Crazy, I know. And please, don't flame me about "This will never happen!" I know that it won't, unless the DM is on crack, or bribed with money, booze, pizza, or sexual favors. (Or a combination thereof.)

However, the SRun system is the best I've seen so far for dealing with complicated forms of combat. To that end, I've tried to stat out Orbital Frame Jehuty, from the anime game/series Zone of the Enders, as if it were a drone. Can you tell me how well I've succeeded so far? What have I missed? Skipped?

Anything you see that's glaringly in need of a looking at? Bearing in mind that I don't care about balance against anything in the SRun canon universe.



Orbital Frame Jehuty

Hull rating: 6
Bulwark rating: 2
Signature: 7
Fuel: Metatron Energy Reaction (Infinate)
Economy: N/A
L/T: VTOL

Jehuty is a very special machine, a giant robot that interfaces directly with it's pilot, to a depth few Riggers will ever feel, and with such fluidity and grace that most Riggers will never understand.

One need not have any cyberware to utelize Jehuty - and likewise, no Cyberware will enhance a user's performance in Jehuty. To connect with Jehuty, simply place your hands on the control contacts in it's cockpit, and the machine does the rest. Jehuty's interface is incredibly advanced, granting a Reaction Increase of 6+3d6.

Jehuty has several forms of attacks, and several skills laid out for it. It's such an intuitive, easy-to-use machine that when Defaulting to a skill or a stat, the Frame Runner is provided with a -1 or -2 bonus, respectively.

Operating Jehuty's movement is a relatively simple affair, yet one that takes some practice to master. The proper skill to use is Humanoid Frame Running, but you can default to Vector-Thrust Piloting with ease. (Additional -1.) Otherwise default to Drone operation skills, or to Reaction.

Jehuty's main method of locomotion is it's flight. Unlike most vehicles, Jehuty is both strictly limited, and yet free in it's flight modes. Normal operations carry a maximum speed of 250 meters per round, while high-speed flying gets one kilometer/round. It can sustain these speeds indefinately, and no rolls are needed to achieve any speed up to the maximum for your current operational mode - conversely, no amount of rolling can exceed your chosen mode's maximum - that's just the way Jehuty works.

Jehuty's attacks are equally advanced. They fall into two groups: Ranged and Melee. You can use Gunnery and Cybercombat respectively if you have the skills - Jehuty's melee weapon, the giant blade on it's right arm, functions just like a similar weapon would if implanted in a humanoid. Alternatively, you can use one skill, Human Frame Combat, for both ranged and melee. Defaults to any sort of skill that Gunnery and Cybercombat would, and then to QCK.

Ranged attacks:

Shot: Jehuty's primary attack, the Shot, is a weak attack, but one that can be used as a free action while on the move, once per combat pass. It inflicts 4LN.

Heavy Shot: A more powerful Shot, the Heavy Shot is still weak among Jehuty's attacks. It needs a Simple Action to fire, and deals 6LN.

Homing Lasers: The Homing Lasers are the pride and joy of Jehuty's ranged combat. While weak individually, Jehuty may fire up to one hundred Homing Lasers (no more than five of which may home in on any one target,) at a time. Perfect for sweeping the skies clean of combative insects that should know better than to attack giants. Each laser deals 4MN, and every additional laser allocated to any one target increases the base power by one. Homing lasers provide bonus dice equal to one-half the total dice rolled on a given shot, and Homing Lasers may be targeted at multiple targets. (Roll individually. For large attacks against small targets, it's reccomended to just say they hit and get on with it.)

Burst Shot: The most powerful ranged attack Jehuty possesses is also it's least wieldly. This attack requires Jehuty spend a minimum of one combat pass charging the attack, though it can spend more. Base damage is 10MN, and increase the damage rating by 1 for each additional pass spent charging, to a maximum of 10DN in two rounds' charging. While charging, Jehuty is immobile, and unable to use combat pool dice to stage down damage. During this time, if Jehuty takes any damage it does not stage to nothing, the charge is lost.

Melee attacks:

Jehuty is a giant robot with a melee attack capability. Indeed, melee is it's primary function. Use standard melee rules to resolve attacks, bearing in mind that targets incapable of replying with a melee attack have no defense except attempting to stage the damage down. (Targets with a melee attack, such as giant robots or dragons or whatever, can reply as normal.)

Blade: The Blade on Jehuty's arm is the single most damaging melee weapon ever devised. It carries a baseline damage of 8SN.

Burst Blade: By spending a simple action charging the energy of it's Burst Shot into it's Blade, Jehuty can unleash a devestating 360 melee attack that inflicts extreme damage into everything nearby. This attack is unblockable, and only Karma pool dice can be applied to staging it down - dodge or die. The Burst Blade deals a baseline damage of 10DN.

Grab: Jehuty can grab onto objects weighing up to 200 metric tons, and lift them clear into the air, wielding them as melee implement or shield. Use the Grapple rules to resolve attacks against things capable of responding, such as other giant robots or dragons; all others, such as tanks or boats, are helpless to resist.

Damage for a grabbed object used as a weapon is (5 + object's Body rating)SN. Jehuty can charge such an object with it's Burst power, which upgrades it to (5 + Object's body rating)DN. A grappled object takes 1/2 the damage it is used to inflict. Attacking with a grappled object in melee is a Complex Action.

When using a grappled object as a melee shield, deal damage first to the object - if the object does not survive, any overflow damage is dealt to Jehuty, with a damage code of 1/2 what it was to destroy the object. If a Charged object is used as a shield, no damage can get to Jehuty - the object explodes (harmlessly to it's wielder,) and pushes Jehuty away from danger, even if the danger was an area-effect. Using a grappled object as a shield against an attack is a free action, and can be done reactively to an incoming attack, melee or otherwise.

Grappled objects can also be thrown, dealing damage equal to (9 + Object's Body Rating)SN, or (9 + Object's Body Rating)DN if charged. The object takes full damage in such an attack, if it explodes, raise damage rating by 2.

Shielding: Jehuty has it's own built-in shielding. This powerful energy field surrounds Jehuty, but at a cost - the shield takes a simple action to warm up, and once active, Jehuty cannot take any actions except maintaining the shield. However, it is powerful indeed - you do not roll to resist damage taken while Shielding, any dice that are used are automatic successes. If Jehuty still takes damage, reduce the damage code by 2, to a minumum of LN.

Shadowrun is not a mecha.

Are you planning this as a specific set of numbers alone in a void, or do you intend to make rules for LEVs and Frames of all sorts?

RE the Shadowrun is not a Mecha comment:

John Campbell is a forumgoer over on the Nightstar forums, which is host to, among other things, the webforms for Schlock Mercenary. A place where they deeply despise, among other things, mecha, and myself.

John, do me a favor, mmkay? I don't go 'round the SM forums anymore. I can't, Chalain banned me for daring to complain that he or one of his admins had jacked my post flood count up so high that I could only post once a minute. I'm trying to post a very valid question regarding that very dice gaming that you guys didn't like over in SM, and I'd deeply appreciate it if you kept your snide comments to yourself.


Herald: I may. I didn't actually realize I wasen't the only person on this board who knew what ZoE was. It would be interesting to see how you'd deal with LEVs and Frames like Zakat. You wanna help?

Nyxll: The thought had occured to me, too. I'm quite sure that they don't have Metatron and Orbital Frames by 2060, but I woulden't find it out of the realm of reason that they have been working on the prototypes of the precursors to LEVs.

By the way, I did specify that the Frame Runner was jacked in. The jack-in hardware is built into the frame's cockpit, and they don't need any cyber to do it.

Stainless: Well, the setting's already there, if you want to create Zone of the Enders as a roleplaying setting using the SR3 rules. I think it'd be neat.

Nyxll: I woulden't see this as being impossible by, say, 2064. It's probably still in the prototype stages, and has all the "complexity-issue" flaws the Rigger 3 book can throw at it, but it would be possible.

I haven't started working on the stats yet. I'm not entirely sure how all the cannons and stuff handle recoil and all that.



Laborious Extravehicular Vehicle, LEV.

The LEV was originally concieved as a safer and more productive extravehicular construction drone. With it's powerful jets that can be used to keep pace with a ship or station, and to traverse it's hull, it was designed to be the ultimate manner worker unit in space. Deemed at first far too costly for the level of productivity and the training that the pilots would provide, the idea was nearly scrapped just out of the prototype stage, until someone from Weapons research found the idea, and the entire project's purview was transferred overnight.

The LEVs were already equipped with substantial structure and body armor, while having sufficient internal space to contain needed construction equipment. It was a shoe-in for a combat role, as it's armor was already mil-spec. By equipping the prototype with a weapons system, the result was an immideate combat performance vehicle that could bring the hurt to even main battletanks on the field, and yet could manuver in a tight situation such as a city to bring tank-grade firepower to places no tank could reach. However, what truely shined was that in doing so, the LEV lost none of it's spaceborne capabilities, yielding an effective weapon system that could not only operate on land or in the black heavens above, but could also survive re-entry into a hot zone.

Many weapon systems were tested on the LEV prototype. Many showed promise - the LEV's powerful nuclear powerplant, originally intended for long shifts of construction, aided by the use of drugs or simsense that could keep it's pilot alert, proved adaptable at powering energy weapons like lasers or even ANDREWS. By the same token, it's advanced shock-absorbing systems proved capable of managing the recoil of heavy railguns and even naval cannons - originally a looked-at feature for their damage and low weight, but decided not worth it for the fact that naval shells take up far too much space.

In the end, the final weapon was determined to be best decided upon depending on the envrionment into which the LEV was to deploy. Because it's nuclear power plant is capable of recharging energy weapons such as lasers and railguns, these are the popular choices - a light railgun similar in design to the Aztechnology Xicohtencatl or an Ares Firelance laser weapon system are considered ideal for most deployments. However, due to the high damage of such weapons, for urban deployments, the Ares Victory autocannon, loaded with AV rounds, is the hottest ticket. Such a (comparitively) light weapon will allow the creative weapons' designer to take the concept of an underbarrel secondary weapon and scale it up imminsely, and thus an HMG similar to the RPK series could be mounted under the autocannon, to engage rioters and other such targets too 'soft' to engage with the main gun.

(Note: I don't actually have the cannon companion, so all I can draw upon is the scattershot cross-section of weapons in the Core book, and the kill-every-muthah-fuggah selection of heavy weapons in Rigger 3. If you can suggest some better alternatives, I'd be glad for the help. )

Because advanced targeting systems are already in place in the LEV's fire control systems, every weapon fired from the LEV is considered to have a Smartlink-II system.

The proper skills to use for an LEV are Humanoid Frame Operation and Humanoid Frame Combat. However, Gunnery may be used to fire the weapons' systems without penalty, Vector-Thrust Piloting may be used to pilot the frame while airborne, and the apropriate skill for operating a humanoid drone may be used to walk with it.

Well, I'd probably stick with LEVs and Frames on vehicle scale, but that's just to keep out of the ship collision rules.

I can't remember if LEVs were supposed to have any sort of neural interface, but they'd definately have worse initiatives than even the weakest Frame. For their use, I would declare a piloting skill that defines the best you can do with the LEV. If the pilot has clubs 6 but piloting 4, he'd only get to use 4 dice to club something. If the pilot had piloting 6 and no clubs skill, it'd be 6 dice with a defaulting penalty (I'd first test at +3 custom default level).
LEVs would need a few new base chassis types, but beyond that R3 construction and GM approval should keep them in the proper power scale.

From my mild knowledge of the setting (little bit of ZoE1 for PS2, Fist of Mars for GBA and Idolo) Frames are all unique and almost better built by a horribly deformed chargen system.

Some extra variables that Frames would need beyond LEVs
Metatron filter: how much the pilot is protected from the consequences of close proximity to metatron
Pilot: effective skill level that the frame uses when the pilot is away
Malleability: how easily the frame will align itself with a pilot

I think there's more, but as long as you aren't dealing with excessive metatron designs, you don't need to include rules to support arbitrarily huge energy outputs.

There's also the question of Frame growth, which I haven't begun to consider with this little post.

Herald, you're probably right, at that.

Orbital Frames are all unique. They're also sod-all powerful, which is why I used Hull and Bulwark instead of Body and Armor for Jehuty.

Also, you should get ahold of ZoE 2 for the Playstation 2. Jehuty is absoloutely AWESOME in that game.


Your extra variables:

Metatron filter: I'm not sure, but somehow I think this was more a function of ADA than any physical shielding.

Pilot: I'd say that the Frame uses the piloting ability of it's AI, like ADA, who is probably an SK that evolved into a true AI within the processing power of Jehuty. This piloting ability is the frame's own, and should probably be 2/3rds of it's Runner's.

Malleability: I'd say this is best left as a function of plot device, aka Storyline, aka the DM says you align easily.

I didn't mean that they are all physical components, but all parts of the complete Frame. I suggest watching Idolo if you haven't because it shows why low metatron designs with powerful SK built in are a much safer place to start a frame than the alternative.

I have watched Idolo. I know that Radium Levanz' brainwave pattern became the metatron energy reaction signature of Idolo - dangerous... Dannngerous.

Metatron seems to eventually resonate with the mind of a devoted pilot. Conveniently, Jehuty and some of the others don't let the mind of the pilot ever issue orders directly to the systems. Keeps the metatron out of the mind for a while longer.
Having an intermediate also appears to help shape the frame as it does develop on its own. If it starts as a SK with hard limits on acceptable behaviour, it will at least consider those limits as it grows. If it starts with raw access to a human mind (and emotions) and is told to destroy all sorts of random opposition as it grows...

Well, yeah. Radium Levanz was an insane nutter, to be sure.

But then, it works the same way if it starts with raw access to a good human, like Leo Stenbuck.

The frames really do seem to take on aspects of their Runners, as do the Runners in turn take on aspects of their Frame. I think you should give a Frame Runner who spends a long time in the Frame something like the Matrix Addiction flaw a Decker can get. You know, they don't want to leave, don't want to dismount the frame. And I can see why, too. Going from being a humanoid, ultra-huge, ultra-fast, ultra-agile machine that could liquidate Loftwyr if you were really trying, back to your own puny meatbod...

That's why you need the AI. Of course, you'd be better off with an AI that is the runner's friend, as Leo and ADA were, and later Dingo and ADA, but in an emergency, the AI could simply dump them from the Frame.

In the end, having an AI as a governor between the frame could, I think, only hold the Frame and the Runner both back. It's flirting with a dangerous power. If the frame or the runner is unstable, you'll get Bad Things when they fuse - like Radium and Idolo, later Radium and Hathor (from ZoE: Dolores, i) or Nohman and Anubis.

Still, you can also wind up with the Hero, like Jehuty and Leo or Dingo. I think that's plenty SRish, the interaction between, chuckle, man and machine.

Slightly back on topic, I'm not particularly into the idea of gigantic mecha, but smaller mecha and armored suits make a lot of sense in urban warfare if the technology catches up. The new Ghost in the Shell series does a great job of illustrating this, and while it's not really Shadowrun (which is really very 80s, and therefore only mecha in a Robocop 3 sense), it's still a great idea.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to the topic... but I was out of town for the weekend.

Since I have not seen much anime, or know other systems like robotech,
I was thinking of something that is a little more shadowrunish.

I am reading rbb3 to get an idea of the mess they created in there, but I was thinking that possibly the damage would be on a totally new scale similar to rifts and the mega-damage. (maybe not 1000, but 10x would be sufficient for deadliness)

I was thinking that something like mecha would have multiple condition monitors
for the various limbs, and an overall condition monitor. Mecha are designed to take multiple hits. ds9 has something called a threshhold, (which is kind of like the hardened armor) if the damage doesn't exceed the threshhold then it is simply absorbed. Hopefully if we get this project and mechanics sorted out, we could even apply the rules to vehicles and simply change stats for vehicles to have a working system.

As for the size of the mecha, I was visualizing something that was max 10 meters tall, not something that would crush the city.

Nyxll, you just perfectly described Battletech.

Not quite, those average 12 meters.

What about heat sinks?

Just incorporate them with in with the weight/bulk of the weapon. It works fairly nicely for ICE tanks, and would make general design simpler.

Didn't know if this was possible - i'm not familiar with the construction rules (and really dislike rbb3), just wanted to give an advice from old BT-days.

I think heat sinks are mainly a game mechanic that stops everyone from using omega strikes each turn. Personally ... I was thinking that it would kind of work this way.

The heat could affect the weapon, like a vindicater, but would not affect the mecha. (most weapons are mounted on the exterior hull) But there would be a targeting computer that a rigger could tell to fire specific weapons. Those would use the rating of the computer, with no additional dice. The rigger could cybernetically tell it which ones to fire with a free action. ie, fire left arm, right arm. and shoulder rocket. The rigger could take control and use gunner to fire 1 weapon (ie head lazer), with his/her skill + dice with a simple action. The weapons should be SS. he/she could flip to another weapon and fire it with the second simple action with a +2 or +4 tn, with gunnery and remaining dice.

Max targetting computer rating is 5. Armor and weapons would use Navy class damage weapons. The reason I was thinking of condition monitors for major extremities like arms, legs, head, body, is that if a leg is blown off, the mecha could still function. Should probably make some kind of integrity test to see if it can survive it.

Sounds good so far (as i can judge with my limited knowledge of the exact mechanics of rigging' stuff).

Hyzmarca, I'd prefer to think of that as Ken Marinaris simply being incompetent, as opposed to being a reflection on Frame Runners as a whole.

Actually, I never really used any subweapons except Grab, Zero Shift, and the Vector Cannon....



I mean, I played with them, I used Geyser when the story required me to, I used Mummyhead to heal myself back up, but that was it. You don't need the others if you're a good enough Frame Runner.

[edit = post consolidation]


Oh, about Ken, you will note that Dingo derided Ken for not being able to pilot her Frame properly.

I guess this comes down to exactly how you think OFs are. The way I see it is that it's a DNI, and unless you're a complete incompetent boob (like Ken was, guess she shoulden't have figured "I'll take Incompetent in manually operating my Frame! It'll never come up,") then you're better off without the AI at later skill levels.

I'm having some serious troubles trying to understand these vehicle design rules. I can't seem to find out where to start working.


For the LEV I wanted to make, the Ares Wraith, I know I'd have to break some rules anyway. It's supposed to be a Humanoid Anthroform with significant size, a Body and armor rating equal to or superior to that of a comparable main battle tank.

I was trying to give it a Nuclear reactor, and vector-thrust VTOL capability and anthroform walking locomotion.

I wanted to give it Smart Materials, and a host of other goodies...

The problem is, I can't just find an easy step-by-step in the book. I don't know where to begin, I have a vauge idea of what goes in the middle, and a vauger idea of the end. Can someone help me?

The chassis (which doesn't exist until you derive one from those listed and your personal desires) would resemble those at the very back of R3. On top of that, you'd then have to flip back a few pages to get some idea of what properties come as a result of nuclear engines in the few chassis that support them.

Once you have those two tasks improvised, start at design features and start picking things. All customizations can be taken as design features (that's why they have DP costs as well as nuyen costs), so be sure to look at them carefully.

Stay within your load and cf range (which you will be making up in steps 1 and 2) and stack up the fun.

Oh, and at the end, remember the cost is DP*markup*100. I had missed the little line that mentions the *100 on my first vehicle design. The house-zepplin was cheaper than a custom shotgun as a result. Then I found the line and had to delay that purchase.