Giving The Children Rides, or, Howdah Do It?

[dialNforNinja]

I'm thinking specifically of a Transformers style character wtih a vehicle mode, but it would apply just as much to Piggyback Man with his folding seat backpack frame - how would you represent being able to easily carry other characters at speed? "Just fluff it if they have the Strength and a good description" isn't, you know, anathema, but a team mate who can transport members without movement powers of their own or evacuate civilians and so on. is a tangible benefit that feels like it should have some kind of cost, if not an overwhelming one. Then there's Optimus Prime with his freight trailer or The Great And Powerful Turtle who's never seen outside his flying bunker but has telekinesis by the ton and isn't shy about moving large masses around.

 

A simple question, and STR does have a cost of its own, but I'm probably overthinking and possibly going too far in the other direction while trying to avoid excessive complexity and detail like my last few. I had intended to just lurk for a while since there's no time pressure on getting things down, but after thinking of the thread title I couldn't not post it; it was just too much classic comic book cheese to resist.

[IndianaJoe3]

Extra Limbs sounds appropriate.

[BoloOfEarth]

20 minutes ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

Extra Limbs sounds appropriate.

 

Might want to throw in Reduced END on STR, only to lift/carry.

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, dialNforNinja said:

I - how would you represent being able to easily carry other characters at speed? "Just fluff it if they have the Strength and a good description" isn't, you know, anathema, but a team mate who can transport members without movement powers of their own or evacuate civilians and so on. is a tangible benefit that feels like it should have some kind of cost, if not an overwhelming one. 

 

 

 

I understand it's not the answer you are looking for, but STR is the answer. 

 

How many people can Superman carry?  As many as he can hold, maybe one in each hand and two piggyback. 

 

 

How many people can Giganto carry?  Six fit in the palm of his hand, no problem. 

 

It's a matter of STR and size.  STR because-- well, being able to move staggering weight is why you buy that.  It is limited by how much you can physically grab or hold.   A Trnsformer is pretty big; plenty big enough to cayy at least one person, and the biggee they are, the more they can carry.  Really the only difference between them and a giant human character is that a giant human isn't inclined to carry someone in his lung.   

 

If that's not enough for the feel that you want, then look at how you are designing his "car powers."   the answer may lie there:

 

Are you doing a multiform?  Are you building it as a vehicle?  What are your campaign rules for building vehicles?  How do you determine how many people can fit in a car with your vehicle rules?  What makes the car firm of a giant robot different from any other car in your campaign?  Do those differences affect how people are carried? 

 

I think looking at it that way will help you find an answer that works for you.  While it's nigh-anathema to say on this board, not everything needs a special costs-extra build. 

 

[Crusty]

There’s a new Hall of Champions book that updates 3e Robot Warriors (you need both books)

 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/327714
 

I’m not that far in yet but there may be something in it that helps

[Chris Goodwin]

20 minutes ago, Crusty said:

There’s a new Hall of Champions book that updates 3e Robot Warriors (you need both books)

 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/327714
 

I’m not that far in yet but there may be something in it that helps

 

Thanks for the shoutout!  As the guy what wrote it, probably not. 

 

Many years ago in a Fantasy Hero game, I played a ki-rin (or more accurately, myself transformed into a ki-rin, in a fantasy world).  The GM, who wrote up all of our transformed versions, gave me PS: Magic Steed, with the idea that I'd be able to use that as a complementary skill in order to help someone (with Riding skill) stay on my back.  Probably not quite what you're looking for for an Autobot type character.  

 

The Resistant Protection Power includes a +10 point Adder:  Protects Carried Items, which can explicitly include other characters.  That might be what you're looking for.  (6e1 p. 276 or CC p. 83)

 

Edit to add:  Clinging, if you want them to just be attached to the side of you, or effectively seatbelted in place inside your Resistant Protection.  

[unclevlad]

Depending on the movement power in question and the SFX:

 

--Growth.  For fun, tack on Clinging, Usable By Others (cling to you only).  Growth's an expensive way to do it, but it's the most straightforward.  Look at how to build a vehicle, and particularly the reference vehicles.  

--High STR lets you deal with 2;  couple that with extra limbs (and stretching helps here) and you can carry a few.

--TK

 

All of these are basically carrying everyone else.

 

--Usable Simultaneously (part of Usable By Others).  Probably used the overwhelming majority of the time with teleport.  Occasional with Extra Dim Movement, but that's a fairly unusual power in most genres.  (Even in fantasy.)  It's possible to use it with other powers;  it's just fairly rare in the comics or supers lit that I can recall.  

[Thia Halmades]

...wait.

 

What’s the question? How to carry other people at speed? it’s not fluffing it, per se, if the vehicle form is properly defined and they have sufficient strength. However, I agree with a prior post, the best, albeit weirdest way to do this, is Extra Limbs (Mama, I got seats!, -0). You can also purchase STR, only for seats, if you’re really looking for the full bucket reclining experience.

[IndianaJoe3]

You don't need Extra Limbs to carry one or two people out of combat. However, if you want to carry more than that, or carry people and still have your hands free, you need Extra Limbs.

[Tech]

On 9/9/2020 at 5:36 PM, unclevlad said:

Depending on the movement power in question and the SFX:

 

--Growth.  For fun, tack on Clinging, Usable By Others (cling to you only).  Growth's an expensive way to do it, but it's the most straightforward.  Look at how to build a vehicle, and particularly the reference vehicles.  

--High STR lets you deal with 2;  couple that with extra limbs (and stretching helps here) and you can carry a few.

--TK

 

All of these are basically carrying everyone else.

 

--Usable Simultaneously (part of Usable By Others).  Probably used the overwhelming majority of the time with teleport.  Occasional with Extra Dim Movement, but that's a fairly unusual power in most genres.  (Even in fantasy.)  It's possible to use it with other powers;  it's just fairly rare in the comics or supers lit that I can recall.  

 

If you used Growth, it doesn't need Usable By Others - your example means they can Grow (Growth). That's not what's needed. I tend to think of Growth only with perhaps extra Running. The Special Effect is you're a car.

[Duke Bushido]

Or a long bench. 

 

Or a net. 

 

Or a 5-seat passenger compartment. 

 

We have all, at one point or another, confessed to accepting that there are this outliers where simply having an appropriate special effect is an advantage, or even the solution itself. 

 

The power is STR.  The question is "how many people at once?" 

 

The special effect is "I am a car now."

 

I know I'm the odd man out with my tendency to rely more on the SFX than do a lot of other GMs, but I just don't see a conversation here outside of "what kind of car and how many people can you stuff in one of those?" 

Assuming STR is sufficient, of course. 

[Thia Halmades]

3 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

I know I'm the odd man out with my tendency to rely more on the SFX than do a lot of other GMs, but I just don't see a conversation here outside of "what kind of car and how many people can you stuff in one of those?" 

Assuming STR is sufficient, of course. 

 

I would like to point out the first thing I said was, “if the vehicle is properly defined and has sufficient strength.” You’re not the odd man out, I think this is a case of “HERO being HERO” and people wanting to micro things that I would — and this is a pretty good example — merrily handwave. “You’ve got strength 100? Yeah, by all means, carry all the people you can fit on your badonkadonk.”

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Tech said:

 

If you used Growth, it doesn't need Usable By Others - your example means they can Grow (Growth). That's not what's needed. I tend to think of Growth only with perhaps extra Running. The Special Effect is you're a car.

 

The UBO was for the Clinging, not the Growth.  They're riding on your back.  What's keeping them from being thrown off in a high-speed turn?

[Tech]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

The UBO was for the Clinging, not the Growth.  They're riding on your back.  What's keeping them from being thrown off in a high-speed turn?

 

Your strength, since you're the car 'carrying' them. Or extra limbs.

[Greywind]

On 9/9/2020 at 12:57 PM, Duke Bushido said:

How many people can Superman carry?  As many as he can hold, maybe one in each hand and two piggyback.

 

Iron Man managed 11.

[Thia Halmades]

Special Effect: Seat Belt, but it all (to @Tech’s point) comes back to available STR.

[unclevlad]

24 minutes ago, Tech said:

 

Your strength, since you're the car 'carrying' them. Or extra limbs.

 

Extra Limbs would be another way to do it, rather than Clinging.  I'm NOT considering a Transformers approach;  more like a Goliath approach, or a transform to something like a giant horse, bird, or dragon.

Also...in the car scenario...Clinging, UBO.  Seat belts.  You're asking for "I can hold them in my transformed state" for no cost, based on saying "it's a car."  Nope.  Unless you're paying for it, it'd be more like riding in the back of a pickup truck.  Nothing to stop you from being tossed out from the bed.  So if you want them safely ensconced and protected...pay for it somehow.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

Also...in the car scenario...Clinging, UBO.  Seat belts.  You're asking for "I can hold them in my transformed state" for no cost, based on saying "it's a car."  Nope.  Unless you're paying for it, it'd be more like riding in the back of a pickup truck.  Nothing to stop you from being tossed out from the bed.  So if you want them safely ensconced and protected...pay for it somehow.

 

This is what I was getting at.  

 

Ultimately, you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get.  If you're relying on STR alone, you're not "doing it wrong" for sure, but you're not getting any more than that.  Superman with his 100+ STR can carry a lot of weight, but he only has two arms, with one hand on each, and he's the size of a human.  He can only carry so many people, and if he's carrying them he's carrying them.  Two people, maybe, can piggyback on him, but if he tries to have more than half his CV they're going to have to make rolls to hold on.  (SFX go both ways.)  

 

To the OP, decide what you want.  Do you want an armored compartment that a rider can sit inside?  Buy that.  Do you want some kind of a safety harness that holds people on, keeping them from falling off if you make hard combat maneuvers?  Buy that.  Want the harness to also potentially protect them in the event of an accident?  Buy that.  

 

If I were trying to build Car-Guy, and agonizing over how to do it, I'd be a little annoyed if Superman got exactly the same benefits as me for declaring it SFX.  

 

I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to dial in to get exactly what you want.  

[Duke Bushido]

You are paying to be a car. 

 

If you accept that, then unless you require characters building cars to buy clinging in order to ride in them, you are just penalizing the shape changer above and beyond getting what he paid for. 

[Duke Bushido]

Well that was out of place. 

 

That was meant to follow the suggested mandate of clinging to keep people inside the car. 

 

I won't say there isnt someone who requires it, but I have never seen it mandated for a  vehicle that it needs a power to keep people inside. 

[unclevlad]

5 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

You are paying to be a car. 

 

If you accept that, then unless you require characters building cars to buy clinging in order to ride in them, you are just penalizing the shape changer above and beyond getting what he paid for. 

 

I agree that *when buying a vehicle as a vehicle*...it's implicit.  But that's not what's happening here.  This is not a standalone vehicle;  it's a character that looks like a vehicle, that is built using character rules, not vehicle rules.  

[Ninja-Bear]

Once upon a time on another forum, perhaps, Circle of Heroes, someone made a custom Power where you made a space to put stuff. I think that power would work nicely here.

[Chris Goodwin]

34 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

You are paying to be a car. 

 

If you accept that, then unless you require characters building cars to buy clinging in order to ride in them, you are just penalizing the shape changer above and beyond getting what he paid for. 

 

I see it as, you're paying to get something more than anyone gets.  

 

SFX only go so far, and the distance they go is up to the point of something being mechanically different.  If you're Superman, you may be 100+ STR, but you're still stuck with two hands and the approximate surface area of a human-sized being.  You don't have any additional abilities to protect people, to keep them from falling off, to hold more than a few of them comfortably, etc., that any other human-sized and -shaped strong character doesn't have.  Those other things?  If you want them, you can pay points for them.  If you don't pay points for them... SFX, sure, but you also run the risk of losing your passengers if you try to Dodge an incoming attack, or make a course change at combat speeds.  

 

Edit to add:  There's a difference between riding a horse bareback, and riding one with full tack, saddle, etc.  Someone -- the rider or the steed -- can pay that, or -- depending on the genre and power level -- that can be handled as equipment for which points are not paid, but there's a mechanical difference there.  I think this difference is what the original poster is asking about.  

[Chris Goodwin]

For that matter, people can ride on the outside of vehicles as well, but they'd suffer the same drawbacks as someone holding onto Superman's back.  

 

What can we write on the sheet that says "character can ride inside in a seat with a seatbelt rather than clinging to the outside like a demented squirrel"?  That's what we're talking about.  

 

Edit:  It's assumed that Vehicles, the game-thing, have whatever that is, and that regular characters don't, but there's not a game-thing anywhere that specifically is "passenger space".  Whatever constitutes "passenger space", how can a regular character have it?

[Thia Halmades]

Oh my goodness, I don’t know if I missed this or if I’m ready to wander off back into the desert.

 

Guys guys guys. Listen listen listen.

 

Let’s remember that the GM & the player have to reach an agreement, and I would point out that Extra Limbs is a whopping 5 points. I see this going in this weird circle where we’re comparing a flying super to a multi-former. Far as I’m concerned, if you’re paying to become a car, then there’s no reason not to assume it’s... a freaking car. Even HERO doesn’t include “seat belts” in its builds.

 

This boils down to granularity and campaign function. I really think this one is over thinking the problem into madness. Which is fine. I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re all mad, here.