I like mecha. I like mecha a lot, from personal power armours to towering colossi, sci-fi to fantasy and everything in between; Gundam to Escaflowne, Tekkaman to Xenogears. So of course I get the itch to add mecha to my games, settings and most everything else.

That itch meandered its way back and forth across my hindbrain and eventually stumbled over a small passage I wrote for my still-unfinished spacehack concerning fantasy spaceships and fighting them — and so here we are, because I also don’t feel like bolting a massive new system onto anything to get my death machines going, lol.

Back-of-napkin Mecha Rules

To add mecha to an existing rpg, rules-wise (how you add them into a setting/story is entirely up to you and well~ outside the scope of this little project, lol), try this:

• Mecha use the exact same sort of stats as other potential antagonists.  So, monster statblocks with Hit Dice in many many games, the antagonist rankings in my pocketrpg, shorthand NPC statblocks from Shadowrun, etc etc.  Reskin as desired.  

What’s the notable difference?  The following:

• Mecha deal damage to other mecha (or mecha-equivalents) normally.
  • They will obliterate a squishy target such as your average adventurer outright; a person is not surviving getting even broadsided by the backwash of a beam sabre. Or being stepped on. Depending on the situation a save or test to get the hell out of the way might be allowable though.
• Under most circumstances, the average living body with typical weaponry is not going to damage a mecha.

But!  All is not lost, because adventurers gotta adventure and also Sabin Figaro and Master Asia exist.  So to the above, if desired, add the concept of [antimech] — renamed appropriately for setting and campaign, if it has a name at all — which is a fancy way of saying “deals normal damage to mecha targets”.

Some ways to make antimech abilities available:

• Make it an intrinsic trait of some character (types); say, all Fighters can damage mecha, for example
• Make it an acquirable trait, whether replacing an existing ability or as a purchaseable trait in games that use those
• Some spells, psychic abilities, or magic/tech/special items may have the ability to damage mecha
• You could also assign broad damage types as antimech; biomecha might be vulnerable to flames or to poison or necromantic energies, for example.

Please note that being able to damage a mecha doesn’t mean it won’t still turn Ixion Iron-Thewed into a bloody smear if he gets stepped on by it.  Gauge risk and rewards accordingly, lol.  Some special equipment/magic/etc might mitigate some or all damage from mecha attacks, though!

Some further considerations and ruminations:

• Hit Dice/challenge tiers/etc correspond to a given mecha unit’s capabilities but not necessarily its size, any more than they do in “mundane” encounters.  That relatively shrimpy machine might be a top of the line prototype bristling with pain-dealing weapons and unusual systems!
  • “Power Armour”: Similarly, if you want a power armour-like unit that is basically a fancy suit for a person but conceivably can be damaged by a person, just go the [antimech] route — the machine can be damaged by routine sources, but its own attacks damage mecha (and may or may not instant-splatter other targets, depending on the suit’s power).

• A mecha isn’t a perfectly impenetrable barrier just because it’s a death machine.  If something can still specifically target the pilot — mindprobes, curses, and so on — it’s going to still work.

• Repair rates are largely going to be up to individual tables as well as the base system being used; maybe something along the lines of using base “healing” rules, doubled if swarmed by techs or using hyper-mending abilities of some sort, halved if no one familiar with maintenance is available or if supplies are poor, etc.  Healing magic isn’t going to work (unless the mecha is biological, perhaps ~).

• It’s best to establish a baseline for mecha in a setting, especially if making specific mecha traits purchaseable or assignable to a unit.  Do typical machines have open cockpits/are they ridden, like FFVI Magitek Armours, or enclosed cockpits, like a Gundam?  Is flying standard or is it a special feature?  How about aquatic capabilities, or sealed cockpits/internal environments?
  • If average mecha have open cockpits, then an enclosed one (with its added protection) is worth making a special feature to acquire, especially if its capable of being a sealed environment.  Flight is a big thing, if mecha are normally ground-based.  And so on and so forth.
  • Of course an absolute free-for-all is also on the table if you want it ~

• Themes are also good.  Are mecha in your world entirely mechanical?  Are they metal, or crystal, or biological?  Plant or meat?  Solidified light?  Solid thought?  Animated bone?  Uncountable porcelain petals held together by blood ritual channeled through amber focus-studs?  Does it vary by culture?

And now random tables, because random tables

Need some quick inspiration to help reskin that statblock or conjure up a new one? Here’s some ideas to get the ol’ creative mecha juices no, not Protoculture flowing —

Composition I	Composition II	Aesthetics I	Aesthetics II
01. Common metal	01. Exotic alloy	01. Sleek	01. Asymmetrical
02. Bone	02. Ivory	02. Ponderous	02. Jagged
03. Ceramic	03. Stone	03. Attenuated	03. Angular
04. Chitin	04. Shell	04. Bulky	04. Bulbous
05. Crystal	05. Soulstuff	05. Crude	05. Corded
06. Mundane wood	06. Plasm	06. Delicate	06. Chiseled
07. Precious metal	07. Glass	07. Jury-rigged	07. Squamous
08. Living flesh	08. Dead flesh	08. Militaristic	08. Organic
09. Hard light	09. Petals	09. Minimalist	09. Bladed
10. Concrete	10. Solid thought	10. Baroque	10. Halo’d
11. Pearl	11. Plasteel	11. Predatory	11. Inscribed
12. Marble	12. Rare wood	12. Mass-produced	12. Banner’d

Form	Power Source	Controls	Wake it up with …
01. Humanoid	01. Biojelly	01. Reins & spurs	01. Bond-brand
02. Piscine	02. Fighting Spirit	02. Ship’s wheel	02. Skinprint
03. Bipedal walker	03. Lightning shards	03. Paired joysticks	03. Circuit medallion
04. Quadruped	04. Harvested souls	04. Steering yoke	04. Soul scanner
05. Avian	05. Reactor core	05. Thoughtgem	05. Eye reader
06. Centaurine	06. Radiant prism	06. Empathetic skinsuit	06. Blood sampling
07. Serpentine	07. Manastones	07. Pulse-point pearls	07. Sung command
08. Arthropod	08. Refined fuels	08. Enclosing shell	08. Tuned chime
09. Amorphous	09. Energy cells	09. Body harness	09. Answered riddle
10. Cephalopod	10. Solar generator	10. Gradient keyboard	10. Inscribed code
11. Vehicular	11. Steamworks	11. Thinking cap	11. Button sequence
12. Hybrid (roll twice)	12. Heartjewel	12. Uplink jack(s)	12. Inserted prism

Features I	Features II	Weapons A	Weapons B
01. Extra armour	01. Long-distance flight	01. Beam	02. Shot
02. Generates nutrition	02. Amphibious	02. Razor	02. Pulser
03. Life-supporting cockpit	03. Barrier-generator	03. Monoline	03. Blade
04. Weapon supercharger	04. Network transmission node	04. Banishing	04. Wing
05. Magic channeler	05. Cockpit sub-mecha	05. Frost (Cryonic)	05. Sabre
06. Psychic channeler	06. Linked drone(s)	06. Flame (Pyretic)	06. Fang
07. Self-regeneration	07. Weapon absorption	07. Souleating	07. Bolter
08. Flight	08. Damage immunity	08. Plasma	08. Whip
09. Bits/dragoons/weapon drones	09. Burrower	09. Repeating	09. Cannon
10. Transformation	10. Soul-storage of pilot	10. Corrosive	10. Claw
11. Mana/psychic/comms jammer	11. Cloaked	11. Thunder	11. Disrupter
12. Unusual sensor suite	12. Holographic projector	12. Hardlight	12. Hammer