The Design of BCS III: From Pilot Levels to the Item System. (Patreon)

A.K.A. "The rest of the general rules overview."

Pilot Levels

Pilot Levels, renamed from Power Levels, now have a larger mechanical impact than they used to. Each Pilot Level offers 1 Ace Trick, 1 Ace Perk and a +1 to all Tests. With this, PL makes pilots switching mechs feel like you actually get to carry over your talents from one machine to the next. In addition, it replaces the need to buy stats by making you stronger as you level up automatically, which solves a problem in that levelups sometimes felt boring, because people were only buying stats, and also that levelups sometimes were like a math puzzle trying to not leave any MP leftovers. It also quantifies differences in experience between characters in a tangible way, making it easier for the GM to tell just how much stronger or weaker an enemy is relative to the PCs for encounter design purposes. 

Going up a Pilot Level is a very significant boon. Hearing the GM say "The Rival is one PL higher than you." should make you sweat, because with that PL comes a large host of goodies. This was, to a degree, true in BCG as well, but less so especially if you went first (because, as we noted last time, damage was more unrestrained, making every attack potentially impossible to recover from). It's possible to beat someone of higher PL in BCS, but they will make you feel the difference, and that will make the victory feel like a genuine achievement.

The main downside of this approach is that it homogenizes builds a bit. You can still specialize in a variety of things, or prioritize some stats over others, but you will always get a +1 to all Tests with each PL. Even if you choose to be an Intellect specialist, with Fitness as your lowest Attribute, you will still have above average Fitness by PL 5. It's not a big problem, IMO, and in my opinion represents that a truly well-developed character also works on their flaws over the course of a story. That said, I can see how it can bother some, and my best suggestion is to not make games go past PL 3 in that case (which is good advice in general if you want the characters to feel like they still have weaknesses).

Ace Themes and Ace Points

This one still stings a little. Renaming Genre Themes, Genre Points and Genre Powers to Ace Themes, Ace Points and Ace Tricks is primarily a tool to help new players see them as things their characters can do, instead of being "meta" or out-of-character narrative mechanics. While I'm going to miss the old names for these, it's an improvement in the sense that now players who struggle to conceptualize meta-mechanics can now actually use them. If your PC knows Swift Riposte, then you can say that you're playing a master of one-on-one melee combat. If your Rival has Twin Strike then they've practiced a combo move. It's not that complicated.

Other than that, there's not a lot else to say here, they're largely the same mechanics that you know from BCG. Maybe Ace Themes could use a bit of rewriting to make them more in-character (ie renaming the Reason to a Goal and the Bane to a Weakness) to be consistent with the reason for renaming them. On the other hand, I think Themes are at their best when they're compelled like Fate Aspects, plus using them to give PCs Genre Points was already an optional rule in BCG (a sizable number of campaigns entirely ignored the subsystem) so if people don't like using meta elements, they don't have to.

Pilot Attributes

There are only three Pilot Attributes: Fitness, Intellect and Charm. That's three less than the old six, and it's because NPCs don't make Intermission rolls so there's no need for defensive stats like Awareness and Willpower anymore. Resources I always liked conceptually but it never played particularly well, so instead I combined those three up into smaller functions of the more important trio.

Other than that, they work much like they do in BCG, just with more functions. We'll get more into it when we talk about Skills and Traits, as that's where it's most noticeable how the Attributes have been rebalanced and given a do-over.

Incidentally, if it looks like I'm bunching up a whole lot of stuff this update, it's because I do want to get to the Skills, Attributes, Tricks, Perks, Upgrades and Weapons ASAP because that's where the bulk of the fun for this series of blogposts will be. But patience, we'll get there eventually.

Mecha Attributes

We only have three Mecha Attributes now: HP, Energy and PL. PL is used for all rolls, while HP and Energy are resources that don't get rolled. Additionally, Energy doesn't actually go up with levels. You can see from this that Mecha Attributes work a little (or a lot) differently from Character ones.

So, let's go over how they work real quick. HP starts at 20 (the equivalent of 5 Threshold in BCG) and goes up to 40 (10 Threshold in BCG). By making HP go up with PL automatically it helps balance the game. PCs should have a decent starting HP by default, and high-level Enemies should have considerable bulk by default as well. Both of those things are necessary, even if there is a small part of me that weeps at the idea that you can't play a 1 HP glass cannon anymore. It's better this way, trust me. Other than that, it's still Threshold, but now with a more intuitive name.

Speaking of the name, it was overdue a change. The first version of Threshold waaaaaay back in GGG was a proper Damage Threshold concept that determined whether you shrugged off a hit or lost multiple limbs when taking Damage and, honestly, I should've changed the name at some point instead of keeping it after it became four HP bars. Something like 10 years later (JFC) come the design of BCS I went with the very basic "Hit Points" instead. Not a particularly exciting tale, but there you go.

Energy is the only Attribute that does not go up with levels automatically. Originally, it did, but I couldn't find a starting number that worked at both low and high levels. An Energy stat lower than 5 was too low for something that you couldn't upgrade and an Energy stat higher than 5 was too high for builds that didn't care and just gave them a free use of a large Energy sink like Shoot it Down or Wave Motion Cannon. No starting point was good (3 was the closest, going up to 8, reaching the "Goldylocks Zone" of 5 at PL 2). It ultimately made the homogenization problem worse. Eventually I decided Energy didn't need to increase with time, and opted to make it upgradable with MP for builds that want to benefit from the extra juice. As a bonus, this gives the game a decent MP sink at high PLs when your build is already complete and you just want more of what you already have.

Finally, there is PL. I already talked about that one in the first section of this update, so I don't have much more to say. In case it wasn't clear by now , PL is effectively Might, Systems and Speed all in one. You roll PL to attack, use Support Upgrades, roll Initiative, and so forth. You can still specialize in having stronger weapons, tougher armor or being better at evading shots, but this is mostly done through Upgrades and Perks (usually granting an individual +2 bonus, equivalent to 2 Pilot Levels, which goes up to +4 or higher when combined).

This way, a more experienced pilot is generally better than an inexperienced one, but a specialist can keep up or even surpass them in their area of choice. For the most part, people will be rolling with a bonus ranging from +2 to +12. At the highest levels with a lot of specialization this can go up to a +16 or higher, but because results are bounded to no higher than 20, it prevents most problems that could arise from excessive optimization. It took a lot of tinkering, and I'm not quite 100% happy with the numbers, but also perfect is the enemy of good and I like how this has worked out in all the playtests so far.

Locked and Volatile Items

Finally, I didn't have anywhere else to put this section, so here it goes. Locked and Volatile Items are the game's gear and equipment, and they work very close to how Monsterpunk handles that subsystem. The main difference is that they're better explained, and the game points out how they can be used as material for Twists and Bonuses. This enables classic tense moments like "You outrun the pack of guard dogs, but you drop your EMP grenade while doing so." (Athletics Success with Twist) or rewards like "When you knock out the guard, you loot some stimulants from their pockets that you can consume for a bonus later." (Combat Success with Bonus) through the mechanics, without the GM having to ad-hoc them. It's nothing you couldn't come up with on your own before, but it's a good addition to have.

That's all for now. Next time, we're finally into the proper rules, starting with Intermissions.

Gimmick Out.