my player wants to build death choper


Advice


so one of my player wants to build a personal flying battle tank. by the rules of crafting this should be know problem. but i am worried this will make a untouchable pc in combat that can just handle all monsters any thoughts on how to let him have his fun with out braking the game?

i have a few but would love to have others views

The Exchange

Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Does it want a tank as in a vehicle or does he want to be a flying tank a la powered armor? The answer to that question should guide you to the appropriate rules.


I'd let him use it for scenarios where the intended fight is vs another vehicle. As regular gear, I think it is too much powerful.

A personal battletank, if properly represented, will probably have more hp and resiliance that all the rest of the team combined, and as much firepower as well. The problem is not being untouchable or handling all monsters, as you can dial up monster as much as you need. The problem is overshadowing the rest of the group. If you make every monster a Godzilla-clone so he can have fun with his battletank, everyone else will have to hide to avoid death while your tank-specced character go toe-to-toe vs the monster.


We have nearly zero crafting rules, so you will have a massive problem, not no problem, coming up with a solution right now. We don't even have rules letting your player craft a chair. Even if we had crafting rules, our rules for flying vehicles basically don't exist - the Drive action description on page 278 is fundamentally not compatible with the rules on page 259 for flying and swimming, so we don't know how to drive a submarine or police cruiser. It's even worse than figuring out how to use Survival properly for mounted mobility.

Closest I can see would be letting this vehicle exist, but good luck figuring out how to actually use it in combat. Once it exists, it can be crafted.

FLYING BATTLE TANK, LEVEL 7
PRICE 16740
Huge land and air vehicle (10 ft. wide, 20 ft. long, 7 ft. high)
Speed 10 ft., full 450 ft., 50 mph (ground and fly)
EAC 16; KAC 20; Cover Total Cover
HP 90 (45); Hardness 8
Attack (Collision) 7d10 (DC 13)
Modifiers –4 Piloting, –3 attack (–6 at full speed)
Systems autopilot (Piloting +13), planetary comm unit; Passengers 7

Note that even the "tank" we have, the all-terrain transport I mostly based the above on, is incredibly fragile - all of the vehicles that currently exist are less durable than, say, a remote-controlled spy drone. Starfinder only has personal-scale vehicles with the approximate durability of paper or glass and starships with the approximate durability of pure adamantium right now. And powered armor, which has its own rules separate from being a walker vehicle (one of the starkest differences is how quickly powered armor runs out of charge, compared to vehicles, which appear to have infinite fuel).


How powerful a tank, or vehicle in any case, like monsters, is entirely relative to its level. Vehicle item levels are relatively the same as a creature's CR and generally use similar health totals (a huge level 6 vehicle has similar HP to a CR 6 animal, for example).

It's important to keep scale in mind when deciding how powerful a tank should be. A 15th level party, for example, wouldn't have much trouble taking down a group of AHAVs, which are basically 16-32' high metal gear-like war machines. A mere tank has no business being "broken" to the same 15th level party. This game is not intended to be realistic and has your PCs performing superhuman acts. A flying battle tank shouldn't be as powerful as many would think.


thanks for all the input

this seems about what he would be looking for its even there level
FLYING BATTLE TANK, LEVEL 7
PRICE 16740
Huge land and air vehicle (10 ft. wide, 20 ft. long, 7 ft. high)
Speed 10 ft., full 450 ft., 50 mph (ground and fly)
EAC 16; KAC 20; Cover Total Cover
HP 90 (45); Hardness 8
Attack (Collision) 7d10 (DC 13)
Modifiers –4 Piloting, –3 attack (–6 at full speed)
Systems autopilot (Piloting +13), planetary comm unit; Passengers 7

but a bit smaller to hold one maybe 2 people only he want a helicopter

as for crafting rules all i can find is put gold in vile shack time pass pour out you have item of same value as there is no restrictions other then level and gold it seem you can craft anything out of anything

so i feel the pain of this lack of rules for it but i don't want to take the fun out of it for the players

party level is 8

i was planing on keeping him from having it at all time aka dungeons and the like it want fit


Sauce987654321 wrote:

How powerful a tank, or vehicle in any case, like monsters, is entirely relative to its level. Vehicle item levels are relatively the same as a creature's CR and generally use similar health totals (a huge level 6 vehicle has similar HP to a CR 6 animal, for example).

It's important to keep scale in mind when deciding how powerful a tank should be. A 15th level party, for example, wouldn't have much trouble taking down a group of AHAVs, which are basically 16-32' high metal gear-like war machines. A mere tank has no business being "broken" to the same 15th level party. This game is not intended to be realistic and has your PCs performing superhuman acts. A flying battle tank shouldn't be as powerful as many would think.

While that's true, at lvl 15 the player will probably ask/have a Flying Plasmaseeking turbocharged novatank with phasing shields TM.

Something like a flying battle tank always bring a lot of problems to regular encounters. Drive by attacks for example, are pretty difficult to counter for many creatures (like beasts). Also, a collision from a tank (using the propopsal shown in this thread) will do 7d10 damage. That's a lot compared to the 2d10 a reaction cannon will do at the same level. Things get worse if you include some vehicle-sized weaponry to the tank, such as a main battle cannon (which could hit things a mile away).

If the player really wants to have a tank, I would try to include more vehicle-to-vehicle scenes and combats. But permanent flying at lvl 7 for the whole group, 450' movement, hardness, and 7d10 damage, are things that will break balance in a regular combat vs a regular monster.


gustavo iglesias wrote:
Sauce987654321 wrote:

How powerful a tank, or vehicle in any case, like monsters, is entirely relative to its level. Vehicle item levels are relatively the same as a creature's CR and generally use similar health totals (a huge level 6 vehicle has similar HP to a CR 6 animal, for example).

It's important to keep scale in mind when deciding how powerful a tank should be. A 15th level party, for example, wouldn't have much trouble taking down a group of AHAVs, which are basically 16-32' high metal gear-like war machines. A mere tank has no business being "broken" to the same 15th level party. This game is not intended to be realistic and has your PCs performing superhuman acts. A flying battle tank shouldn't be as powerful as many would think.

While that's true, at lvl 15 the player will probably ask/have a Flying Plasmaseeking turbocharged novatank with phasing shields TM.

Something like a flying battle tank always bring a lot of problems to regular encounters. Drive by attacks for example, are pretty difficult to counter for many creatures (like beasts). Also, a collision from a tank (using the propopsal shown in this thread) will do 7d10 damage. That's a lot compared to the 2d10 a reaction cannon will do at the same level. Things get worse if you include some vehicle-sized weaponry to the tank, such as a main battle cannon (which could hit things a mile away).

If the player really wants to have a tank, I would try to include more vehicle-to-vehicle scenes and combats. But permanent flying at lvl 7 for the whole group, 450' movement, hardness, and 7d10 damage, are things that will break balance in a regular combat vs a regular monster.

Drive by attacks aren't too bad to deal with. Typically a pilot can't race their vehicle at max speed and fire their weapons due to limited actions and racing is a full action, and a vehicle's drive speed is much slower (10 for the tank above). You can have another party member fire the guns for you as you race, but that's taking up the use of an entire member, and a lot more monsters do have ranged attacks as opposed to Pathfinder.

Ramming and collision damage is very high, as ramming actually doubles the damage of your collision, but is very restrictive and rather easy to avoid since you only can move in a straight line or 45° angle at your facing, pass a check of 10+(2xlevel) to initiate it, must stop at the end of your movement (also provokes), and then the enemy must make a reflex save of 13 to negate (as per the vehicle above).

Normal collisions are easier to do, except reflex 13 is for half. A vehicle that deals collision damage, though, takes half of what they normally deal. Most level appropriate encounters at level 7 only need to roll a 4 to pass. 7D10 damage at level 7 is actually in line with the average damage that a CR 7 deals, according to the combatant array chart.

I don't think "vehicle sized weapons" are really a thing and probably wouldn't be distinguished from normal weapons. Everything that isn't starship scale, whether it'd be rifleman or a jeager straight out of pacific rim, regardless of their size, use similar weapon damage values given out of the book. Not so much a question of how big, but what level it is. Even in the book, the picture shown for the 2D10 "light machine gun" is actually a 6 barreled gatling gun, and heavy weapons in general are modeled as massive military grade weapons that are too big to properly wield.

Sorry for the rambling, but I wanted to offer my perspective on things. I do still agree that it would cause some balance issues, as it's practically another party member for free that a player can use instead of his character. Mainly my point is, unlike other games, it's not appropriate for tanks and jets to dominate in this game when vastly larger scale challenges exist at higher levels.

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