Powered Armor Multiform

[Enforcer84]

I've been mulling over several topics and I'm going to try something for my Hero A Day thread; doing an "Avengers" style team with the same point totals but different combat levels.

Anyway, another idea that I saw and was fond of was a Tony Stark style crime fighter with several different powered armor suits for different occasions.

It was suggested that a Multform might be used.

Here's the rub. Should the base character take the multiform power as a focus or OIHID.

Since the armors themselves would be foci shouldn't the main power not also get the break?

[Edsel]

I think that OIF would be just fine. You can take a multipower as an OIF and apply that limit to all the slots in it. I think the multiform armor is sort of analogous to that.

Besides he can only wear one set of armor at a time and he's going have to go back to his base to change it.

[Sketchpad]

I usually do this through a main power suit (emulated through 3 - 4 MPs) and a small gadget pool to allow for mods

[Zed-F]

I have a character with a OIF multiform armour that can be reconfigured on the fly. One thing I found useful for balancing purposes was to make sure that all forms had the same number of CP invested in the armour. This made sure that if the armour went missing, all forms would be equally disadvantaged. Everything that is not derived from the armour is identical in all forms.

 

In your case, if you can always go back to the lab and get another armour suit if your first one goes missing, I wouldn't think you could apply OIF to your multiform. I would be more tempted to use a VPP, only changed in certain circumstances, restricted choices for what to change to. I would not buy focus as a lim on the control cost, as that would mean that stealing one armour would mean you couldn't use any of them, but I would buy focus on the powers in the pool.

 

OTOH, if there is some critical component required to use the armour that you must have with you in order to activate another set of armour, e.g. the helmet is the same for all armour suits and has the interface that lets you use the armour, then if the suit you're wearing gets stolen you're out of luck and can't use any of them until you get it back. In this case, OIF on the multiform is appropriate. This would be similar to my character that I mentioned above, except you would also presumably have an Extra Time and limited power (only change in lab) on your multiform cost.