Monster Monday - Motocon Chaser

The operator shouts at the soldier as the car suddenly swerves, causing her shot to hit the ground in front of the crimson motorcycle chasing them. One of a pack, the fleet of scarlet cycles sped towards the armored vehicle with perfected coordination. As they drew close, one of them began to shift, transforming into a lean, humanoid figure with a blaster for one hand and a blade for the other. Wheels at the end of its legs allow it to easily skate along the truck even as the witchwarper in the backseat tries to weave together a spell to ward it off. Before she can finish lacing the occult intricacies together, the blade of the drone stabs into the tire of the party's vehicle, causing it to buck and skid as its rim sparks on the road and the chaser slides back among its pack, converting into an enercycle one more.

Motocon Chaser by Arturs_Arts

A mecha moving with momentum, our machine maintains a moderate measure with mischief-makers but means to match their mileage as they make haste and move out.

I had a lot of fun putting together the video for this one, so I hope you'll check it out! Also, give some props to the illustrator on this one, arturs_art!

It has been a hot minute since I made a mechamorph, but I wanted to make some using the vehicles officially from Starfinder Second Edition. We're starting at the bottom with the enercycle and working our way up. For a lot of these more typical vehicles, I want to represent them as Motocons - a type of drone created by and modeled after mechamorphs but lacking their status as living machines. The chaser is the first of these, designed to be a pursuer while not a direct combatant. As such, it's designed as a skirmisher and while it features some high attack bonuses, its attacks only ever deal moderate damage.

It has Convert as all my mechamorphs do, but it can notably do it as a single action and if it started its turn moving, it can also combine that with its Momentum, really playing into the way that Transformers from the Bayverse movies or Transformers One would often maintain while shifting between forms. Drive-By has some significant similarities to abilities such as Pounce, but I wanted the Strike it includes to be able to happen at any point during its movement. As such, this uses the flourish trait. Design-wise, the main idea behind this is that Pounce requires the target to end up in melee range of others, which leaves it a little vulnerable. That doesn't have to be the case here and so the safety of it, the ability for it to end its movement consistently out of range, warrants the inclusion of that trait.

It's also meant to play into the fact that the chaser isn't meant to be mixing it up in melee. They're supposed to get in and get out while setting up targets for other, more combat-capable units. Aiding in this particular task is Hobbling Slice, letting the chaser make a nano-edge blade Strike that leaves a creature with a Speed penalty. Honestly, this might need a power boost. I was considering glue bombs when designing this, which inflicts a slow of this sort for a minute - but uses a resource and grants a chance for the victim to Escape. The victim can't Escape from the effects of Hobbling Slice, so I think it should be fine. But if you feel that it doesn't quite have a enough juice, I think you could reduce it to a single action with the flourish trait. Rounding out the chaser's kit is its eponymous ability, the Give Chase reaction. This is pretty much just No Escape from the barbarian, but modified to work with the range of the chaser's laser pistol rather than the reach of its blade, since Starfinder is a slightly more range-centric game.

PF/SF2e Motocon Chaser

PF/SF2e Mechamorph Rules

ENCOUNTER HOOKS

Rather than the traditional encounter hooks that I offer, I want to give a broader sort of idea. As I've established, the design behind the chasers is that they aren't meant to directly engage targets. They're meant to maintain visual and harass targets until the heavier units can catch up. With that idea in mind, I think they work best against slightly higher-leveled PCs so that you can run them as a group that then bleeds into an encounter with a slightly tougher foe. They could also be a good pursuant in a proper chase, triggering an encounter when players fail too many checks to outrun them.

Chaser and Enercylce

One more monster to go, and then I'll be on a bit of a hiatus for the holidays and to put together the Patreon! Along with that, if you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures/builds I'm working on or just talking about your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers or help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, check out the Twitter.

Have a monstrous Monday!