More than meets the eye

[Mister Andersen]

New Campaign Quality

Autonomous Entities (Seasons Only: -25 XP). Characters with the complex construct or construct quality may heal normally. Those characters also possessing the self healing quality or neither construct quality instead gain an additional action die of their standard type at the beginning of each session that does not count as a Starting Action Die.

Robots in Disguise (Seasons Only). The Hologram gadget and Security Drone security picks gain the CUL quality for characters with the complex construct or construct quality. Further, characters that possess either quality who also possess the augmented (proteus device) quality allowing the assumption of animal forms may change their Type to Animal, and gain the Beast quality, when in that form. All other characters gain an extra Caliber I pick as part of their possessions.

[Sletchman]

I like what you've done here for a full transformers game, in a small set of rules you've managed to capture the whole scope of transformers.

Interestingly, I have a player in my game who is playing a Daring Test Subject, with Hulking and Fearless, who used his possessions to proteus mod himself into a Humvee, as well as adding on prodeus mod weaponry housed in his hands, a remote control so he can control his vehicle form [mainly cuz i couldn't figure out what to do otherwise].

Also, him not being a construct allows him to heal normally, and with a bit of handwavium and me saying he's an organic machine [much like a cyborg], and completely of earth origin, it also sorta functions.

Few Questions: How are you planning on handling vehicular damage saves? I said his damage goes to VP/WP, and called shots can take out specific locations, and instead of needing a called shot to shoot an occupant, the enemy can aim at the enemy, who gets a degree of cover based on how visible they are to the enemy.

How are you handling hardness? Do they get it only in vehicle form? In both? If not in humanoid, can they requisition armour [transforming or not?] to give them DR in humanoid form?  I've given my player his hardness in vehicle form, but in humanoid form his more delicate bits are exposed, and so he has to wear custom built armour.

So far, without any real rules changes, we have a transformer in a party of black ops style agents, and no ones complained about balance issues, even with the current antagonist - a full special npc that was blantly coppied off U.S. Warmachine, it really shows what the system can do, and also has the dnd players down the other end of the gaming store going "He's actually playing a transformer?? Holy *$%@!"

[Darth Sephiroth]

Also how about the combiner abilities of some of them? Merging is something that could be rather difficult to deal withas you end up with absurdly powerful beings.

Then there are the upper level transformers who are more of plot device entities rather than normal characters.

[Gatac]

I did some thinkin' on this topic before (but never got anything so complete out of it), and the Vehicle / Robot damage schism is what killed my attempt, basically. However, I have a rough idea on how to do this:

1) Treat the Vehicle Damage Save as Damage Reduction against normal attacks.
2) Called Shots against Vehicle mode components work as usual, except that any result that would destroy the vehicle mode merely makes it inoperative. You can only destroy the Transformer by depleting it's Wound points. In exchange, a Transformer that has been rendered inoperative by vehicle called shots is too heavily damaged to transform to robot mode. Same thing applies to taking wound damage.
3) Arm Transformers with vehicle weapons.

That way, the TFs can be massively resistant themselves without treating their in-fighting differently, armor-piercing weapons really mess them up, their armor scales to the resilience of their vehicle mode (but is better than an Earth-made vehicle of the same type), and you can make a vehicle mode useless / prevent transformation through damage.

I know, this needs to be cleaned up a lot, but I think it's a fair shot without anything that is obviously totally broken.

Gatac

[Mister Andersen]

I did some thinkin' on this topic before (but never got anything so complete out of it), and the Vehicle / Robot damage schism is what killed my attempt, basically. However, I have a rough idea on how to do this:

1) Treat the Vehicle Damage Save as Damage Reduction against normal attacks.

What are 'normal attacks'? I recall something about how you shouldn't be able to take out a tank with a hand gun, but I can't find any reference to that anywhere.

My main problem with this otherwise cool idea is balance - Trannies are getting on average at least 6 points of DR that their meatbag teammates aren't that isn't costed into their Talent - plus that unlike ordinary vehicles they're likely to benefit from increased Defence scores due to class.

2) Called Shots against Vehicle mode components work as usual, except that any result that would destroy the vehicle mode merely makes it inoperative. You can only destroy the Transformer by depleting it's Wound points. In exchange, a Transformer that has been rendered inoperative by vehicle called shots is too heavily damaged to transform to robot mode. Same thing applies to taking wound damage.

I was thinking of anything that makes a vehicle inoperative instead rolls on the table of ouch, while anything that would destroy it instead rolls on the ToO as if it were a critical.

3) Arm Transformers with vehicle weapons.

That's always an option, but upscaling conventional weapons should always remain an option, especially for the smaller ones.

[Gatac]

Attacks that do lethal damage. Sorry for the confusion. As for gaining DR, well, yeah. But honestly, I'm not sure how to make a Cybertronian completely balanced against a normal Spycraft character. As for smaller characters, I'd really like to get the standard-sized "car robots" up and running before I worry about Spychangers, Micromasters, Minicons and such.

If this was D&D, this would be the time to break out the stupidly high Level Adjustment. Far be it from me to suggest any such thing (because LA sucks hard), but we are missing some sort of "This is supposed to be more powerful" indicator / rebalancing mechanism.

The only outright weakness I'd ascribe to Cybertronians is a matter of defending against infections and weird angles of attack. Cosmic rust, scraplets, energon radiation...all of those point to a race that just wasn't created in competition with anything but itself. The only reason they haven't been eaten alive is that they're not biological, but any technological threat seems to blindside them.

Gatac

[Gatac]

After more thinking, I've come to the conclusion that the only way to do Transformers justice is to balance them against mecha, not humans.

...when's C:S coming out, anyway?

Gatac

[Mister Andersen]

New Campaign Quality

Big Damn Universe (Season Only). The base size category of all PCs, NPCS and gear is moved one grade down - thus the base size of a mundane human is considered to be Small. The number of squares occupied by Vehicles and other such gear is reduced by 2/3 (round to the nearest whole square. Thus a 2x3 vehicle would occupy 1x2 squares.

This came to me last night as a way to handle what are effectively Huge characters without actually having to put up with what the mechanics of actually creating Huge characters would lead to. Probably should only be used when the majority of the party are likely to be such characters - uch as Transformers or T'Sentradi...

[glimmerrat]

I was going to say 'how would you handle triple-changers'? but then it occurred to me that you could just build another Proteus Gadget into your vehicle form to change into the other form.

You could even use Proteus Gadgets targetting body parts (such as hands) to reproduce most transformers cool extra retractible items. Iirc:

Optimus Prime: Energy Axe (remember the battle at Sherman Dam?)
Megatron: Energy Flail
Jazz: Winch Grapple Gun
Ratchet: Welding Torch

Anyway, I digress. How would you go about doing:

Headmasters
Target Masters
Power Masters

These would all be good ways of including humans in the team, neh? Or how about:

Pretenders
Those who turn into immobile bases
Heaven forbid - Special Teams??

See what kind of ideas these turn up.

[Mister Andersen]

I was going to say 'how would you handle triple-changers'? but then it occurred to me that you could just build another Proteus Gadget into your vehicle form to change into the other form.

Yes.

You could even use Proteus Gadgets targetting body parts (such as hands) to reproduce most transformers cool extra retractible items. Iirc:

Optimus Prime: Energy Axe (remember the battle at Sherman Dam?)
Megatron: Energy Flail
Jazz: Winch Grapple Gun
Ratchet: Welding Torch

I'd actually just go hidden compartment+weapon myself.

Anyway, I digress. How would you go about doing:

Headmasters
Target Masters
Power Masters

These would all be good ways of including humans in the team, neh?

Yeaah, no. That was pretty much the franchise's shark-jumping moment for me until Beast Wars came along. If you want them, at best they'd be Personal Lieutenants making Aid Another checks.

Or how about:

1. Pretenders
2. Those who turn into immobile bases
3. Heaven forbid - Special Teams??

See what kind of ideas these turn up.

1. High caliber Blend/Bluff/Falsify check gadgets.
2. NPCs all the way
3. Campaign quality- something along the lines of "Once per session all the PCs may spend an AD to combine into a single gestalt entity, 1 size category greater than the largest member of the team for every 5 team members formin the gestalt. This entity has the CRW (X) quality where X is the number of team members required to form it. Each ability score is the highest possesed by the team plus number of team members in gestalt - So if Arcee (Dex 18), Bumblebee (Dex 15) and Jazz (Dex 16) combine, the gestalt has a Dex of 21. Checks are lead by the member with the highest appropiate bonus, everyone else makes Aid Another checks to support them."

[Darth Sephiroth]

Aren't most of the combiners many times larger than their parts (Devistator is far larger than any of its parts)

[Mister Andersen]

Construction equipment - bull dozers, cement trucks and the like - is at least Huge, so at the very least he'll be Colossal. But looking at the gear chapter wheeled construction gear is actually Colossal, so Devastator ends up as Gargantuan

[glimmerrat]

Yeaah, no. That was pretty much the franchise's shark-jumping moment for me until Beast Wars came along.

Really? The moment when it jumped the shark for me was beast wars... I mean, Optimus Primal? A Gorilla? No, it's probably best if i just don't go there and be happy that other people like it. I'm antagonising far too many people recently.

Incidentally, do you know where the expression 'jumping the shark' comes from?

[Mister Andersen]

Happy Days. Specifically the episode where everyone goes to some water park and Fonzie literally water skiis over a shark, as it's the point where most people agree the show lost its cool and seriously started to suck.

But what's not to love about Beast Wars? The events of the first Transformers movie aside, this was the first time where we got the 'Cons kicking arses and taking names in any sort of meaningful fashion - and what's more, doing so on a fairly regular basis.

[Maldroth]

Honestly the best TF conversion should be a toolbox to allow a GC to emulate any of his favorite series. If you don't like Beast Wars (which I perticularly don't) you can opt to not use those rules or campaign qualities.

I had a good amount of conversion done for a D20 TF game but never worked on it further for two reasons. Couldn't get any local players interested in playing it. And I figured it would be an IP I'd never get approval for since its Hasbro who own WotC.

I do like what you are doing here though.