Lancer implements “wound”-like rules for when a mech suffers damage or strains their reactor. However, if a mech is unlucky, these “wounds” can cause them to lose a turn, take double damage, or destroy them outright. While many players in the Lancer community find these consequences acceptable, this system has prompted others to develop more forgiving rules to ameliorate the severity of these results. For my part, I would like to present some potential house rules for Lancer’s Structure and Overheating system, which I include as optional rules in Prototype Pattern Groups, my NPC supplement (and for which reCaste on Pilot NET has created a Foundry Module!).
Structure & Overheating Rules as Written
For quick reference, I include the tables for Lancer’s Structure Damage and Overheating below. They are available from the free version of the Lancer Core Book, pp. 80-81.
Structure Damage Table
Check the lowest value on [Structure Damage]d6
| 5-6 | Glancing Blow | Emergency systems kick in and stabilize your mech, but it’s Impaired until the end of your next turn. |
| 2-4 | System Trauma | Parts of your mech are torn off by the damage. Roll 1d6. On a 1–3, all weapons on one mount of your choice are destroyed; on a 4–6, a system of your choice is destroyed. Limited systems and weapons that are out of charges are not valid choices. If there are no valid choices remaining, it becomes the other result. If there are no valid systems or weapons remaining, this result becomes a Direct Hit instead. |
| 1 | Direct Hit | The result depends on your mech’s remaining Structure: 3+ Structure: Your mech is Stunned until the end of your next turn. 2 Structure: Roll a Hull check. On a success, your mech is Stunned until the end of your next turn. On a failure, your mech is destroyed. 1 Structure: Your mech is destroyed. |
| Multiple 1s | Crushing Hit | Your mech is damaged beyond repair – it is destroyed. You may still exit it as normal. |
Overheating Table
Check the lowest value on [Stress Damage]d6
| 5-6 | Emergency Shunt | Your mech’s cooling systems manage to contain the increasing heat; however, your mech becomes Impaired until the end of your next turn. |
| 2-4 | Destabilized Power Plant | The power plant becomes unstable, beginning to eject jets of plasma. Your mech becomes Exposed, taking double Kinetic, Energy, and Explosive damage until the status is cleared. |
| 1 | Meltdown | The result depends on your mech’s remaining Stress: 3+ Stress: Your mech becomes Exposed. 2 Stress: Roll an Engineering check. On a success, your mech is Exposed; on a failure, it suffers a reactor meltdown after 1d6 of your turns (rolled by the GM). A reactor meltdown can be prevented by retrying the Engineering check as a free action. 1 Stress: Your mech suffers a reactor meltdown at the end of your next turn. |
| Multiple 1s | Irreversible Meltdown | The reactor goes critical – your mech suffers a reactor meltdown at the end of your next turn. |
What Has Come Before
Before detailing my own house rules, I want to provide some variant Structure & Overheating rules used by the Lancer community.
GMS Crisis Catalog by Maria Lopez provides an alternative version of the Lancer Structure Damage and Overheating tables. The tables preserve the “Roll d6 equal to missing Structure/Stress and take lowest” while reducing the odds of instant destruction on the Structure table and the Exposed on the Overheating table. I have used them in the past and enjoyed them, and they’re a common substitution for many Lancer GMs.
Lancer: NPCs Rebaked by Kai Tave creates a custom Structure Damage table for non-Ultra NPCs with at least 2 Structure. It replaces the System Trauma results with a Hull save vs. Jammed, and reduces the odds of instant destruction or reactor meltdown. This makes NPCs less likely to become dead or useless during a fight.
Now, onto my take on these tables.
System Trauma Structure Damage
During one of my earliest games of Lancer, my mech had its weapons blown off due to System Trauma. I found this incredibly cool; they’re blowing up my mech! It felt like if I wasn’t careful, my mech would fall apart (though in reality, my arsenal of other weapons and systems ensured my continued relevance). System Trauma emulated what I would expect from a mech-genre combat RPG, and the vibes resonated with me.
Since then, I’ve seen plenty of the other results on the Structure Damage table. Glancing Blow was trivial. Direct Hit was devastating. Crushing Hit soured more than one of my games. Out of all the results, only System Trauma felt both genre-appropriate and fair.
So, for a time, I simply defaulted to “Don’t roll Structure Damage, just roll for System Trauma.” This worked alright for player mechs, if a bit high on Repair costs, but it frustrated me more for NPCs: NPCs have one or two weapons or systems, and each of them are usually crucial for their combat tactics. An assailant losing their weapon becomes little more than a warm body to contest objectives. Because of this issue, I shelved the “Always System Trauma” approach for Maria’s until I had an idea.
Offer A Difficult Choice
What if I offer a choice to the victim of Structure Damage? They can choose between rolling for System Trauma and losing one of their tactical options, or they could choose to take a debilitating condition. At this point, I was using a condition referred to as “Dazed” by the community, which is basically the downside for taking Lancer’s Brace reaction:
Dazed (Condition)
Due to the force of a particularly powerful attack or effect, a Dazed character cannot take reactions and can only take one quick action – they cannot move normally, take full actions, or take free actions.
Armed with this condition, I created my own rules for Structure Damage:
System Trauma Structure Damage
When a character takes structure damage, instead of making a structure damage check, the affected character chooses to either be Dazed until the end of their next turn, or to suffer the System Trauma effect from the Structure Damage Table (Lancer, p. 80).
This way, PCs with spare repairs pick System Trauma, and NPCs or PCs with low repairs pick Dazed. Both players and GM may choose between action flexibility and action quantity, which I find to be a satisfying dilemma. Best of all, I keep the genre-flavor innately conferred by System Trauma.
An Aside: Recharge Heat
Before I dive into my Overheating rules, I want to explain a design phenomenon for NPCs. NPCs with a single Stress become Exposed when Overheated, taking double damage from most sources. NPCs with more than one stress instead behave like PC mechs, rolling on the Overheating table. However, since the Overheating table eventually ends in a Reactor Meltdown, this leads to the player tactic of “heatgunning”, where player mechs treat the NPC’s heat cap as a slightly shorter health bar to nuke into meltdown. To compensate for this weakness on NPCs, most NPCs have an average Heat Cap of 8, making them much harder to heatgun, but also less likely to overheat in general.
Personally, I like self-inflicted heat as a risk/reward mechanic on NPCs, so I looked into ways to introduce Heat into NPC kits. At first, my kneejerk change was to replace the Recharge tag with the Heat (Self) tag with a value scaling with the Recharge value. Unfortunately, Lancer balanced the affected abilities around only being available every few rounds. Without that limitation, the affected NPCs could spam their powerful abilities at will with their above-average heat caps. Eventually, I settled on simply adding the Heat (Self) tag alongside the Recharge tag; this way, I preserved the intended pacing, and NPCs could become a little more toasty:
Recharge Heat
If an NPC has a heat cap, all of its abilities with the Recharge X+ tag gain the Heat (Self) X tag if it didn’t already have the tag. The value of Heat (Self) X is 1 Heat if the Recharge X+ value is 4+ or 5+ and 2 Heat if it is 6+. This rule is intended to provide more opportunities for PCs to pressure NPCs through inflicting heat. Consider using the Chill template on NPCs with 2 or more Stress if this rule leaves them too vulnerable.
However, this became a double edged-sword, as multi-structure NPCs once again became vulnerable to heatgunning. As a stopgap, I tried making a “stat bonus template” called Tempered (now Chilled) that boosted multi-Stress NPC heat caps by +2. Eventually, though, my distaste led me to adopt my current rules.
One Reactor Stress for All
A common refrain in Pilot NET’s mechbuilding channel is “[Reactor] Stress is a resource.” Many player builds abuse their mechs’ heat caps for fun and profit, throwing caution to the wind. On the other hand, NPCs with more than one Reactor Stress are susceptible to “heatgunning”, as mentioned above. Maria’s Overheating table addressed daredevil players by adding the risk of “half damage” to the potential results, but multi-Stress NPCs still carried the burden of vulnerability if they inflicted any Heat upon themselves.
Thankfully, Stormtalus on Pilot NET once told me about his own rules for Overheating. Similarly displeased with how NPCs handled Heat, he ruled that all NPCs instead always have 1 point of Reactor Stress, always becoming Exposed when they Overheat. Any heat they received over their heat cap instead converted to Energy Damage (which Exposed doubled, in turn). After seeing a similar “single heat bar” approach in Salvage Union, I decided to make my own twist on Stormtalus’s approach:
One Reactor Stress for All
All characters with a Heat Cap – PC or NPC – only have 1 Stress and cannot gain more. When a character would take Heat that would put them over their Heat Cap, they become Exposed and Overheated.In addition, any Heat a character takes beyond their Heat Cap is instead taken as energy damage that cannot be reduced.
I apply the “One Reactor Stress” rule to both PCs and NPCs, and add a new status, Overheated:
Overheated (Status)
Mechs become Overheated when their reactor begins emergency venting protocols, locking down the mech’s ability to generate heat. When a mech would become Exposed by overheating, they additionally become Overheated. An Overheated mech cannot take any actions or activate abilities that would inflict heat upon themselves, including using Overcharge and activating systems with the Heat X (self) tag. Weapons with the Overkill tag instead lose the tag while Overheated. A mech can clear Overheated by taking the Stabilize action.
Combined with the Recharge Heat rule from above, this transformed Overheating from a heatgunning tool into an action denial tool. Overheated NPCs cannot use their Recharge abilities nor Overcharge (if they are normally capable of doing so) until they Stabilize, consuming their actions for their turn. Again: Offering the choice between action flexibility and action quantity (plus double damage from Exposed, of course). PCs playing with heat can still skirt the redline, but Overheated forces them to respect their limits.
Conclusion
Both my takes on Structure and Overheating streamlined Lancer for me while cutting out a lot of frustrating variance during my games. Players know what to expect with my rules, and can make calculated risks instead of simply “playing safe” to avoid these tables (or outright disregarding them). Meanwhile, I can play more aggressively with my NPCs, knowing that they can take more hits and deal more hits without accidentally kicking a player out of the rest of the combat scene. Ever since I adopted these rules, I’ve never looked back. I highly recommend any GM dissatisfied with the vanilla Structure Damage and Overheating rules to try my own (or one of the others suggested above). Foundry users can make use of the following mods to support these rules:
- PPG Structure Rework for my rules from this post and Prototype Pattern Groups
- Lancer Alternative Structure for Maria’s from GMS Crisis Catalog
- LANCER: NPCs Rebaked Structure Rules for Kai Tave’s from Lancer: NPCs Rebaked
Lastly, unrelated to this post, if you’re looking for a selection of LL0 premade characters for Lancer using Wallflower‘s Sagarmatha and Solstice Rain‘s Chomolungma, check out Stormtalus’s Lancer Premade Characters for ten builds leveraging those options!
May these resources help you with your games, or help you devise your own house rules for Structure Damage & Overheating!