Giving The Children Rides, or, Howdah Do It?

[Chris Goodwin]

1 minute ago, Thia Halmades said:

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

 

"This" ... has never really gone away.   

[Chris Goodwin]

All of the nitpicking and overengineering aside, just remember that you pay for what you get, and you get what you pay for.  

 

The 10-point Protects Carried Items Adder for Resistant Protection does what it says on the tin, for Resistant Protection.  If I were the GM, I'd likely make that less of an Adder to R.P. and almost a Power of its own; and that would be what lets you wrap your R.P. around a passenger, but also your Life Support, Invisibility, Desolidification, and so on.  I'd call it "Passenger Space" and be done with it.  

[Thia Halmades]

Which brings up a whole separate point, which is this:

 

Are we debating whether its possible, as a special effect (good news, it is) or,

Are we debating the very specific how because it’s an ongoing power use? Or.

Are we debating how many “car traits” you inherited in your transform. Or.

Are NONE of these things fully capturing the question?

 

In the first scenario, I’m fine with extra limbs and strength — exactly as I said in the beginning. If we’re really going into the more granular space of “how do I build seat belts and life support?” That’s almost a separate question, and the answer is exceptionally well documented, with harness being a thing included as part of a vehicles SFX. If this is a question of “how many angels can dance on my butt while I fly?” Depends on the type of angel and the amount of junk in that trunk. 

 

I’m all for a healthy debate, but I do want to ensure we’re answering the same question. That’s kind of important. I mean. To me.

[dialNforNinja]

So that would effectively be a naked Advantage to make all of your defensive abilities apply to whatever you're carrying? I can see it, though not without the Extra Limbs (passenger seats) and possibly Clinging UBO (seat belts.) Whether to add Growth or Shrinking depends on whether you're turning into a car, an ATV, or a snowboard, naturally. Great discussion BTW, exactly what I was looking for... and exactly the debate between building everything in the finest detail and just waving a hand and saying "Y'all a car now!" that made me ask the question.

[Thia Halmades]

I believe what I said, was, “Mama, I got seats! (-0)” — much more specific than “Y’all a car now!”

 

Sir. *cough*

[Greywind]

I'd suggest looking at Madison Jeffries and the Box armor. Jeffries is/was Alpha Flight's resident technomorph that inherited Box after its creator Roger Bachs died. Jeffries used it as a robot, a suit of armor, and AF's version of the quinjet.

[Chris Goodwin]

21 minutes ago, dialNforNinja said:

So that would effectively be a naked Advantage to make all of your defensive abilities apply to whatever you're carrying? I can see it, though not without the Extra Limbs (passenger seats) and possibly Clinging UBO (seat belts.) 

 

I don't think the Clinging needs to be UBO.  (Mucus Man to Velcro Man:  "You don't stick to me."  Velcro Man:  "No, but you stick to me...")

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

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.  

 

 

Not disagreeing with what you're saying; simply seeing it going in a different direction:

 

 

At some point, this character / robot -- this Transformer-- paid for the ability to turn into a car.

 

In this campaign, how do cars work?

 

Does the GM require that cars have special powers to indicate that people can ride inside of the cars?

 

If so, fine.  Well, not fine, exactly.  Extremely nit picky and frivolous points wasting in my own opinion, but if it's his game, it's his rules.

 

However, if he _does_ not require that automobiles buy special "and people can ride in here" powers, but he _does_ require that characters who have bought the ability to be cars _also_ buy an additional power because people can ride in here, how is the original character "getting what he paid for?"  Or even not getting screwed?

 

 

And I have my own nit to pick:

 

If you seriously _must_ model seat belts and make someone build the power to install seat belts in a car,  Clinging is extremely wrong.  You want Entangle.  You can't escape Clinging with a Contortionist roll or a pen knife.

 

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

3 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

At some point, this character / robot -- this Transformer-- paid for the ability to turn into a car.

 

In this campaign, how do cars work?

 

Does the GM require that cars have special powers to indicate that people can ride inside of the cars?

 

If so, fine.  Well, not fine, exactly.  Extremely nit picky and frivolous points wasting in my own opinion, but if it's his game, it's his rules.

 

However, if he _does_ not require that automobiles buy special "and people can ride in here" powers, but he _does_ require that characters who have bought the ability to be cars _also_ buy an additional power because people can ride in here, how is the original character "getting what he paid for?"  Or even not getting screwed?

 

Vehicles (significant capital V Vehicles) are mechanically different from characters, a lot of which is already baked in.  Among other things, they have a Size stat (which provides STR and BODY for free, making those the only remaining Figured Characteristics in 6e!), and start with 2 rPD and 2 rED for free.  And their DEF can explicitly be bought with a "Does Not Protect Passengers" -1/2 Limitation.  Also, a Vehicle's DEF, plus other Defense Powers, and other powers like Life Support, do explicitly cover the vehicle and all of its occupants automatically.  

 

So... the ability for Vehicles to have passengers is built into the game mechanical construct that is the Vehicle.  

 

(I have a recollection of there being "everyvehicle" equipment such as seats, seat belts, headlights, and so on, but I can't find that verbiage in 6e, so I may be misremembering from earlier editions.)  

 

Vehicles also explicitly don't have END or REC, and have to buy an END Reserve or 0 END on Powers that cost END, other than their movement.  

 

So... Vehicles and characters have different sets of -- largely incompatible -- starting assumptions.  One of those being passenger space...

[dialNforNinja]

As for the "turns into a car" bit, that's Growth and some extra Running with OIAID (edit: and a Shapechange for the "normal car" disguise factor) since it's only a change in degree of how the character can act, not even the basic function of what they can do. Adding a few features to specify that passengers and cargo are carried securely in car form rather than hanging off the back like a baby koala, and what is a fair way to represent those for Turbo Teen compared to Teen Wolf who's just as strong, fast, and tough in his Alternate ID but does not have genuine textured Naugahyde, Super Sport trim level bucket seats to ride in and a moon-roof to keep the rain off is the point of the question. (Presumably, Teen Wolf spent those points on some Enhanced Senses and Claws.)

[Sveta8]

Hmm. For some reason, this keeps reminding me of the Cat Bus. Fleshy living thing with the intent to carry people. Granted, I'm also seeing a flesh car that grows arms in some demented Labyrinth Hand esk scene to keep people contained, so take of that what you will.

But, I do mainly question to what granularity are you attempting to replicate the people carrying. While you could create Seatbelts with Clinging or Entangle or what have you, do you need to? Is it something so complex that you are worried about crash test rules for carrying people? Obviously so if you are asking about it. However, my two cents is rather something else. If you want to carry people, I would first look at whatever Size you have. A Large Character could probably be carrying two people in their chest cavity if it opened up. Gruesome, and awesome mental imagry by the way, I'ma have to figure out how to have a living Cage Enemy sometime. Enormous Character Might carry 4, ect. In other words, first, check how many characters it feels reasonable could "fit" inside the vehicle character.

Then? Well, Extra Limbs, specifically for Grabbing is how I"d treat it. If you, the car, fail to hold onto them due to crash, letting go, ect, they are going to be let go and so on. Grab has pretty solid rules for how it restricts you and the others. If memory serves, you don't face any additional penalties for carrying more people, just if they are all trying to get away, or they exceed your carry capacity. Then you dont' need a special power for holding onto people, just that you... well... Hold them.

[Duke Bushido]

31 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Vehicles (significant capital V Vehicles) are mechanically different from characters, a lot of which is already baked in.  Among other things, they have a Size stat (which provides STR and BODY for free, making those the only remaining Figured Characteristics in 6e!), and start with 2 rPD and 2 rED for free.  And their DEF can explicitly be bought with a "Does Not Protect Passengers" -1/2 Limitation.  Also, a Vehicle's DEF, plus other Defense Powers, and other powers like Life Support, do explicitly cover the vehicle and all of its occupants automatically.  [TRUNCATED, BUT NOT IGNORED]

 

 

Then we keep backing down the infinite shapeshift rabbit hole.

 

Either he has turned into a car, or he hasn't.

 

But even then, if he hasn't, then what car bits does he not "just have," and why?

 

Because there's a points costs?

 

Don't forget the 248pt builds that can come out of a pair of headlights.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Seriously how about for a Vehicle character (a character sheet whose sfx is car) is to have XDM defined as passenger space. It has a -0 limitation of passenger space. So that the people in XDM take damage if the vehicle can pass along the damage. 

[Sveta8]

8 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Then we keep backing down the infinite shapeshift rabbit hole.

 

Either he has turned into a car, or he hasn't.

 

But even then, if he hasn't, then what car bits does he not "just have," and why?

 

Eh... That I would sorta toss into a whole other nightmarish question. Is turning into a car just the SFX of whatever Grabbing/Clinging/Ect Power they have, or are they actually Multiforming into a Car? If they are SFXing their power, then they just.... sorta shape into the car. Might be the whole "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" sorta car where you can tell it's a person, but there ya go. Sure they may have rearview mirrors, blinkers, and tires and so on, but I wouldn't think they'd get anything beyond ancilary stuff. Where you define that is where I consider pedantic.

If they are Multiforming? They get what abilities they decided to put into the Multiform. That's my take on it.

[Chris Goodwin]

29 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Then we keep backing down the infinite shapeshift rabbit hole.

 

Either he has turned into a car, or he hasn't.

 

But even then, if he hasn't, then what car bits does he not "just have," and why?

 

Because there's a points costs?

 

Don't forget the 248pt builds that can come out of a pair of headlights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm out of rep for the day...

 

Probably Multiform would be enough to transform (heh) from a person to a Vehicle, but what we don't have, and I'll assert is the point of the thread, is the ability to build a character that is both a person and a Vehicle, or to let a character buy Vehicle features.  I'm not even sure the Ultimate Vehicle covers that, though now that I think about it the Ultimate Metamorph might.

 

(Interestingly: Robot Warriors has an option for self aware robots and giant monsters using the mecha build rules.  Essentially, they can be built with INT and EGO scores, Skills, Psych Limits, etc.  It might be worth looking at that for guidance.  I also recommend James Jandebeur's Incomplete Character rules (I don't have a link, but it can be found with a Google search).

 

Part of what I'm looking at is the notion that a character who can carry other characters inside them, protect them with their DEF and Life Support, and so on, effectively has an ability that other characters don't.  I can think of ways to build them that don't even need overengineering Power builds, like that 10 point adder on Resistant Protection.  (Conversely, characters are assumed to have arms and hands, but Vehicles need to buy Extra Limbs if they want them...)

 

16 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Seriously how about for a Vehicle character (a character sheet whose sfx is car) is to have XDM defined as passenger space. It has a -0 limitation of passenger space. So that the people in XDM take damage if the vehicle can pass along the damage. 

 

The 10 point Adder for Resistant Protection is RAW, and doesn't require XDM.  🙂

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

but what we don't have, and I'll assert is the point of the thread, is the ability to build a character that is both a person and a Vehicle, or to let a character buy Vehicle features. 

 

Well, we _sort of_ do....

 

All vehicle features can be expressed in terms of Characteristics and Powers, because the system _is_ that generic.  It's the very fact that this can be done that lead to our developing vehicle rules before the "official" ones were published, and why to this day we still don't use the published rules: the base game system works fine as-is for doing that.

 

Or rather, we _did_ have rules for it.  The 6e changes to Growth kind of kinked it up....

 

 

Going from the oft-lamented "but just how much room is inside my starship" comments about the HERO system vehicle rules:

 

Model your vehicular size not so much on "how many hexes it fills" but in terms of Growth.  Determine a starting point (we use "man-sized," which works as-is for building motorcycles).  Using older versions of Growth, five points doubled your mass.  (Yeah; the argument can be made that DI is important to get that "steel is heavy" thing going on, but suppose you want to build a super-science motorcycle out of techno-plastics your genius super-scientist invented?  Anyway, before I digress, let's get back into it:

 

We know that the average adult human being has a volume of about 16.5 US gallons, or 16000 cubic centimeters.  We know that to double the volume without changing the density we need to double the size, which one five-point level of Growth used to let us do.  We also know the square-cube law, etc, so we know that a man-sized thing that is "twice as large," in this case, twice as tall, wide, and deep, has eight times the volume.  Using a quick-and-dirty "characters are 2 meters tall (hey: they're action heroes!  They should be a bit taller than other people.    ) we can decide that a vehicle after three five-point levels of Growth (or, for simplicity, one fifteen-point level) standing on its rear bumper is two shoulder-lengths wide (for simplicity, let's call this a meter.  It's more along the order of 4'; or 4 and a smattering of inches, but let's just call it a meter), half a meter thick (closer to 2 feet, but let's just round a bit for this discussion, as it's really late on my longitudinal strip of the planet), and four meters "tall."   Lay it down on it's wheels and we have a vehicle that is just a bit over 13 feet long, 4 feet wide, and two feet tall (which, for quick-and-dirty, let-me-get-to-bed style math, we're going to call 4m x 1m x 1m, or four cubit meters.

 

That doesn't seem tall enough: our tall heroes would like some more headroom.  One more 5pt level of Growth doubles that: it's now 4m x 1mx2m high.  Double it again (five more points) and it's 4m x 2m x 2m, or, to get a bit more accurate from the baseline of "man-sized," , it's 13' 2" x 44" x 88" tall.  But let's get to the volume:

 

With out simplification that a man-sized object is 2 meters by 1 meter by half a meter, we are stipulating that a man-sized object has a volume of 1 cubic meter.  Yes; it's a bit bigger than the 1.6 we know to be factual, but if you want to get specific, then by all means use the real average size of people and just do the same thing. I'm in a hurry, so I rounded a bit.  I also wanted to practice thinking in metric: a couple of decades of disuse have made me rusty. 

 

So with 20 points of every-edition-except-6 style Growth, we have built a car that is 16 cubic meters in volume.  We could toss in five more points of growth to make it anywhere from 4m x 2m x 2.000000000001m up to 4m x 2m x 4m, or a potential volume anywhere from just a tiny hair about 16 cubic meters up to 32 cubic meters.  But let's suppose I talk to the GM, and he lets me spend one single extra point on growth to bump it up to 17 cubic meters.

 

Of course, I can rearrange those dimensions anyway I want, so long as I don't mess with the total volume, right?

 

So I make it 5.1308m long, 1.9304 meters wide, and 1.7272 meters tall, for a total of 15.9565 (rounded) cubic meters,

 

 

Just like my wife's car.

 

It's a Ford Flex.

 

It seats eight.

 

And no one gets stuck to the seat belts.

 

But then the GM realizes that those dimensions also include the dead air space over the hood and in front of the windshield, which is actually a bit _more_ than a cubic meter, and says "tell you what, Duke.  Save that last point.  Just spend the the 20pts on your size group, and you've got room for eight passengers, and engine, and a staggering amount of groceries, too.

 

 

 

But it get's even wonkier!

 

 

Because the HERO System _needs_ SFX to fully define the powers, the vehicle rules _as written_ don't actually tell you just how much room is inside the vehicle.  When you get right down to it, they _can't_!  You buy movement for your vehicle because you want it to move, but you don't actually _have_ to put an engine in it!  You can simply say "it just does, okay?" and it's completely within the rules! 

Honestly, this is why so much of my vehicle building in Heroic-level stuff is done in FFS before I ever touch the HERO system, even my own house rules for vehicle building.  Honestly, it's why Robot Warriors had to straight up _dictate_ that certain things took up specific amounts of mass: there is nothing anywhere else in the entire system that tells you that.  You want a twenty-four cylinder in-line diesel-fueled ship's engine powering your Flex?  Well, you're going to have a make it a lot longer, and sit on the roof---   

 

except that you don't have to, because the vehicle rules don't specify the amount of volume anything takes up!  That giant beast of a powerplant doesn't have to take up any more room than a triple-A battery....  it could be mounted in an entirely different dimension and just "beam" the horsepower straight to the wheels!

 

The upshot of that, of course, is that I can put the entire 16 cubic meters of my wife's Flex toward passenger space: I can put three more people in the way, way back part of the car, and another two under the hood!

 

And there's the problem with over-building, over-tinkering, and over-thinking trying to build every little thing with the game components:  eventually you end up stuck to your seatbelts until your car decides to turn you loose, and with flashlights that show you whatever it is that the flashlight wants you to see, because the rules for Images dictate that the person using the power is in charge of the image created.  (Fortunately for us, flashlights have _no_ imagination, but then again, you'd have to buy an EGO: 0 stat to demonstrate that "properly," I suppose.

 

 

It's also why no one really knows how big their starship is.

 

 

Anyway, you'll have to back up an edition to utilize this idea (assuming your not already familiar with anything pre-6) because of the changes to Growth going into 6e.  At the moment, all I can tell you about it in 6e is how tall it is and that it doesn't qualify for an area of effect (in spite of covering several hexes, should you decide to throw it)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

The 10 point Adder for Resistant Protection is RAW, and doesn't require XDM.  🙂

Fair enough but it doesn’t allow for bulk. By that I mean technically the characters being carried are external to the vehicle character. With XDM I’m suggesting it be used to represent internal space of said Vehicle character. Now I’ll readily admit that this is nitpicking. I offered it as a possible solution.

[Greywind]

If the character converts to a vehicle, then the character uses the vehicle record sheet along with the attendant rules for vehicles.

[dialNforNinja]

4 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Probably Multiform would be enough to transform (heh) from a person to a Vehicle

No, actually, or at least not in Champions Complete. It specifically says that you cannot have a Vehicle (or Base, Computer, etc.) as an alternate form, only a Character compliant with the normal rules and campaign point caps/RoX (though the latter is worded in such a very confusing way that I had to have someone here explain.) I don't have the 6e corebooks or FREd, but checking the BBB the wording is not so direct in 4th edition, it just says "the new form should be built with the same guidelines as the base character," which I take to mean "built as a character rather than a vehicle" as well.

 

Hunting around the internet for a couple hours I only found one person's collection of Transformers character stats (it's here if you're curious, also featuring many DC, Marvel, & indie comics characters) all 4th Ed and using a Shapeshift with linked Movement powers rather than Multiform, and a couple of "hot to Transformers in 5th Ed" threads tha tpretty much advised the same thing, sicne the character's stats, skills, psych lims, etc. don't change, and the physical folding and twisting is not relevant to game mechanics when they're really just changing movement style and sometimes the availability of their weapons.

 

As an aside, one of the bear-themed semi-OC characters on that linked page is named Ursanal, and another, a platypus with chainsaw bill and tail, is Monoscream. If just those don't make you hit the link, I don't know what else possibly could.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, dialNforNinja said:

No, actually, or at least not in Champions Complete. It specifically says that you cannot have a Vehicle (or Base, Computer, etc.) as an alternate form, only a Character compliant with the normal rules and campaign point caps/RoX (though the latter is worded in such a very confusing way that I had to have someone here explain.) 

Here the intent is that you can’t have a character sheet Multiform into a vehicle character sheet. You can have a character Multiform into another that is built with the sfx of car though.

[dialNforNinja]

Well yeah, that's what we've been talking about. I guess there's no reason you couldn't prepare a Vehicle sheet for the character's alt mode if that's what you mean, though it doesn't seem like there'd really be any advantage to doing so when you'd still need the normal character sheet at the table anyway. Maybe for the GM who has an NPC transformer secretly acting as the party Supermobile and letting a PC drive to keep their cover, i guess?

 

I suppose you could also treat it like a Summoned Vehicle, but that seems to be adding even more complexity for again no real gain.

[Grailknight]

How about just Barrier with Mobile and No Range?  Seems to handle everything, no falling out, protects those inside and can have Life Support UBO as needed.

 

[Duke Bushido]

12 hours ago, dialNforNinja said:

 It specifically says that you cannot have a Vehicle (or Base, Computer, etc.) as an alternate form, 

 

This sort of touches on where I wanted to go next, before bowing out, because we are bumping the same division we have been bumping the past decade or possibly longer. 

 

Do the rules say you can't have a car as a primary form? 

 

If the HS volume 1 and 2 are "the" rules, and all else optional, as some have suggested on the boards in the past, what is the relevance of a rule outside those books? 

 

Must I own Champions Complete in addition to the other books to ensure my characters are legal with...  Well, for lack of a better term, "the rules"? 

 

And if CC is now mandatory, then it follows that AP 1&2 and all the other blue-backs are at least as mandatory, so do we crawl into the Ultimates or wait for one that specifically states they, too, are to correct way to do X? 

 

To the OP:

 

Other that build suggestions, I don't think you're going to get anything more out of this thread.  Frankly, I hope I am wrong, but we have come to that point where we bump into the division of "people who need permission"  and "people who wait for correction." 

 

The earliest rules did  not specify that we could build fantasy games or recreate Traveller with the same rules, but a lot of us did.  Also, a lot of us didn't. 

 

Then they published rules for doing that, and for a lot of folks, _that_ was when it became okay to do that. 

 

The earliest rules didn't specify that we could be aliens and robots and demons and extradimensional creatures,  but we did it.   There were allusions to things that might have suggested robots (foci and the like), and sample characters that were robots and cyborgs and aliens... 

 

I don't specifically remember demons or werewolves, but I am sure quite a few of us did it. 

 

Modern rules specify these things, and for my tastes, the over-specify to point that becomes detrimental to creativity. 

 

So here is where we are stuck:

 

One side of this argument boils down to "the rules don't say you can be hollow." 

 

 

The other side sums up as "they don't say you can't be hollow, either." 

 

My suggestion is to pick the side that gives you the level of creative freedom with which you are the most comfortable, and go from there. 

Have fun with it.  It _is_ a game, after all.   

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

All vehicle features can be expressed in terms of Characteristics and Powers, because the system _is_ that generic.  It's the very fact that this can be done that lead to our developing vehicle rules before the "official" ones were published, and why to this day we still don't use the published rules: the base game system works fine as-is for doing that.

 

Or rather, we _did_ have rules for it.  The 6e changes to Growth kind of kinked it up....

 

 

We have a Size Characteristic for Vehicles, which -- maybe -- works slightly better than Growth, either Then or Now.  Minor quibble that doesn't change the rest of your point though. 

  

39 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

One side of this argument boils down to "the rules don't say you can be hollow." 

 

 

The other side sums up as "they don't say you can't be hollow, either." 

 

My point is, you're either one or the other; if you can be both, that's a utility that ought to cost points.  Humans can't -- typically and routinely at least -- carry other humans around inside them, unless they buy the power to do so (or unless they're pregnant; I know someone will go there).  The same way that Vehicles can't pick weapons up and use them, unless they buy the power to do so; they can't even function autonomously, again unless they buy the power to do so.  Or the same way that Vehicles' DEF, Life Support, Radio Hearing, Flash Defense, and probably other Powers I'm not thinking of, automatically work for everyone inside the Vehicle, in a way a person would need to pay points to have it do.  (I've pointed out a RAW way for Resistant DEF to do so, and suggested it might work for other Powers.)  

 

I may even be nitpicking further than the original poster in the thread; I think @dialNforNinja was asking about what you'd use to securely carry someone, whether inside (like a Vehicle) or outside (like a saddle or a howdah).  I haven't been trying to nitpick or be obstinate; I'm honestly trying to figure out what the difference is between, for instance, someone hanging on Superman's back, and someone being carried in a safety sling like one of those tandem skydive harnesses.  

 

I'm looking at the difference between two cases, trying to figure out if there's a difference there; the presence of the discussion seems to indicate there is one, and I think it's worth trying to figure out if as a general case there's something more to it than SFX.  

 

[Chris Goodwin]

13 hours ago, dialNforNinja said:

No, actually, or at least not in Champions Complete. It specifically says that you cannot have a Vehicle (or Base, Computer, etc.) as an alternate form, only a Character compliant with the normal rules and campaign point caps/RoX (though the latter is worded in such a very confusing way that I had to have someone here explain.) I don't have the 6e corebooks or FREd, but checking the BBB the wording is not so direct in 4th edition, it just says "the new form should be built with the same guidelines as the base character," which I take to mean "built as a character rather than a vehicle" as well.

 

One of my bedrock principles of Hero gaming is that if you want your character to be able to do something, the rules shouldn't get in the way of you being able to do it.  (Which means that as a GM, I might not want you to be able to do it in my campaign X, but it might be perfectly fine in my campaign Y.)  

If you want to Multiform into a Vehicle, I would say IMGYC.  (In My Game You Can.)  

 

Back in 3e Champions, I had a shapeshifter character using a VPP that I eventually wrote up a number of forms for.  One of those forms was a powered armor suit, with the idea that if one of my teammates was unconscious I could carry them around inside me.  I'm pretty sure the GM had me take Usable On Others on my Armor, Life Support, and whatever Enhanced Senses I was using.  To me that made sense, and was extra utility that costs points.  

 

I'm not saying I'm objectively correct, that my way is the One True Way.  But it's something that was certainly thought of and allowed for, since more or less the beginning.