Machines That Can Only Disappoint You

With a chaser of wounds, fear, and death

This Week’s post talks about making MACs worse.

It must be difficult to build a walking armoured fighting machine. I bet some mistakes slip through.

Do you wish your MACs were more authentically... bad?

Play with Bad MACs mode, where each MAC must have a Flaw.

FLAWS

Wobbly: Test to fall when taking 2 hits from a single attack, instead of 3 hits.

Volatile: Suffers a hit against yourself every time you roll a 1 on an attack roll.

Toasty: Start with 1 Heat and never go below 1 Heat.

Frail: Brawls against you roll twice as many AD.

Exposed: Your Main Gun is destroyed in a single hit.

Capped: Only move up to 9” when Rushing.

Awkward: Only move up to 4” when Advancing.

Unreliable: Start the battle with 1 Hit.

Understeer: Turn only at start or end of a Move.

Blinkered: Your front arc is only 90 degrees.

Bareback: Hits to your Rear destroy modules in a single hit.

Deathtrap: Take 1 Internal Damage whenever a module is destroyed.

Stiff: Take +1 Heat when Moving.

Recoil: Your Main Gun fires at +1TN.

Overclocked: Take +1 Heat when firing your Main Gun.

Barndoor: Attacks against you get -1TN.

Jamming: Roll a die when you activate in the attack phase. On a roll of 1 you do nothing this phase.

Unshielded: When your Heat would go above 6 take an Internal Hit instead of a normal Hit.

Brittle: When you Fall, take an Internal Damage.

Locked: When you Rush you cannot turn before or after the move.

Buggy: Roll a die when you activate in the Move phase. On a roll of 1 you do nothing this phase.

Lag: Attacks against targets with SD3 or higher get +1TN.

Twitchy: Attacks against targets with SD2 or lower get +1TN.

Insulator: Roll each time a point of heat would be lost. On 1 it is not lost.

Explosive: When you have enough Internal Hits to be destroyed in the Meltdown phase you are destroyed immediately instead.

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Elsewhere

Dice Goblin writes about a wounds system for Cairn, easy enough to transplant over to ITO or EB.

Playful Void has a simple system for gathering useful items as you travel, inspired by Tears of the Kingdom.

Grognardia follows up on a previous post exploring just how many early D&D illustrations feature the monsters getting the better of the characters.

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Coming Soon

Over on Patreon I’m talking about making combat dynamic in Mythic Bastionland.

Combat in Mythic Bastionland is already a bit more involved than ITO or EB, but I also wanted to offer some guidance on making combat interesting. Here's the Oddpocrypha on the matter. 

DYNAMIC COMBAT

PLAY

Tal and Moss are launching an attack against 3 Scholar-Knights of the Order, vengeance for their attacks on the Realm.

Ref: So you’re charging in full-pelt?

Moss: Yeah, should we focus on one of them?

Tal: Okay, I’ll send my Raven out to attack another.

They roll their attacks, wounding the Scholar-Knight that they charge, and the Raven scores an Onslaught, dismounting another. The Order fight back, doing some damage but no wounds yet.

Ref: Okay, the Scholar-Knights bark orders at each other. It’s not clear who’s in charge. Still, the two on horseback dismount and form a close formation with the other, pulling their shields up into a shieldwall. 

Expect the full post here and on the blog next week. Thanks for reading Bastionland Presser! Subscribe for free to receive new posts straight into your inbox.