In the current edition of the book, the Yantra-log are beefy. 

They're rocking 100 Hp at start with 14 AC & 14 MR. That's a vast difference when compared to the 4 + 1d4 starting Hp of every other race. Even the armour values are significantly higher than their peers have.

First, let's talk about Why this is the case:

The goal for the Yantra-log was always to have their stats represent that they are a mechanical race. They are beings that were created aeons ago; made of metals & ceramic, they are naturally supposed to be tougher than their flesh & blood counterparts.

I wanted to take that further and create a Race option that gave you a different narrative arc than your contemporaries - I wanted you to feel powerful to begin with. Nigh indestructible before, many adventures later, you began to realize that you body could only weather so much & you began to be a lot more cognizant of your mortality.

I went about this with vastly improved Base Health. Originally, Yantra-log weren't even allowed to upgrade their Armour/MR, either. These 2 elements combined would create the sense of marching towards mortality.

What Went Right

The current set up definitely hit the goals I wanted. Early levels were all about invincibility and being the player who'd be willing to take a hit for your allies, but with time (around level 5-6) they'd start to see that they couldn't tank as much as they could before and with regeneration being slow, they'd fall behind the damage:healing curve. They'd start to feel a lot more worried. 

What Didn't Work

Short form sessions & one-shots. The previous set up only worked if players were committed to a long campaign that'd take them from level 1 to 10.

If you don't have to worry about the future, you don't generally have to play with long form consequences in mind.

An update last year had me adding AC/MR scaling to Yantra-log. Looking back, it was an experimental change but one I lost sight of until recently.

It goes without saying, the experiment didn't work but it did better showcase the shortcomings of the previous system.

The Solution

I've been thinking on this one for a while, letting it gestate, so to speak, in the back of my mind. A while back, while talking to one of the other Bludgeon team, I hit upon a really interesting addition to how the Yantra-log work - Glitches. An optional rule that would see their core systems begin to malfunction in some ways after they suffered fixed damage thresholds.

This opened up a few different possibilities for the Race & the game.  For starters, it allowed there to be consequences for being callous with your health early on. It allowed for a fun RP hook that could be exploited by players, as well.

But it was when I was talking to another team member that things really came together:

"Why not just have a smaller Hp pool that refreshes?"

Boom. Everything fell into place and the current iteration was born.  It's great how a single statement can help bring about a watershed moment like this.

Now, the Yantra-log will have a smaller Health pool that remains static. However, once this pool reaches 0, they gain a random Glitch and they reset their Hp.

Their base AC/MR is lower but can be upgraded to keep abreast of expected scaling values as normal armour. 

And finally, if they accrue 5 Glitches in total they suffer a catastrophic system failure and shut down permanently.

And what about the Glitches themselves? Well, I set them up to have a Combat & a Role-play function. Here's a taste of what to expect:

Glitches are themed around internal damage, so players aren't forced to say that their character looks damaged or beat up. These errors do add quirks to your role-play, so that should be a fun time at the table.

When will this be out?

Hopefully soon. I took a bit of a break the last weekend, but will be picking up again now  that I feel a little more rested. I'll try and get some more updates into the book before dropping version 1.2. 

Bonus: For a while, I was also considering having Health pools drop permanently at fixed thresholds as a solution. So, if you dropped from 100 to 90, your new Max. Hp would stay at 90. Ultimately, compared to the solution above, this felt more like a band-aid than a proper solve.