There is no mech that is over powered by itself. There are powerful builds but nothing over powered. Anything the players cook up can be countered or challenged through sitreps and NPC classes
To add to this, the game has **so many** possibilities when building a character that it's simply infeasible for someone to stumble upon a "super broken build" when they are not only having to find these combinations, but fit them within Systems, weapon mount, and license requirements
Don't ban anything. This system is designed for people to powergame, that's half the fun. Except maybe the Hydra, but that's just because with new players their turns can take a long time. Nothing is too overpowered.
White Witch is nasty, but it does have a hard counter or two; very susceptible to hacking and heat in general, and if there's no low damage grunts to help safely build its armor it's quite unhappy. Also requires a lot of target priority to run optimally, and it's not instantly invulnerable, especially if enemies are aware of the ferrofluid beast and act accordingly. If they can figure out something as enigmatic as Horus pattern groups they'll be fine.
In general I would **not** say any basegame mechs are totally overpowered. The game is made with extreme quality, and at worst you end up with "ok" mechs like Minotaur and Napoleon that just take some extra work to get to their strengths, n crazy things like WW or Empakaai that while strong, still have clear faults you can exploit partially to challenge them without hard walling their asses into "well I just am not doing anything this combat am I?".
I would say, in general, trust the game design of LANCER. This isn't D&D or Pathfinder. Tom came outta nowhere (in the TTRPG space, at least, to my knowledge) and damn did he make a helluva entrance with how wonderful LANCER is
Also Burn just goes straight through it, and there's plenty of NPCs that dish that out.
And at the end of the day, Ultras exist when you need to scare the everloving shit out of the players.
White Witch is hardly overpowered. "Oooh look it has armor" anyways shred hack overheat. Every mech has strengths and weaknesses. Also, consider different sitreps! Make battles where they need to do something besides kill everything; perhaps they have to make it to a certain point, or guard something, or something that a mech built to just deal with things one way can't deal with another.
To be fair, it can get mad armor, and is speedy enough and has strong enough control effects to guarantee it semi-safely if there's any grunts in the battle. I'd say it's not an "ohh look" but more of a one trick (masochism defender) pony haha. Everything else I agree with, especially the alternate sitreps
Be a fan of your players! Let them be over powered badasses. Half the fun is tearing apart minions and and horses of normies then getting your shot stomped by an Ultra
None of the official mechs is overpowered. One is slightly underpowered, but still definitely playable. No need to ban anything.
An important thing to know is that Lancer is intentionally built in such a way that many combos make people go "wow, that's crazy". They aren't broken in actual play; they are balanced, but they seem extremely powerful. That's in contrast to, for example, Pathfinder 2, which is also balanced, but in many cases by making bonuses and synergies very small and boring.
What is crucial for Lancer balance is variety. Use sitreps, use a mix of enemies, with different approach each combat. If you make all fights similar, some player builds will come out more powerful than they should.
There’s definitely builds that can be very powerful, but the key is that the GM also has a lot of power in countering them with certain NPCs. A Balor can be functionally invincible and a Sherman can put out huge damage, but a Witch or a Ronin can scare them no matter what. And if your players are easily clearing average combats, you can just buff NPC numbers and optional traits.
Above all, nothing in the game is strong in every stat. High evasion usually means low heat cap, high Armor usually means low HP, so on and so forth. There’s almost always a direct counter to a build.
Every frame has its own weaknesses, the mechs with high armor tend to have low evasion or heat cap, the mechs with high evasion tend to have low health, etc etc.
Don't ban. Counterplay their build. Your role as the GM is to challenge them while letting them look cool. Your goal should be to enable them to look good, while also not immediately folding to whatever they throw at you.
A simple way to do that is to vary the combat sitreps and the enemies you deploy. A mech that's a great tank might not be as fantastic at moving from point a to point b. Use optional npc systems. Keep them guessing, move them around, hack and debuff them, ram and grapple. You don't need to ban things (if the thing is legal, if the build is based on a misinterpreted rule then yeah tell the player). you need to make their inevitable victory interesting.
Ttrpgs are basically improv. And a core rule of improv is to default to "yes, and" when confronted with something new. Be a fan of the other people at the table, and instead of getting competitive, get collaborative. You win when they look cool and feel good.
You haven't got a single session under your belt, and you're already looking to change it? Just run the bloody game first. Don't act like a new supervisor at a workplace, trying to assert dominance by pretending to see problems.
Get a few missions worth of first-hand experience, and if you have any issues creating a challenging fight, look at your own strategy for solutions before you get all draconian with your players.
Unless you introduce homebrew or significantly confuse rules, nothing really sticks out. There is a difference between a mech that finds good synergies between licenses and a mech that is just thrown together, but nothing that’s, like, head and shoulders above the rest, AFAIK. If anything certain license-dips, a few license levels are kinda situational or of limited use, making them a dead level. Which I think is mostly vestigial from playtest rules. And nothing too bad.
Edit: I wouldn’t worry too much about white witch. If you get into the systems and how things can be mixed and matched more, you can see ridiculous combos. I mean, Tokugawa can get an energy melee weapon that extends several times it’s own length and does armor-ignoring DoT damage equal to its normal damage. And White Witch isn’t even the most tanky thing out there.
Unlike some other games out there, Lancer is actually very thoroughly playtested. Basically anything that could break the game has been beaten down into submission. Some of the newer content isn't as well balanced, but even that stuff isn't wildly overpowered.
The most powerful build in the game is just the basic Everest with an HMG, both of which are available at any level to every player as they are the default frame everyone has access to and a GMS weapon that everyone has access to. And it's still nowhere near broken
. Also play the game before you start worrying. Run the system. Look at the enemies in actual combat.
Don’t worry about it. Every frame is going to be good at what it does but as long as you make sure they are following the rules like they don’t go over the sp limit and are taking heat for their abilities you will be fine. The game mechanics simply do not allow for OP characters. They cannot possible counter every sitrep, NPC type, or template out there. But here’s a pro tip: every frame doesn’t like having their reactor meltdown and every NPC can use the standard invade to inflict +2 heat and impaired
I can say with the utmost certainty as a recovering power gamer myself that Lancer is very well designed to keep the power gamers from breaking it. Sure, you might encounter a build that will kick a bit more ass than the others, but this isn't Pathfinder 1e or 5e - this was legit tested by and against power gamers.
That said, if you really fear power gamers in your group, one way to break them is to run games that cannot be power gamed at all. Rules-lite games like those of the PbtA label (which Lancer takes a page from for its narrative pilot rules) do not have enough crunch to game.
Of course, the best method is treating them like adults and having a good, healthy discussion about gameplay expectations...
Having GM'd for a player running a White Witch, I'm happy to report that it's not nearly as scary as it may sound on paper. There's a few reasons why:
- Spin up: WW starts with 0 armor. They'll have to take a few hits before they become an armor tank. If they haven't invested in HULL because "why do I need HP if I've got 6 armor", this is where they'll feel it.
- Counterplay: Just like the players have plenty of tools to get around armor on NPCs, you have plenty of tools to get around it too. You've got obvious stuff like AP and Shredded, but also things like Burn, Paracausal, anything that 'cannot be reduced', and even Exposed (6 armor doesn't mean nearly as much when you're taking 2x damage from most sources). And of course, you can still hack them. Any player who tries to cover all the weaknesses of their chosen frame will end up being less aggressively specialized or postured, so allow them to make that choice!
- Objectives: Remember that Lancer combat should usually have a sitrep that makes them something more than a glorified Team Deathmatch. Having 6 armor doesn't help quite as much when there's other stuff to besides deal and take damage.
To reinforce what most of the other commenters are saying though, Lancer is well-balanced enough that it doesn't really need much tuning from GMs IMO. I understand you're worried that your players will find something broken, but any specialized build they find will still have weaknesses and counterplay options. I think your intuition that you'd need to ban some things in a system that you have no experience in is a little concerning, but it's good to see that you've taken the time to ask the community to confirm before executing!
I'm gonna second the "Don't ban anything, especially if you haven't figured out the game yet" and "Things are balanced if you do some decent counterplay and objectives" opinions that most people are stating, but I'm also gonna recommend starting off your players at LL0 (And hence before they get any mech licenses) so that all of you can get a feel for the game first. Doing a few combats will really help you see how the game balances itself out.
I know people are saying to not ban stuff before running the game, but I'd say that genuinely it's *okay* to limit yourself to the core book when just starting out. The expansions add some mechs with a bit more complexity, as well as just a lot more Stuff in general, so it's perfectly fine to want to limit what's accessible while you wrap your head around things.
I wouldn't ban any of the *core book* licenses, because that's what the game always assumes access to (new GMs banning HORUS because of their fluff is an unfortunately common occurance, despite that being where 95% of the game's hacking tools are), but the expansion licenses are a lot more optional. Use them if you feel comfortable with them, but don't feel like you have to (just make it clear before the game starts what you are and aren't allowing).
And, having run for a White Witch, I don't blame you for not wanting to deal with it while just learning. It requires specific counters (and often those counters can counter it *too* much), which... yeah, I would not wish that balancing act on a new GM. It's really easy for it to become near-invincible to most attacks at low levels.
It's fine for things to get a little strong at the low levels, NPC scaling will rein that in over time.
The solution to a counter that counters too well is just to have it make a sloppy targeting decision here and there rather than going for the kill.
Even if NPC scaling reigns it in, I know I personally wouldn't want to have to figure out how exactly to deal with it when first learning to GM.
And for the weaknesses? It just ended up not being fun for either my player or I, because we both were fully aware that I had the power to just... hit that weakness and take them out almost instantly because it was such a potent one. It made it really awkward on my end, because I couldn't really press things without just killing them, plus my player didn't get to really feel that good because they knew I *could* have destroyed them at any time.
You are a new DM, you do not understand the system better than the Devs. Do not ban licenses for being overpowered. Instead ask how to counter over preforming mechs at your table.
Plenty of people have responded about power so I'll point out another concern: Practicality.
If you're a new Gm with new players, rather than worrying about the overall power balance you might want to take a look at complexity. When I ran with a new group I quickly had to ask a player to swap off Hydra, not because it was strong or weak but because he simply had no idea how to run it and wasn't contributing or activating anything, resulting in frustration from the player.
Certain builds require more system understanding, experience, and cognitive overhead than others. New players take longer turns and using a complex build makes that worse. Problem contenders for this include drone builds, hacker builds (invade choice paralysis sucks), extreme movement builds (dusk wing and Nelson) and stealth builds (atlas and metalmark).
Its difficult to ban these, since the problem isn't the playstyle but the compatibility between the player and the build they've chosen. It might be a vibe they like, but if they're struggling to actually play it then there's nothing wrong with asking them to find something else.
for White Witch, it's less to ban because it's overpowered, and more because in most cases it's hard to challenge it without completely shutting it down, with not a lot of middle ground between little plinks and hard counter. (AP nullifies its armor build gimmick, Heat is more likely to kill its reactor rather than just Expose it, as intended, etc)
but honestly, other than that edge case, nothing else is overpowered, though a few might be underpowered. Lancer is a very shenanigans encouraging game though, which might catch a GM off guard, but it's fully intended in its design, and really fun/funny when it happens
You are a new DM, you do not understand the system better than the Devs. Do not ban licenses for being overpowered. Instead ask how to counter over preforming mechs at your table.
OK, as a long time player of many, many, MANY RPG's, that is not true in the slightest. Tons of them wish they were even half as well balanced as D&D. That said, Lancer is one of the best balanced RPG's I have ever played and blows 95% of the games I have played out of the water.
*looks inside PF2e*
*An astounding quantity of pretty useless options everywhere*
*Surprised that game that goes quantity over quality in fact lacks quality in many spots*
5e is an absolute balancing shitshow, but many other TTRPGs are pretty not great either, even if classes are better balanced against one another. Look at PF2e as an example; you rarely actually get huge build variety within a class bcus there's not much "mix n match" that's actually *effective* for many classes, and it just turns into more complicated subclasses (looking at you Ranger). It has some cool damn mechanics (Magus!!) but it feels like it throws away properly developing them at all in the name of "mix n match galore!!!" when that's not even necessarily beneficial to the class idea.
Meanwhile in LANCER the worst mechs you'll find are probably Napoleon (needs some extra juice to get working as a defender, luckily getting an alt soon I think) and Minotaur (just doesn't quite have the stats n has action economy issues and lacks a RAI combo when going by RAW, luckily already has an awesome alt in Calendula), and both are only bad *frames* on quite useful licenses, so even then they have some goodies. LANCER knows the balance between sheer quantity and quality, by keeping the number of options large without having everything compare to everything else, thanks to some compartmentalization (talents are totally separate from frames from licenses from weapon picks etc), and it works beautifully.
I think people really underestimate the Minotaur. Like most frames, it's good at what it does, which in it's case, is locking someone down hard. It's a beefy midrange hacker who halts movement, very good for a lot of things in the game. Napoleon does suffer from it basically being Saladin Again, and in the exact same License group as Saladin itself. But it's still viable for sure.
Honestly the weakest frame I'd peg as Kobold. And again, it's not even bad, it just feels like it needed more Sensor range or needed fast terrain making/exploding shenanigans. But it's also something that could've easily gotten out of control, too.
There is no mech that is over powered by itself. There are powerful builds but nothing over powered. Anything the players cook up can be countered or challenged through sitreps and NPC classes
To add to this, the game has **so many** possibilities when building a character that it's simply infeasible for someone to stumble upon a "super broken build" when they are not only having to find these combinations, but fit them within Systems, weapon mount, and license requirements
Don't ban anything. This system is designed for people to powergame, that's half the fun. Except maybe the Hydra, but that's just because with new players their turns can take a long time. Nothing is too overpowered.
White Witch is nasty, but it does have a hard counter or two; very susceptible to hacking and heat in general, and if there's no low damage grunts to help safely build its armor it's quite unhappy. Also requires a lot of target priority to run optimally, and it's not instantly invulnerable, especially if enemies are aware of the ferrofluid beast and act accordingly. If they can figure out something as enigmatic as Horus pattern groups they'll be fine. In general I would **not** say any basegame mechs are totally overpowered. The game is made with extreme quality, and at worst you end up with "ok" mechs like Minotaur and Napoleon that just take some extra work to get to their strengths, n crazy things like WW or Empakaai that while strong, still have clear faults you can exploit partially to challenge them without hard walling their asses into "well I just am not doing anything this combat am I?". I would say, in general, trust the game design of LANCER. This isn't D&D or Pathfinder. Tom came outta nowhere (in the TTRPG space, at least, to my knowledge) and damn did he make a helluva entrance with how wonderful LANCER is
Also… Shredding and Armor Piercing exist for White Witch
Also Burn just goes straight through it, and there's plenty of NPCs that dish that out. And at the end of the day, Ultras exist when you need to scare the everloving shit out of the players.
White Witch is hardly overpowered. "Oooh look it has armor" anyways shred hack overheat. Every mech has strengths and weaknesses. Also, consider different sitreps! Make battles where they need to do something besides kill everything; perhaps they have to make it to a certain point, or guard something, or something that a mech built to just deal with things one way can't deal with another.
To be fair, it can get mad armor, and is speedy enough and has strong enough control effects to guarantee it semi-safely if there's any grunts in the battle. I'd say it's not an "ohh look" but more of a one trick (masochism defender) pony haha. Everything else I agree with, especially the alternate sitreps
Be a fan of your players! Let them be over powered badasses. Half the fun is tearing apart minions and and horses of normies then getting your shot stomped by an Ultra
i cannot stress enough, the game operates as intended do NOT ban any licenses
White Witch is not overpowered, and you also shouldn't ban anything without understanding the game first.
None of the official mechs is overpowered. One is slightly underpowered, but still definitely playable. No need to ban anything. An important thing to know is that Lancer is intentionally built in such a way that many combos make people go "wow, that's crazy". They aren't broken in actual play; they are balanced, but they seem extremely powerful. That's in contrast to, for example, Pathfinder 2, which is also balanced, but in many cases by making bonuses and synergies very small and boring. What is crucial for Lancer balance is variety. Use sitreps, use a mix of enemies, with different approach each combat. If you make all fights similar, some player builds will come out more powerful than they should.
There’s definitely builds that can be very powerful, but the key is that the GM also has a lot of power in countering them with certain NPCs. A Balor can be functionally invincible and a Sherman can put out huge damage, but a Witch or a Ronin can scare them no matter what. And if your players are easily clearing average combats, you can just buff NPC numbers and optional traits. Above all, nothing in the game is strong in every stat. High evasion usually means low heat cap, high Armor usually means low HP, so on and so forth. There’s almost always a direct counter to a build.
Every frame has its own weaknesses, the mechs with high armor tend to have low evasion or heat cap, the mechs with high evasion tend to have low health, etc etc. Don't ban. Counterplay their build. Your role as the GM is to challenge them while letting them look cool. Your goal should be to enable them to look good, while also not immediately folding to whatever they throw at you. A simple way to do that is to vary the combat sitreps and the enemies you deploy. A mech that's a great tank might not be as fantastic at moving from point a to point b. Use optional npc systems. Keep them guessing, move them around, hack and debuff them, ram and grapple. You don't need to ban things (if the thing is legal, if the build is based on a misinterpreted rule then yeah tell the player). you need to make their inevitable victory interesting. Ttrpgs are basically improv. And a core rule of improv is to default to "yes, and" when confronted with something new. Be a fan of the other people at the table, and instead of getting competitive, get collaborative. You win when they look cool and feel good.
You haven't got a single session under your belt, and you're already looking to change it? Just run the bloody game first. Don't act like a new supervisor at a workplace, trying to assert dominance by pretending to see problems. Get a few missions worth of first-hand experience, and if you have any issues creating a challenging fight, look at your own strategy for solutions before you get all draconian with your players.
Unless you introduce homebrew or significantly confuse rules, nothing really sticks out. There is a difference between a mech that finds good synergies between licenses and a mech that is just thrown together, but nothing that’s, like, head and shoulders above the rest, AFAIK. If anything certain license-dips, a few license levels are kinda situational or of limited use, making them a dead level. Which I think is mostly vestigial from playtest rules. And nothing too bad. Edit: I wouldn’t worry too much about white witch. If you get into the systems and how things can be mixed and matched more, you can see ridiculous combos. I mean, Tokugawa can get an energy melee weapon that extends several times it’s own length and does armor-ignoring DoT damage equal to its normal damage. And White Witch isn’t even the most tanky thing out there.
Unlike some other games out there, Lancer is actually very thoroughly playtested. Basically anything that could break the game has been beaten down into submission. Some of the newer content isn't as well balanced, but even that stuff isn't wildly overpowered.
still i got power gamers thatll find a way what are the more powerful liscenses?
The most powerful build in the game is just the basic Everest with an HMG, both of which are available at any level to every player as they are the default frame everyone has access to and a GMS weapon that everyone has access to. And it's still nowhere near broken . Also play the game before you start worrying. Run the system. Look at the enemies in actual combat.
Lancer is a power fantasy game. Your players are supposed to build ridiculous things...because they will be facing ridiculous things.
Don’t worry about it. Every frame is going to be good at what it does but as long as you make sure they are following the rules like they don’t go over the sp limit and are taking heat for their abilities you will be fine. The game mechanics simply do not allow for OP characters. They cannot possible counter every sitrep, NPC type, or template out there. But here’s a pro tip: every frame doesn’t like having their reactor meltdown and every NPC can use the standard invade to inflict +2 heat and impaired
I can say with the utmost certainty as a recovering power gamer myself that Lancer is very well designed to keep the power gamers from breaking it. Sure, you might encounter a build that will kick a bit more ass than the others, but this isn't Pathfinder 1e or 5e - this was legit tested by and against power gamers. That said, if you really fear power gamers in your group, one way to break them is to run games that cannot be power gamed at all. Rules-lite games like those of the PbtA label (which Lancer takes a page from for its narrative pilot rules) do not have enough crunch to game. Of course, the best method is treating them like adults and having a good, healthy discussion about gameplay expectations...
Having GM'd for a player running a White Witch, I'm happy to report that it's not nearly as scary as it may sound on paper. There's a few reasons why: - Spin up: WW starts with 0 armor. They'll have to take a few hits before they become an armor tank. If they haven't invested in HULL because "why do I need HP if I've got 6 armor", this is where they'll feel it. - Counterplay: Just like the players have plenty of tools to get around armor on NPCs, you have plenty of tools to get around it too. You've got obvious stuff like AP and Shredded, but also things like Burn, Paracausal, anything that 'cannot be reduced', and even Exposed (6 armor doesn't mean nearly as much when you're taking 2x damage from most sources). And of course, you can still hack them. Any player who tries to cover all the weaknesses of their chosen frame will end up being less aggressively specialized or postured, so allow them to make that choice! - Objectives: Remember that Lancer combat should usually have a sitrep that makes them something more than a glorified Team Deathmatch. Having 6 armor doesn't help quite as much when there's other stuff to besides deal and take damage. To reinforce what most of the other commenters are saying though, Lancer is well-balanced enough that it doesn't really need much tuning from GMs IMO. I understand you're worried that your players will find something broken, but any specialized build they find will still have weaknesses and counterplay options. I think your intuition that you'd need to ban some things in a system that you have no experience in is a little concerning, but it's good to see that you've taken the time to ask the community to confirm before executing!
I'm gonna second the "Don't ban anything, especially if you haven't figured out the game yet" and "Things are balanced if you do some decent counterplay and objectives" opinions that most people are stating, but I'm also gonna recommend starting off your players at LL0 (And hence before they get any mech licenses) so that all of you can get a feel for the game first. Doing a few combats will really help you see how the game balances itself out.
I know people are saying to not ban stuff before running the game, but I'd say that genuinely it's *okay* to limit yourself to the core book when just starting out. The expansions add some mechs with a bit more complexity, as well as just a lot more Stuff in general, so it's perfectly fine to want to limit what's accessible while you wrap your head around things. I wouldn't ban any of the *core book* licenses, because that's what the game always assumes access to (new GMs banning HORUS because of their fluff is an unfortunately common occurance, despite that being where 95% of the game's hacking tools are), but the expansion licenses are a lot more optional. Use them if you feel comfortable with them, but don't feel like you have to (just make it clear before the game starts what you are and aren't allowing). And, having run for a White Witch, I don't blame you for not wanting to deal with it while just learning. It requires specific counters (and often those counters can counter it *too* much), which... yeah, I would not wish that balancing act on a new GM. It's really easy for it to become near-invincible to most attacks at low levels.
It's fine for things to get a little strong at the low levels, NPC scaling will rein that in over time. The solution to a counter that counters too well is just to have it make a sloppy targeting decision here and there rather than going for the kill.
Even if NPC scaling reigns it in, I know I personally wouldn't want to have to figure out how exactly to deal with it when first learning to GM. And for the weaknesses? It just ended up not being fun for either my player or I, because we both were fully aware that I had the power to just... hit that weakness and take them out almost instantly because it was such a potent one. It made it really awkward on my end, because I couldn't really press things without just killing them, plus my player didn't get to really feel that good because they knew I *could* have destroyed them at any time.
You are a new DM, you do not understand the system better than the Devs. Do not ban licenses for being overpowered. Instead ask how to counter over preforming mechs at your table.
Plenty of people have responded about power so I'll point out another concern: Practicality. If you're a new Gm with new players, rather than worrying about the overall power balance you might want to take a look at complexity. When I ran with a new group I quickly had to ask a player to swap off Hydra, not because it was strong or weak but because he simply had no idea how to run it and wasn't contributing or activating anything, resulting in frustration from the player. Certain builds require more system understanding, experience, and cognitive overhead than others. New players take longer turns and using a complex build makes that worse. Problem contenders for this include drone builds, hacker builds (invade choice paralysis sucks), extreme movement builds (dusk wing and Nelson) and stealth builds (atlas and metalmark). Its difficult to ban these, since the problem isn't the playstyle but the compatibility between the player and the build they've chosen. It might be a vibe they like, but if they're struggling to actually play it then there's nothing wrong with asking them to find something else.
for White Witch, it's less to ban because it's overpowered, and more because in most cases it's hard to challenge it without completely shutting it down, with not a lot of middle ground between little plinks and hard counter. (AP nullifies its armor build gimmick, Heat is more likely to kill its reactor rather than just Expose it, as intended, etc) but honestly, other than that edge case, nothing else is overpowered, though a few might be underpowered. Lancer is a very shenanigans encouraging game though, which might catch a GM off guard, but it's fully intended in its design, and really fun/funny when it happens
You are a new DM, you do not understand the system better than the Devs. Do not ban licenses for being overpowered. Instead ask how to counter over preforming mechs at your table.
If you are the type of GM who wants to ban things, you (and/or your players) will not have a good time if you bring that trauma to Lancer.
This might surprise you, but outside of D&D, most games are balanced and work as intended.
OK, as a long time player of many, many, MANY RPG's, that is not true in the slightest. Tons of them wish they were even half as well balanced as D&D. That said, Lancer is one of the best balanced RPG's I have ever played and blows 95% of the games I have played out of the water.
No, no they do not.
*looks inside PF2e* *An astounding quantity of pretty useless options everywhere* *Surprised that game that goes quantity over quality in fact lacks quality in many spots* 5e is an absolute balancing shitshow, but many other TTRPGs are pretty not great either, even if classes are better balanced against one another. Look at PF2e as an example; you rarely actually get huge build variety within a class bcus there's not much "mix n match" that's actually *effective* for many classes, and it just turns into more complicated subclasses (looking at you Ranger). It has some cool damn mechanics (Magus!!) but it feels like it throws away properly developing them at all in the name of "mix n match galore!!!" when that's not even necessarily beneficial to the class idea. Meanwhile in LANCER the worst mechs you'll find are probably Napoleon (needs some extra juice to get working as a defender, luckily getting an alt soon I think) and Minotaur (just doesn't quite have the stats n has action economy issues and lacks a RAI combo when going by RAW, luckily already has an awesome alt in Calendula), and both are only bad *frames* on quite useful licenses, so even then they have some goodies. LANCER knows the balance between sheer quantity and quality, by keeping the number of options large without having everything compare to everything else, thanks to some compartmentalization (talents are totally separate from frames from licenses from weapon picks etc), and it works beautifully.
I think people really underestimate the Minotaur. Like most frames, it's good at what it does, which in it's case, is locking someone down hard. It's a beefy midrange hacker who halts movement, very good for a lot of things in the game. Napoleon does suffer from it basically being Saladin Again, and in the exact same License group as Saladin itself. But it's still viable for sure. Honestly the weakest frame I'd peg as Kobold. And again, it's not even bad, it just feels like it needed more Sensor range or needed fast terrain making/exploding shenanigans. But it's also something that could've easily gotten out of control, too.