BCZ Retrospective XIX: Features

We're almost to the end of the PC section, with the last set of Upgrades in this update. Most of the Features in BCZ were the result of months of me playing BCG, watching giant robot anime or playing videogames and going "You know, that's something that BCG doesn't have. I wonder if I can adapt it..."Sadly, my notes are lost to time, but I believe one or two of them were actually commissioned by Kickstarter backers.

Oldtype

Oldtype was designed as a sort of balance patch for Bosses and Rivals that were having trouble staying alive against PCs optimized for offense. It was so effective that I ended up taking the defensive ability and making it a General Upgrade. That's right, first came Oldtype then Internal Fortification, not the other way around! BCZ goes at length about the utility value of Oldtype and how it is a very powerful buff 90% of the time with a negligible drawback, so I don't have much else to say about it mechanically. I'll just note that I really like how it basically turns your Bosses and Rivals into the tabletop equivalent of videogame damage sponges with tons more HP than the PCs who have only a tiny fraction of their skillset. Easily one of my favorite additions to the rules in this entire book.

Omnienvironmental

This is a commission, and it was originally going to be a Mobility Upgrade, but giving it an activation cost made it basically "Like most Mobility Upgrades except better" so it ended up becoming a Feature. I'm not 100% happy with it, because if you use it for its intended purpose it is a very harsh penalty to Energy just so you can ignore a handful of Terrain penalties that may or may not ever happen in your game (when was the last time you fought underwater? RIP Getter-3.) but if you attach it to one of your Transformations then it is a very efficient way to give most Terrain in the game a middle finger while you don't have to suffer the penalties the rest of the time. Still, it is worth taking, and that's a victory.

Remora Frame

Oh boy, this one is kind of busted. Docking makes you very hard to kill, and you can optimize towards aggression then latch on to the party tank. Throw Dispersion Aura on top and it becomes kind of gross. Oh, and remember how I said Miniature Model was messed up by the rules-as-written because of the order of operations from the core book? That also applies to Remora Frame. Overall Rating: Yuck.

Sibling Model

Sibling Model is what happens when I sit down and try to boil down the gimmick of units that specialize in team attacks to a simple mechanic. Do you want a party of coordinated units with great teamwork? Everyone gets Sibling Model and when it happens it's a guaranteed 30+ Damage attack once per Operation. Do you want two or three units with a specific team attack that only they can pull off? Give them Sibling Model. Finding a buff to it that wasn't overwhelmingly powerful was the toughest part, and I think it was tweaked a handful of times until I went with the smallest possible numerical increase. It's okay, but not all that exciting. I wonder if I should've instead gone with something flashier, like "It turns your Synchro Attack into a Technique" or something along those lines.

Unstable Reactor

I genuinely can't remember if Unstable Reactor was a commission or my own idea, and that sucks, because I really want to take credit for it but I can't do so with a honest conscience. Unstable Reactor is probably the most flavorful Feature in the expansion, if not the whole game, and it is extremely powerful to boot. Originally all it did was turn your mech into a bomb. That is to say, it didn't give an Energy bonus, it simply made you explode when defeated. The Energy bonus was added later for flavor reasons. Yes, dear readers, I actually made this extremely powerful Feature even stronger just for flavor! Originally, the explosion was supposed to be both the good and the bad thing about the Feature. The idea is that, to most optimizers, the explosion isn't even a negative, because they either don't care about what happens after they've already lost or plan to never actually let that happen. No, the real negative isn't for them, but for their teammates and the GM that now has to deal with a potential teamwipe where everyone dies horribly. All Features are subject to GM approval, but Unstable Reactor gets its own sidebar explaining when and when not to allow it. Even then, I still sometimes get questions about how to deal with PCs that picked it from GMs that weren't ready to deal with the walking nuclear bomb PC. C'est la vie. My official stance is that Unstable Reactor is so much fun and causes so much drama when it goes off that it is worth all of the unintentional headaches it can invite.

And that's all for Upgrades... At least for PCs. We still have a bunch of NPC Upgrades to do after we do PC Weapons. This thing isn't ending yet!

Next: Melee Weapons.

Gimmick Out.