Mechanics Update: Leg Day
Legs. Not every mech has them, but when it comes to the fantasy mechs embody, they’re not just for show. Legs make a mech resonate with the human form (or perhaps an animal form). People connect with mechs, in part, because of the way in which they remind us of familiar bodies.
So today is Leg Day.
Hitting Your Stride
Precipice: Mech Miniatures Combat is in its Open Alpha. And as a designer, that’s a fun place to have the game. It’s ready enough to be played. It’s written down enough for people to try it. But it’s still flexible enough to change. The design space is still largely unexplored.
When I played the game with Crabbok (something you can watch on his channel, here), we talked a lot about different modes of movement. His experience driving heavy vehicles gave me some great insights into the advantages (and disadvantages) of treads over wheels, what legs might offer to a (fictional) large-scale military weapon, and more.
One item that he flagged was that you can still move at full speed with a damaged leg. He wasn’t the first to flag this, but he was the first to offer a really elegant solution: What if the Stride action sums the total energy to Leg parts?
I was curious how this would play, so for the last few months, I’ve been testing it out on the table. And I’m now please to announce that it works great. Excellent call!
The Stride action is being updated accordingly. While I was concerned that larger movement distances would feel too large, players found that the extra movement felt good on the table. A slightly larger movement “base” also creates more design granularity to play with, which is always a plus.
Notably, not every movement action will work this way. The Jump action, for instance, still runs on power to the individual Leg part. This works thematically, and helps keep Jump distances feel reasonable in comparison to Stride, too.
Skidding into Position
If you look at the current version of Alpha part cards, you’ll notice the Brake action is one of the only uses of the “2” Input card besides Guard. And it’s… not amazing. Over many test games, Brake is probably the least-used action on the Part cards. It’s mechanically and conceptually important that a mech be able to brake, but do people actually use it? Only every once in a blue moon. After all, momentum is useful in most contexts, and you can spend it in other ways (the Impact keyword, or just letting it run out on its own after each Momentum Move). Yes, sometimes you need to stop on a dime, but it doesn’t come up that often.
Brake being circumstantial and Guard being so dang good has resulted in a play pattern of tossing the “2” Input card onto an arm and then just leaving it there for protection. It’s uninteresting, so I’m mixing it up a bit. And the way I’m doing that is by increasing the opportunity cost of not having the “2” available.
For many sets of Legs, this means Brake is getting replaced with a stronger action: Skid.
Skid can function as a Brake in a pinch, because it is important (occasionally) to be able to stop. But it also has another utility: an extra bit of movement mid-burst. This is optional, but gives a savvy player the chance to close (or widen) a gap at a fast initiative slot, provided they have the momentum to do it.
In the initial tests of this mechanic, it’s playing really well. Melee, especially 2” melee attacks, were a bit hard to land, and this gives mechs a better chance to close the gap mid-burst for a key hit. It’s also helpful for sliding behind cover or out of an arc at crucial moment, weakening an oncoming attack. Combined with the longer move distances from the Stride update, this has made mechs feel more mobile overall.
Notably, some legs will keep Brake instead of Skid. But for those mechs, it will be a design priority to give other useful outlets for the “2” card.
Topping Out
This isn’t a change to the Leg parts, but it does affect Legs. Each Torso now has a Mass value (differentiated from its Size, which still exists) and a Top Momentum.
This is a long-requested feature. While tracking momentum with the d6 on all mechs is convenient, as many people have pointed out to me, many people have other dice they’d love to use (d8’s, d10’s, etc). Further, it’s easy to put 2d6 next to each other on the momentum tracker.
I tested this hypothesis out on the table, and they were right! So higher Top Momentums now exist for mechs. This also helps make tradeoffs on the Torso interesting; you can put fast Legs with a slow Torso if you’d like, but your overall movement will still be slower than a mech with a sleek, aerodynamic torso. But this is Leg day, and we’ll talk more about Torsos in a future update.
Moving Forward
Speaking of momentum, you might notice some other changes from the current version of the Alpha (v1.0) on these cards. That’s because we’re preparing to move to the next Alpha version: v1.1! Version 1.1 reflects all the user experience and feedback I’ve accumulated since the launch of Alpha v1.0. Look forward to the launch of Alpha v1.1 next week!