Reign of Steel is out!

[The Whiner Knight]

The Cyberbeast has four monowire talon attacks, a monowire bite and a crushing tail. It does not have Extra Attack. Should I just use All-Out Attack if I want to make it use a claw-claw-bite attack, or hold on with its front legs and rake with its back legs?

Because when you say controlled by a cyborg wolverine's brain the natural first word that comes to mind is, of course, moderation.

Seriously, I continue to be stunned by the sheer overkill of the Cyberbeast. It's for whipping out when I want a rocks-fall-everyone-dies situation, or I have to control a party that's got ahold of too much working equipment and I need to make them consume resources in beating the thing.

[GnomesofZurich]

Bought it and enjoying it. Reign of Steel was my favourite 3E supplement, the update to 4E is great. However, I'm curious why point-based weaponry was used for the robots rather than Extra Arms (Weapon Mount). I know it was done that way in the original book, but in 4E there are other options. Thoughts?

[Kromm]

Weapon Mount is fair when every combatant in the background can buy weapons off the same list, provided that he antes up for the corresponding wealth and legal status. Under those circumstances, it simply buys an extra hook to hang the weapons from; it frees up a hand. The weapons per se are cash purchases. Which of course also implies that the setting uses cash.

In a setting where there are clear Haves and Have Nots, and the point is that the Haves are superhumanly capable, you need to charge points for the weapons to get a fairer picture of the imbalance. This is especially true when the setting really doesn't let people buy weapons for money.

The Reign of Steel setting is rather obviously the latter kind of background.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In a setting where there are clear Haves and Have Nots, and the point is that the Haves are superhumanly capable, you need to charge points for the weapons to get a fairer picture of the imbalance. This is especially true when the setting really doesn't let people buy weapons for money.

Weapon mount also rather implies that, having killed a robot, you can detach the weapon from the weapon mount and mount it on your Jeep technical. Weapons purchased as powers cannot be detached in that way, and even if the GM wanted to create house rules, do not give any suggestions as to how you would do it. This could be either a feature or a bug, but since point values on NPCs are basically color text, being completely useless for balancing an encounter, I would tend to prefer the weapon mount implementation.

[Moebius]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

In casr anybody else is confused, I beleive the product in question is this one....

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/willtolive/

..... _The Reign of Steel:Will to Live_ pdf which appears to hve been just released on E23.

Like _TransHuman Space:Changing Times_ this is a product updating a 3e setting to 4e mechanics.

......and, yes, that means all the bots are done for 4e. :)

Thank you. I was confused.

It appears Ultra-Tech and the 3e Reign of Steel are needed to fully use this one. Correct?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Weapon mount also rather implies that, having killed a robot, you can detach the weapon from the weapon mount and mount it on your Jeep technical. Weapons purchased as powers cannot be detached in that way, and even if the GM wanted to create house rules, do not give any suggestions as to how you would do it. This could be either a feature or a bug, but since point values on NPCs are basically color text, being completely useless for balancing an encounter, I would tend to prefer the weapon mount implementation.

Well gadget covers it, though your getting points so could be a problem in some games.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Moebius

Thank you. I was confused.

It appears Ultra-Tech and the 3e Reign of Steel are needed to fully use this one. Correct?

Those and maybe High Tech too for low end human stuff. This is based on my impressions from the playtest.

[The Whiner Knight]

Chapter 4 focuses on listing equipment from Ultra-Tech, High-Tech and Low-Tech that is available in the Zones, with an emphasis on UT because the setting has been bumped from TL9 under 3e to TL10 under 4e.

It also sets out three robot-fighting styles and makes some brief mention within the text of Gun Fu and Action, but these are less important I think than having the stats for an ETC payload rifle or an M72 LAW.

And as far as recovering weapons from trashed robots, it has about a half a page on the time investment, necessary skills, and what you need to pull a device's components out of a robot frame, attach readouts, triggers and stocks, and various packaging, and get it suitable for a human to pull out and wave around.

[Puppetminion]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Weapon mount also rather implies that, having killed a robot, you can detach the weapon from the weapon mount and mount it on your Jeep technical.

Several of the bots do mount standard weapons more or less externally (Rover and Hoplite for example), and they are weapon mounts. So it looks like the book flags the weapons easy to salvage.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Moebius

It appears Ultra-Tech and the 3e Reign of Steel are needed to fully use this one. Correct?

Yes. Lots of other books are useful in some areas (such as HIGH-TECH for Zone London and BIO-TECH if you're dealing with the Zoneminds that use that sort of thing), but a decision was made not to repeat more material from REIGN OF STEEL or ULTRA-TECH than was absolutely necessary.