Power Armor 'themes'

[Stormspace]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Well' date=' by the point the series ended, Turtle could only move a bowling ball or so when outside the shell. When inside the shell, he still had an effective teke STR of about 100-110. (He lifted a battleship out of the water as a demonstration, and held it there for about a minute before he set it back down.)[/quote']

 

Yeah, that was because he felt exposed and couldn't concentrate. A perfect example of In Heroic ID powers.

 

The armor could just be an exoskeleton and not a full suit. Meaning, no armor, just str, dex and some other powers.

 

I had a character Called Magna a while back that was basically a powered armor version of Magneto, but way weaker. He welded an steel ball as a weapon by tossing it about with his magnetics. Included flight, magnetic telekinesis, etc.

 

So, take an effect and see what you can do with it.

[Hermit]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I actually did a Scorpion themed Powered Armor type

Gave him a tail (extra limb) with a nice multipower collection to reflect options of HKA, Drains, NND, and extra HA from that tail. Extra STR for grabbing only, clinging, extra leaping, and a real nifty Spatial Awareness 360, but only able to work on those on the same surface as he was, to reflect a Scorp's ability to feel vibrations around him.

 

Aquatic Powered Armor, already mentioned by someone else, is also great fun, and a real surprise for the Atlanteans when they get uppity. You can either take a name of some other technological device (Torpedo, etc) or go with another animal name (Steel Shark, etc).

 

Given the backstory you've given about the suit being made to 'help a lot of people' though, the EMT meets Fireman idea mentioned sounds pretty good. Maybe you should take into account HOW it was supposed to help people? It it was meant to help prevent building collapse, for example, then super strength is a given, but entangle would also work (to build temporary supports until further materials could be brought in). A suit for firefighting would be a lot different from one meant for under water rescue or retrieval. And so on... but of course, just fighting crime in itself can help a lot of people so more traditional abilities are still not out of the running.

[Snake Gandhi]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Maybe you should take into account HOW it was supposed to help people? It it was meant to help prevent building collapse, for example, then super strength is a given, but entangle would also work (to build temporary supports until further materials could be brought in). A suit for firefighting would be a lot different from one meant for under water rescue or retrieval. And so on... but of course, just fighting crime in itself can help a lot of people so more traditional abilities are still not out of the running.

I've put some thought into that. I'm thinking he was trying to build a superhero, but I'm not sure if he was planning of piloting it himself. Its just deciding what inspired him to make that superhero.

 

An idea inspired by the earlier THOR armor and v2 of the Ultimates, maybe he was a mythology buff and set out to make a technological version of his favorite ancient hero?

[Hermit]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

well, you could always go with the old Perseus Power Armor. It would have a cloaking device (Invisibility), a built in sword or sickle (HKA), Boot jets with wing designs scribed on the side (yay super swift flight), and maybe a forcefield to mimic the aegis or Athena's favor.

 

Heck, an armor named "B.E.O.W.U.L.F." might be cool, one meant to stop the Grendals of today etc etc.

[Snake Gandhi]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Ohh, Beowulf, hadn't thought of that one.

 

*goes to find his copy of Beowulf*

[Vanguard00]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Biologically

Engineered

Offensive

Weaponry,

Operational

Lifeform

Function

 

or

 

Biologically

Engineered

Offense,

Worldwide

Operational

Law enforcement

Factor

 

Or something. *shrug* Slow day at work.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

One of my personal faves in the battlesuit category was a magical suit of armor which granted special abilities to the wearer, along with a group of magical weapons (bought as a multipower). The whole thing was pretty much a Thor ripoff with a few bells and whistles since the whole thing could be summoned up with a magical incantation.

 

Matt "Always-happy-to-put-my-two-cents'-worth-in" Frisbee

[Snake Gandhi]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

One of my personal faves in the battlesuit category was a magical suit of armor which granted special abilities to the wearer, along with a group of magical weapons (bought as a multipower). The whole thing was pretty much a Thor ripoff with a few bells and whistles since the whole thing could be summoned up with a magical incantation.

 

Matt "Always-happy-to-put-my-two-cents'-worth-in" Frisbee

I've been working on a tech version of that for fun, a OIF harness with the stats and defenses and an OAF hammer for the crazy stuff.

[Vanguard00]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

One of my personal faves in the battlesuit category was a magical suit of armor which granted special abilities to the wearer, along with a group of magical weapons (bought as a multipower). The whole thing was pretty much a Thor ripoff with a few bells and whistles since the whole thing could be summoned up with a magical incantation.

 

Matt "Always-happy-to-put-my-two-cents'-worth-in" Frisbee

A friend of mine built a Ragman type armor that was magical in origin. He drew strength from it, actual Armor, and a variety of other powers, all based around this suit of clothing & cloak made from patches that came from...something. Demons or mages or something like that. I always thought it was a nice variation on the powered armor origin, but I've not played anything like it myself. I usually stick to the stereotype Iron Man/Stingray.

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I'd Cast my vote for the Cyclone of Robotec Fame. I played one for about a year, and boy was it a blast. I steered away from the Vehicle build, and simply made the Motorcycle part a slot in the Multi-power (Running w/OAF) I had 2 Multi-Powers one for the Armor/Bike & one for the Weapons. He worked out GREAT. Another kool aspect I added, that the GM loved & really ran with was that he only knew how to operated the suit... I had a DNPC who built & maintained the suit. the GM took that character and gave me many a headache, and tons of RPing goodness - it was a really fun run while it lasted.

 

Wildcat

 

 

Back when I first got into Champions, there was a guy in our group for a while

who ran the same sort of character. He wasn't in the group for long, though.

 

 

Major Tom

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

If I may?

 

The Argent Apostle of my group wears a suit of strange silver "life-metal" found in an alien wreck. It absorbs electricity and channels his own bio-electricity to blast people or heal them or stimulate them and improve DEX. It is also very receptive to brain-waves, giving the user a Mind Link power but a Vulnerability to Mental Powers.

 

Cold Steel is a vaguely Mr. Freeze villain who combines the traditional armor with traditional ice concepts. I got the idea after seeing the note in Dark Champions about strengthening the metal in guns by subjecting them to low temperatures. He ices himself over and gets Hardened defenses as a naked Advantage that Costs END (provided I can do that, I haven't actually checked the book and made him yet).

 

A currently unnamed armor hero (maybe Ironhide, after the Transformer) would have a suit built on steam principles with lots of nifty gas-venting pneumatic pumps and stuff. He'll be able to jump really high and use the pumps in the arms for mad crazy punches not unlike the Big O robot in the anime of the same name. As a bonus his "lower-tech" feel could make him a Golden Age or even Pulp character.

 

Speaking of Golden Age, check out the Knight Owl in the old Golden Age Champions book if you can. He's a rockin' clockwork armor man with a name I honestly wish I'd thought of first.

 

I like to tell myself these are all quite un-Iron-Manly.

 

 

I haven't gotten that far in my reading of Dark Champions yet, but I was

under the impression that subjecting metal to extremely low temperatures had

the effect of rendering it brittle and therefore susceptible to damage -- which

is what some researchers think happened to the Titanic, in that exposure

to the colder waters it was sailing through weakened the metal in the hull just

enough that when the ship was hit by the iceberg, the impact was enough to

rupture the hull.

 

 

Major Tom

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

You could also go with the Centurions option -- have a battlesuit/power

armor whose weapons systems are modular in nature. That way, the character

could tailor his or her offensive/defensive capabilities to fit the situation at hand.

 

It'd probably have to be designed as a Cosmic Power Pool though, to represent

the operator's ability to change weapons configuration as needed.

 

 

Major Tom

[Karmakaze]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I had a powered armor concept where the armor had a completely customizable surface. It had originally been meant as a stealth function, but the wearer used it to change the logo and color scheme to maintain a few identities.

[Adventus]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I like the 'stealth' suit. A mutant who need a powersuit to focus his power thru. The armor has no powers of its own. All of the powers come from the character. He just needs armor to use them. So if his armor gets stolen, it is completely useless. All the character would need would be a new armor to wear.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

There's also MACH # from Marvel. The personal Fighter Jet is his schtick.

[SuperKlaus]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I haven't gotten that far in my reading of Dark Champions yet, but I was

under the impression that subjecting metal to extremely low temperatures had

the effect of rendering it brittle and therefore susceptible to damage -- which

is what some researchers think happened to the Titanic, in that exposure

to the colder waters it was sailing through weakened the metal in the hull just

enough that when the ship was hit by the iceberg, the impact was enough to

rupture the hull.

 

 

Major Tom

 

Yeah, I kinda thought cold just made things brittle myself, but hey, I've got the idea in my head now. It'll be one of those "shh, it's a superhero world" things if any player asks, eh?

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

One of the ones that I came up was Dr. Incredible.

 

He was a scientist and although he worked with superheroes most of his life, he never developed any superpowers. His lab assistants all did (through accidents), his AI went rogue and escaped (to become a Mechanon-like supervillian). In the 60s, he was on the first team to go to Mars.

 

Finally, after working for several decades (and now somewhere in his 60 or 70s), he discovers a way of beaming power to a location without any serious transmission loss and thus makes sustainable forcefields and anti-gravitics a possibility. (Up to this point, they required a large generator to supply the power, and now it didn't need to be attached.)

 

His powers were Armor (Forcefield), RKA "Laser", and Superleap and Flight. Several parts of the suit did not have a focus, he could simply rig something up to give him these powers by tapping power into implanted crystals in his wrists.

[Kestrel]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I've built tons of powersuit characters over the years. Some I've even used the vehicle rules on.

 

1. Stingray. Pretty much a knock-off of the Marvel hero of the same name. Underwater movement powers, electrical attacks and such. Life support, of course.

 

2. Black Falcon. Wears a suit sort of like the Vulture's from Spiderman. The suit enhances his speed and strength. Gives him some enhanced senses. Flight and gliding of course. The main attack power is a killing attack defined as razor sharp wingtips that he uses to slash his targets as he does move-bys.

 

There are others, but this will do for now.

[steriaca]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Humm...try a power suit which looks like a hi-tech EGL girl.

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Humm...try a power suit which looks like a hi-tech EGL girl.

 

 

EGL girl? What's that?

 

 

Major Tom

[steriaca]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

EGL girl? What's that?

 

 

Major Tom

 

"Elegent Gothic Lolita". It is a fashion style from Japan which uses dark colors, and lots of lace and frills. Imagion a high tech armor which makes whoever wears it look like a high tech version of a porsolin doll, except that the skirt is above the knees.

[GoldenAge]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I jumped to the end so I'm sorry if this duplicates another's idea...

 

- One of my favorite armored characters was created by one of my players in the late 80's called DJINN.

 

Djinn's armor was based on multiple layers of hyper-condensed air. His armor was capable of flight, and had an awesome EB, that when fully deployed had double knock back, all based on the release of the compressed air.

 

The Armor was built in two parts. There was some basic Armor representing the complex polymer layers that contained the compressed air (10 rPD/10rED). In addition there was a Multipower built into the suit. It contained the Forced Air EBs, Flight and Force Field.

 

The Force Field represented the armors different levels of hardened air. The more power dumped into the armor's micro-compressors the harder the shell became.

 

The motif of the armor was a cool combination of modern technology and pre-Islamic Arabian mythology. I still use him as an NPC today.

[garou]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

Yeah' date=' I kinda thought cold just made things brittle myself, but hey, I've got the idea in my head now. It'll be one of those "shh, it's a superhero world" things if any player asks, eh?[/quote']

Found some information on it:

 

http://www.onecryo.com/onecryo/how.htm

 

http://www.cryogenicsofindiana.com/woodworking.htm

 

http://www.imperialweapons.com/shared/cryo.html

 

Given a quick read, it appears that steel, when exposed to severely cold temperatures (forget the icy waters of the north Atlantic, we're talking 300 or more below 0, Centigrade) as part of the quenching process results in steel which resists warpage, friction wear, etc. If you do it to a sword, it needs sharpening much less often.

 

Who says gaming never teaches you anything?

[Citizen Keen]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

I have always liked Power Armor characters whose Powered Armor's primary function is to amplify his/her minor, innate abilities. Psychic amplifiers, or whatever. Really, technology-amplified supers are my favorite. Spiderman, Wolverine, whomever. Love 'em.

 

cK

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Power Armor 'themes'

 

The most unique PA I ever GMed over was a character who's armor had, among other things, Energy Absorbtion and Growth. The Absorption fed the Growth power. Yep. The armor grew. It was years ago, and I don't remember the jsutification for it, but I recall that I allowed it for the novelty of it. Turned out to be not only interesting, but kept the other characters and NPCs guessing as to just who or what the Hero was.

 

Mobility suit - wearer is para- or quadraplegic. Without suit' date=' cannot move.[/quote']

 

Transformer suit - suitable only for larger suits' date=' consider a multiform - one form is normal powered armor, one is a robotic animal, one is a motorcycle-style vehicle, etc.[/quote']

 

One idea I've always wanted to model (but never got around to doing) was like this, inspired by the original Bubble Gum Crisis. Priss's suit in particular:

 

She had the powered armor, like all the rest of the team, but her motorcycle could 'transform' into a seperate robot of sorts. I wanted to do something like that, modeling the bike to become an exoskeletal 'booster' suit of sorts that allowed additional powers such as perhaps additional armor, STR, and movement powers.....

 

 

Man, now I think I'm gonna have to sit down and do that....