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[Kadzar]

Actually, the height of the center of mass is pretty irrelevant to artillery and tank design, the real issue is footprint, which you want to be as wide and deep as is reasonable in order to prevent it's weight (which is how it actually offsets recoil, though spreading the force also helps) from causing it to sink.  That said, it could be argued that by increasing the footprint you are effectively lowering the center of gravity, but that isn't completely true.

Six legs would probably be optimal for legged artillery, but four (with a wide enough stance) would probably work for an AFV.

As ridiculous as it sounds, there are some reasonable arguments in favor of a two-legged gun carriage unit, narrow profile, variable firing height and vantage, some terrain advantages.  Not really enough to offset the massive expense and complexity, but still good points.

Center of mass matters a great deal for movement. The lower the center of mass, the higher an incline a vehicle of equal footprint can handle without tipping; since one of the most frequently parroted arguments in favor of mecha is that legged vehicles can handle rougher terrain, it makes sense to go as low as possible with the drive unit in light of the guns to be put on its back. Of course, you can just make the vehicle longer or wider, but that means stressing the legs more with the additional mass and needing wider paths down which to travel.

Clearly the most optimized mecha is some sort of scorpiod centaur.

[scriver]

[NullForceOmega]

Actually, the Wasteland 2 scorpion bot is what made me think about this issue in the first place, it's a very cool design.

Trekkin, I want to address a couple of points about all-terrain/armored vehicle design here:

    The stance of your vehicle must be broad and fairly short, preferably as close to a square as possible, and your center of gravity must be relatively high, or you aren't crossing any kind of broken terrain period, the ideal configuration is approximately pyramidal. with most of the weight concentrated in the upper half of the envelope.  This allows your vehicle to more easily navigate across uneven objects, like shattered buildings, rocks, vehicles, etc.
    This is less applicable to artillery platforms as they are intended to be deployed on relatively even terrain so they can actually use their armament, since their weapon is typically not rotatable (rotatable mobile artillery is more common recently) your ideal shape is more of a rectagonal pyramid with the peak near the back (rear third or quarter) where the bulk of the weight is.
    In the case of tanks, you want a broad short rectangle with the action of the cannon positioned as close to directly above your center of gravity as possible, your center of gravity will ideally be directly below the turret at the ring, about mid-way through the actual body (and around two thirds of the way UP the height of the vehicle), then you want around a quarter to a third of your overall height to be airspace below the hull.

For an armored walker you would ideally want any heavy armaments to be located in a similar fashion, their action should be centered above your c.o.g. and they should follow the above stated pyramid ideal, if you wanted to build a humanoid platform, you would need it to have the human advantage of a variable stance, and firing any sort of heavy weapon would probably necessitate it immobilizing itself in a crouched position, or that the weapon be placed at or near its waist level (which would mitigate most of the variable firing height I noted in my previous post).

I've studied this pretty extensively.  But I should really stop derailing my own topic because this is mostly irrelevant to D&D/PnP games, If you or anyone else wants to continue we might be able to squeeze this discussion into either the tech thread or science thread, or maybe even re-purpose the Suidobashi vs. Megabots thread.

On topic: Thri-kreen Monks.  OP in so many wonderful ways.

[Mephisto]

I've been reading Yggdrasill (don't comment on the spelling, that's how the game spells it). I kind of want to run a modern-day game featuring emerald ash borers now. One of the two original humans, Ask, was made from an ash trunk. The world tree itself is also an ash.

[scriver]

Ask just mean Ash.

And yes, that means the ur human was a Pokemon trainer.

[NullForceOmega]

And Ash had a Heracross, further support for the new title.

[Jimmy]

I've always had a soft spot for the Red/Blue series, since I played it as a child. I heard there's a PnP RPG out there, but that it's a total slog for the GM to prep stats for encounters.

One thing I'd love to see would be a Nuzlocke style PnP RPG version of the Kanto game. I already have my own headcanon for it too (not posting unless under request to avoid derail).

[Mephisto]

We were talking about pet monster anime games over on RPG Geek. It was revealed that Cute and Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters is still one of the best. If you're into BESM, give it a look.

[Trekkin]

I've always had a soft spot for the Red/Blue series, since I played it as a child. I heard there's a PnP RPG out there, but that it's a total slog for the GM to prep stats for encounters.

One thing I'd love to see would be a Nuzlocke style PnP RPG version of the Kanto game. I already have my own headcanon for it too (not posting unless under request to avoid derail).

You know, this is one of those universes that gets brought up every so often around my gaming group(s), and the biggest obstacle to running it has always been that nobody wants to actually play through capturing animals and making them fight for money. I'm curious, now, what such a game would look like without the fighting. What would (human) PCs do?

[NullForceOmega]

Probably other forms of competitive sports featuring pet monsters, racing, tug-of-war, other non-destructive contests maybe?  It might feel bad to capture animals to make them fight, but I'd bet people would take less issue with making what amounts to a dogsled team.

They might also use their creatures for support purposes, search and rescue, law enforcement, aiding the community.  I'm sure there are many applications that wouldn't involve combat.

[BlackFlyme]

Wild Empathy is great for catching animals and unintelligent magical beasts.

My current Pokemon team consists of an Advanced Bulette, a Hydra, and the Loch Ness Monster. I just caught the Hydra in tonight's session.

[Harry Baldman]

My favorite D&D Pokemon concept has to be an arcane spellcaster Baleful Polymorphing their enemies and collecting them for posterity/making them fight to the death when space runs low.

[MrWiggles]

So this Saturday was Savage World Rippers.

We're in the middle of thje egyptian desert. And we're trying to dig out this necropolis. We were attacked again, and the workers we had left, left.
We manage to dig out the door. And we found a key hole. We didnt have a key. So I shoved this work horse of a crowbar into the key hole and just fucking busted that thing out. That didnt really help things. But thanks to exploding dice, even though we're untrained and dont have the tools, we manage to pick the busted lock.

And so we went toward our doom. And we went into the tombs. Down and down and down we went. And eventually we found a big ass mummy. We fought the mummy. It was not going well. As well, it takes half damage and has like 10 toughness. And is even more tough toward piercing weapons. And for our group anyway, since we have to hide our weapons, is the sword cane. And sword canes are rapiers. Pokey weapons, not slashing weapons. I have Ripper claws which do slashing but didnt bring'em with me.

Bob, our caster, just decided to breath fire on the thing. And we manage to kill it. Woot! So we continue back down. And we found some fucking treasure! This treasure is with Bob. This is important.  Bob also has scrolls with our next clues. Also important.

So we went down and down and down and found the second imporant mummy. This one we decided to not fuck around with. We open the top of her stone coffin and just breath fire into it, asap.

And we were fighting. Poor.y The mummy manage to grapple and grip the neck of one ouf PCs. SO I and nother players we rushed to his aid and manage to break the grapple. And Bob was breathing fire, shooting lighting, and like fuckin nothing.

So. I pulled out a stick of dynamite. And I wailing about trying to jab the stick into the mummy. The unsaid plan was to get it stuck into the mummy, retreat, bob breaths it on fire and the mummy blows up. We win.

So after a few rounds I manage to stick in the boom-boom. Then the mummy attack me, and I was incapcitated. And we manage to shove the mummy back into the stone coffin, and bob lights it on fire. We close the lid.

The fuse is lit.

We try to dog pile the lid, but we lost initiative, so we were able to. And she blows the lid off. We all back away. Bob leaps on the mummy. And grappling onto mummy, keeping it in the coffin. The boom, goes off. And it does.... 2d6 damage. And the mummy is fine. Bob is fine. Dynamite in Savage World is pretty lack luster.
 And one of the character does a smarts roll, and determines that we havent really hurt the mummy at all. So Bob is holding the mummy off, and the rest of the PCs retreat. I took a hit to my agility attribute, and went down from a d8 to a d6. Man that sucks.

[Gentlefish]

Oh man, Ultimate Wilderness is a beaut of a book. I can't wait to be able to play a shifter.

[pikachu17]

I have realized that the Battle Master's Commander's Strike can allow assassins another critical hitting attack. If that assassin had already hit with his sneak attack his last turn, does he get another one if the Strike hits? And does the supiority dice also double/triple in a crit?

And unrelated, does Mage Armor/Draconic Resilience/Armor of Peace stack with unarmored defense?