How would one go about optimizing a Coglayer from Dragonmech?

[Holya]

I'm asking because I've not been able to find any guides on optimizing anything from Dragonmech. Though that isn't really the only thing that hasn't gotten any handbooks but I was wondering if anyone knows of any guides for the Coglayer class from Dragonmech or hell any of the classes from Dragonmech.

[Fizban]

I went on a tear through a few magitchech/mecha books a while back. Dragonmech is. . . okay. I was mostly analyzing the mech system (it mostly works aside from repair being ridiculously, prohibitively expensive vs WBL so it has to be accounted for separately), but naturally this also has to be understood in relation to the mech jockey and coglayer classes. Bottom line is that obviously if you want to be a mech pilot you need to be a mech jockey (and have a sponsor paying for your mech upkeep really), and if you want mechs that can exceed the limits of normal mechs (or indeed do a lot of things people might expect mechs to do in the first place) you need a coglayer.

But the coglayer class is terrible. Specifically, their tech system is a pile of garbage that depends on DM adjudication and starting conditions. Trying to figure out what they can do, what they're supposed to do, and what they should do, there are problems. They have no explicit combat ability, so the only combat function they can do is make themselves a powerful weapon. They have a single pool of upgrades, and no limit on how many can be applied to one thing, so for combat they just ramp up the damage dice on something as high as it will go. The device powers have been pretty well scrubbed of any touch or area effects though, so IIRC you're limited to normal attacks unless you upgrade a portable steam gun. That'll give you a good amount of damage, but its already heavy to begin with, and if you want more range you have to pay for that out of your damage budget. Oh, you wanted to do some tech things? That's coming out of your damage budget too. Oh you wanted to set aside one device and try building another, yeah by the way that limit on your number of devices apparently isn't actually a limit since they break down so slow you could keep many times that functioning, except for the other places that say that's impossible for some reason. And of course the damage you get from maxing out one steam gun is rather large.

Then there's automation, which even with unfavorable rulings is still ridiculously cheap. If you have a mech with extra guns (or even just extra melee weapons), there's no reason not to automate them for free attacks, or just automate the whole mech. What stats do those attacks use? Who knows!

So basically coglayer optimization is dependent upon how strong the starting stuff you can upgrade is and how freely you can apply the open-ended upgrades. Minimum fix for the system is to impose a limit on how many upgrades you can apply to one device, such as 1/2 your maximum, just so that people can have more than one device without "un-optimizing" themselves- this means that the optimal route is one combat device with half your max, and then various utility devices filling up the rest. Problem devices I noted were: the amplifier die progression, boiler's mechanical effect (what does it even do?), flywheel just doubles the speed of literally anything, attack bonus of animated arms and weapons, iron jacket control stats, metal leg speed, rotor arm everything, and what happens if the force generator's field breaks, all of which the DM needs to fix or determine before the class can even be optimized. And you need to decide on weather they're allowed to upgrade other people's stuff and maintain it, or write down proper hard limits on why they only have a set pool (like a device without maintenence breaks down after X hours, or a high % every X hours).

And of course from a setting standpoint you need to figure out your class and level demographics to figure out how many coglayers of what level are in use by a given organization, so you know how many and what sort of upgrades they should be using, since even a 1st level coglayer assigned to a powerful device can make ridiculous upgrades.

[Holya]

Eh Boilers from what I've been dealing with that allow ALL of the Dragon mech books is that they just double the physical force of things. Since the sizing rules in Dragonmech are.. Well lets be honest they are a mess because the boiler isn't built to the size of the character but the item your putting it on and not the 'weapon' size but the actual object size which brings up all kinds of weird interactions.. The amplifiers are limited solely to energy damage so they are easier to rule on and have had to be capped at 5 on any one item. Since you can get a flame thrower or what is basically a energy ball lobber that does more damage and has a larger area then a max level fire ball.

Flywheel by the book only doubles things with a mechanical speed with the example given like making a rotor turn a extra time. So basically its good for making a lawnmower? But most of your energy attacks with steam powers are touch based unless you throw a pump on them or one of the other steam powers. It also comes down to the question thanks to how its written is each steam power its own maintenance or is it every item you have steam powers built into a single steam power to maintain? One allows for .. A lot of cheese. The other means the Coglayer is pathetically weak on its own.

By what is being done and the class texts itself and the supporting text in steam warriors? Coglayers can make weapons or steam powers for others they just have to maintenance it.

I mean from the way I've seen the steamborg played.. Which in the current game I am in has four boilers on his steam hammer and a few boilers on his clockwork armor is doing a minimal of 50 damage a swing. The steamborg is simple to optimize to me. You just treat it as a barbarian that doesn't have rage and gets some niffty bonuses. A single dip of barbarian opens piston rage and then well its basically set for what ever you want to do.

Its the coglayer that.. Becomes weird on trying to build well since it is a more downtime extensive class. It gets some interesting combos.. Such like the three way flamethrower example in the book or the force generator and force sword automatic attack arms.. But again your right about needed to figure out just what the flying hell happens if someone manages to pop the force wall your making. Along side the asinine repair costs when it comes to mechs that aren't magical or other things. It does have some cost mitigation with some of the feats that give you stupid amounts of gold by salvaging anything that can be considered mechanical. But that doesn't resolve the issue of most things chipping away at your personal money pool and forcing the party to take down time. OR finding assistants that can help you craft the more complex steam powers.

So with that in mind. With the current rulings at the table of no more then five amplifiers and boilers on a item. The DM has also ruled that each item is a steam power no matter how many steam powers you put onto the item. That and the boilers you put onto a small creatures weapons are half a pound so they have some weight. So the five boilers for small would be 2.5pounds for medium it would be 5 and so on.

With that in mind would the best way to go about building the character be focusing on stats and downtime? Or trying to figure out ways to just do massive burst damage like with the Steam warrior adept which maximizes all steam damage as long as you take a turn between each shot?

[Quarian Rex]

I think the steam powers are far more usable than Fizban might imply (though he isn't far off the mark) and using a limit of 1/2 steam powers used on a given item is probably a good call. The Coglayer could use a bit of an update as well. At the bare minimum boost the BAB to 3/4 and HD to 1d8. It suffered the 3.5 curse of throwing new powers onto a Wizard chassis regardless of whether said powers were appropriate to such a thing.

Also, take a look at the NetBook of DragonMech (http://www.yaboogie.com/csmith/steamp/DM_NetBook_of_Dragonmech_0.7.pdf), home of the Self-Maintaining feat (an item creation feat for having steam powers without maintenance), and the Q&A thread (http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=190) which answers a lot of questions (steam powers use the creators BAB, Flywheel has minimal combat potential, Boiler reduces time between shots on a Steam Gun, the force field from the Force Generator doesn't pop when it is penetrated, that is just the amount of damage that it can block on a single hit to prevent invulnerability, etc.). I just rediscovered DragonMech over the last week so this is all pretty fresh to me.

Overall I was really impressed with the usability of the mechs across the entire level range of the campaign. Having mechs maintain relevance from level 1 to level 20 without completely overshadowing everything else is a tough thing to do. DragonMech is the only d20 attempt that I have found that seems to be mostly successful. And I have looked.

[Holya]

Oh I know steam powers are useful. Its just the one time I got to play the coglayer in a previous game I wasn't allowed downtime. That and the DM was sticking to a very strict version of WBL that had just barely enough gold for you to stay ahead of the bell curve of magic item need. And when I say barely I mean you would just barely get the weapon needed to hurt the DR/magic four levels after they showed up.

So yeah I know I can build things that match the magicals in damage and utility. Its just figuring out how to optimize it in terms of what magical items would be good on a Coglayer. That and if the Coglayer can be viable at all in a party with little downtime or that is tight on gold. I mean I know the automation I could set up. The main reason I avoid automation is because my current DM has banned the Artificer because he thinks they are broken and play a different game then D&D.

[Fizban]

Eh Boilers from what I've been dealing with that allow ALL of the Dragon mech books is that they just double the physical force of things.
And what does physical force mean?

Flywheel by the book only doubles things with a mechanical speed with the example given like making a rotor turn a extra time. So basically its good for making a lawnmower?
It improves the speed of objects that move or require a specified mount of time to function. So wagons, mechs, boats, any object that moves, unless the DM clarifies- and you just started stating your clarifications.

But most of your energy attacks with steam powers are touch based unless you throw a pump on them or one of the other steam powers.
The pilot light is an attack, not a touch attack. The spark generator is a touch attack, and has a different amplifier progression because of it. There aren't any other energy damage powers.

It also comes down to the question thanks to how its written is each steam power its own maintenance or is it every item you have steam powers built into a single steam power to maintain? One allows for .. A lot of cheese. The other means the Coglayer is pathetically weak on its own.
Not sure what's up for questioning, you spend 1 hour maintaining your steam powers, you have X steam powers, you maintain X steam powers. Like I said, the question is weather you're allowed to build more than that allotment. The problem is "for each day he doesn't maintain his steam powers, the coglayer temporarily loses one steam power." This line (and the general section) treat the steam powers like they're a bag of parts you carry on you at all times and can recombine into whatever you want, when they're also individual devices that can be handed off (and maintained) and often should be built into items from which they couldn't be separated (but this is fantasy steam power, not realism), and the decay mechanic implies that you aren't actually allowed to build more than that allotment. Because if you could, you would have more than your supposed limit of steam powers. So the DM has to decide if there's a hard limit, or set up an actual decay/failure system that accounts for "abandoned" devices properly by enforcing your maintenance as required maintenance rather than reduction of a limit.

ts the coglayer that.. Becomes weird on trying to build well since it is a more downtime extensive class. It gets some interesting combos.. Such like the three way flamethrower example in the book or the force generator and force sword automatic attack arms.. But again your right about needed to figure out just what the flying hell happens if someone manages to pop the force wall your making. Along side the asinine repair costs when it comes to mechs that aren't magical or other things. It does have some cost mitigation with some of the feats that give you stupid amounts of gold by salvaging anything that can be considered mechanical. But that doesn't resolve the issue of most things chipping away at your personal money pool and forcing the party to take down time. OR finding assistants that can help you craft the more complex steam powers.
Ah, the 3-way flamethrower, so useless, such a terrible example. Now, if you had a flamethrower to upgrade that'd be great, but again- the main hack to avoid wasting a ton of powers on a crappy flamethrower is to upgrade a personal steamgun steambreather (not steam gun, that's projectile) or flame nozzle, but the flame nozzle is shorter range and if you blow yourself up while the damage is amped you're super dead.

As for repair costs, I analyzed those a bit too: repairs go way, way faster than building and have a much lower DC, but are based on the market price. This implies that "repairs" are actually buying off the shelf components and replacing/installing them. Thus, you should be able to slash the price down to 1/3 by crafting the parts yourself, using the normal times and DCs. And I don't see why you aren't allowed to use salvage to repair other mechs, but even at 1/10 the market price of an enemy mech that's still some free repairs you ought to be able to convince your DM to allow.This still doesn't fix the chance of permanent failure whenever hit points drop to 50%.


So with that in mind. With the current rulings at the table of no more then five amplifiers and boilers on a item. The DM has also ruled that each item is a steam power no matter how many steam powers you put onto the item. That and the boilers you put onto a small creatures weapons are half a pound so they have some weight. So the five boilers for small would be 2.5pounds for medium it would be 5 and so on.
WELL THEN. You get to completely ignore the main limit of the class? That's doesn't even require decent optimization, though it does explain why you think of it as a downtime class. Normally each steam power is built individually at the magic item rate of 1,000gp per day, which means you basically take a day or two to build your new stuff on level up then you're done, after which you just take 1 minute per power to reconfigure them into something else. But if you need to rebuild every device you want to upgrade then that'd take longer.

So yeah, you get to make as half a dozen or more robots with no limit on how many functions or power other than 5 amplifiers and your time and money, that's pretty strong and optimizing it is a downtime focused effort.


I think the steam powers are far more usable than Fizban might imply (though he isn't far off the mark) and using a limit of 1/2 steam powers used on a given item is probably a good call. The Coglayer could use a bit of an update as well. At the bare minimum boost the BAB to 3/4 and HD to 1d8. It suffered the 3.5 curse of throwing new powers onto a Wizard chassis regardless of whether said powers were appropriate to such a thing.
I should clarify that when I say it's terrible garbage, its because of those specific problems I outlined. I do like the general idea, as its the only steampunk/magipunk class/system that actually takes the main point of the genre and runs with it: arbitrary application of "steam power" to existing non-magical technology to make them better because steampunk. The steam power system does that quite well, it just barely has any non-magical tech to build off, is missing a ton of critical information in some powers, has a woefully short list of parts (they mention "nonmagical sources of cold" in the amplifier but those don't even exist), and requires a bunch of DM clarification to make it work. Considering how meticulously detailed the rest of the book is, its pretty shameful that the foundational class that's supposed to build everything doesn't even work. Wizards can break the game easily, but you can make one and load it up with spells without making a dozen rulings.


Also, take a look at the NetBook of DragonMech (http://www.yaboogie.com/csmith/steamp/DM_NetBook_of_Dragonmech_0.7.pdf), home of the Self-Maintaining feat (an item creation feat for having steam powers without maintenance), and the Q&A thread (http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=190) which answers a lot of questions (steam powers use the creators BAB, Flywheel has minimal combat potential, Boiler reduces time between shots on a Steam Gun, the force field from the Force Generator doesn't pop when it is penetrated, that is just the amount of damage that it can block on a single hit to prevent invulnerability, etc.). I just rediscovered DragonMech over the last week so this is all pretty fresh to me.
I mean, it says pretty clearly on the front that its a fan creation, but the Q:A thread is kinda important. Googling for errata doesn't produce a result, but I wasn't aware there were a bunch of other books for the setting, so maybe they included those answers in the later books as well (they also mention a frost launcher which nulls my previous statement). And that force field ruling is still bonkers strong for any purpose other than fighting ridiculously large mechs.


Overall I was really impressed with the usability of the mechs across the entire level range of the campaign. Having mechs maintain relevance from level 1 to level 20 without completely overshadowing everything else is a tough thing to do. DragonMech is the only d20 attempt that I have found that seems to be mostly successful. And I have looked.
Eh, maybe? I'd say this depends massively on where the mechs are coming from, how often they're usable, and what you're fighting. Things look okay on paper if you can devote most of your WBL to the mech, but once you start taking damage or have to fight anything outside the mech you're pretty screwed. I'd say you really have to plan properly if you want them used in the campaign as more than the occasional mech-day.

The Steam Armor from Warcraft: More Magic and Mayhem on the other hand, is much more integrated with normal character mechanics: a pile of hp with hardness that stops working when those hp run out, provides AC, strength, and effective size bonuses, and you otherwise fight as your normal character (it more power armor than mech). The cost is prohibitively expensive unless you can make it yourself (the given cost is to craft, while to purchase its 3x that), but high level characters can afford it if they want some extra max hp and hardness, which is always valuable, and the prices are mostly set (and can be tweaked easily enough) so that a tinker can get it earlier and use it as the majority of their stats. Of course the book is much harder to get hold of, and the section is criminally underdeveloped: they have a self-repair feature (and the setting includes repair spells), but barely any other modules to make things interesting.

Dragonmech's got a pretty decent mech system, but I'm not sold on it working alongside normal adventuring, as its simply too mech focused.