It's an Armor, it's a Motorcycle, It makes Julianne Fries!

[The Confinist]

Hi All,

I'm building some characters for a group of people (very new to HERO) for my upcoming Champions campaign, and I'm having trouble building a concept, so I thought I would ask around here.

I'm building the Armored Hero of the group, and I'm basing his armor on(i.e. stealing completely from) the Cyclone battle armor of Robotech (well, Mosepida) fame. For those of you who don't follow the series, it's a motorcycle that converts into a suit of power armor, and some abilities change and some stay the same.

What are some ideas on how to model this? Vehicle with Multiform? Multiform with OIF limitation? Just a cool special effect for Extra Running? What do you think?

[JmOz]

My gut says to do this:

Build the character with a multiform, and a 100% different Duplication (The bike), as a -0 the dup takes always on

When he multiforms the duplication power is no longer in effect and he assumes a form that has the more complete character (When the two combine)

MF should have a -1/4 lim (Dupe must be present)

[Peregrine]

As I recall, the Cyclone was a separate PA/motorcycle that combined to form a larger set of PA.

I'd do the PA/motorcycle combo as a OIF PA and a vehicle. Then use multiform (with the incorporation of the motorcycle as FX, as I'd say that 'must have vehicle available to combine' and 'vehicle not available when combined' basically cancel out; take a -0 limitation if you want to split hairs) for the larger PA (my initial instinct is to have the larger PA as a vehicle bought by the second form, but OIF or OIHID would probably be more palatable).

[The Confinist]

Thanks for all your advice!

Jm0z: I hadn't thought of using Duplication for that purpose. My original idea was to give the primary character a vehicle with Multiform, but that wasn't really giving me what I wanted.

Peregrine: The Cyclone is made of two parts, but the first part is just the "pilot suit", which is a set of light non-powered armor with connection points for the rest of the armor (i.e. the "powered" parts). While I was at work, I was thinking of using Vehicle on the primary character as a focus (OIF of course) on a Multiform power, but I like your idea better (the -0 Limitation on Multiform).

[Kaeto]

I'm working on doing the motoroids from Bubble Gum Crisis, and they are proving to be hard. It can be a motorcycle, a indipendent robot, or a locked on suit of armor over top of a suit of power armor.

[JmOz]

Start with Duplication for the robot, give it Multiform for the bike, then it is the same as above

[Tech]

Send me an e-mail. One of my friends already built it for one of his heros, including the mini-missiles.

[The Confinist]

Thanks for all the input on this. They way I finally did it, was to built the "main" form as a standard Power Armor style hero (i.e. skills of pilot with powers derived from an OIF battlesuit). Then, I built another character with just the skills and some minor powers (pilot in pilot's suit, etc.) with points in Vehicle (190 pt vehicle) and a 75 point Multifomr (350 form + instant change) with a -0 limitation Must Be Riding Vehicle to Change. Whipped up the vehicle as the BIke Mode, and viola! A Cylone Rider.

Thanks again!