Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

[Lucius]

Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Interestingly enough, I'm playing a character with a battlesuit currently.

 

Just last night I noticed that out of 350 pts, I spent over 100 just on skills, and that's not counting 30 pts in martial arts and a couple of talents/perks. And a boken that he can use either in Hero ID or secret ID that's obviously not part of the armor.

 

The suit gives him a range of abilities, but almost all of them are very cheap.

The most expensive, the Life Support power, totals 18 real pts and only 36 active in a campaign where the max active pts is 60.

 

Ah, here it is. The armor totals 73 real pts, as I calculated it - and I think that includes an onboard computer. Then there's a 25 pt "gadget pool" that can include add-ons.

 

The armor is Only In Hero ID. The Gadget pool has a focus limitation, so anything from there that is "bolted on" to the armor has to fit outside and is more vulnerable. Which makes sense.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Where did the palindromedary go?

[Marketeer]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

I view the Battlesuit issue in the same light as the OIHID issue and the Focus issue: that the big concern is keeping tabs on the overall efficiency and scope of the character relative to the rest of the group.

 

Any broad-ranging limitation upon powers bears scrutiny, not just for mechanical balance but because I don't want one player/character taking a disproportionate part of the overall campaign spotlight.

 

For example, an OIHID character can typically earn 30-50 points in savings. Even if that goes into, say, mental attributes and skills, this makes the character much more broadly applicable and useful than an equivalent character without the limitation.

 

Does that make the character unreasonable or abusive? No, not at all.

 

But on the other hand, 40 points or so of savings is a lot. For example, taken as Disadvantages, that would be along the lines of "Hunted by Menton on a 14-"; I wouldn't allow that disadvantage lightly, either.

 

The issue for me in regard to OIHID, OIF, and so on is that often, these Limitations are totally appropriate in terms of character concept, it's just that their impact upon overall game tone is significant. I wouldn't disallow them out of hand, but I would certainly monitor them closely.

[Marketeer]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

A solution that I have found for Battlesuits, and balancing in general, is a general principle of "sliding generosity":

 

Within a given group of players/characters, I am more generous with cost-breaks or "efficient" builds and constructs if they are the first time a character has them. Conversely, a character with a lot of discounts, particularly borderline ones, is scrutinized much more carefully.

 

For example, I am generally fairly lenient about ECs, and what can be squeezed into them. On a character who already has OIHID or OIF, however, I tend to be a little more discerning. Naturally, the OIF/OIHIDer has actually taken a limitation that will come up in game play, I won't offset that too much by giving everyone else free-and-clear ECs. The principle is more one of equal scrutiny rather than "equal breaks".

 

 

By making sure the players as a group are given equal opportunity to take appropriate limitations and discounts, I keep the group as a whole on par with each other, and that makes it easier to write and pace sessions so that everyone is involved and has a good time.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Does anyone still allow OIF on battlesuits?

I have in the past. But after reading this thread, I'm considering changing to OIHID, or maybe using the Battlesuit Lim aylwin13 posted. [Rep for that, BTW!]

[aylwin13]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Thanks for the Rep, bdh. I wish I could take credit for the limitation, but the folks at Global Guardians get that credit. I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention here. I think its a great way to model 'suits, and the way they are damaged.

[Peregrine]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

I look at battlesuits from a different perspective. Given that a character who has one will inevitably and reasonably be caught without it (whether OIF, OIHID, or some Battlesuit limitation), is it practical to build a character who is not helpless without it, but who is comparable to the other PCs with it? I'm still undecided, but given that design criteria, it's tough to meet the requirements.

[assault]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

is it practical to build a character who is not helpless without it' date=' but who is comparable to the other PCs with it? [/quote']

 

For me, in this situation, "comparable" means "a 200 point character", assuming 350 points total.

 

That is, the battle suit would cost about 150 points.

 

That would leave plenty of points for skills, characteristics, perks & stuff.

[Terrapin]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

I look at battlesuits from a different perspective. Given that a character who has one will inevitably and reasonably be caught without it (whether OIF' date=' OIHID, or some Battlesuit limitation), is it practical to build a character who is not helpless without it, but who is comparable to the other PCs with it? I'm still undecided, but given that design criteria, it's tough to meet the requirements.[/quote']

 

I think that the wrong way to go about things is to use the point savings to have a bigger blast, more multipower slots, stronger defenses and faster movement than the PCs who bought their powers without Focus lims. This creates characters who overshadow their teammates while in the suit, but are useless without it.

 

Better results are yielded if the designing player aims to be roughly as combat-capable inside the suit as the other PCs, then takes the points saved by making eveything OIF and spends at least half of them on things that will enhance out-of suit utility.

 

Players who design OIF-based heroes should think about handling two situations:

 

First, what will the character be able to do in non-combat situations where it would be inappropriate to be walking around in a battlesuit? This isn't terribly different from the need for any PC to have non-combat abilities.

 

Second, what will the character be able to do in a fight if he is out of his suit? Obviously, he probably won't be able to go toe-to-toe with a supervillain, but he should at least have some way of staying alive.

 

Most of the workable designs I've seen follow one of four general paths: the Powered Geek, the Powered Agent, the Powered Kid or the Powered Hybrid.

 

The Powered Geek designed and built his own suit. He is probably rich, since a) it takes money to build a battlesuit and his invention skills allow him to make a lot of money in his Secret ID, and having money can easily justify having social clout and connections - it's the player's choice whether to make him a playboy or a recluse. He should have a battery of KS/SSs, many of the high-tech General Skills, an appropriate form of Analyze and possibly a personal Vehicle or Computer. Some of his lesser powers might be defined as a small Gadget Pool which usually constitutes modular accessories that attach to the suit, but could be used as "utility belt" items in situations where he has to go unsuited. In a non-combat, low-profile scenario, he can employ brains and money, which are generally pretty useful. If his suit is taken away, destroyed, damaged or whatnot, the good news is that he can repair or replace it given time and materials. In the meantime (say, if he is captured and needs to fight his way out of the VIPER Nest in just his skivvies), his combat role will be strictly supportive; he'll need to make his knowledge an asset to his teammates by making Analyze and KS: Supervillain rolls and saying, "Hmm, that suit design looks poorly insulated...hey Ironclad, throw him into the fountain!" or some such. He's also the natural choice for performing necessary noncombat tasks during the fight, such as disabling a Doomsday Device while the other heroes fend off the bad guys.

 

The Powered Agent was issued his equipment; he usually knows someone who can repair or modify it, but mainly he just uses the thing. He has a variety of military and/or espionage skills that might include means of gathering information, maintaining a cover identity, and using a variety of weapons and vehicles. He probably has some martial arts training; the defensive maneuvers (Martial Block/Dodge/Escape) will be useful both in and out of the suit, while the attacks won't be of much use against supervillains, but should allow him to take down goons handily. He typically has decent CON and BODY, can resist basic interrogation, and has a few escape skills. His natural DEX is better than the typical Powered Geek's. He should have Tactics and Teamwork (which, again, will be just as useful inside the suit as out), and he should invest a few points in broader-based skill levels instead of just buying 3-point Battlesuit Weapons MultipowerCSLs. He can have a go at disarming Focus-based villains, slapping a Choke Hold on a spell-reciting evil mystic, commandeering a vehicle (even a common civilian vehicle can be an effective weapon when driven at high speed) or punching out a VIPER Heavy Weapons Agent and using his BFG-9000 against the opposition. He may have the Paramedic skill, which can often prove handy in emergencies. In a pinch, he can always apply a grab or throw which temporarily reduces a villain's DCV.

 

The Powered Kid isn't necessarily a thirteen-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who was given a battlesuit by enigmatic aliens because she is the Chosen One and it is her destiny to fight evil; the term can apply to anybody who unexpectedly got hold of a powerful Focus. Child, dilettante, rock star, mild-mannered reporter, whatever...the Kid doesn't need to spend a pile of points to explain having the suit. On the flip side, the GM may forbid the Kid from starting with any suit-related skills or skill levels. Not being an intensively trained, totally focused hero usually means that the Kid has better social skills and people-knowledge than many supers, and can mingle readily among normals in incognito missions. In a fight outside the suit, the kid doesn't have many advantages, but all is not lost. For one thing, the Kid is usually so unimpressive outside the suit that villains may not take much notice. Also, it is very common for heroes with serendipitous origins to have high amounts of Luck, and being surrounded by bad guys without one's battlesuit is definitely an appropriate time for Luck to intervene. Finally, any player who wants to play a Powered Kid probably doesn't feel the need to be an utter bad!!! in every scene; if the player doesn't mind spending the occasional fight scene screaming for help while attempting to skateboard out of reach of the bad guys, let that be the fairly paid price of the -1/2 limitation.

 

Finally, the Powered Hybrid is just a 'multi-classed' hero who essentially bought two or more separate powers sets, brought the cost down with Limitations, but will rarely be utterly powerless because no one circumstance can turn off all his powers. The "Mentalist in a Battlesuit" is an especially common example of this. A typical formula might be: 150-point hero with 150 active points of powers bought OIF and 150 points of other powers bought with a different -1/2 lim. In short, powersuiting isn't the only thing he does, so the benefits and weaknesses are correspondingly reduced.

[Kristopher]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

One of the NPCs I designed with power armor was a "sub-superheroic" engineer and martial-arts student who put together a team to build a powersuit after her superhero husband was put out of action (can't remember at the moment if he died or not, it's been about 4 years since I built her). She could already kick the butt of just about any "normal", but needed the powersuit to bring her up to superhuman levels.

 

OIHID and martial arts -- two great tastes that taste great together.

 

 

EDIT: Someone said, upon seeing her, "Oh, you read Alpha Flight?" Um...no. Hey, I had an idea on my own. It happens.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

For Focus based Power Armor it depends on how rigorously the GM applies the lost powers due to body exceeding DEF rule, and how much of the OIHID aspect inherent to Power Armor as Full Body Focus the GM plays up.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Terrapin again.

This thread has given me quite a bit to think about. One of the PCs in my group has built a power armor character. While I don't think he's overpowered compared to the other PCs, he is pretty-much useless outside his armor. We may be revisiting that concept. Thanks all around!

[Lucius]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

With a name like Terrapin, you must be the expert on armor!

 

Powered Agent

 

Powered Hybrid .

 

 

I think my current character fits one or maybe both of those two – more like a powered agent I think.

 

OIHID and martial arts -- two great tastes that taste great together.

 

Given the character I recently designed, I had to laugh at this!

 

A suite of OHID powers, and 30 pts in martial arts.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Considering buying barding for the palindromedary…

[OddHat]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

One of the most interesting characters in my longest running campaign was essentially a Navy Seal with a battlesuit and a big gun. Out of his armor he was able to handle agents and had solid non-combat skills, in his armor he was a very effective Super. Every so often he'd get caught without the armor and have to find someplace to change or, when t was stolen, recover it, and once in a while the armor or gun would get damaged in combat. Worked very well. I never had another player complain that he was "too powerful" compared to the rest of the team.

[Zed-F]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Good summary, Terrapin.

 

I agree, any powersuit character should be competent at a heroic level (minimum) outside the suit. How exactly you define 'competent at a heroic level outside the suit' will vary from character to character, but in general I try to think of a scenario where the team is captured and has to fight/sneak its way out of a tight spot with all foci and so forth removed until such time as they can recover their gear. I actually like the hybrid of 2 powersets approach a great deal and often use it for 350-point characters.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

I suppose you could build your character with Multiform, requiring extra time to change (shifting in and out of the suit). This would require some explanation for abilities that vanish when you don the suit.

 

Maybe your suit is not adequately articulated for precise moves like Acrobatics and Martial Arts to be viable. Maybe your high DEX/SPD is too much for the servos to keep pace (Who said "Z'lf"?). Perhaps your powers work OK but mess up the suit (there's no place for your EB to exit; if you turn desolid, the suit falls off).

[incrdbil]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Rule of thumb: YOu shoudl be able to challenge a standard agent, if just at hth, or have enough int based skills to still be an asset. (Maybe you cant go toe to toe, but you can hack into systems, override security, hot wire a robot/vehicle etc).

[gojira]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

I think I'd require at least HtH with an agent, plus a little more (Skills, some powers or gadgets). That's the standard I set for my own characters.

 

A default for me is Iron Guy who is also an ex-PRIMUS agent. I.e., he's got cyberline drugs which make him fast, and he's got skills, but not much else. The suit makes him super, but at speed 4 or 5 he can still beat an agent without too much trouble. Throw in a small gadet pool and he's ok.

 

 

Just curious, I've never run this past a GM before because I just came up with it recently. Take ol' Iron Guy there, with an OIHID battle suit. Assume he practically sleeps in the thing, i.e., he's NEVER with out the suit if he can help it. What would you give him as a lim for Only NOT In Hero ID. Example: martial arts he can only use at his default STR 10 (doesn't work with the suit on)?

[Wanderer]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

In addition to the excellent summary by Terrapin, I should mention there is another battlesuit archetype as well: the Nanotech Marvel. This character type (which may resemble in all other respects any of the other Terrapin Archetypes, but most typically is a Powered Geek or Powered Kid) has the so-called battle suit as an integral part of his/her being, not a "dress", e.g. a nanotech coverage they summon out of their blood, or a mystical armor they call from an extredimensional pocket with a thought, or an array of self-repairing cyborg enhancements. While these characters (of whom the most typical example is Authority's Engineer) share with more classical Iron Man types the extremely flexible SFX justifying a very broad array of powers, they do not allow for a Focus limitation, and only in some cases for OIHID as well. Sometimes, they might justify a -1/4 Not In Lim, specifing a relatively rare condition that disables their powers (such as, ironically, the infamous Not In Intense Magnetic Fields), but most commonly the most they can aim for is some SFX-related Vulnerability and/or Susceptibility.

 

If one wants the extensive broad SFX "laundry list" power-picking freedom of battlesuit characters, but doesn't want to bother with the issues of OIF and OIHID as well, IMO defining the suit as a nanotech technobiological hybrid is a very good solution.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

My first Champions character Ranger, way back in '82 - '86, was a powered armor character. He was effective, but he was also the slowest and least dexterous PC on the team.

 

We've also got one in our current MidGuard campaign, Mentor's Cyberknight. Again, an effective character but in no way unbalanced with regard to the other PCs. He's got the senses, different attacks, and good defenses but I'd give him only 2:3 odds he could beat our team brick whose powers are inate. And if she actually gets her hands on him his odds plummet sharply since she's not only much stronger but has better defenses and a higher CON and DEX. Cyberknight would also probably come off second best against our team's numero uno EB Thunderbird, who also does not use foci or a PA. What the armor provides is tactical flexibility; Cyberknight is our team's utility character. He can do things most of the specialists can do; he just doesn't do them as well.

 

The trick is to be reasonable about what Powers and Characteristics can be put in the PA. That requires some cooperation between the player and GM when designing the PA character; I don't think it is reasonable for PA to encompass any desired ability any more than EC or MP will. It's an sfx, and needs to be judged accordingly.

 

One of the things I like best about PA characters as a GM is that they give you a built-in handle to mess with the character because of the sfx. In our game yesterday, our hero team MidGuard was about to enter an alien planet's atmosphere when they were hit with an attack that absorbed all energy. The ship instantly lost all power and went ballistic, the PC's all blacked out for a second, and Cyberknight's armor went totally dead. All the other (non-PA) characters simply reactivated their powers; Cyberknight had to wait for an entire minute before his cold-fusion reactor began cranking out enough juice to power up his armor again. And when you're falling from space at Mach 15 in a tumbling spacecraft, 60 seconds without power is a looooooong time.

[Jaxom]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Just curious' date=' I've never run this past a GM before because I just came up with it recently. Take ol' Iron Guy there, with an OIHID battle suit. Assume he practically sleeps in the thing, i.e., he's NEVER with out the suit if he can help it. What would you give him as a lim for Only NOT In Hero ID. Example: martial arts he can only use at his default STR 10 (doesn't work with the suit on)?[/quote']

 

A limitation which is not limiting is worth no points. If you go OIHID and never are out of HID, then you get no points for that part. I'd be happy to give you the same mod for ONIHID if that was the route you chose to go (since that would then be limited the same way OIHID was intended to be).

 

 

More simply, my take on this whole thing is that Battlearmor is no problem at all as written if you are applying power limits.

 

Built as a OIF, if you choose to take max points in armor (going the "I'm hard to hurt" route) that means that an attack without modifiers is going to have trouble stopping you but a simple penetrating attack is going to start tearing through that armor and turning off systems while hurting you... If it is a penetrating KA then you're in a world of hurt, in fact, as it is roughly 50% to stop a power (or power group) with every successful hit(not to mention tearing up the person inside).

 

Built as OIHID the player had better count on being out of the armor on a regular basis and had better understand when I do nasty things like stealing it or ambushing him/her while the suit is not available. Otherwise it is not a limitation and is worth no points.

 

Built as a multiform it is not a huge point savings and so you don't have to look for serious consequences for the player to balance the point-savings.

 

 

Regardless, it is going to boil down to how the player handles it. A player who seeks to abuse the system can if allowed by the GM but as written the rules can be used to prevent such abuse.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

 

Regardless' date=' it is going to boil down to how the player handles it. A player who seeks to abuse the system can if allowed by the GM but as written the rules can be used to prevent such abuse.[/quote']

Amazing how many discussions on these boards can be summarized this way.

 

[Edit: That came across snarkier than I'd intended. I mean it as a good thing that the rules are generally well-balanced and most abuses can be handled by a GM who knows how to apply the rules. Personally, that the main value I get from these boards: ideas for how to keep the rules from being abused.]