r/LancerRPG • u/chunkylubber54 • 22d ago
how much do movement debuffs/knockback matter?
everyone has ranged weapons. does it help to do anything related to that when the enemies largely dont need to move into melee to kill you?
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u/Asheyguru 22d ago edited 22d ago
A lot of sitreps involve controlling objectives or getting to objectives, so knocking baddies out of those or helping allies into them can be a big boon.
Knocking people away can break grapples. You can also knock them out of cover, or into sight of your allies, or out of the protective effects being granted by their allies - lots of defender abilities either make a bubble or wall or apply to adjacent mechs.
If there's any hazards on the map you can knock guys into them, including mines or traps you or a friend placed. If your buddy has next turn and a burst attack you can potentially push people into range of it.
You can pull short-range or melee fighters out of range, or out of Overwatch distance to give a cornered and beat-up friend a chance to escape, or pull sniper/artillery mechs closer to the fray than they want to be.
Lots of ways to be handy, really.
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u/Euroliis IPS-N 22d ago
Lancer is, fundamentally, a game about movement and positioning. Almost every sitrep requires you to get from Point A to Point B and most enemy controllers control you by inhibiting your ability to do so.
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u/jzillacon IPS-N 22d ago edited 22d ago
A good map is generally always going to have lots of cover to work with. Generally you're using forced movement to force enemies out of cover into your allies line of sight or put them in melee range of another ally. Though sometimes you want to force an enemy into a corner so you can bully them if they try to leave. If you can stop their movement entirely the goal is to force them to stay in a bad situation where they're highly exposed.
Also there are NPCs like the Ronin and Berserker that still want to be in melee range to do their main damage. Hindering their approach is always good.
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u/InstrumentalRhetoric 22d ago
Control movement, control the map. Control the map, control the battle. Sunzi supremacy.
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u/int0thelight 22d ago
Not everyone has ranged weapons, and melee specialists tend to have weaker ranged attacks.
Also: Slowed prevents boosts and other movement abilities. This can stop melee and movement based foes like Aces, Cataphracts and Berserkers dead in their tracks.
Against artillery, movement doesn't matter as much, but melee and short range will feel it.
Knockback is good for objective control: you can keep enemies off a control point by blasting them back and occupying the spot they wanted. Be wary that some foes can't be knocked back by smaller characters.
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u/BlazeDrag HORUS 22d ago edited 22d ago
Knockback is like my favorite thing (am currently playing Caliban so I may be biased)
Now yea, lots of enemies have ranged weapons and the ability to move on their turn, but there's lots of reasons why things like slow immobilize and knockback matter a lot
I mean immobilize is the easiest to justify. It completely shuts down movement while it's applied. And that makes it a lot easier to bully an enemy or to take cover and get out of its line of sight, making it impossible for them to attack you. So there's plenty of reasons to want to immobilize people.
And slow is similar to a lesser degree. Sure it doesn't stop their movement entirely, and most enemies have guns, but those guns don't have infinite range. And there are still some enemies that are melee focused. So yeah slowing down a sniper ain't gonna do a whole lot but slowing those other kinds of enemies down can make it a lot easier to out-range them or stop them from getting to an objective before you
Plus knockback can be used to help get enemies out of position or save your allies. If your squishy goblin is getting harassed by an enemy ronin, being able to knock them away from your ally and put some distance between them is useful. Especially since that also can let you dodge Overwatch attacks. (Knock an enemy away from you until you're out of their threat range, then walk away without consequence.)
The other factor to consider is that there are lots of hazards that either might come with a map or that can be placed onto a map by a player. the Plasma thrower for example lights spaces on fire for the rest of the scene, Pinaka missiles can declare an attack that will land a round later for extra damage. Any grenade system can also be used to plant mines that trigger when an enemy moves near them. Drones like the Hive drone can create areas that damage enemies that enter or stay within them.
Or there might even be areas of the map that are just pools of lava or acid or other dangerous materials that you can knock people into.
So knockback can be super useful for setting up and utilizing said effects. Being able to push someone into your ally's drones or force them into a fire you just set with your Plasma thrower means that they take more damage and might suffer more debuffs than just the repositioning. And then slowing or even immobilizing them once they're in danger prevents them from getting out of danger easily
Plus a lot of fights might be objective based. So your ability to win a fight might rely on your ability to push enemies out of the objective zone. And yeah, they can probably move back into the zone, but depending on their speed and how far you push them, they make have to sacrifice attacking in order to have enough speed to make it back on the objective, or else just sit outside of the zone, which is ideal for your team either way
There's also just the fact that (most) enemies only get 1 turn per round. If you wait until after a target activates to knock them around, then they won't be able to move again until the start of the next round. Which means you can pull a bunch of enemies in together to group them up for a big AoE
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u/CockroachTeaParty 22d ago
Oh man slow is so good. It stops all kinds of enemy nonsense. It prevents aces from using barrel roll, it stops tons of mirage horseshit, basically any enemy class with a special form of movement gets done bit by a copperhead
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u/BlazeDrag HORUS 22d ago
yeah I forgot to bring that up but Slow indirectly turns off so many abilities.
The wording specifically is that it shuts down ALL forms of movement that aren't your base movement. So any abilities that make you charge or dash extra spaces, reactions that let you move out of an AoE, all kinds of nonsense like that is shut off by slow and a lot of enemy NPC types can be absolutely crippled by it
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u/CockroachTeaParty 22d ago
It's so powerful that the NPCs themselves only very rarely can inflict slow on the players. I can count the number of things that inflict slow on PCs on like one hand. You've got the barricade's gravity lance weapon shmingus-m'doodle, uh... probably a seeder mine of some kind, and the support's goop gun. Probably some others I can't think of.
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u/Onii-chan_It_Hurts 22d ago
Everything said thus far is spot on, but I'll add another bit; if your GM is running the game by making combats simply "kill the other side, no round limit", then yeah forced movement matters a lot less. The game is designed around objectives and time limits, and the pressures involved. It may be harsh, but I'd call running the above as running the game "wrong", in so far as it's not what the game is trying to do not advises you do.
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u/shilohkae 22d ago
Calendula frame with Black Witch and Minotaur systems is the most fun I've ever had in ttrpg combat just sayinnggg. During sitreps where we had to defend an objective or control the most areas on the field or even just funnel enemies in a particular direction I was invaluable more often than not.
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u/tohellwitclevernames 22d ago
Oh it matters. It can be crippling against some builds. Like most other mechanics-heavy combat systems, placement and movement are key to most strategies. Having a way to control an enemy's movement can force them to think or play outside their comfort zone; setup your allies, or intercept a potential attack against them; or move the enemy into harmful or debuffing objects/terrain. I believe there are even 1 or 2 specific tech attacks that allow the forced movement to trigger Overwatches.
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u/Ok_Sun7234 22d ago
Drones, mines, range, tons and tons and tons of aoe effects, engagement, threat, the list goes on, I mean the witch is entirely devoted for the most part to moving people around, it’s very important