The Steamroller
Basic Information
The Steamroller is a combat role (and also a subtype of Ace Pilot).
The Steamroller is a very aggressive attacker, who launches a flurry of blows and hounds the enemy relentlessly. In some ways, The Steamroller overlaps with The DPSer. However, the Steamroller is focused on number of attacks rather than accuracy or damage potential. You make daring frontal assaults that keep the enemy off balance and on the defensive.
The Steamroller can get a kill in one of three ways:
- a lucky shot that turns into a critical hit
- the Death of a Thousand Cuts, hitting again and again for minor damage each time
- pressuring the foe into making a fatal mistake
Sources
Bibliography
Game and Story Use
- Games with strong social mechanics, suppression fire, or sanity rules are where the steamroller shines.
- They're also good in games where the number of actions per combat round can be quite different for various characters.
- Most commonly overlaps with The DPSer, but armed with a machine gun, shotgun or other area-effect weapon, they become The Nuker.
- Make sure your system can handle multiple attacks quickly. A Steamroller can easily ruin other players' fun if each turn takes an hour to resolve.
Building This Character
- Physical Traits are your best investment.
- If one of those Physical Attributes determines your Reaction Speed, focus on it.
- Willpower is the best-developed part of your mind. You aren't clever or tactical, just gutsy.
- Weapon skills, like Marksmanship or Melee are likely to be quite high. (By contrast, Dodge and Parry might not be as good, since the character isn't likely to fight defensively.
- Intimidation will be useful - just how useful depends on how effective social rolls are in the system.
- In some systems, Leadership is needed by The Steamroller. I'm talking about systems where Morale involves a contested roll by the leaders of both sides.
- Cause Fear, Rebel Yell, and other forms of Intimidation are really useful.
- Beyond that, the next most important thing is an increased Attack Rate, possibly due to Florentine or Two-Fisted combat modes.
- Initiative boosts are really good to. In some systems this amounts to the same thing, as going first in the Combat Round means you get extra attacks during the round. (Two examples of such systems include Scion RPG/Exalted RPG that lack rounds per se, and Feng Shui RPG where the highest initiative roll determines how long the round is.)
- It will be helpful if Movement Rate and Defense are both high so you can get into fights fast and survive them. If you have any remaining Feat or Edge choices, these areas could use the boosts.
Variants
page revision: 6, last edited: 27 Oct 2019 03:14