I just picked this book up at a Con and was reading through and was kind of perplexed when the 90ft tall Mecha Kitai robots only had a strength of 10.
Is that just for Vehicle to Vehicle comparison? Or can my Half-Orc fighter actually arm wrestle this thing?
A few points on that:
1. That's just the base-line model; you can improve the strength with after-market upgrades.
2. Pathfinder rules aren't built for verisimilitude. A Colossal-sized creature with a Strength of 10 may not have as high a bonus as your half-orc fighter, but he can still pick up 2 of him as a light load, so it's up to the GM how that works out for arm-wrestling.
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We tried to make the rules as seamless as possible going from creatures to vehicles, but the 'object' nature of vehicles made that hard (when making a creature larger, you can just throw on natural AC. Objects don't get that benefit in core Pathfinder, they just get more hp).
Keeping Strength at '10' was a means of adjusting for that discrepancy; size penalties to attack and ac would scale at the same rate, so two Large mechs fighting would have the same hit/miss chance as two Colossal mechs fighting.
However, while this makes attack values more correct, other things are thrown off as well with mech/creature interactions, as you've pointed out.
When dealing with mech/creature interactions, I would recommend adjusting the mech's base strength according to its size as if you were advancing a monster: Large 18, Huge 26, Gargantuan 34, Colossal 42.
If you want to keep these values all the time that's also valid; when fighting mech to mech in melee combat you'll never miss, but everything else will be more seamless, and it will certainly speed up vehicle combat and make melee attractive compared to other vehicle combat options.
We tried to make the rules as seamless as possible going from creatures to vehicles, but the 'object' nature of vehicles made that hard (when making a creature larger, you can just throw on natural AC. Objects don't get that benefit in core Pathfinder, they just get more hp).
Keeping Strength at '10' was a means of adjusting for that discrepancy; size penalties to attack and ac would scale at the same rate, so two Large mechs fighting would have the same hit/miss chance as two Colossal mechs fighting.
However, while this makes attack values more correct, other things are thrown off as well with mech/creature interactions, as you've pointed out.
When dealing with mech/creature interactions, I would recommend adjusting the mech's base strength according to its size as if you were advancing a monster: Large 18, Huge 26, Gargantuan 34, Colossal 42.
If you want to keep these values all the time that's also valid; when fighting mech to mech in melee combat you'll never miss, but everything else will be more seamless, and it will certainly speed up vehicle combat and make melee attractive compared to other vehicle combat options.
I was wondering about using the Colossal base strength. Thanks!