Need help with DF Battlesuit built as Ally

[Tinman]

I'm GM of a DF campaign.
The Artificer wants to build himself a clockwork battlesuit. We want to build the battlesuit as an ally & I need the help of the hive-mind.

My question is:
Is there a way to build the ally so I can give all the advantages I want it to have & have the artificer use them with out "granted by familiar"?
What do I have to do to make the ally a wearable set of armor?

I know about payload in the suit & maybe Compartmentalized Mind: Controls.
What else?

[Atreyu_Hibiki]

A long time ago (geez, twelve years!) I wrote up this car as a character. If you pull out the car-shape things and leave everything else, you have a pretty good set of pilotable armor!

Originally Posted by Atreyu_Hibiki

Honestly, everything you need to build a vehicle is in Basic Set: Characters. It has high DR, 0 IQ, increased ST, Dedicated Controls (Driver) (found near Compartmentalized Mind), Body of Metal, 2 payload amounts (passengers and cargo), Pressure Support, Machine metatrait, Slave Mentality, Restricted Diet (gasoline or fuel-type), Valuable Property, etc. Decide what you want the top speed to be, then give it that much Enhanced Move, fiddling with the Base Move to find approximately the top speed you want. For example, a car with DX 5 and Enhanced Move 3 will have a top speed of 115 mph.

And so forth. I have a generic sedan-type car worked up...

FIVE-PASSENGER CAR, 115 mph.
-36 Points

ST 40 [300]; DX 5 [-100]; IQ 0 [-200]; HT 10 [0]
Secondary Attributes HP 40 [0]; Will and Per 0; FP n/a.
Advantages
DR 9 [21]
Dedicated Controls (driver) [10]
Doesn't Breathe [20]
Enhanced Move (ground) 3 [60]
Immunity to Metabolic Hazards [30]
Injury Tolerance (Homogenous, No Blood) [45]
Payload (Cargo) 13 [13]
Payload (Passengers) [32]
Pressure Support 3 [15]
Sealed [15]
Vacuum Support [5]
Feature: Wears out instead of aging [0]
Feature: No fatigue points, can't spend fatigue points [0]
Feature: Eight hour energy reserve, refuel 3 times per day [0]

Disadvantages
Valuable Property [-10]
Unhealing (Total) [-30]
Slave Mentality [-40]
Restricted Diet (Gasoline) [-20]
Numb [-20]
No Manipulators [-50]
No Legs (Wheeled, 4 wheels) [-20]
Maintenance (1 person, monthly) [-2]
Low Empathy [-20]
Incurious (CR: 6) [-10]
Horizontal [-10]
Hidebound [-5]
Flammable [-10]
Electrical [-20]
Dead Broke [-25]

[Maz]

It looks good. But I wouldn't allow someone/thing to have those mental disads when you have IQ:0.

[Atreyu_Hibiki]

I think at some point after this build, there was a ruling about having IQ: N/A instead of all those negative points. That would bring the total back up by 200 points, leaving the car as a 164 point Ally character, which seems reasonable.

As armor, drop Enhanced Move, some of the Payload, some of the ST, Horizontal, No Legs, No Manipulators, and Flammable.
Add some more DR.
Change the Restricted Diet to something DF appropriate, like, I don't know, bones or bottled lightning - or drop it and add Doesn't Eat.
Spice to taste.

[scc]

I believe that it's Changing Times that makes the change to IQ. An IQ 0 thing lacks sufficient intelligence to get itself into trouble, which is why it can't have mental disadvantages.

To the idea in general I believe that the excepted way to do things for power armor is to actually use a series of gadgets.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Is there a way to build the ally so I can give all the advantages I want it to have & have the artificer use them with out "granted by familiar"?

That's kind of a bad idea.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Tinman

I'm GM of a DF campaign.
The Artificer wants to build himself a clockwork battlesuit. We want to build the battlesuit as an ally & I need the help of the hive-mind.

My question is:
Is there a way to build the ally so I can give all the advantages I want it to have & have the artificer use them with out "granted by familiar"?
What do I have to do to make the ally a wearable set of armor?

I know about payload in the suit & maybe Compartmentalized Mind: Controls.
What else?

You could have the ally afflict Puppet (itself) and Possession (itself only, puppet only, Parasitic, No Memory) on the PC on touch. Then the player “possesses” the ally as a “parasite” if the ally has enough payload. The Ally could even be IQ 3-4 to make it semi-independent when not worn, but wholly controlled by the PC when worn.

But I concur with evileeyore; this is almost an end-run around point costs for a PC’s powers.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Culture20

You could have the ally afflict Puppet (itself) and Possession (itself only, puppet only, Parasitic, No Memory) on the PC on touch. Then the player “possesses” the ally as a “parasite” if the ally has enough payload. The Ally could even be IQ 3-4 to make it semi-independent when not worn, but wholly controlled by the PC when worn.

But I concur with evileeyore; this is almost an end-run around point costs for a PC’s powers.

If the GM is OK with it and applies the rule fairly, it shouldn't be a problem.

[zoncxs]

Yeah, this is a work around for points. I read this as "I want to be able to do all these things that cost 10x but I only have x."

You could allow it, and do the possession route mentioned above, Pyramid article 3-24 "Biomech" tells you how to handle such a thing.

But I would not build a suit that way, I would have him but the suit with gadget limitations.

I am running a Supers game right now and have two players with those "powers"

One has a nano suit that lives in them and they can fuse with (Guyver Style) and the other built her suit (ironman style). The difference is that Guyver had several not combat powers to make her cost the same as ironman, whose points mostly went to DR.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Culture20

You could have the ally afflict Puppet (itself) and Possession (itself only, puppet only, Parasitic, No Memory) on the PC on touch. Then the player “possesses” the ally as a “parasite” if the ally has enough payload. The Ally could even be IQ 3-4 to make it semi-independent when not worn, but wholly controlled by the PC when worn.

That seems super complicated to me.

But I concur with evileeyore; this is almost an end-run around point costs for a PC’s powers.

I'm not too worried about an end-run around point costs for three main reasons:
1) The PC can just build a suit with gadgeteering for a few hundred bucks.
If he does it as EQ then he can build whatever he wants to into the suit regardless of point costs. Having it as an ally will restrict what he can do, not give him more room to power-up.
2) I want the bad guys to be able to attack & disable the suit it's self.
Also, I want the structure of the suit to protect the pilot. He's pretty squishy compared to the others. Building the suit as advantages makes that very difficult to model.
3) The cost of advantage based powers vs equipment is ridiculous.
For a hand crossbow that can shoot either a standard bolt or a canister shot (DF Treasure Tables p.32) costs either 15 points (with gadget limitations) or $150 as equipment. To get the stuff in the suit will either cost the PC 73 pts or max $500 (per the invention rules) & no limits on the level of DR & other included advantages.

It would be much better if I can have a reasonable alternative to provide that will cost a few points (reasonable pts cost vs $ cost) & not push him into only buying it as gear.

The best way, is to make the battlesuit as an ally with payload. I just need to make sure that i'm covering all the bases and making sure it's priced & balanced right.