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I've been prepping to play in Horizons of the Vast with my home group and am planning to play a mechanic with the Experimental Vehicle alternate class feature. I think it will be great to have a ready built conveyance for our exploration activities, however I have some concerns for the character at later levels.
Normally, a Mechanic's Drone/Exocortex (or any other alternate class feature that replaces Artificial Intelligence) advances in level with the character at no additional cost.
If your drone is ever destroyed or lost, you retain its mind and all its subroutines in your custom rig and can replace its body for free using your custom rig after 24 hours of uninterrupted work. You can take a single 8-hour rest during each 24 hours spent working, but any other interruption greater than a moment of conversation requires you to add 12 hours to the time required to rebuild your drone. In addition, every time you gain a mechanic level, you can rebuild your drone from scratch with the same amount of work, allowing you to change any or all of the choices you made for your drone (including ability scores, chassis, feats, mods, and skills).
The exocortex is automatic and the experimental armor/weapon prototype (from COM) can use looted gear or be changed at each level up with the same omission of cost. I also noted that the Experimental Explosives alternate class feature will never cost the character a single credit. However, the Experimental Vehicle has a very steep cost requirement of the character.
In addition, every time you gain a mechanic level, you can redesign and rebuild your vehicle with the same amount of work, though if the new design's price is higher, you must expend credits equal to the difference between their prices.
The only question I have here is are modifications (which seem to require separate purchase, similar to arming a drone) included in the design price of a given vehicle.
I'm trying to figure out why this particular class feature has a draw on the character's resources and the others do not. I'd like to know what others think or if there has been any specific information about this released. I do not believe this belongs in Rules Questions since I fully understand what the text is saying.
Thank you for any discussion.
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The vehicle must have the experimental graft (page 78)
Adjustments: Decrease price by 50%, increase modification slots by 1.
Your vehicle design upgrades are half price before applying other grafts that can increase/reduce the price.
You pay for it because it is a very powerful piece of gear (you can wrap your entire party in hardness and HP and full/improved cover with crazy manueverability) that would ordinarily be blown up repeatedly if pushed hard and you can replace it for free when this happens.
If you're often fighting inside your vehicle, you don't need to spend money on armor upgrades, just loot whatever trash is left over from enemies. If you're often fighting inside your vehicle you can also become less reliant on weapons and focus on ramming or (once you qualify for a Huge size) running over groups of enemies - with three modifications to increase your hardness, increase your collision damage dealt, and reduce your collision damage taken you can dish out a lot of damage this way.
Basically your vehicle is potentially a lot more powerful to you and especially to your party than a drone or weapon/armor is, so you pay to upgrade it. If your party is fighting from inside it for cover reasons, you may want to ask them to chip in to pay for it from party funds.
Modifications are not free.
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Thank you Xenocrat, those were some pretty good points. I hope my squishy contemplative lives long enough to see the rewards of such a powerful vehicle!
I will certainly remember to ask the riders to pony up for their transportation.
I hope there will be a lot of outdoor combat. The compacted vehicle is going to be less helpful than noted when in a building/dungeon. Kind of like a mount I suppose.
Other views or thoughts are certainly welcome. I'd like to get the most out of this feature!
You can always go for a small race/medium vehicle if you want more use inside buildings. But even medium w/large vehicle can do some interesting stuff in larger rooms. As long as you're in front and have a 10' cube (including you) available you can manifest it and then your party can hop in for improved cover (on a cruiser, for example) to shoot from even if the room is otherwise empty of useful cover.
I am convinced whoever wrote the experimental vehicle section either doesn't care about or just hates vehicles. Its an awful alternative class feature. You can do most of it with a modest credit investment.
The only thing you actually get is the ability to miniaturize a vehicle, compare that to getting a full drone that you could ride into combat and fight alongside you.
A modest credit investment that you can't fit through doors and goes poof when it gets destroyed.
My only real problem with the experimental vehicle is that it seems like a meme character to suddenly unfold a police car in a hallway and run people over or use it for cover.
I am convinced whoever wrote the experimental vehicle section either doesn't care about or just hates vehicles. Its an awful alternative class feature. You can do most of it with a modest credit investment.
The only thing you actually get is the ability to miniaturize a vehicle, compare that to getting a full drone that you could ride into combat and fight alongside you.
You get a half cost vehicle with an extra upgrade slot that can be modified every level and replaced for free every time it's wrecked. It's amazing.
The drone can't provide total cover (full cover after level 7) and hardness/HP to protect your entire party or ram people for more damage than the best weapons. A level 1 vehicle doing a ram action averages 20 points of damage dealt (Reflex DC 10 negates), takes an average of 5, but also has Hardness 5, so often won't take any at all.
I think the power level of this option probably depends strongly on the campaign. In some kind of "dungeon running campaign it would be hard to use this option but in a campaign that has a lot of exploring or outdoor stuff it is an amazing option. Given this probably becomes the party bus there is every reason for the party to help kick in for mods as normally the whole group would be forced to pony up for this anyway and now they get it half priced and not having to replace it if it gets destroyed which is a LOT of money saved.
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Thank you Xenocrat, those were some pretty good points. I hope my squishy contemplative lives long enough to see the rewards of such a powerful vehicle!
I will certainly remember to ask the riders to pony up for their transportation.
I hope there will be a lot of outdoor combat. The compacted vehicle is going to be less helpful than noted when in a building/dungeon. Kind of like a mount I suppose.
Other views or thoughts are certainly welcome. I'd like to get the most out of this feature!
So far in Horizons of the Vast approximately two thirds of your time is exploring in the great outdoors -- and the other one third of the time you are exploring in ruins and indoor spaces where a vehicle is impractical.
Good luck with your adventure! I hope you and your party have a blast!
Hmm
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So far in Horizons of the Vast approximately two thirds of your time is exploring in the great outdoors -- and the other one third of the time you are exploring in ruins and indoor spaces where a vehicle is impractical.Good luck with your adventure! I hope you and your party have a blast!
The first thing my group said when they looked at the hex map from Planetfall was that they were gonna need a boat.