How do *you* build Mechas?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Anyone have recommendations for balancing (and, for that matter, running) combat against the kaiju?

Well, you'll almost certainly want to use D-scale or even C-scale hit points and DR (that is, divide all the relevant values by 10 or 100) - if all the fights are kaiju vs. mecha, the numbers using regular scale are going to just get silly. However, if you do use one of the higher-scale numbers, be aware that damage then becomes much more variable. 100d of damage will vary reliably produce 350 points of actual damage, the average, so 350 DR will reliably stop it, 340 will reliably let 10 through, and so on. But when you switch the scale and start rolling 10d D-damage the odds of it being so reliably 35 points of of damage actually drop, because of the way the probability of dice work. And it's even worse if you use C-scale - sure, the average of 1d of C-scale damage may still be 3.5, but actually, every result (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) is equally likely to occur.

What I'd strongly suggest is using some variation on the "DR as dice" system. This has been well-covered by Douglas Cole, particularly in "Armor Revisited" in Pyramid #3/34, but the gist of the system is actually quite simple: convert the DR into the number of dice of damage it stops on average, and subtract those from the damage before rolling. To find the average number of dice a given bit of armor would stop, divide its value by 3.5. So, for example, our hypothetical DR 350 mech would stop 100d of damage. A weapon that did 102d of damage would roll just 2d against it, but whatever it rolled would be the amount of damage it took. This system has the advantage of working very well no matter what scale you choose to use: 35 points of d-scale DR subtracts 10 dice from D-scale attacks, and 3.5 points of c-scale DR subtracts 1d from C-scale attacks, which all works out to the same average damage penetrating.