(Kinda) Giant Mech Battle Help

[Bobbyjackcorn]

To be short and sweet, I'm running a "Voltron" style boss battle next session. I've already got plans for how to run it, but I'd like to hear if anyone else has done this before. If not, feel free to spit ball!
It's not that I'm unhappy with my current plan, but it's rather roughly formed.

[ImproperJustice]

Are the heroes or villains forming Voltron?

I once played in a convention game, with a tongue in cheek inter dimensional elementary school, where I ran a group of five students, one for each grade, that played on the tetherball team, and each had a mech that formed “Balltron”.
They had to shout the Head, shoulders, knees and toes song in order to form up.

I remember taking down the playground bully by forming the “Blazing Tetherball”.

The other PCs were all amazingly awesome anime tropes in child form.

[Kane0]

Oh, so many way to do this. But heres one:

Each part of voltron firsr uses their action to combine, so voltron only happens when everyone has used their action to Voltron, and takes about a round to assemble
Once formed Voltron has ideally at least one different thing to do per party member (eg attacks, abilities, powers, movement). The power of these abilities might scale according to the level of the PC using it.
This way everyone that makes up voltron can have a turn and do something as voltron while voltorn is in play and also doesn't screw up initiative.

[Future Sword]

Are there rules in 5e for multi-part creatures? Like, a golem with separately-controlled arms? If so, I'd say go for those, just scale everything up a few sizes.

[LordEntrails]

You could look at Lair actions, but I like thoughts along the lines of Kane0.

Though, maybe each PC gets one action (and reaction) and no movement, then Voltron gets a move action after the last PC's action.

[Bobbyjackcorn]

Oh, so many way to do this. But heres one:

Each part of voltron firsr uses their action to combine, so voltron only happens when everyone has used their action to Voltron, and takes about a round to assemble
Once formed Voltron has ideally at least one different thing to do per party member (eg attacks, abilities, powers, movement). The power of these abilities might scale according to the level of the PC using it.
This way everyone that makes up voltron can have a turn and do something as voltron while voltorn is in play and also doesn't screw up initiative.

The idea I came up with so far is pretty similar. I gave everyone one action, and a special effect based on their backstory. For the legs, I gave two actions, but their options are kicking for half damage, and moving half speed.

How do you all think I should handle the mechanics of health and damage though?

[HandofBlades]

Hmm for health and damage I would say it goes as follows. Take the total combined health of the party and then divide by that number. Each time it takes that amount of damage a pic gets knocked off and is prone at 1 hit point. So they lose the arm they lose an attack a leg they lose half the movement speed and such. If voltron takes more than half its health in damage from a single attack it falls apart.