By Your Powers Combined...

[kafkonia@home]

How would you go about building a set of characters who combine to become one more powerful character? Something like the original Firestorm from DC, or the Constructicons and the like from Transformers.

In the past, I've tried to do it by building the more powerful combined form as the base, and the combining Alternate Forms and Duplication to represent splitting into different people. But that's... ugly. Any suggestions as to a more elegant way of doing it?

[jason taylor]

Give the combined characters a separate write-up.

That is also useful for collectives that are more subtle then Voltron such as a Military unit or a ships crew.

[Rev. Pee Kitty]

The way I handle it is to build the gestalt as its own character. Then divide its point total by the number of members, and use that as the template cost for each one to buy the Alternate Form advantage.

So say you've got the six original Constructicons, and you build Devastator as a 3,000 point character. They'd each buy Alternate Form (1/6 of Devastator) for 15 points (plus modifiers) + 450 points ((3,000/6) * 0.9).

Captain Planet isn't a good example, though, since he's just a Patron that the kids summon. He'd be more Patron (Temporary Disadvantage, loss of all ring powers, -X%), where X is probably way more than 80.

[kafkonia@home]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

The way I handle it is to build the gestalt as its own character. Then divide its point total by the number of members, and use that as the template cost for each one to buy the Alternate Form advantage.

So say you've got the six original Constructicons, and you build Devastator as a 3,000 point character. They'd each buy Alternate Form (1/6 of Devastator) for 15 points (plus modifiers) + 450 points ((3,000/6) * 0.9).

That works. I'd never thought of it that way. Thanks!

Captain Planet isn't a good example, though, since he's just a Patron that the kids summon. He'd be more Patron (Temporary Disadvantage, loss of all ring powers, -X%), where X is probably way more than 80.

That's why I didn't mention him -- I just couldn't think of a better catchphrase for the subject line. :)

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

The way I handle it is to build the gestalt as its own character. Then divide its point total by the number of members, and use that as the template cost for each one to buy the Alternate Form advantage.

So say you've got the six original Constructicons, and you build Devastator as a 3,000 point character. They'd each buy Alternate Form (1/6 of Devastator) for 15 points (plus modifiers) + 450 points ((3,000/6) * 0.9).

Does it always need to be an even split? The original Firestorm, for example, was overall more of a burden to the professor, who had no control over the merged form and only verbal influence as a voice/face in the head.

[Rev. Pee Kitty]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Does it always need to be an even split? The original Firestorm, for example, was overall more of a burden to the professor, who had no control over the merged form and only verbal influence as a voice/face in the head.

Definitely not! There are no additional balance issues caused by doing a 90/10 instead of 50/50, or whatever ratio you want. An even split is the most efficient use of points (much as a circle is the most efficient way to maximize the area enclosed by a given length of fence) -- so you certainly don't have to worry about it being overbalancing as you add more required people or skew the proportionate split.