I'm not quite sure those are fair assessments of the Fenrir. In the first case you are talking about a 1 in 7,000,000 event (that's the odds of both rolling a critical and maximum damage) that inflicts 65 points of damage, not enough to destroy the Fenrir although yes, it does do a lot of damage and forces unconsciousness checks. Still, it's kind of hard to say that a morph isn't very tough because it can be badly damaged by a completely freak occurrence. Even in your second example you talk about the Fenrir taking 2 wounds on a critical success. Well, yes, again, it's an extremely lucky event and you have charged ridiculously close (within 10 meters) with a pretty powerful weapon. The odds are much, much higher that you will charge to within 10m of the Fenrir and inflict no wounds at all with that very same attack, at which point it is going to turn on you with its multiple weapons and probably turn you into a very fine mist (depending on what it is armed with). Being fired on from 10km away by someone with a disposable launcher? How is that a design flaw of the Fenrir? Every morph in the game can be fired on from 10km by someone with a disposable launcher.

Moxie allows regular successes to be upgraded into critical successes, right? That flouts some of the odds. But that is probably not fair to the metric. If I ever allow the Fenrir off Callisto for eclectic but general consumption (per core they are just a specific place Morph), I would increase their DUR based on the fact that they are as big as vehicles.

jKaiser wrote:

These things were designed as the equivalent to Main Battle Tanks, right?. . .

That's the problem right there. No, they are not designed as the equivalent of an MBT. If they were they would have the equivalent armament of an MBT. This would not only include the equivalent of the 120mm gun but would also include things like the .50 machine guns (which, I'm assuming are more powerful than they standard listed machine gun since that's meant to be a man portable weapon and these aren't). Fenrir are still meant to be 'soldiers' deployed in situations where a tank is not appropriate (probably things like urban combat where the Fenrir goes room to room by crashing through the wall). At least that's my read on it. If you were going to insist that Fenrir are suppose to be the MBTs for Eclipse Phase then I would have to insist that you allow me to arm it in a corresponding fashion, which means guns not currently on the list that do ridiculous amounts of damage, with horrifying ranges, which standard morphs could not pick up and use. Again the whole 'disposable launcher' argument would be null and void because the Fenrir would be equipped with seeker launchers that fire missiles substantially larger than the standard missile and which hold more than a single shot.

I recently had some discussion about how vehicles have, like, stupid high DUR compared to say, a Fenrir. Really, I think it's a bad comparison. The Fenrir is a morph - the entirety of it's structure (i/e, the DUR) is devoted to it's various functions, just like the human body (barring a couple of potentially redundant organs, even so if those get banged up you're still leaking vitals). A car, on the other hand, is full of parts and spaces which are not integral to it's structural integrity or functionality. Fire through the trunk of a car and see how much impact on it's functionality bullets have. Since DUR is the measure of "how much gross physical damage can this object take before it literally stops functioning" a Fenrir is going to have probably slightly lower DUR than objects like a buggy which has effectively redundant structures. If you actually penetrate the Fenrir's armor, you are doing damage to something it needs to function. To this end, I'd say it needs a better AV than more DUR. I'd also like to say, while the speed of a seeker hasn't really been made explicit, I'm pretty sure they can't cross 10k in a single combat round. I believe a Fenrir is armed with Radar and Lidar, which move at the speed of light (ish). With ingrained weapon systems and maybe Mental Speed, you could easily locate, track and fire on an incoming missile from that distance. You may even be able to get in a few shots with multiple egos. But a lot of this has to do with EP as a system not being scaled for open warfare.

SquireNed wrote:

. . .It's not actually that rare. Criticals happen about 10% of the time in EP, and a critical success for a non-combat monster sits at around 5% of the time if they're decent. . .

Crits only happen 9% of the time if you've got a 100% chance to hit. The odds are never greater than that because there's only 9 rolls that are some form of crit that are not automatic critical failure. Crits happen in roughly 10% of successes so a lot of times the odds of a crit are only 6 or 7%.

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Remember that there is no damage mitigation going on any more when a critical success happens, and you'll get a +5 damage about 20% of the time with that build. 65 isn't max damage, it's only in the upper 80% of the damage curve. Sure your damage will look more like 38 most of the time, but see below.

The odds of rolling 55 or higher on 6 dice (what is required to get the 65+ points of damage) is .0462%. That is 462 occurrences out of 1,000,000 tries, not 4.62% and I forgot to shift the decimal point after my calculations. That's 1 in 2100, and that's only occurring because you got lucky on the attacking roll. Since it is also suppose to be a critical that means there's only 2 occurrences it could be (33 and 44 since your example seems to be someone with a target of 50) so you are looking at a 1 in 105,000 event. Ok, so the odds of a 65+ critical are better than 1 in 7,000,000, but it is still incredibly anomalous.

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. . . That shredder will almost always cause a wound; its average damage is 6d10+5, which maths out to 38 with -10 AP. . .

38 - 22 (32 armor - 10AP) = 16. That means that roughly half your attacks will fail to cause a wound (in fact, 47% of the time, ignoring for a moment bonus damage). Since you have a respectable chance of missing in the example (49%) that means that you will fail to cause a wound 73% of the time. Those odds will go down a bit if I figure in the bonus damage but not terribly much so my statement that you are more likely to fail to cause a wound is still accurate.

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Keep in mind that most of the EP weapons are probably not real combat munitions; even the automatic rifle and machine gun are based on intermediate cartridges, with only the sniper firing high-caliber ammo (probably something like a .50 caliber analogue), so if you actually had stuff like anti-material rifles or, say, a plasma rifle, you could wreck the Fenrir's day really quick. I mean, the Fenrir is a "tank" that doesn't even have full protection against a frag grenade (which, admittedly, can only hurt it on special occasions, but it's not high-power).

See above. The problem isn't that the Fenrir isn't tough. It's that it isn't as tough as you want it to be. If you assume it should be a tank then yes, you're going to be disappointed. If you compare it to other morphs on a reasonable basis then it is pretty respectable.

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. . .Also, anyone can carry a disposable launcher, but the Fenrir can't really, because you'd have to replace them all the time. This means that the Fenrir has a significantly decreased maximum engagement range, which really hurts it when you look at its large size penalties. . .

Incorrect. A Fenrir can carry a disposable launcher just like any other morph can. Did you think Fenrir could only use mounted weapons? Even if you want to argue that the picture doesn't show limbs that could use a disposable launcher (and I will counter by pointing out that there is nothing in the text that says a Fenrir lacks fine manipulation capabilities, maybe they're just concealed at the moment) you could easily add another set of limbs. While this might seem like cheating I will point out that the counter examples such as the Daitya talk about how effective a modified one would be, not a stock one.

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The real problem with the Fenrir is that at least against a standard morph you can't get a positive bonus, but a homing smartlinked seeker can actually hit a Fenrir with no penalties at extreme range.

You can do the same thing to any morph with an accushot missile. A homing smart linked missile against a standard morph would have a -10 (although to be fair one of your arguments is using a Daitya, and you wouldn't have the -10 there) so yes, that's a drawback to the Fenrir. One drawback does not make it woefully underpowered.

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The Fenrir is vulnerable to ambushes . .

Any ambush that will hurt a Fenrir is going to inflict serious hurt on pretty much any morph I can think of.

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and while it's a nice big tank it's not even the toughest morph in the game (up-armor a Daitya and you've got twice as much speed, similar armor, and similar weapons capabilities), and many of its combat features are easily replicated elsewhere.

You've added 20 points of durability to the Daitya and sacrificed 6 points of armor. That actually seems like a bad trade to me. You are much more likely to be wounded since it takes 2 points less damage to wound you. You're faster on the ground but now you're stuck to the ground. You've got no extra limbs and no ego sharing. Could you slap some of these features onto a Daitya? Sure, but now you are comparing a modified morph to a standard morph. If I can jam extra stuff into the Fenrir then we are right back to where we started with the only real difference being the higher durability, lower armor, and higher ground speed.

jKaiser wrote:

I probably could've phrased that better, since on thinking about it, MBTs are a bad analogy. Honey Badgers or other fighting vehicles, perhaps. But still, my question remains, aren't these things meant to be deployed as part of a larger force, with support and the like? I'm not saying that does away with the weaknesses in the design, but my take on it was that these were specialized designs, not universal combat machines. EDIT: I took another look at the stats and I was envisioning them way too big. Explains at least the tank assumption on my part. They still speak to me as being more like a mobile weapons platform, the support member of a fireteam on steroids, rather than solo combat assets, though.

Infantry Fighting Vehicles are probably a much more appropriate concept over tank. They are better armored than your average soldier but they don't have the armor and massive weaponry of a tank. That said, IFV still mount guns considerably bigger than what a soldier can carry. Perhaps one of the weaknesses of the Fenrir is that there should be some 'Fenrir specific' weapons that it could mount. As it is it is sort of like taking a humvee, uparmoring it, giving it a gunner position, and then having the gunner use his assault rifle, and then wondering why it isn't a more effective combat vehicle.

Actually, this raises an interesting question. Does every Ego in the Fenrir roll SOM for passing out? Because if they do, that makes a Fenrir even more reliable if stocked with multiple Egos - the odds of every single user failing the check is quite reduced. One might pass out from the feedback or the internal damage while others keep doing. You can ignore one wound intrinsically as a synth, another if you stack in cheap Medichines (which just aren't standard issue in morphs). I believe the Fenrir has a big SOM bonus. I'll agree with Lazarus. The Fenrir isn't designed to wrestle MBTs or even TITAN warmachines. It's designed to act as an equivalent to some Jovian Marines in Exoskeletons. It has a pretty good pound-for-pound in that regard, especially if stocked will with weapons. One Fenrir can certainly produce more volume of fire than a small unit of Jovian troops, even with Reflex Boosters. It has, what, like 8 separate weapon mounts, four extra pneumatic limbs? It has thrust vectoring so it flies, 360 vision. It's pretty nasty in personal scale fighting. But EP doesn't do anything beyond that well - so it's not going to compare well somebody driving a redneck technical. Eclipse Phase is clearly not intended to actually roll dice at that scale.

SquireNed wrote:

. . .The problem is that the average hit from a shredder does one wound on a Fenrir. The shredder isn't a particularly powerful weapon; it's moderate cost. It's what I chose because it's the sort of weapon you could conceivably have on a non-combat character. Someone with a rail- or RAP machine gun could easily hurt the Fenrir from an actually decent range. . .

Actually, here is part of the problem. The Shredder is a stupidly powerful weapon for what it does. In comparison a rail machine gun firing armor piercing ammunition (the best possible combination) is 5d10+6 with -14 AP when fired full auto. On average rolls the close in Shredder fired full auto actually does .5 points more damage against targets with 14 points of armor or more. Against targets with less armor this increases up to 4.5 points more damage. Of course the machine gun does have substantially better range, can take advantage of other forms of ammunition depending on the situation, and will average more damage one the target is out of the short range of the Shredder but the fact still remains that in the combat conditions that were being set up in order to show that the Fenrir wasn't particularly strong the 'not particularly powerful weapon' is more effective than the autofiring rail machine gun with armor piercing ammunition.

ORCACommander wrote:

in regards to disposablelaunchers, they could merely be external mounted single fire tubes, much like what an AKULA II submarine is capable of doing with external torpedos. . .

You could do that but you run into lots of funny issues. If you use the existing weapon mounts then the Fenrir has a total of 8 missiles it can fire (I actually thought it was only 4) and then it is completely out of weaponry. That seems like a lot at first but it probably isn't enough to survive many prolonged engagements. Of course you could always stick more weapon mounts onto it, but then we are back to the whole issue of how heavily can you customize a morph.

The odds are more in the Fenrir's favor than it is in the case's. Why? Because assuming all else is equal with the egos the Fenrir will have a higher initiative bonus. It can also survive 4-5 strikes depending on how lucky/unlucky it is. Assuming it kills at least half the case morphs before they can attack (a very reasonable assumption) they would probably not kill the Fenrir unless they had brought extra disposable launchers. Even if they did, as we talked about before it would take them additional time to ready the next launcher during which time the Fenrir could take them out with whatever weaponry remains.

Hey, I won't argue overblown. I'm just taking issue with 'truly pathetic'.

I think part of the problem is that surprisingly little from your morph matters in a fight. I think DUR is about it. You can add more limbs and more armor up to whatever functional cap is desired. Past that it's all about your speed stat and weapon choice.

They should be able to apply it to their own rolls while in it, as Moxie is an ego stat. The biggest problem with the Fenrir is its description IMO. Its not comparable to a tank, IFV, or other combat vehicle, its a lot smaller, and presumably masses a lot less due to the legs. Its a pretty potent combat morph though, partially because it can act as a command node with all the egos in it, and its strong sensory suite. Its also flight capable, which tends to get overlooked I think. Slap a couple of stealth enhancing aftermarket mods on it (medichines are a must have, radar stealth and optical stealth are probably a good couple to use, as well as quantum radar, weapon AIs for the extra weapons the users may not be able to use are probably a good thing to pick up as well) Its still going to want to take cover though, and, like a lot of heavier morphs, will want a lot of drones to give it telemetry and allow to be better fight without LoS. It's also worth noting that it has at least 5 manipulating arms, which extend its utility a lot further than its art would suggest. In terms of role, I think it has more in common with an attack helicopter than a tank, due to the (admittedly slow) thrust vector. It doesn't really have a real world analogue as its basically a fairly tough and mobile pile of guns with a panopticonic sensor array. In game terms its actually fairly strong in game terms, because with 6 egos inside its very likely for at least some of them to win the initiative, and it has a huge moxie pool to use for getting those initiative:firsts off, and ignoring armor. That also partially makes up for its lack of boosted speed, as its egos can use delay actions to keep going in later action phases. All in all, its a decent, though kind of overcosted morph, though its not as bad as the Faust in that respect. It just shouldn't be compared to a vehicle or tank. I've made some actual tankomorph rules though, and its an absolute steal cost wise compared to them. 200 DUR morphs don't run cheap. EDIT: mental speed is a must-take. It help the morph win initiative due to the initiative boost to all egos, and grants an insane action economy. 18 actions per action turn, 12 mental only. This lets the morph act as a jamming/RC hub for a lot of bodies (such as the attendant shell swarm its going to want). Beyond that, I'm actually not entirely sure what all of those could be used for, so far my best guess is launching multiple time reduced infowar attacks, even if most of the egos in the morph are mediocre hackers, there only needs to be two good ones for some crazy hacking to happen.

I disagree completely – the Fenrir is a total killing machine, and throwing one at the players is a cordial invitation for them to Get Wrecked, but this isn't because of the armor and gunmounts, but rather because of it's unique ability to mount multiple EgoSharing augmentations. Let me expand on that: At it's most basic, EgoSharing is like Speed, but better. Not only does the EgoSharing cap at 6 when everything else is limited to 4, all the actions take place in the first action round rather than having to wait, and each gets it's own initiative roll. Taken together, the Fenrir is technically the Fastest morph in the game, even if it doesn't actually win the initiative. The next thing to note is that the egos all share the same senses and are neurally linked – what one sees, all see. Depending on how the GM interprets the rules, this means that either every Ego gets to roll perception to see something and only one needs to succeed for everyone to succeed, or the ego with the highest perception rolls with the others assisting for up to a +30 bonus on top of that from enhanced vision. Which segues neatly into the most powerful feature – the Fenrir can (subject to GM fiat naturally) apply Teamwork bonuses to skills which normally don't qualify. Perception is the most obvious but Freerunning, Flight, Infiltration... these could (and in my opinion, should) qualify for the bonuses. Most important is that this could apply to Fray. Combined with one of the egos using Full Defense for their action results in the Fenrir rolling (Fray/2 +60) to fray against ranged attacks, which is a nigh-unique ability. If the ego rolling the test has a skill of 80, this means that aggressors have at best a 50% chance to hit, regardless of attack mode. Which leads neatly into the last feature, which is applicable even if the GM doesn't allow the teamwork bonuses – the egos in the Fenrir can be optimized. Each aspect of the morph can be put under the control of the ego most capable in that ability – the ego with the highest fray rolls for the whole morph, the weapons fall under the control of the ego with the best skill, the one with the best perception sees for all. Seen from the outside, the egos form a gestalt entity where all the skills are rolled by the highest value of the group inhabiting it. Put together, the Fenrir is a combat machine unmatched by anything else in the system. It's simply that all it's bonuses are implicit, instead of being stated explicitly. Now some notes about weapons!

SquireNed wrote:

The shredder isn't a particularly powerful weapon; it's moderate cost. It's what I chose because it's the sort of weapon you could conceivably have on a non-combat character.

Lazarus wrote:

Actually, here is part of the problem. The Shredder is a stupidly powerful weapon for what it does.

I think this is more a miscomprehension of what the Shredder actually is; it's often referred to as a Space-Shotgun, where it's more accurate to say it's a Space-High-Pressure-Water-Cutter-Gun. In other words, it's an anti-armor gun, more likely to be found in the hands of a SWAT team member than those of a desk-jockey. Firing SS at close range has a damage code identical to a Thermobaric Grenade, and is ultimately comparable to being hit with a plasma cutter. Similarly, I don't really see vulnerability to one-shot Seekers as a fault exactly, because killing stuff like the Fenrir is exactly what the disposable launcher is supposed to do. Regarding disposable launchers, and advanced weaponry in general; it's important to remember that it's perfectly reasonable to combine weapons together – a Fenrir needn't have a "single" disposable launcher per mount, it can quite legitimately wield an array of 7 tubes as a weapon – or more simply, just have a variant that can be reloaded. Moreover, if the Fenrir is using internal ammo storage then reloading might be a Quick Action (explicitly allowed) if it's an action at all – I would have no qualms saying that the Fenrir's mounted weapons reload automatically. From a more housrule-y point of view, the Fenrir's description says it usually mounts "linked" weapons, which iirc isn't an explicitly defined term. This could simply be a reference to combined arms, but it could be parsed as multiple weapons set to fire at as one – in other words, weapons that can be fired at the same target without incurring multi-weapon penalties. Which is to be honest one of my favorite ways to represent heavy weapons – a heavy machine gun is the same as attacking with a normal MG twice, or can apply FA/Burst bonuses to SA fire.

The Ego Sharing upgrade is incompatible with anything that gives speed.

You know someone brought up Fenrir needed a Fenrir unique weapon. I was thinking, not so much a cannon, but a CWIS. A defensive only gun mount that would use the gunnery skill to fire on any incoming missiles or drones. Maybe a penality? Giving the Fenrir two defense rolls. The CWIS can be overwhelmed.

Personally, I just assume that the Fenrir presented in the books is an hilariously flawed version intentionally leaked by Gerdr to give the impression that their front-line combat morphs are hilariously fragile. As a point of reference, I assumed that a "budget" APC would have Armor 34/32 and DUR 160, and a "budget" light tank would have armor 36/36 and DUR 200. So I'd put a real, Milspec Fenrir somewhere in that range. By way of comparison, the semi-cheap Heavy Tank was 36/44 armor and 400 DUR. As for it being out of the range of small arms? It should be. "I get close to the tank and kill it with my shredder" should be suicidal, and entirely unworkable as a strategy. That's also why I implemented the Hardened Armor rule, which reduces/eliminates the damage bonuses for bursts/FA based on the difference between your target's unpenetrated armor and the AP of your weapon.

I foresee a nomenclature war upcoming... Let's save everyone some grief and decide how literally we're defining the term "tank" here, because it has a specific definition as an actual vehicle, and much broader set of terms that I think people are leaning on. I know I was.

The thing's always evoked the Dragoon from Starcraft to me, so it's in that nebulous "mechanized infantry" category for me.

jKaiser wrote:

I foresee a nomenclature war upcoming... Let's save everyone some grief and decide how literally we're defining the term "tank" here, because it has a specific definition as an actual vehicle, and much broader set of terms that I think people are leaning on. I know I was.

Although history would remember them, if at all, as a mere footnote in the story of the fall, the Nomenclatural Wars of the 2090s were brutal.

Note how "of the 2090s" can be read as either "The Nomenclature Wars, which happened in the 2090s," or as a part of the whole proper noun, "The Nomenclatural Wars of the 2090s," implying other Nomenclatural Wars. :P