Voltron

[Chaot]

I haven't posted in a while. Thought I'd check in.

Today I had the bizarre idea to stat Voltron up. Unfortunately, it's a bit late tonight. This will probably have to wait till morning, as I've two kids to put to sleep. Still, anyone excited by the idea? I'm thinking of riffing on the ship rules to build the Lions and Voltron. The Robeasts will probably be Cthulhu level monsters.

Fun.

[caeman]

I LOVED Voltron as a kid. The lions were my favorite.

[drohem]

Yeah, I dug the heck out of Voltron too.

[Agentorange]

We didn't get Voltron over here in the UK, mind you we did have the clangers.....

www.clangers.co.uk

With hindsight it is clear that the Skymoos are in fact green cthulthoid moonbeasts

[sladethesniper]

yeah, so, um...I'd still like those Voltron Stats...

-STS

[Chaot]

Sorry. I haven't had time to work on them yet. It's still on my list.

Edit: By 'work on them' I mean I need to type the stuff up. I'll let you all vet them.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Chaot

[uruk]

We didn't get Voltron over here in the UK, mind you we did have the clangers.....

Nice heads up there. That was one of those shows we saw here, but I didn't know the name. That'll be a good one to add to my Bagpuss and Wombles collections.

[Chaot]

So, I've been doing some more thinking about this as someone else brought up the concept over at RPGnet. I'm going to cross post some ideas to see what you all think.

Ok, so I've been thinking about this and I think I have an elegant way to explain the flow of combat in the series. From my recollection, combat usually begins with an armada attack and the lions fly out to destroy the ship. Then, the bad guys release the robeast. The lions go after the robeast and get their tails handed to them. Then they form Voltron and pretty much dominate the combat.

Well, the flavor of BRP that I use (Elric!/SB5) which allows the PC to parry as many times in a round as their skill allows at a -30 skill % per Parry. So, someone with a 121% skill could parry at 121% for the first parry, 91% for the second, 61% for the third, 31% for the fourth and 1% for the fifth. Now Voltron's pretty tough, but using these rules, an armada could possibly lay down some major hurt. With the armada's attacks split between the five lions, this reduces some of the dangers to the big V.

So the lions take out the armada and in the process have sustained some damage themselves. Suddenly, the enemy releases the Big Bad. Let's say the BB is of equivalent power level of Voltron. Now, the lions are hurt, but they know that if they wear the robeast down a little they'll have a better chance of taking it out as Voltron. So they throw themselves at it for a while, not doing major damage but enough to possibly give them an edge as Voltron. Once it's not safe to fight as the lions anymore, they change into the big V and dish out the hurt.

See, in the cartoons (from my recollection) it doesn't matter how hurt the lions are, when they form Voltron they seem to be performing at peak performance again. Maybe it's some aspect of the power crystals they use reenergizing themselves or some hand-wavy thing like that.

What do ya think?

and

This opens up another issue I've been struggling with. Voltron's Blazing Sword is his end move and seems to be pretty powerful. Why doesn't he just start out with it. But what if different weapons need some time to power up? The first rounds of combat might be Voltron using the various lion attacks to keep the robeast busy enough so that he can use the Blazing Sword. So what if weapons of different 'power' takes different amounts of rounds to power up?

Which helps answer another conundrum. What do all the PCs do when they form Voltron? Perhaps they're tracking and coordinating their various powers to greatest effect? That way it's not just the black lion yelling out orders. I don't know, but it's something to think about.

I've a list of powers for both Voltron and all of the lions as well as their general effect and effectiveness. I haven't translated them into actual mechanics yet except for some broad guidelines and ideas. I'm waiting until I nail down exactly how I want to represent the lions and Voltron. Despite the excellent ideas in the Mecha thread, I'm leaning towards twisting the Vehicle rules for this purpose. It just seems more appropriate to me. However, if my attempt fails, I'll be revisiting the Mecha thread and stealing... uh, I mean borrowing... left and right.

Edit: Any ideas/criticisms/refinements are more than welcome.

[RosenMcStern]

Hmmm, I would go for another explanation, instead. Most superobots created in the 80's used a "Final" weapon, i.e. finished off their enemies always with the same weapon, unlike Mazinger did. Notable examples: Daitarn, Zambot, Darutaniasu, God Sigma, Golion (Voltron), Goshogun, Trider. Some of these weapons were energy blasts, some were swords, some were a mix of this. And all shared the same characteristic: the opponent had no opportunity to fight back, it just stood there and was vaporized/bisected/quadrisected. Voltron is possibly a bit different in that it put up a bit of a fight with its sword, but that's all.

I think the point here is not that using such weapons require a powerup time, it is rather that the weapon is "one shot", i.e. once the superobot activates it, it burns out most of its energy in a short time, so it must be sure to kill the enemy mecha with just a single blow or it will not be able to use the weapon again until the next combat. This actually means that the opponent must have been disabled or stunned somehow with inferior weapons before the final one is drawn.

So you could try the following trick: assuming Golion/Voltron has 200 PP, it costs it, say 100 PP to activate the sword and 10 PP per blow to strike with it (just 5 PP per round to keep it active) while the other weapons are just 1-2 PP per round to use. This way if it does draw the sword too early and cannot kill the robobeast with the first two or three blows, it might be easily forced to retreat in order to recharge.

More extreme example: Darutaniasu has 150 PP, and it costs it 5 PP per turn to use its steel blade (1d10+db) and 80 PP to use its flaming sword (10d10+db) per single attack. It is easy to guess which weapon is best used to kill, but better wait until the blow cannot miss!

[Simlasa]

I'm not all that up on Voltron or other classic Mecha... short of really liking the look... but I'm wondering if maybe the 'finishing move' tradition could be explained by the opponents having armor/energy sheilds/psychic auras that require a different mode of attack to bring them down... before the killing damage of the uber-weapon can be implemented?

IIRC a lot of times Ultra Man would fight fairly impotently until some point when suddenly anything he did would begin to rip off limbs and slice up the bad guy.

This might be back to my personal PSB explanation that the monsters aren't purely physical manifestations.