Lancer: NPCs Rebaked

So to answer a long comment with a long reply, touching on two main points:

1). Yes, the damage on the Goliath is lower. I'm not a fan of tier-scaling multiattacks as noted throughout the supplement, and more to the point, my personal view of the Goliath is I don't really want it to be a high damage threat in that way. Lancer isn't a game where Defender = Low Damage, many of the Defender-type NPCs defend through punishment or threat of reprisal, like Demolishers, Pyros, and Sentinels.

But those NPCs already exist, and I don't think the Goliath needs to also be another Defender whose primary threat comes from dealing high damage in the same way. I was personally more interested in exploring the Goliath as a lockdown bruiser off-Controller sort of unit.

2). Yes, the Goliath is objectively more fragile. This is a concern that was brought up during testing by people who initially saw the change and had the same reaction you did, but during testing the overall consensus across multiple reports was that it WAS more fragile, but not in a way that really made it a completely irrelevant unit, if that makes sense. Yes, if you start a Goliath all the way across the map and have it trundle towards the players, it can get killed by long-range artillery before it can get into the fight, but that's a thing that can already happen via Seeking Payloads, Paracausal Mods, Swallowtails locking on to people to shred them, the Kidd's FABI mods, etc.

I considered adding more HP to compensate for the loss of Siege Armor as I did with other NPCs like the Barricade or Demolisher, but I felt that at a certain point simply adding more HP to an already big pool could start to get frustrating to deal with in an unenjoyable way, and testing with the HP unchanged didn't prompt any major "this isn't working" type issues, so I elected to leave it as is.

In exchange for the lower damage and lower overall toughness via Siege Armor, the Goliath rebake gains additional maneuverability via Towering Stride, and more importantly gains additional effective map presence via its various tech actions. Crush Targeting is now no longer on a recharge, but it also has optionals such as Mag Gauntlet and Coercive Force which allow it to extend its reach and pull people out of position and into its grasp. I tend to view Siege Armor as something the Goliath was given in order to let it weather fire while trundling into the fray. With an easier ability to both get to the fight and start affecting people at greater range, I no longer saw Siege Armor as a necessary part of its kit.

As always, I recommend trying things at the table for yourself, because first impressions can be deceptive, but that's the overall gist of it. My recommendation for those that want tougher rebake Goliaths is to apply the Veteran template and consider using the revised NPC structure/stress tables.

Just to spread the love a bit more, I went ahead and posted a page of designer notes not from the Assault but from another NPC (the Breacher) to give an idea of what those look like, and how much there tends to be. The Assault's design notes are, I think, a bit less of a "sizzle screenshot" as it were since they're so extensive that it's basically just a screenshot of nothing but text, but it's a good suggestion to showcase exactly what the notes entail in general.

It only touches on the core rulebook mech NPCs, so not counting things like Squads or Monstrosities, BUT however I am currently in the process of playtesting and feedback for rebaked versions of Wallflower NPCs. When those are in a satisfactory state, I plan to upload them to this page as a separate standalone document, and if you've purchased NPCs Rebaked you'll be able to download it as well. That's the current plan anyway. This won't include Eidolons, to be clear.

Hey, coming back to this now that I've gathered some more info, it seems like in order for this to happen, this would have to be a modification made to the Lancer Foundry module itself, not the lcp. The author of the Foundry module, Eranziel, said that unless they specifically add separate default image handling for the rebake NPCs, that the only way this could be done on the lcp end is if the lcp somehow overwrote the core NPC IDs, which I don't want to happen. He did say he'd consider making that change, but ultimately it'll be up to him and whether he feels like it.

The math IS changed in a number of respects, though most official Lancer modules shouldn't feel it too hard given the levels they tend to hover around. The biggest change is that a lot of NPCs had levels of excessive accuracy/to-hit numbers pared down, which will have an effect in terms of things like Evasion, cover, the Impaired condition, and Lock On all being more important and impactful in various ways.

The bigger changes will occur at higher levels of play, most notably Tier 3. At this level, a number of dangerous strikers have had their attacks shifted from multiple attacks per tier to single attacks with conventional damage scaling. In other words, instead of a Tier 3 Operator making three attacks for 7 damage every time they pull they trigger, they make one attack that deals 11 damage.

A lot of GMs are accustomed to accounting for these sorts of enemies at higher levels and their players are accustomed to facing them and so a lot of "metas" have developed around this. Using the rebake NPCs, this no longer really exists. At higher levels of play when using rebakes, the general advice I give is for GMs to utilize more templated NPCs (Veterans, Elites, etc) and/or simply more actual NPCs.

Most of the pre-written Lancer modules are designed to take place at lower levels, usually starting at LL0 and going out to maybe LL4 or so, so none of them should really require any extensive overhauling if using rebake NPCs. People have been running Solstice Rain and Winter Scar and Wallflower using them and it's worked fine. At higher levels is where things may need to adjust some.