This week I’m taking on building vehicles with Paizo’s new Tech Revolution vehicle construction rules.

Vehicles: Starfinder vehicles have traditionally been SLOW to keep characters competitive. Tech Revolution lets us have faster vehicles, but at a price of tying all attributes to their item level that means all fast vehicles are equally tough, you can’t build a tough warhorse of a tank because they aren’t any tougher than a car or truck of the same level. An Armored car has more hit points than a tank of the same level. Trucks and Motorcycles go the same speed by level. Turbo boost works more like Knight Rider or a nitrous bottle than a European turbo diesel.

Vehicle	KZ1000	HD Fat Boy
Item Level	9	15
Price	27,000cr around $4,000 US back in the 1970s. -10 Cycle -10 Factory Made 21,600cr	230,000cr was $10,995 MRSP at launch -10 Cycle -10 Factory Made 184,000cr
Size	Large 541lb	Large 657lb
Speed	40ft +5ft Racer 45ft x20 = 900ft +25% full speed = 1,125ft 127mph as built item level 9 125mph top speed from track tests	45ft x20 = 900ft full 102mph as-built item level 15 105mph top speed from track tests
EAC/KAC	18/20 -2/-2 Cycle 16/18	29/31 -2/-2 Cycle 27/29
Cover	None	None
HP	75 -10 Cycle -10 Racer 60	255 -10 Cycle 230
Hardness	9 -20% Racer 7	15
Attack	8d10B DC16	15d10B DC21
Modifiers	+2 Piloting, –1 attack (–3 at full speed)	+2 Piloting, –1 attack (–3 at full speed)
Systems	2 slots -1 Factory Made	4 slots -1 Factory Made
Passengers	1 -50% Racer	1
Cargo	100lb	100lb

When I threw in the Kawasaki KZ 1000 of Mad Max and CHIPS fame, things got harder it can go from 0-60 in 4 seconds and 0-100 in just over 12 seconds. You’re never going to spend a lot of time at top speeds, and even going highway speeds on a tabletop map will be difficult. So the real question is it fast enough compared to character movement speeds to make it feel realistic? I added the Harley Davidson from Terminator 2 so we can see the differences between a lighter racing-style bike and a larger touring bike. If you’re an Akira fan you might have enough or a starting point here to work up a battle between Kaneda’s and the Clowns bōsōzoku gangs, if folks show any interest I might stat up Kaneda’s bike.

I think the Kawasaki and the Harley are both too high level for where I would put them. The designers didn’t build in a lot of dials to turn up speed or hit points or any other factor in isolation, everything in the same item level ought to be fairly competitive with the exception of if I raced a sportscar, taxicab and garbage truck of the same item level you can probably predict which one would win. I don’t want to make a Harley into a Racer just to get more speed, Buell does that already and still wouldn’t be a level 15 bike. Unfortunately the Item level 15 bike feels more like the Dodge Tomahawk motorcycle built around a Dodge Viper engine, while Dodge built 9 that would probably be a protorype and they each cost $550,000 much closer to an item level 15 vehicle on a gut level even without an official dollars to credits conversion ratio. I had one worked up for my Not Star Wars idea in manga style a few years ago in case you’ve never seen one.

There are other limitations as well, Tech Revolution’s Land Cycles offer no cover, motorcycles with farings should provide some cover from the front, Kaneda’s bike from Akira should provide partial cover from the front and back. Fully enclosed shells like the Light Cycles from Tron might be required to get around on planets with toxic atmospheres, some people like fully enclosed cabins to stay out of the rain. If you want this from Tech Revolution,you could make your cycle armored to give it partial cover and then buy the personnel enclosure modification to grant them cover. Since people can buy weapon mounts and load up small arms, long arms or heavy weapons on their vehicles, you’re going to want that cover. There’s not any way I see yet to get improved or total cover out of a cycle frame.

To get back to the title I don’t know where to get the gold plating, but using the rules from Tech Revolution I can kind of get a Harley with a machine gun on the front and there’s a lot of cool stuff I want.

Actual cargo rules are completely missing and the word cargo only comes up in flavor text so I don’t know where I’ll put my cool stuff if I get it.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com