LANCER: I Literally Cannot Go Back to D&D 5e (Part 2: System Comparisons)
You don't have to settle for just one thing you can do on your turn.
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I should mention that I had actually introduced this DM friend of mine to Lancer prior to this game. I mentioned ICON at one point as well, the fantasy game in playtest by Massif Press. But due to the fact that we already knew D&D, it was the system we stuck with.
The first session actually went really well. Some narrative shenanigans were had, one character had a massive dramatic breakup with his girlfriend, and I got to use some neat class features to get out of failing a potions class.
Then we got to combat.
The DM had taken a page out of Lancer's book and tried improving the action economy. In addition to the standard actions, we also had an established “Mental” action, which we could use to analyze enemies. An interesting addition, and I applaud him for doing this still. But it highlights one of the core flaws of D&D combat design: It's very easy to become checked out if you’re not in an engaging encounter.
Action Economy & Agency
Agency is a thing that gets talked about a lot in games. It’s the ability of the players to make meaningful decisions. The idea of a TTRPG is to maintain as much player Agency as possible, without breaking the existing rules of the game or world.
We often think of agency in terms of narrative, but combat has a good deal of agency considerations as well. In D&D 5e, you only get one action, and you'd be hard pressed to spend it not attacking. Sure, bonus actions exist, but they aren’t consistently available. They depend almost entirely on your class or your gear. And if your primary action, like a single target spell, fails… too bad, wait anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes for your next turn.
That’s not exactly fun for obvious reasons.
Lancer, on the other hand, has a more complex action economy. You either get one full action, or two quick actions per turn. Attacking in and of itself is not an action. To use your weapons, you Skirmish as a Quick Action, which fires all weapons on one mount, which can have one or more weapons on it. You can also Barrage, which is a Full Action, and lets you use two mounts. Compare this to 5e, where you often have to either dual wield weapons, which is restricted, or wait until 5th level with specific classes to gain more attacks.
With Lancer, you can theoretically make more attacks at LL0 using an Everest than a Level 5 D&D Fighter that dual wields. It takes some prep, but you can, in a single turn, make 7 attacks.
Lancer also gives players the option to mix up their turn with actions that are available to any player: Locking On for better chances to hit, Scanning to reveal information, Invading to debuff, Grappling to become Engaged and restrict enemy movement, Ramming to knock enemies prone, and more. Plus, these are all quick actions that can be combined with Skirmishes or each other to still make an effective turn without resorting to pure damage.
If all else fails, in Lancer you can Overcharge. Overcharging allows you to trade an increasing heat cost for an extra Quick Action. The more you Overcharge, the more heat (a type of stress cost) you take. This is available to all characters. If your main actions fail, you can make the choice to give yourself some heat to eke out some more damage or debuff another enemy.
One more thing: You are not limited to one Reaction per round in Lancer. In addition to Overwatch (similar to Opportunity attacks), you can also get weapons, systems, and talents (similar to Feats) that give you even more options for your reactions.
Lancer I find solves the problem of whiffing actions, which is nice when your turn only comes every once in a while. It also gives you a broader range of options for your turn, which you have to make decisions about. It keeps me engaged and constantly thinking about what I can do in the next turn and next round.
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Dynamic Initiative
Lancer has a very dynamic approach to ordering character turns. The players and GM choose when each character acts, with the turns going player, enemy, player, enemy until one side has exhausted their turns, and then all characters on the other side take their turns. This can reset round to round, so one round your swordswoman melee PC might go first, then your hacker PC would go next, and then the next round the order might be reversed. This allows for a much more fluid sense of gameplay, and one that allows for more agency.
It also means that you are more engaged more consistently, because you could take your turn or need to respond to an enemy turn at any given point in a round. In D&D the only reasons you’d need to pay attention are when your character gets targeted by something, when you have a reaction to use, and when you’re taking your turn, which comes after a similar interval each round. Being honest, only one of those things is consistently engaging, and like I explained in the section on Action Economy, your turn can be over rapidly and disappointingly.
Disabling Conditions
Getting stunned is frustrating in any RPG. However, D&D is particularly frustrating because it has multiple conditions that force you to essentially skip your turn, and ones that can last for potentially multiple turns in ways that are fairly stagnant. Stunned, petrified, and paralyzed are three such conditions that come up more often than they realistically should.
In Lancer, the only condition that completely prevents you from doing anything is Stunned. Similar conditions, like Jammed, still allow you to take a limited scope of actions, and still allow you to move. They still suck, but at least there is consistently something you can do about it.
Stabilizing in Lancer allows a mech to do a few things, including clearing either their own or an ally’s conditions. This presents the ability to actually choose when your ally is stunned: Is it better to act on your own, or help your ally that might be more effective? This adds that layer of agency that is missing from D&D's conditions.
Additionally, conditions in Lancer don’t typically last beyond one turn. If they do, it is usually accompanied by a clear, feasible solution instead of waiting for your dice to cooperate with no choice in the matter.
Viability
One last thing I’d like to mention, which might be more of a note on the player side of both games, is viability. D&D as a system is based on linear progression, where your entire build is dictated by the choices you make at each level. Reversing those choices often comes at the level of spells or individual abilities. With this in mind, if you realize you’ve made a bad decision with your classes, going back as per RAW isn’t easy. If your DM is cool with it, then sure, you can make changes to your character if you’re genuinely not having fun.
Lancer doesn’t do that. In Lancer, your progression comes from specialization rather than pure power creep. Lancer’s licensing system specializes more than it directly increases power. A Monarch is not going to be better at pure long-ranged damage than an Everest, but it will be really damn good at consistent multi-target damage and using missile weapons.
And Lancer doesn’t even really have trap options, either. Every option is viable to be used, so long as you don’t intentionally make wasteful decisions with talents (again, similar to Feats) and weapons. This avoids the Ranger scenario where one license in particular goes unused. Are there less popular licenses, absolutely. But I have yet to see a discussion on useless mechs. Every mech specializes in its own way. The only way you won’t be viable is if you intentionally make yourself so.
And even if you do, your GM should recognize that and ask if you want to proceed anyway.
Back to My Game
While not all of these points came up in my game, it was difficult to avoid thinking about. Once I moved and cast my one spell for my turn, it was . . . a lot of waiting until my name was called. We had no real objective to complete other than eliminating whatever was at the end of the location, and between those reasons and my general dislike of the system now and the fact that by this point this group felt like an intrusion on my time even though I loved hanging out and laughing with these guys, I was mostly checked out during combat. I didn’t have a whole lot of options due to my build, and the mismatch between my build and what actually wound up being the pace of the game.
Was it disrespectful, of course. Could I have done better to at least try to pay attention? Maybe. I don’t know if my brain would have let me.
One Final Note
As systems, D&D and Lancer are pretty far apart. They have different design philosophies, different design teams, and even entirely different universes in their games. Some may say it’s an unfair comparison. They might be right, at least in some respects, and what you like is dependent on you alone.
I wanted to write this article to share my experience, and to show that you don’t have to stick with 5e for everything. I saw a post about porting Lancer mechs to 5e, and my question is: Why not take the shot with Lancer? One-shot modules for it exists, with things like Death on the Glacier and The HA Corvette Job. I have my own introductory one-shot in the works as well. If you don’t like it, that’s only one weekend you’ve “wasted,” and by “wasted,” I mean you’ve given a game a genuine try and found you didn’t like it.
That’s not a waste. That’s valuable. Genuinely valuable. You now know for a fact you don’t like something.
On another note: Could I ever play, or God forbid, run D&D 5e again? I don’t know. It would take either a wonderful game, a change of fixations, or the chance to play with my wonderful girlfriend to do so. And my girlfriend is as enthralled with Lancer as I am.
That said, there’s always the Lord and Saviour, Pathfinder if I ever need a more popular game to run on StartPlaying.
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>//GOOD LUCK, LANCER