Dragon Mech and Earthshaker!

[unseenmage]

Dragon Mech. What's it good for? Has anyone actually used it? How's it play?

Earthshaker! Is there a 3.x conversion of it anywhere?
Edit: Oh yeah, how does Earthshaker! compare on the Dragon Mech size scale?

How do the Dragon Mech size categories compare to the Draconomicon Colossal+ size categories? Is a category IV a Colossal++++?

Any other advice, or even a quick but detailed explanation of how the Dragon Mech book works, would be welcome.

Thanks regardless Playground.

[dysprosium]

I have the Dragon Mech books but never really had a chance to use them. I was going to but that campaign died due to real life . . .

Earthshaker does not have a 3.5 conversion per se but there was a Dungeon magazine adventure (issue 97) that had a similar premise in it -- but that mech was waaaaaaaay smaller in comparison to Earthshaker. If you have the original module for Earthshaker! and the Dragon Mech books I suspect it would not be hard to stat out the adventure. IIRC the characters don't even fight Earthshaker itself but more or less infiltrate it from the inside.

In standard 3.5 there is no official size higher than Colossal+ (and even that is reserved only for epic dragons). Using the Dragon Mech size categories Colossal+ sized dragons would be dwarfed by the city mechs.

I'm away from my books at the moment but I believe that Earthshaker would be considered a clockwork/steam powered city sized mech.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Let me clarify from the beginning that I know nothing of Earthshaker, this will be entirely about Dragonmech.

I have the Dragonmech books and I have run a long-running Dragonmech game, but have not played it which is important. At it's core, it's basically just additional material for a 3.0/3.5 game and can be treated as such. It introduces new classes/PrCs, new feats, new skills, new spells, new monsters, and new equipment but they follow the same rules as regular D&D for a large part.

The major exception, as you can imagine, is the mechs. Mechs are more difficult to...hmmm...utilize in a game. They offer very clear benefits and such which can make it difficult to gauge the difficulty of combat encounters. A mech of decent size/material vs. low-level infantry will not be a challenge, no matter what the DMG tells you about the CR of the encounter. Especially if there's a half-way decent pilot at the helm. On the other hand, a mech can make for a very exciting encounter for the PCs...so long as they know various ways to combat a mech which should be the DM's duty to inform the players about. The problem is these methods...often make a fight against a mech very easy which means the CR is still off. There's a lot of eye-balling on the DM's part to take into consideration what their party can do and what they can handle because the books don't offer a lot of help in this regard beyond 'this is how much this mech costs, take it out of an NPC's/villain's budget' despite the fact it's essentially a whole'nother creature.

Mech-to-mech combat is fun as well, but requires knowing the rules for mechs very well for it to take place at a brisk pace. Pilot skill plays a large role, but the size of the mechs fighting one another and what weaponry they have plays an even larger role then that.

The biggest concern you need to address is what role mechs are going to take in your campaign. Do you want the game to focus around mech-combat yes/no? If no, then it's much easier but just as rewarding in my opinion! You have an interesting setting with plenty of interesting quest potential and combat potential with the creatures unique to Dragonmech and with mechs as opponents. You can have plenty of fun with just that, but chances are the players will want to use the gigantic death machines.

As for how Dragonmech size categories work with Draconomicon Colossal+ categories...don't try to compare the two. The larger size categories in Dragonmech were made with the implicit consideration they would only apply to something as large and clumsy as a Dragonmech mech and they don't really work for creatures. If you want some sort of massive automaton/mech then use the Colossal I-V and City-mech A-F categories, if you want a huge creature then use the Colossal+ categories.



...Also, use Lunar Dragons sparingly. They are a great challenge but they are the bane of players. Pound for pound they are superior to regular dragons in every single way, especially if you give them dragon specific feats/spells (like from the Dragonnomicon) but, more importantly, they don't keep treasure. A lunar dragon with a hoard should be the exception and that means your players will have an even harder fight against a normal dragon but with none of the great pay-off for it.

I highly recommend the game system though!

[unseenmage]

Let me clarify from the beginning that I know nothing of Earthshaker, this will be entirely about Dragonmech.

I have the Dragonmech books and I have run a long-running Dragonmech game, but have not played it which is important. At it's core, it's basically just additional material for a 3.0/3.5 game and can be treated as such. It introduces new classes/PrCs, new feats, new skills, new spells, new monsters, and new equipment but they follow the same rules as regular D&D for a large part.

The major exception, as you can imagine, is the mechs. Mechs are more difficult to...hmmm...utilize in a game. They offer very clear benefits and such which can make it difficult to gauge the difficulty of combat encounters. A mech of decent size/material vs. low-level infantry will not be a challenge, no matter what the DMG tells you about the CR of the encounter. Especially if there's a half-way decent pilot at the helm. On the other hand, a mech can make for a very exciting encounter for the PCs...so long as they know various ways to combat a mech which should be the DM's duty to inform the players about. The problem is these methods...often make a fight against a mech very easy which means the CR is still off. There's a lot of eye-balling on the DM's part to take into consideration what their party can do and what they can handle because the books don't offer a lot of help in this regard beyond 'this is how much this mech costs, take it out of an NPC's/villain's budget' despite the fact it's essentially a whole'nother creature.

Mech-to-mech combat is fun as well, but requires knowing the rules for mechs very well for it to take place at a brisk pace. Pilot skill plays a large role, but the size of the mechs fighting one another and what weaponry they have plays an even larger role then that.

The biggest concern you need to address is what role mechs are going to take in your campaign. Do you want the game to focus around mech-combat yes/no? If no, then it's much easier but just as rewarding in my opinion! You have an interesting setting with plenty of interesting quest potential and combat potential with the creatures unique to Dragonmech and with mechs as opponents. You can have plenty of fun with just that, but chances are the players will want to use the gigantic death machines.

As for how Dragonmech size categories work with Draconomicon Colossal+ categories...don't try to compare the two. The larger size categories in Dragonmech were made with the implicit consideration they would only apply to something as large and clumsy as a Dragonmech mech and they don't really work for creatures. If you want some sort of massive automaton/mech then use the Colossal I-V and City-mech A-F categories, if you want a huge creature then use the Colossal+ categories.



...Also, use Lunar Dragons sparingly. They are a great challenge but they are the bane of players. Pound for pound they are superior to regular dragons in every single way, especially if you give them dragon specific feats/spells (like from the Dragonnomicon) but, more importantly, they don't keep treasure. A lunar dragon with a hoard should be the exception and that means your players will have an even harder fight against a normal dragon but with none of the great pay-off for it.

I highly recommend the game system though!

Thank you for such a thorough response! I'd just be using the mech rules for mech to mech combat and mech to environment combat and only for very huge over large city mechs.