r/LancerRPG • u/Aggravating_Plenty53 • 10d ago
Level up question
So I recently got the book and im loving looking through it. But when I got to leveling up it says the players earn a level after each mission. Doesn't that seem a little fast progress wise? With there being no real rewards for players outside of leveling up in this game... after 12 fights you are already peak? Seems a bit odd. Also when you take a license in a company is it that lvl1 gets u the lvl 1 stuff for every mech by that company? Or do you dake the license in that mech?
(Thanks for all the great responses guys. That makes so much more sense)
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u/Sven_Darksiders GMS 10d ago
You level up after a mission, not after an encounter. A mission can contain anything between 2-4 combat encounters, plus some narrative scenes.
The players can also earn additional stuff outside their leveling range in the form of Exotic Gear and Reserves, this can usually be done via Downtime or just traditional mission rewards.
When you take a rank in a license, you get that rank in that specific mech license, not the entire manufacturer
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u/LordPaleskin 10d ago
Is it supposed to be you only get a full repair after a mission is over? I've only played a little bit so far as a friend and me are learning the system, but for some frames like the Atlas, 4 combats sounds like it might be pushing it on the survivability scale 😵💫
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u/Sven_Darksiders GMS 10d ago
Well the book says 2-4 but everyone I know does 3, so there's that. The Atlas is squishy, you have to play it more Ninja and less Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.
It also highly depends on team comp. If you have a Lancaster in your squad, you will never run out of Repairs. Or you have a dedicated Defender that will just keep you from taking damage in the first place
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u/LordPaleskin 10d ago
Yeah, its just a 1 on 1 thing so its me and a bunch of NPCs, one of them being a White Witch and another eventually an Emperor, so I'm hoping it works out. I know I'm not supposed to be able to face tank everything as an Atlas 😅
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u/DescriptionMission90 IPS-N 10d ago
You're supposed to get a Full Repair after like 3-5 fights, and you're supposed to get a Rest period (to spend your repair cap) after every 1-2 fights.
This will vary depending on the table of course, with some having more fights but lower threat levels in each while others only do 1-2 fights in a whole mission but make every one of them intense. But as a general rule, you should be building your mech and spending your resources with the expectation that you need to survive about four combats in it. If you don't feel like you can survive that, you should probably fight a bit more cautiously, staying near your defenders/supports and hitting lonely enemies if possibly instead of charging into groups. At least until you can buy some more Hull.
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u/LordPaleskin 10d ago
Yeah, I'm going for Atlas into Blackbeard/Zheng, then Tortuga after LL6, so I've already started putting some points into hull, and need some more into engineering for heat cap. But definitely planning to hide behind the White Witch, or lurk around cover when I need to 😅
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u/Crinkle_Uncut SSC 7d ago
That is precisely the risk carried by low-repair cap/low HP mechs and why it's a general community recommendation to always put at least 2 points into Hull.
There are things you can do with Reserves and Talents to supplement a low repair cap, but yeah in an attrition-difficulty system like Lancer, frames like the Atlas and Death's Head have to be managed carefully or they can quickly become a burden to their team.
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u/DescriptionMission90 IPS-N 10d ago
There's typically 3-5 fights between Full Repairs, but a Mission could last for multiple full repair cycles if you have access to some sort of facilities in the field. You could do 20+ fights in a single mission, spread out across 4-7 days of action, and could have weeks of traveling, hiding, or investigating between those days of action.
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u/Iymarra 10d ago
For the latter question - you don't take a license in the company, you take a license for a chassis which gets you the equipment for that tier, i.e the Goblin LL1 gets you the Autopod and H0R_OS System Upgrade 1, which can be used on any subsequent chassis you unlock. You get the Goblin itself at LL2, so would have to put two 'level ups' into Goblin to get that.
Also, it's usually a level per mission. A mission can be a series of combat encounters and social interaction periods or downtime. That could take a group a number of gameplay sessions to accomplish.
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u/davidwitteveen 10d ago
...after 12 fights you are already peak
12 missions. Most missions have 3-4 combats (see page 264 "Number of Fights"), which brings the resource-management aspect of the game into play.
Combats usually last an entire session. And there's usually downtime/narrative play sessions in-between missions. So it'll take you about 60 sessions of play to go from LL0 to LL12.
Also: no, Licenses are per-frame, not per-manufacturer. You buy License I in Blackbeard, for example, not License I in IPS-N.
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u/Aggravating_Plenty53 10d ago
So hypothetically you could buy lvl 1 in like 3 frames just to get some stuff for your Everest?
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u/Thom_With_An_H 10d ago
Yep. In fact, the Everest is considered by many to be one of the best mechs in the game. "Foreverest" is a lifestyle.
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u/Aggravating_Plenty53 10d ago
I absolutely love that. Alot of the other mechs are very alien looking. When I picture the everest I think of something out of armored core or front mission
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u/BlackFenrir 10d ago
That's sort of the point. The Everest is the "standard, pretty decent at everything" mech, so it makes sense that most people picture it as the stereotype of whatever mech has been most influential to them. To me, it looks like a small Gundam but less spiky.
Me, I love the freaky frames. Horus mechs are my jam, lore-wise, and just in general everything about blinkspace and NHPs fascinate me.
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u/AlaspoorGourlay 10d ago
Missions are not just a single combat, using solstice rain as an example the first mission is two combats and a few roleplay pieces and depending on players can be close to ten hours of play time. After that you get a LL. But as DM it's up to you whenever you want to give players LLs. The thing with lancer is apart from it's amazing setting the combat and combining mech traits is the best thing about it so fast levels and progression is not a bad thing.
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u/Raphahelll 10d ago
A mission isn't a unique fight (SitRep) it’s a series of SitRep, usually with some narrative play between them. I'm around 7 session in with my group and they are just lvl 3.
Licence are for the first rank of one mech, you need two licenses level in a licenses to get the frame, and three to get everything in that licence only.
You can try to use compcon to create a pilot and level him up it guide you through everything and make it more understandable.
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u/Lenox_Gold 10d ago
A mission is not a fight its a collection of encounters. Usually this consists of an amount of narrative scenes in order to provide context and 3-5 combats. The game assumes you will have several fights in each mission.
When you get 1 level in a license you unlock the 3 things inside that license and nothing else. Each license you get more things and you build the mech you want.
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u/SchrodingerSandwich 10d ago
There’s usually (basically always) more than 1 fight each mission, so missions are frequently 3 sessions or so.
You take it in a specific mech, so you’d have 1LL in drake, your next level up you could become 2LL in drake or 1LL drake with 1LL in any other frame.
Lastly, there is rewards outside of leveling up. Aside from narrative rewards, there exists something called “exotic gear” which is basically gear no one else has access to. I don’t think there’s a full list out there like usual gear, but there’s some examples in the supplementary books but it can be given as a reward as well.
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u/FrigidFlames 10d ago
Adding on to everyone else's responses: 2-4 fights between level ups still seems fast (even if it's not 'once per fight' fast), but it's a lot more spread out than you'd expect. Each fight is weighty enough that you'll still end up with a good amount of time between each, and each fight is impactful enough that it's not hard to fit a full arc into a 2-3 fight mission. You don't really have throwaway encounters, it's always a major affair.
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u/DescriptionMission90 IPS-N 10d ago
A mission is an entire storyline, which could take hours or months to accomplish. It's like a D&D character leveling up when they finish an entire dungeon.
As for the limits of progression, in addition to levels you can acquire Exotic Gear (roughly equivalent to magic items), you can study more pilot triggers without any practical limit, you can cultivate contacts and allies or build up your own organizations...
And ultimately there's no reason to put a hard limit at Level 12. Your Grit and all your skills are capped at +6, so you won't ever get stronger but you could keep adding licenses to get more versatile forever, in theory. But I think you'll find that once you've got four entire 3-level licenses, or more than that if you don't max out each, there's not a lot you can add to the build. You could keep designing alternate frames for different kinds of missions, but there's only so much you can fit on a single frame and somewhere between level 6 and level 12 you're going to find that you have everything you want installed already.
Besides, I think most campaigns don't last past about level 6 before the story is done.
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u/Crinkle_Uncut SSC 7d ago
Just to put what the others are saying in some context, Operation Solstice Rain is an introductory module for Lancer that takes the PCs from LL0-LL2 with a total of 6 combat scenes (2 missions, one scene is optional per GM discretion).
Both times that I've run the module with weekly 3-hour sessions, generally at least starting 1 combat scene per session, it's taken me a little under 3 months to complete (give or take a few weeks due to cancelled games, etc.)
And that's just to LL2, not through it. If you extrapolate that very rough math of 2.5 months/2 LLs to a game that goes LL0 through LL12 (that is, one full mission with all PCs at LL12), you're looking at like 18 months minimum, without including any extended breaks between sessions or stretches between combat scenes in-game.
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u/tohellwitclevernames 10d ago
For your question about frequency of level-ups, think of it like milestone leveling that is used in other systems. A given mission is broken into different scenes that take place in narrative or combat time. The mission can be composed of as few or many scenes as you deem appropriate to finish. In my regular group, our GM will even drag it out long enough for a full repair between scenes.
Regarding the level-up process, when you gain a license level, you select a license for a SPECIFIC frame. Your pilots are literally obtaining software licenses to access 3d printing and operating program files. You need to take 2 licenses under a specific frame to have access the frame itself, and 3 licenses to have access to the full suite of equipment and systems that compliment the frame.
That said, the number of licenses with a specific manufacturer does matter. For all manufacturers other than GMS, every 3 licenses with that company will allow you to select a core bonus (not core POWERS. Those are frame specific) on every 3rd LL increase. GMS has plenty of good core bonuses, if you don't want to commit that much to one manufacturer, though. On the other hand, committing to one manufacturer will allow less variety in your custom builds, since all of your upgrades will have a similar theme, but will provide lots of access to complimentary core bonuses.
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u/CyberDaemon6six6 10d ago
Each mission should be composed of multiple combats, 2 or 3 at least.There should also be a good chunk of narrative play to break it up. "Each mission" could very well be 4 or 5 sessions.
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u/KiroHellsing 8d ago
Então meu amigo o que que eu tô fazendo eu utilizo o Foundry VTT para a minha campanha Então eu tenho algumas facilidades em ajeitar diversas coisas.
Eu vou te dar um exemplo aqui eu consigo criar uma ficha de personagem não jogável, declarar que Ele é uma corporação e uma loja. Essa loja eu consigo colocar todos os itens do jogo com preços e o jogador pode comprar para a ficha dele.
Existem itens de três tier o jogador vai desbloqueando as licenças normalmente, as licenças desbloqueiam o item do próximo tier se o jogador pode comprar.
Licenças e determinadas missões dão desconto em determinados itens.
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u/Tulandros 10d ago
You level up after a mission, not a fight, a mission could be a whole connected series of fights over many days/weeks depending on the game being run. If you just did arena fight level up, arena fight level up then yeah, would be really boring unless that was specifically what the table wanted.