An Import Tool to bring WarMachine Warjacks, Myrmidons, Vectors, and Colossals into Pathfinder 1e and 2e.
I’ve been a fan of the Iron Kingdoms since the d20 IKRPG released for Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, later 3.5, back in 2001. I got into WarMachine in 2003 and kept up with it a little into Mk. II.
Before anyone asks, I rocked Khador. Something about that “I will get there and kill you, eventually. Sometime this game, maybe later.” playstyle appealed to me. Or maybe it was the kickass steam-powered armor. The world may never know.
While I fell out of the WarMachine scene, not a year goes by that I don’t return to the Iron Kingdoms in some way through one of my two weathered copies of the core books. If I’m not playing across the war-ravaged lands of Western Immoren? I’m taking elements (LIKE STEAMJACKS!) and importing them into other games I run.
But I always found that I needed more powerful ‘jacks. A greater diversity of smashy, smashy. So back in 2005, as I was wrapping up high school, I wrote the first version of “JackForge,” and let me tell you, it was terrible. So terrible I buried it deep in the depths of a thumb drive that I only recently rediscovered. One that gave me the wrong kind of awkward teen flashbacks, as apparently I had decided to update it in 2013 with even worse code. Which is impressive, given that at that point I knew what I was doing.
Maybe.
So I did the only logical thing. I had myself a cinnamon raisin bagel with jalapeño cream cheese and pineapple on top. Good eats.
Then I sat down and rebuilt it from the ground up into the app I always dreamed it would be. A tool that could dynamically convert Warjacks and their ilk to both Pathfinder systems and to my own little hard conversion of the WarMachine system to d20. It’s basic data entry with a few dropdowns, toggles, and a rogue textbox that does not respect your time. Most of all it’s a love letter to Privateer Press’s halcyon days. When they were riding high as Games Workshop’s biggest and only real competitor, and had an award-winning TTRPG.
It runs right here on this page. If you want it off my lawn, there’s a standalone portable version on my GitHub under releases.
And with that little bit of old-nerd nostalgia? I leave it to you, Internet. I know you won’t judge it and say nasty things behind my back on various social media sites.
Why? Because the Internet is full of nice people, that’s why. How do I know? I read it on the Internet, and would the Internet lie to me?
No. Clearly…
Turn a WarMachine WarJack into a playable Pathfinder stat block in six steps.
- Type the jack’s WarMachine stat line into the plate on the left: SPD, STR, MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM, hit boxes, and special attacks (plus a name).
- Pick the Chassis Type and the Class / Chassis. Weights a chassis can’t be are greyed out (Khador builds no lights; colossal chassis lock to Colossal).
- Set the Arc Node. Extra controls appear when they apply: Cyriss vectors relabel MAT/RAT to CaL / CHD and gain a Hover option; Retribution myrmidons get a Field Power box; tick Unique ‘Jack? to nudge the CR for a character jack.
- Press Convert.
- Read the three tabs: PF1e Pathfinder 1st Edition, PF2e Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and APF1e a WarMachine-style hit-location “box-out” damage system.
- On PF1e or PF2e, hit Send to Foundry SBC? to copy an import-ready stat block to your clipboard, then paste it into Foundry’s SBC module (PF1) or PF2e Bestiary Import module (PF2).