The "Sentient Vehicle" style of character

[Marketeer]

Hi folks,

 

Ok, so picture a player who wants to create a sentient vehilce as his character--say K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, or one of the Transformers--in a new, four-color style, 350 pt. superhero campaign.

 

What would be a relatively clean way to write up the character? I thought of using a vehicle with an AI, but there are problems with that as a construct; is there any simpler or smoother way to do it?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: The "Sentient Vehicle" style of character

 

Hmm...I wrote a character up along these lines way back when, before there were vehicle or AI rules...kinda rusty on exactly how I did it though.

 

Good movement powers definitely. Decent DEF. Increased size and the powers and disads that go with it.

 

Movement and DEF need to be usable by others. They can maybe be bought as Foci...wings, tires, rotors, whatever...assuming they can be shot off without damaging the character himself.

 

I may have to go back and do this again with several editions worth of upgrades to the rules to help out...

[Dust Raven]

Re: The "Sentient Vehicle" style of character

 

I've done sentient vehicles as player characters just using the standard character, rather than the Vehicle, as a template. At least for campaigns where at least some of the player characters are not also vehicles. This tends to keep things more or less fair. If everybody is a vehicle, then go ahead and use the Vehicle template and add in INT, EGO and PRE as additional Characteristics.

 

For buying the passenger area of a vehicle character, just give the character a FW to cover the interior space and put Feedback on it. The character's casual STR is how much he can carry without slowing him down at all and should be considered his max load (though he could be overloaded and just move real slow and spend loads more END).

[GAZZA]

Re: The "Sentient Vehicle" style of character

 

It's a shame the Incomplete Character rules weren't made a part of 5th edition; this is the sort of thing they're really good at.

 

As it is, Vehicle + AI is probably the way to go, but the real question is who's paying for it? Can a Vehicle pay for it's AI? Vice versa? Normally they would both be paid for by some other character.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: The "Sentient Vehicle" style of character

 

In The Ultimate Vehicle you'll find optional rules for adding INT, EGO, PRE, and even COM to your Vehicle. This is the recommended method for creating sentient vehicles in the Hero System.