D20 Mecha is written by David Pulver, an author who brought new life into GURPS and BESM. This makes him more than qualified to make a system where the effects, the end result, are the goal, and the method to do so isn't important.
Mecha here aren't just giant robots. It's a suit of power armor, a tank, or an old warship. In short, it's any vehicle. The author lays out a very simple sixteen step checklist to create the vehicle.
I know someone's going to read that, sixteen step, and think that this is outrageous but it's not.
1.Choose Mecha Type
2.Choose Size
3.Choose Hit Points
4.Choose Occupants and Cargo
5.Choose Armour
6.Choose Defense Modifier
7.Choose Strength
8.Choose Speed
9.Choose Handling
10.Choose Special Abilities
11. Choose Exotic Abilities
12.Choose Defects
13.Design Weapons
14.Add up all Mecha Point costs.
15.Determine what Skills of Feats are needed to control the mecha.
16.Record the mecha's statistics and give ita cool name....
Each step has tables and examples so that there is never any ambiguity about the design. In some cases, the author provides designer's notes so that you can see where he's coming from and adjust to fit your own style. In my playtesting of the d20 Mecha Companion, I found hit points to be too little. The ideas and descriptions presented here in the designer's notes as to why that is, make sense. To make combat between mecha fast and furious with a few key hits deciding victory. Ideas on how to modify that are presented, and ideas on how to use the hit points with Mongoose Publishing's Armageddon 2089 are also included.
Now that last part is a key thing as it shows that the company is paying attention to reader's request for more utility. While it presents numerous subsystems for various things, like maneuvering, the author realizes that there are a lot of books, say, for boats, that some GM's may be using and be happy with already and in such cases, the author practically insist that you use what works for you.
In addition be being clear, the examples showcase a lot of variety in their design. This goes not only for something like the Shelby Cobra, a mecha with no weapons and meant not for combat, but for the open road, to the KR-03F Steal Combat Suit, a standard of the 22nd century. All mecha stats, like monster stats, are included along with costs.
Now speaking of costs, the author covers himself well here. BESM d20 has the advantage, Own a Big Mecha, and each level of that is 400 mecha points. But what if you don't want to use Mecha Points and want to use say, gold or cash? Conversions are provided so that you can quickly see how much it would cost to lay out the funds for the different styles of mecha based on the point totals.
Outside of the construction system itself, the author provides you a peak at how you might use this book in a standard fantasy setting. Barbarians can now have Viking longships while Rogues can use smuggler boats and the spellcasters can design various types of golems or magical suits. The author fails to note what Modern d20 Classes can do and doesn't go into the same detail with the BESM d20 classes as he does with the standards.
Those looking to play an all mecha campaign get two new classes, one core, one prestige. The Mecha Pilot is your standard fighter who specializes in mecha use so he gets fewer hit points and base attack bonus, but good abilities with mecha including numerous bonus feats. The mecha commander on the other hand, while sharing those lower hit points and BAB, gets numerous abilities relating to commanding others including the formation of battle plans and providing tactical advice.
Skills and Feats help round out the section. For Feats, we get a lot of standard feats with the Giant Robot added to it. Instead of Dodge, we get Giant Robot Dodge. Instead of something like Cleave or Sunder, we get Giant Robot Fighting which allows you to apply those feats you know with your mecha. It's a quick system but useful and can expand most campaigns. I would've liked to have seen some examples of those classes in use, say in a fantasy kingdom with titles and other ideas on integration and then in a far future setting.
Layout is a simple two column design with good use of header fields to break the information up into bite sized readable chunks. Boxed text shows important details and game related information so that at a glance, you can see tables, designer's notes, and other information that'll need to be referenced quickly.
The art in d20 Mecha is good but is out of place for a BESM book. Unlike BESM d20 which was slick and anime like, this one is rough and looks more standard. The price is average for a GOO book, but high for a d20 book. Compare this 80 page book to most $19.95 books which are usually 96 pages or in some (now) rare instances, 112-128 pages.
For me, d20 Mecha doesn't fail to provide the mechanics, but it does fail to provide the soul. If I didn't own the d20 Mecha Companion by Dream Pod 9, I'd be a lot more lost as the examples in the book are solid, but are limited in number and don't always match up to the ideas presented.
For example, armor is supposed to stop the average damage of the normal weapon. In almost all cases, the armor falls below that level. A normal grunt gets 200 points to make mecha, but the powerful Steam Dragoon Folkor is only 215 mecha points. How powerful is that if every first level character can run around with it as personal gear?
One way the book could've gone in order to showcase just how easy it would be to use this in a fantasy game would be to breakdown the classic constructs, golems, and show the main differences. See, that's one thing that these vehicles don't have going for them, challenge ratings. Now if someone is driving around in steam powered armor, that is essentially a vehicle, is that worth a +1 or +2 CR bump? What about an automated mechanical sea spider? Well, CR isn't one of the things in a mecha stack block so we're left pondering.
If you're looking for ideas, it's great to have the over three pages of references, but if you're like me, quite a few of those are well known and you'd rather have three more pages of examples. I also understand that the industry does use advertising, but in an 80 page book, to have four of those pages go for that purpose seems excessive.
D20 Mecha has it's flaws. It's stronger when coupled with the Companion but on it's own, provides an effective effect based system to create almost any type of vehicle that the reader wants. It provides options so that no matter if the reader is using BEMS d20, D20 Modern or standard D&D, he can use the book without worry.
