It started with a question I had, to do with another thread on here:

What if your non-combat abilities could become combat abilities?

And I don't mean like, "I pick the lock so we can get away, thus ending the encounter."

That's choosing to resolve the encounter as a skill challenge. I mean more like "I pick the lock and the bad guy takes damage or suffers unpleasant consequences."

At first I thought like, maybe you unlock a trap's mechanism and then you can use it against the bad guy?

But then I thought, what if you could just, literally unlock a part of the bad guy, and make it fall off?

So now I've got this idea for a big boss battle. The boss is a huge automaton, and he's covered in railings and ladder rungs and the like, so his engineers can crawl all over him, trying to repair him and keep him functioning. The PC's can too, though, if they're small enough. I'm thinking the PC's fight the automaton but they're really just trying to stop it, and the engineers are trying to keep it going.

The automaton can do lots of big, slow, flashy moves, but the PC's can learn to avoid them or stop them somehow. The automaton interacts in some way with the environment and the engineers; the PC's can try to use skill, social finesse, intimidation, and non-combat magic to keep the engineers from doing their jobs and to sabotage the robot thing. They can do damage to it, but if they do, they get shocked or shaken off, and the thing gets madder.

The idea is to give the PC's lots of well-choreographed information about how the thing works and moves, then let them decide how to slow it down and stop it. I'm imagining the encounter lasting for at least 5 or more rounds, and being a multi-part encounter where the automaton moves through a series of different rooms trying to get to The Placetm and do The Bad Thingtm

I'm also imagining that the engineers aren't really up to pitched deadly combat, but that maybe there are others working with them (or using them as slaves?) who are. I'm trying to decide if I want to use gnomes, goblins, or modrons for this, or maybe something else?

So the PC's can try to reason with / scare engineers, not just kill them. Or maybe even disable them if they're modrons.

The party is a group of six players with widely varying ages. We've got a good mix of tough combat abilities, utility magic / skills, and some social power. The players are all also fairly new. I'm trying to encourage them to focus more on what they think they'd be able to TRY to do if they were real heroes in the real world, rather than what's on their character sheets.

Here's what I need help with. I want to prepare descriptive text, rules text, and dialogue to efficiently communicate the automatons' abilities and features to the players. I want them to understand the basic idea of the encounter right away, and then to quickly learn more each round until they can come up with a plan.

I want this encounter to be forgiving of mistakes, but to feel big and exciting. Climbing around on the giant scary robot man, trying to shut him off before he does the big bad thing.

So, ideas? What features should the big bad robot have? What powers, action options, etc? How can the players interact with each feature and power in more than one way? How should I prepare for expected actions ideas or unexpected ones?

What should the engineers be? Should there be "taskmaster" style enemies too? Perhaps ones that show up in small waves, so as to keep our smashier minded players happy?

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.