Chris Goodwin

Which brings up a whole separate point, which is this:
 
Are we debating whether its possible, as a special effect (good news, it is) or,
Are we debating the very specific how because it’s an ongoing power use? Or.
Are we debating how many “car traits” you inherited in your transform. Or.
Are NONE of these things fully capturing the question?
 
In the first scenario, I’m fine with extra limbs and strength — exactly as I said in the beginning. If we’re really going into the more granular space of “how do I build seat belts and life support?” That’s almost a separate question, and the answer is exceptionally well documented, with harness being a thing included as part of a vehicles SFX. If this is a question of “how many angels can dance on my butt while I fly?” Depends on the type of angel and the amount of junk in that trunk. 
 
I’m all for a healthy debate, but I do want to ensure we’re answering the same question. That’s kind of important. I mean. To me.

All of the nitpicking and overengineering aside, just remember that you pay for what you get, and you get what you pay for.  
 
The 10-point Protects Carried Items Adder for Resistant Protection does what it says on the tin, for Resistant Protection.  If I were the GM, I'd likely make that less of an Adder to R.P. and almost a Power of its own; and that would be what lets you wrap your R.P. around a passenger, but also your Life Support, Invisibility, Desolidification, and so on.  I'd call it "Passenger Space" and be done with it.  

I see it as, you're paying to get something more than anyone gets.  
 
SFX only go so far, and the distance they go is up to the point of something being mechanically different.  If you're Superman, you may be 100+ STR, but you're still stuck with two hands and the approximate surface area of a human-sized being.  You don't have any additional abilities to protect people, to keep them from falling off, to hold more than a few of them comfortably, etc., that any other human-sized and -shaped strong character doesn't have.  Those other things?  If you want them, you can pay points for them.  If you don't pay points for them... SFX, sure, but you also run the risk of losing your passengers if you try to Dodge an incoming attack, or make a course change at combat speeds.  
 
Edit to add:  There's a difference between riding a horse bareback, and riding one with full tack, saddle, etc.  Someone -- the rider or the steed -- can pay that, or -- depending on the genre and power level -- that can be handled as equipment for which points are not paid, but there's a mechanical difference there.  I think this difference is what the original poster is asking about.  

This is what I was getting at.  
 
Ultimately, you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get.  If you're relying on STR alone, you're not "doing it wrong" for sure, but you're not getting any more than that.  Superman with his 100+ STR can carry a lot of weight, but he only has two arms, with one hand on each, and he's the size of a human.  He can only carry so many people, and if he's carrying them he's carrying them.  Two people, maybe, can piggyback on him, but if he tries to have more than half his CV they're going to have to make rolls to hold on.  (SFX go both ways.)  
 
To the OP, decide what you want.  Do you want an armored compartment that a rider can sit inside?  Buy that.  Do you want some kind of a safety harness that holds people on, keeping them from falling off if you make hard combat maneuvers?  Buy that.  Want the harness to also potentially protect them in the event of an accident?  Buy that.  
 
If I were trying to build Car-Guy, and agonizing over how to do it, I'd be a little annoyed if Superman got exactly the same benefits as me for declaring it SFX.  
 
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to dial in to get exactly what you want.  

Oh my goodness, I don’t know if I missed this or if I’m ready to wander off back into the desert.
 
Guys guys guys. Listen listen listen.
 
Let’s remember that the GM & the player have to reach an agreement, and I would point out that Extra Limbs is a whopping 5 points. I see this going in this weird circle where we’re comparing a flying super to a multi-former. Far as I’m concerned, if you’re paying to become a car, then there’s no reason not to assume it’s... a freaking car. Even HERO doesn’t include “seat belts” in its builds.
 
This boils down to granularity and campaign function. I really think this one is over thinking the problem into madness. Which is fine. I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re all mad, here.

Any question asked in good faith with an open mind to hear the answer is not stupid. Note, I did not say there are no stupid questions; I’’m saying that you’re most assuredly not going to ask one. HERO is hard to break through, it’s alphabet soup with a dozen lightsaber builds and rabbit hole arguments as to why “everything is a transform” (it’s not) lurking around every corner. Have no fear, we’ll help you navigate those waters. 
 
Welcome. 

I know the lack of covers makes this problematic, but it there any way to set up Robot Warriors for a Print-on-Demand run? I'm juggling some projects and would like to do a few mecha for the Hall of Champions and would like a reference copy. I do own the PDF now, in case that is an issue, but I don't believe RW is licensed for copy-for-individual-use.
 
At the same time, I want to thank Chris Goodwin for opening the Conversion Guide.

You don't need Extra Limbs to carry one or two people out of combat. However, if you want to carry more than that, or carry people and still have your hands free, you need Extra Limbs.

Extra Limbs would be another way to do it, rather than Clinging.  I'm NOT considering a Transformers approach;  more like a Goliath approach, or a transform to something like a giant horse, bird, or dragon.

Also...in the car scenario...Clinging, UBO.  Seat belts.  You're asking for "I can hold them in my transformed state" for no cost, based on saying "it's a car."  Nope.  Unless you're paying for it, it'd be more like riding in the back of a pickup truck.  Nothing to stop you from being tossed out from the bed.  So if you want them safely ensconced and protected...pay for it somehow.

I would like to point out the first thing I said was, “if the vehicle is properly defined and has sufficient strength.” You’re not the odd man out, I think this is a case of “HERO being HERO” and people wanting to micro things that I would — and this is a pretty good example — merrily handwave. “You’ve got strength 100? Yeah, by all means, carry all the people you can fit on your badonkadonk.”

Or a long bench. 
 
Or a net. 
 
Or a 5-seat passenger compartment. 
 
We have all, at one point or another, confessed to accepting that there are this outliers where simply having an appropriate special effect is an advantage, or even the solution itself. 
 
The power is STR.  The question is "how many people at once?" 
 
The special effect is "I am a car now."
 
I know I'm the odd man out with my tendency to rely more on the SFX than do a lot of other GMs, but I just don't see a conversation here outside of "what kind of car and how many people can you stuff in one of those?" 
Assuming STR is sufficient, of course. 

Earlier I replied to one of your posts and I said “you are unlikely to ask stupid questions,” and here is proof I was right — this is a perfectly reasonable question, particularly for a newcomer to a system that “has so many ways to do things.” [insert thematically heavy sigh]. So let me dispel {HA!} that idea first; yes, there are lots of ways to achieve a specific effect, but usually, if you reason from effect, there’s a single, clear best option. When I do a build, and this is a hard earned lesson, much of which I attribute to @Chris Goodwin and @ghost-angel for beating that concept into my skull. It’s why if you read my posts, particularly my later posts after I’d done six or seven full game designs and overhauls, you’ll see that theme repeated: What exactly do you want it to do, and how exactly do you envision them doing it? Once I have those two pieces of information, I can usually cobble something together. Let’s get to it then. Oh, pet peeve; avoid negatives in your writing. Rather than ask “what of these don’t you want,” it’s much easier to ask “Which of these do you prefer?” This also makes it easier for people to respond as their thinking is normalized.

Where’s my hat? Ah, yes.
 
You have a GLB who’s throwing a “banshee like wail” into a crowd that strips STUN (and possibly blinds/deafens) the target/group. Here’s the critical point I want to address; your first concept is the one with the most concrete rules, I just don’t think you have the familiarity to get to it. It is a Flash Attack, which has a defined number of dice; you can also do it as Darkness if you want it to really wreck someone. Then you add your Area of Effect and sprinkle in some limitations et voila! Champagne.
 
Next up, PRE attack. A Presence attack sort of by its nature is an AOE, it doesn’t need to be purchased separately, but you certainly can do that. You can also link a power to the limitation “requires a stat roll,” — for me, I’ve used this aggressively to tie off an ability to a power, such as PRE, so those points do more work for the character. I think PRE attacks tend to be unreliable; one of my signature HERO characters, Aiden, was a young dragon. And by “young” I mean he was only 600 points or so, so doing a massive PRE attack was one of his big things, and it was always fun to roll 12d6, but more often than not, the result didn’t eclipse the target by enough points to make it worth while.
 
Your third choice, Entangle. I agree with you; what you are describing is not an Entangle.
 
So I think none of those represent what you described; I believe that this is an Energy Blast, No Body (-1/2?), Compound Power, Flash (Hearing). Power Link; one set of dice is rolled and it represents the effect for both powers — that’s a home brew rule, by the way, and one I absolutely swear by. So you have a 12d6 EB plus 12d6 Flash, you roll the dice once, and done. Makes things clean and consistent. The object of the power is to overwhelm the targets CON so they get stun-locked into place, and if they happen to also get their STUN dropped, great.
 
The other way to do this is an AOE Change Environment, where the scream is so powerful that it makes the terrain quiver and grinds movement to a halt; imagine a series of waves going so hard that you can see concrete warp beneath it. This should have AOE, Lingering Effect, and you can also add in +Perception modifiers making it nearly impossible to hear anything other than the scream. 
 
Let me know if either of those are closer to your original vision.

The next time you eat chicken think of this picture.
 
 

This one!

I LOVE THIS ONE!!
 
Warning: I’m up a little late and when that happens I tend to ramble. So I’ve put my answer to your question up front, where it’s easy to see:
 
Answer 1: It actually doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent. You’d be surprised how much punishment the HERO system can take and still put out a balanced game experience. To go back to @Ninja-Bear, it’s easiest to make all weapons free, because the cost was paid by the player when they invested in the Martial Art to use it. For example, Kusari-Gama. If I pick one of those up, I’m going to smash my own skull. Someone trained in it, however, is going to have the opposite experience. This is how I did it in Persona; you pay the points for what you want, you have the thing more as a manifestation of the point investment, rather than the other way around. If a bunch of points are paid for magic, great. Here’s your spell list based on the rules laid down for this system, etc.
 
Answer 2: There are a number of other things to consider before you can answer it. And based on the question, I’m making a couple of assumptions: That you’re doing some kind of high fantasy setting, that said setting involves the collection of gear and loot, and that said gear and loot is plentiful enough that it prompts the question. So if Kage, the Shadow Mage, doesn’t have 33 points available, he can’t pick up the enchanted hand crossbow? Or the bracers of archery? It’s downright skull breaking. So how else do you solve for it?
 
You can do this: Each character can soul-bind/befriend/attune (to use the 5th Ed D&D word) to X number of magical items. This is a campaign rule and costs zero points that the players can see, but you can see them. If you want to be hard and fast with it, you can give everyone their build cost in magical attunement. I build a 200 point Rogue, I can equip up to 200 points of magical gear. Or if you’re concerned, just, “gear.”  This can include spell books, spells as well as swords and shields. Going this route removes all of the messy player level book keeping from the equation, and leaves the GM free to run a game that plays like it should. 
 
Alternatively, each player may be limited to the Rule of 9; head, chest, arms, legs, two weapons, two rings and a necklace.
 
There’s no “canonical right way” to do it. In ... FH 5th Ed? Steve put forth the idea, as an option, gear is gold, magic is points. But that’s not always the case. And, more importantly, ignoring that is not necessarily going to create any kind of imbalance in your campaign. Your best bet, IMO, is to ignore this question entirely, and instead drill down to stat spread, skill selection, core powers/abilities, damage dealt, and damage that can be sustained, in addition to any other non-combat abilities that your casting classes are going to have. So let’s break down the reasoning:
 
In a traditional fantasy setting, there are three and a half core classes; Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard/Cleric. I say 3.5 because there’s a ton of campaigns and systems that just go with “magic” and that includes healing, there’s systems with all kinds of different ways to tap into other worldly... or natural but normally inaccessible... or... you get my point. The more critical question, in my mind, is not about point assignment or gold spent, but functionality and general balance. To that end, I would say that those three classes don’t really provide much framework. Whereas tank, blaster, scrapper, controller, etc., more traditional super heroic tropes, do the job much better.
 
The tank wears heavy armor, carries some variety of weaponry, has a shield. Do those cost points? Someone brought up: things paid with gold are fungible, things paid with points are not, however, there’s a counter to that, and that’s “everything has a point cost.” There’s a nasty rabbit hole you can fall down trying to reconcile the cost of a shield against gold against real cost in points to the character. Meanwhile, your casting classes have to spend points on their spells — unless you say they don’t. And you treat spells like equipment. Also an option. My late night rambling aside, here are my hard learned lessons from years of GMing Fantasy HERO:
 
1) Power level is, broadly, a lie. After a while it becomes nearly impossible to do a decent audit. I became much more interested in this question: Does everyone have roughly the same points invested in base stats and core skills? Do they all fall within the guidelines for CSLs, and are they utilizing the tools provided accordingly? Last, but not least, is their general DPR (damage per round) equivalent? A fighter who hits every round may not be as sexy as a Rogue with extra dice in Backstab, or a wizard who can throw chain lightning through an entire group, but that just means they’re doing their job. Standing up front, drawing fire, surviving, and dealing out punishment. The Rogue should be able to outpace the fighter in damage, because that’s the rogue’s job.
 
2) Damage output caps are critical. Decide early what your max number of KA dice is, AND your highest Active Point cost, and hold that line for a while as you continue to balance encounters and defenses. 
 
3) Remember: Defense wins championships. Unless you let someone buy an NND Killing Attack that’s disruptive, or the Wizard can call down oodles of Meteors every round. You don’t want that to happen, that gets gnarly.
 
4) This in a very looping way comes back to my point, and your question: when is it appropriate and how do you do it? My answer is “ignore the common application, and approach it differently.” We can math everything to death. Doesn’t mean we should.

The mechs get much larger, but for reasons tied primarily to tidal forces, don't expect a mech in one of my games to break thirty foot, and very few humanoid mechs will break twenty.  Platform types may be larger, of course, but they operate under different stressors.  Still, most combat mechs will not see the interior of a space station, save for docking and repair mech-dedicated sections.
 
The fragility of the stations is precisely why you _won't_ them wandering around on the inside of a station.  You may find them outside, but if the enemy is attacking the station directly, there is little choice but to put the combat mechs where the action is.   
 
Primarily, combat mechs (in that particular campaign, I mean) would be confined to planetary or near-the-carrier type space action, and of course throughout the belt, where numerous ammo dumps, small repair stations, etc, have been constructed over the years.  Even then, except for mech-specific servicing stations, you won't find them inside the asteroids, either.
 
To sum it up more succinctly:  Battle Tech style mechs are the core of the military mechs (though I am partial to the VariTech for space missions), but they don't go stomping around inside the artificial colonies unless the enemy is already there.  Ideally, they repel the enemy before they get that deep.
 
I am working on a background point that the O'Neil's in orbit perpendicular to the solar plane are being studied with the goal of changing their orbits to match the solar plane, owing to the difficulty of defending them at the extremes of their orbits.  It's not something "from the history books," but a bit of background story I thought might add a little something in terms of depth and in terms of the situation:  "to even consider such a thing-- hundreds of thousands of people, too many to evactuate....  the dangers that must be overcome...   Things have got to be pretty bad to take that risk....  There's something that TransSolar isn't telling us; something they don't want us to know....  What sort of danger are we in that the risks of changing our orbits seems reasonable....?  And why the sudden big push to accelerate the teraforming on Venus?  The Tin Can Colonies have already given us so much room....."
 
That sort of thing.
 
So:   exoskeletal mechs: Frames.
Somewhat larger exoskeletal mechs, usually purpose-built (heavy machinery, heavy weaponry, but still generally open cockpit:  Rigs
Large enough to support a fully closed and life-supported cockpit:  Mechs
Heavy, wide, and generally low-built:  Platforms  (though these are also piloted as Mechs are, Platforms are generally tracked, wheeled, or multi-legged for stability or maneuverability, and generally tailored to certain terrains)
 
The problems of going larger than thirty feet or so with a humanoid form made of a metal framework and plating are all inertial, so while I enjoyed Transformers as much as anyone else (except maybe little kids, who dig anything more than us crusty curmudgeons ever could), I have a very difficult time building anything but a superhero campaign around anything much larger than thirty feet.  You know: the same reason that a crane that can lift fifteen tons will never _ever_ try to _swing_ even five tons: it will twist itself into a helix and fall over from any attempt to _stop_ swinging it.   
 
 
 

TL;DR; Long Term Endurance is a solid way to represent physical wear of heavy armor. Other thoughts follow.
 
I always get lost in these threads. Are you asking about a fundamental rules question? I.e., “how do I?” Or are you asking “how would you to achieve verisimilitude?” Because we’ll be here for a while depending on how you answer.
 
Short version: Build Armor with the limitation, “weight category, (-x/y).” Weight categories are: Clothing (-0), Light (-1/4) Medium (-1/2) Heavy (-3/4) and Urk (-1). Then the fun starts. What do you want that weight category to mean? This is the beauty and the beast of HERO; you can define for yourself and your campaign what happens when you put on armor of each weight class, and you can also bake in the appropriate skill/ability/super skill to wear it without those restrictions, or have it factor in strength, etc. etc. 
 
For example: When I did Persona, every power included the limitation “Persona Ability (-2).” For that campaign, that was short hand for: Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Only Equipped Persona Ability (-1), Costs END (-1/2). Then there was a bunch of other mods that went after it, which made powers themselves, as you might guess, super cheap! But that’s because you had to pick from a list and each Persona had a corresponding set of powers it could learn. The relationship to your problem being, you can easily bundle whatever it is armor restriction means to you. If you want armor to fatigue, you can use Encumbrance or, for me, Long Term Endurance. If you’re going for a Dark Souls/NIOH vibe, that’s your jam right there. Longer you wear it, the more it wears you down.

@Chris Goodwinbeat me to this when he pointed out that under RAW, a crit occurs when you beat your target by half (in favor of the defender, so rounded down); this is what I’ve always used and it works very well, particularly given how much manipulating of the numbers can be done by skilled players. In your system as proposed, I’d be looking at a pretty wide gap between OCV & DCV and that’s before application of CSLs or other modifiers like Surprise. Not saying it can’t work, just far less often. Also bearing in mind that you have a 0.5% (IIRC) of rolling 3 (that very specific combination; there’s a broader chance to roll any combination of 3 of a kind, but a materially smaller chance to get that exact one).
 
To the question you didn’t ask, a Critical Hit in my games doubles damage rolled. I’ve fiddled with different iterations of this, but I found doubling the dice to be the most entertaining; oh, and if you’re using rolled STUNx, double that and take the higher value. If you’re using the damage chart (almost forgot this) then by every two over the crit threshold, I allow players to adjust their targeting roll by 1.  So, on a crit, you roll a 12, you can move it to 13. 
 
Your second question is messier, because it all depends on what you mean by night vision. However as my games tend to be bouncy science in application, my answer is “no,” because the mirror needs to have something significant to reflect. If you can’t see it with normal vision, then the mirror can’t see it, and I’m pointing my eyes at the mirror and seeing what it’s reflecting, not bouncing my dark vision off the mirror, because my eyes are receptive, not emissive.

If you don't mind dropping back a couple of editions...
 
 
is complete!
 

If you don't mind dropping back a couple of editions...
 
 
is complete!
 

Thanks, Vlad.
 
For what it's worth, I _detest_ sound bites.
 
I swear, I really believe the increase of sound bites on the news is contributing to a rise in stupidity.   😕
 
 

This work started it in the early 1990’s with the goal of using Robot Warriors mecha construction and combat rules with 4th edition Champions and the HERO System Rulesbook. It has been updated and enhanced to help you do the same—with any current edition of HERO!
Convert Robot Warriors characters to the 4th, 5th, or 6th editions of the HERO System! Use Robot Warriors robot writeups—as is—in current editions! Build new robots using the old rules and take advantage of new rules! Convert robots from Robot Warriors to the Vehicle rules of the HERO edition of your choice!  
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/327714/Robot-Warriors-to-HERO-System-Current-Editions
 
Now available as Pay What You Want through DriveThruRPG!

Thanks for the shoutout!  As the guy what wrote it, probably not. 
 
Many years ago in a Fantasy Hero game, I played a ki-rin (or more accurately, myself transformed into a ki-rin, in a fantasy world).  The GM, who wrote up all of our transformed versions, gave me PS: Magic Steed, with the idea that I'd be able to use that as a complementary skill in order to help someone (with Riding skill) stay on my back.  Probably not quite what you're looking for for an Autobot type character.  
 
The Resistant Protection Power includes a +10 point Adder:  Protects Carried Items, which can explicitly include other characters.  That might be what you're looking for.  (6e1 p. 276 or CC p. 83)
 
Edit to add:  Clinging, if you want them to just be attached to the side of you, or effectively seatbelted in place inside your Resistant Protection.  

A lot of recording device builds are done with Eidetic Memory, seasoned appropriately to taste.  

Thanks for the shoutout!  As the guy what wrote it, probably not. 
 
Many years ago in a Fantasy Hero game, I played a ki-rin (or more accurately, myself transformed into a ki-rin, in a fantasy world).  The GM, who wrote up all of our transformed versions, gave me PS: Magic Steed, with the idea that I'd be able to use that as a complementary skill in order to help someone (with Riding skill) stay on my back.  Probably not quite what you're looking for for an Autobot type character.  
 
The Resistant Protection Power includes a +10 point Adder:  Protects Carried Items, which can explicitly include other characters.  That might be what you're looking for.  (6e1 p. 276 or CC p. 83)
 
Edit to add:  Clinging, if you want them to just be attached to the side of you, or effectively seatbelted in place inside your Resistant Protection.  

Thanks for the shoutout!  As the guy what wrote it, probably not. 
 
Many years ago in a Fantasy Hero game, I played a ki-rin (or more accurately, myself transformed into a ki-rin, in a fantasy world).  The GM, who wrote up all of our transformed versions, gave me PS: Magic Steed, with the idea that I'd be able to use that as a complementary skill in order to help someone (with Riding skill) stay on my back.  Probably not quite what you're looking for for an Autobot type character.  
 
The Resistant Protection Power includes a +10 point Adder:  Protects Carried Items, which can explicitly include other characters.  That might be what you're looking for.  (6e1 p. 276 or CC p. 83)
 
Edit to add:  Clinging, if you want them to just be attached to the side of you, or effectively seatbelted in place inside your Resistant Protection.