Iron Man type character questions

[Kzinbane]

I'm not current on Iron man, but several years ago Tony Stark had several different armor suits he could use. One was a stealth suit - black and hard to see with various stealthy attributes and without many of his offensive systems. He also had his standard suit, a space suit (literally) - designed for orbittal use and with various features in addition to and lacking from his standard. I think he may have had an underwater suit and an "anti-hulk" suit too at some point.

 

Here's the deal. How do you work out a charater that - like Stark wants to have several armor suits to choose from hanging in his closet (or whatever)? VPP seems too expensive and multiform - though it would work (Tony without armor is basic form, 4 different armored forms to choose).

 

Don'cha love complicated characters? what he wants is to have modular armor - right arm can take 4 different attachments, left arm 4, back pack has options, different locomotion options based on situation (jets, silent anti-gravity, underwater jets, etc). This seems perfect for VPP but again - VPP is costly!

 

Ideas?

[CrosshairCollie]

Multiform is the best way to do this, that I'm aware of. Buy the Multiform with the limitations 'takes a turn to change forms' (to represent putting on the OIFs) and something that means 'only where the armors are'. Possibly give each a small VPP Gadget Pool for attachments and the like, and you're good to go.

[JmOz]

A Second option (though I would go with the Multiform) is to build all four suits seperatly, figure out what abilities they share (all of Iron Man's could fly)

 

Then build a MP with four U slots that use combine slots to represent the different suits.

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I used a VPP for a character that had a basic suit with modules...worked pretty well...

[Kzinbane]

That's the one I'm leaning toward Collie - but there are so #*@*! many ways to do things in Hero (which is GOOD... mostly ) that I'm fishing for other ideas as well.

Thanks!

[Silbeg]

If the different equipments (left arm, right arm, etc) are not dependent on each other, you could do it with sets of multipowers...

 

Example (points not included)

 

Multipower (Left Arm) - OIHID (-1/4)

u) Repulsor Beams

u) HAs

u) Augmented STR (only when both Arms are configured with slot, -1/2)

u) etc...

 

Multipower (Right Arm) - OIHID

u) Repulsor Beams

u) HAs

u) Augmented STR (only when both Arms are configured with slot, -1/2)

u) etc.,

 

Multipower (Movement) - OIHID

u) Repulsor Beam Flight

u) Swimming

u) Tunneling

 

 

Note: with the flight, he could also just add the "useable underwater" adder (to the flight slot, or a separate flight slot),

 

Just an idea...

 

Silbeg...

[Guest innominatus]

Your description of "modular" armor (sorta like Iron Man circa Issue #300, I'm guessing?) sounds almost exactly like Dreadnought, an NPC "hero" (more on that in a minute) in my last campaign. He had some "standard" powers that I bought regularly; but for most his gear I bought it as a VPP with Zero Phase and No Roll to Change (+2 Advantage total), the OIF Limitation (-1/2), "Technology Only" (-1/4), and "Number & Level of Powers Limited by Hardpoints" (-1/4, although some may consider that a bit stingy).

 

Now here's how it works: Dreadnought has a set number of "hardpoints" where he can attach weapons or special functions to the armor. How many Active Points a particular power could have was determined by where the device was attached, as well as what Limitations could (or must) be included in the build for the power.

 

The chart looks something like this:

 

Location / No. of Powers / Active Points

Shoulder: 2 / 60 (Must be "Restrainable")

Forearms: 2 / 45

Palms: 2 / 45

Chestplate: 1 / 45

Boots: 2 / 20

Backpack: 1 / 30

Outer Coating: 1 / 10

"Utility Modules": 6 / 20

Helmet: 3 / 20

 

Now, the total cost of all these gadgets would far exceed the total points of his VPP; but his suit's power source only had enough energy (read: the character only had enough VPP points) so that at any one time he could have active 1 weapon (shoulder, gauntlet, or chestplate), 1 boot module, 1 helmet module, the outer coating, and either the backpack module or a couple of "utility" modules (usually belt-mounted). Of course, a certain amount of mixing-and-matching could occur (if he wasn't moving, Dreadnought could shift the VPP points to have 2 weapons active; or if he was just scanning an area, he could give up the weapon "slot" in favor of activating more of the helmet or utility modules); but he could only choose freely and instantly from among the devices were currently mounted on the armor; if he wanted to invent something else for a specific opponent, he'd have to go back to the lab and swap out some other gadget....

 

I thought it was a pretty cool way to handle it at the time, but what really made Dreadnought fun to inject into a scenario was the moral dilemma he created for the PC's. In his own way, Dreadnought was a stalwart and dedicated crimefighter; however, he was also a blatant and unabashedly bigoted, sexist, homophobic redneck whose only qualification for herodom was his willingness to follow any order without question (like Iron Man, Dreadnought was the corporate-sponsored mascot for a high-tech company). The heroes looked for any opportunity to thumb their noses at the bastard, so when a prototype military robot built by Dreadnought's corporation came to the heroes claiming it didn't want to be a killer and asking for asylum, the heroes blithely ignored Dreadnought's warnings and gave the robot safe passage to City Zero-One, a robots-only community that had been built on the ruins of Doctor Destroyer's abandoned base in the Antarctic. That decision would later cost the heroes (and the world) dearly; the robot turned out to be a state-of-the-art metahuman-hunter powerful enough to take out Mechanon singlehandedly. City Zero-One mass-produced the robot until there was one for every metahuman on the planet, villain AND hero, and sent them out to slaughter the entire metahuman population en masse....

 

It just goes to show that even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even the world's biggest @$$hole may have something to say that you need to hear....

[TheImperialKhan]

As it happens I did this with my character of Centurion back during the 90s. The GM just had me write the various armors up as though they were seperate characters. He didn't bother with having me buy each suit as long as the cost for each varient was less than the standard armor. They all had to be kept at one of two locations - Centurion's Armory at Strike Force Mansion Command Headquarters or the Armory under the Stevens Tower in Boston (Corp. HQ). I could only change armors at those locations.

 

What made it work out was the fact that I didn't abuse the idea and constantly switch from armor to armor but instead stuck with the standard varient A suit for the most part, only changing when there was a compelling and character driven reason to. Of course every one of those armors was stolen by Viper when one of there moles cracked the security codes to the Armory and Centurion had to track them down and destroy them but that just made for a good adventure.

[JmOz]

My guy had on his VPP: OIF/Only change at labs/Limited F/X (-1/4) IIRC

 

Like I said, this is a classic Multiform, however depending on how you want to do it the "Basic" suit should be on the base character, for balance reasons...

[Agent X]

I like the "evil buy suits as vehicles method and use multipowers" method.

[Guest Champsguy]

All the suits are gonna have Armor, right? They're all gonna have Flight, right?

 

So you buy the Powers common to all the suits, and then use a power pool (change only in lab) for the other stuff.

 

Example:

All of Hyperman's suits have 20/20 Armor, 15" of Flight x4 NCM, some Life Support, an End Reserve, and a few Enhanced Senses. Buy those OIF, just like you normally would.

 

Then buy a Multipower or a VPP with "Change only in lab" (-1/2) on it. If you size the MP or VPP correctly, you can fit in all the nifty devices that each suit of armor would have.

 

100 point Multipower

No more than 60 Active Points in one power (-1/4)

Only change slots in lab (-1/2)

m: 12D6 EB

m: +30" Flight

u: 4D6 RKA

u: Invisibility to Sight, Radar

u: 10/10 Force Field

u: 10/10 Force Wall

m: 10D6 Dispel vs Techology (+1/4)

 

Put anything else you want in the Multipower. When you go to the lab, you "change suits" into whatever type of armor you need for the occasion.

[Bengal]

My hero Hummingbird has eight different identities, each with its own costume and powers. His stats, skills, vehicle remain the same, and the other stuff changes. This is a Multiform, Only Changes In Lab Between Adventures (-1/2). Comes out to be quite cheap- I was even able to make his base form into a formidable adventuring type.

[Insaniac99]

when you have a ton of suits, I'd just use a VPP...

[Kzinbane]

Hmm

 

Heh, how big does a suit have to be before it's not a suit any more and is instead a vehicle? Mental powers work by line of sight on a suit (you could mind blast Iron man for example) but would they work on a mechwarrior if you could not see the operator? I degress...

 

In further talking with the player he's interested in a limited number of suits. His company is hoping to sell versions of them to the public and maybe the Military (I have a few plot seeds sprouting already...).

Easiest then would be to simply have a character sheet for each suit.

I like easy... I have little enough hair as it is without pulling more out trying to get a modular suit system put together with the (even after reading many times) confising VPP rules!