Big O

[tkdguy]

Does anyone have any idea how to write up Big O, both the mecha and the show's characters?

[BoneDaddy]

I've always thought of "the big O" as being the result of a powerful presence attack.

 

Sorry, I'm no help at all, but I couldn't resist.

[tkdguy]

Okay. No ideas so far. Anyone have ideas on how to build mecha in general?

[ShelleyCM]

Wow, that is SO not what I thought this thread was going to be about.

 

Sorry.

 

-Shelley

[Blue]

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

Wow, that is SO not what I thought this thread was going to be about.

 

Sorry.

 

-Shelley

That certainly would be "other genre", wouldn't it?

 

Can't find my copy of Robot Wars (an out-of-print Hero Games book from about a decade ago) or I'd tell ya how they do it. But I seem to recall they tweeked the system extensively for this.

[Snarf]

You should check out Star Hero or The Ultimate Vehicle. Basically, humanoid mecha are built just like other vehicles but have the extra limbs power.

 

In season 1, before Big O got a new power ever episode, these were the weapons I remember:

 

Grappling and Pulling Chain Thingies - Stretching with limitations, I think.

Laser Eyes - Bigass RKA.

Hidden Rockets - RKA with charges and autofire or maybe a big RKA with one charge and reduced penetration, to abstract all the missles into one attack, since he always uses them all at once.

Arm Shields - DCV or possibly Armor with limitations. Fifth Edition represents ordinary shields as DCV.

Arm Piston Blasty Things - RKA with armor piercing, extra time(?), and extra damage linked to a punch. Or maybe just a big HKA. He never actually hurt anyone with the those blasts that missed.

[Kaeto]

Don't forget his ultimate attack ...

The Crome Buster.

It came from his forehead

 

25 D 6 Rka A.P. , Penetrating, Gestures, Beam, 3 charges.

[Snarf]

3 charges? I only remember him doing one shot with that in the sea monster episode. Or are you talking about that thing in the last episode that blew a hole in the city?

 

Here's some more weapons from the second season:

He fired his grappling hooks off in every direction at once that one time - RKA with AOE: Radius.

Machine Guns in the hand - Autofire RKA in a multipower with his fist pistons. Come to think of it, he pretty much never uses two of his weapons at the same time. Everything could be in multipower.

 

[tkdguy]

Thanks for the weapons suggestions, Kaeto and Snarf. I have Star Hero. I'll look at it closely.

[Jhamin]

Rodger Smith is basically a skilled normal built on more points than most everyone else. A couple of the villians are as capable as him but that's about it. Good Ego, Good Int, Great Presence, Great Str (he can lift Dorthy). A couple of gadgets and points spend on a follower (Norman the uber-butler) and a vehicle (the bullet proof, gadget laden black caddie). Rodger has Dorthy as a DNPC, is hunted by the various villians in the show, and has psych limits centering on his own sense of free will and destiny. His refusal to wear any color other than black is odd, but probably doesn't rise to psych lim status. His refusal to use guns probably does. Why this doesn't prevent him from firing Big O's machine-cannon arms I'm not sure, but it doesn't.

That fact that he pilots Big O seems to work more like a perk than a vehicle. It is shown several times that the Megaduces seem to have their own intelligence and merely allow drivers to pilot them. Big O and Rodger are as effective as they are partially because Big O actually seems to want to be driven by him. Several other Megaduce pilots have been abandoned or even killed by a mecha that didn't like them. Schwarzwald and Big Duo also seemed to have this going, but he was a little too nuts to make it work for long.

 

Dorthy is a robot and does in fact seem to use the automaton rules. She has had arms and legs disabled by damage but seemed otherwise unhurt. She is strong, fast, and durable but seems to be passive to an extent that could probably be a psych limit. She weighs about 3-4 times what a woman of her size would, and this freqently funtions as a physical limit.

[Snarf]

I pretty much agree with what you said, except you didn't mention Roger's inhumanly high DEX. I've seen him pull off insane untrained physical feats, like jumping out of a 2'nd story window and in through the sunroof of his speeding car, without breaking a sweat.

 

Roger also has a couple frequently used gadgets. Off the top of my head, I can think of a skeleton key device and his watch, which has a grappling hook and remotely controls his vehicles. Speaking of vehicles, he has some other pretty substantial vehicles in addition to Big O. There's his very square car "Gryphon", which has camoflage skin, machine guns, and rockets, and Prairie Dog, the double-train that transports Big O through the subway system.

 

Dorothy has that headband thing which can be a CD reader or a flashlight.

 

I think one of the Adult Swim promos said Big O was 18 stories tall. You could use that as a base for determining how many levels of size all the robots need.