More than meets the eye

[Mister Andersen]

Cybertronian. More than meets the eye, you are an autonomous robotic entity capable of assuming a vehicular form.
      Requirement: Culture (Cybertron).
      Type: Large humanoid complex construct (2x2). You are immune to vacuum damage as well as all posions and contagions except Radiation and those specifically designed to affect constructs, and do not breathe so never need to make Drowing checks. When you suffer a critical injury result of 41 or higher, you instead suffer -4 permanent damage to a randomly selected attribute until repaired), and apart from the Refresh action can only heal with a Mechanics (Int) check using the Medicine/First Aid or Medicine/Surgery rules, as appropriate; attempts to treat you with human science suffer a -8 penalty (the Cybertron focus for Cultures is required to avoid this penalty). You may not attempt to disguise yourself as or blend in with humans. Finally, you do not receive the bonus feat due to your Specialty unless it is Hunter, Investigator, Ironman, Motor Head, Special Ops or Technician [2.5]

• +4 Strength / -4 Charisma. [2.5]
  
• You gain the achilles heel (cold), achilles heel (EMP), achilles heel (radiation), augmented (x1.5-4 day/night sight), augmented (x1.5-4 thermal sight), augmented (desktop computer I), augmented (parabolic microphone) and augmented (raid jacket) qualities. [2.5]
  
• You gain the augmented (proteus device) quality. You may assume an alternate form of any powered vehicle of up to caliber IV that is either Medium or Large in size; this form may be changed every time you achieve a new level, and must be purchased as part of your Possessions or Mission Gear. Further, you must possess the appropriate Drive focus, and gain a Synergy bonus to your Drive check from your Athletics and Acrobatics skills. When in robot mode, all integral equipment of this vehicle is available to you, while any gear or upgrades installed in the vehicle form may be accessed by spending an action die; in the case of upgrades that affect your Acceleration and Turning ratings, the value is applied to your Strength and Dexterity modifier respectively when making Acrobatics/Jump, Acrobatics/Tumble, Athletics/Maneuver and Athletics/Sport checks, and the Bullrush combat action. [2.0]
  
• Favoured Classes: If you have more levels in any base class than your highest level in either Intruder Wheelman, your starting action dice are reduced by 2. [-1.0]
  
• Deeply Reviled: The starting disposition of any character that does not share your native culture and is aware of your Origin is reduced by 2 grades. [-1.5]
  
  
  

[Agent 333]

I'm gonna go ahead and say the vehicle tranform should be worth far more than 2 points. The movement bonus alone is worth more than that...

[Mister Andersen]

Augmenting gear is only 0.5 points per caliber, and you can't really place a cost on yourself.

Still...

• You gain the augmented (proteus device) quality. You may assume an alternate form of a non-personal vehicle of up to caliber IV that is either Medium or Large in size; this form may be changed every time you achieve a new level, and must be purchased as part of your Possessions or Mission Gear. Further, you must possess the appropriate Drive focus, and gain a Synergy bonus to your Drive check from your Athletics and Acrobatics skills. When in robot mode, all integral equipment of this vehicle is available to you, while any gear or upgrades installed in the vehicle form may be accessed by spending an action die. [2.0]

[Mister Andersen]

New Feat

More Than Meets The Eye
Your alternate form is bigger than normal.
   Prerequisites: Cybertronian. Base wounds 25+.
   Benefit: Your vehicle form may be Huge in size, but you lose the ability to assume Medium vehicle forms. Further, for purposes of determining the outcome of grapple checks and bullrushing attempts, your robot mode size is considered to be Huge instead of Large. Finally, your base speed increases by 5'.

[Darth Sephiroth]

How would you cover the smaller transformers, such as those with motorcycle alt-forms.

[Mister Andersen]

Arcee is still going to be Large in her robot form - judging by this picture, assuming a wheel size of 1.5', get a bot at least 7.5' tall from a racing bike.

Anything Frenzy's size is probably going to be handled by a 1st level feat similar to the one above

[Gatac]

 

I love you.

Gatac

[Mister Andersen]

Heh.

Further refinement:

• You gain the augmented (proteus device) quality. You may assume an alternate form of a non-personal vehicle of up to caliber IV that is either Medium or Large in size; this form may be changed every time you achieve a new level, and must be purchased as part of your Possessions or Mission Gear. Further, you must possess the appropriate Drive focus, and gain a Synergy bonus to your Drive check from your Athletics and Acrobatics skills. When in robot mode, all integral equipment of this vehicle is available to you, while any gear or upgrades installed in the vehicle form may be accessed by spending an action die; in the case of upgrades that affect your Acceleration and Turning ratings, the value is applied to your Strength and Dexterity modifier respectively when making Acrobatics/Jump, Acrobatics/Tumble, Athletics/Maneuver and Athletics/Sport checks, and the Bullrush combat action. [2.0]

[glimmerrat]

Andersen i *hate* you. Now i have to run this. I practically have my group battering my door down to get the go-ahead to start creating a team. Naturally this needs wiki-ing...

But as for the mini/micro bots, yeah a 1st level feat would do it. How would you handle the upscaled weapons? I get the idea that a Transformer-scale assault rifle would make short work of an APC or light tank.

I am so checking back on this thread later.

[Aragathor]

How would you handle the upscaled weapons? I get the idea that a Transformer-scale assault rifle would make short work of an APC or light tank.

I would go for this:

-Against other Cybertronians use standard weapon damage
-Everything else multiply weapon damage (maybe triple damage or something, plus AP bonus)

[famine]

How would you handle the upscaled weapons? I get the idea that a Transformer-scale assault rifle would make short work of an APC or light tank.

I would go for this:

-Against other Cybertronians use standard weapon damage
-Everything else multiply weapon damage (maybe triple damage or something, plus AP bonus)

So you're thinking something sort of like the Mega Damage from the old Robotech RPG?  That would be pretty cool!

[Aragathor]

Don't know how robotech was handled, but:

Let's look at Ratchet, he uses a one handed-machinegunlike weapon.
Let's assume that under my idea it's a H&K UMP .40 S&W.
Against cybertronians it deals standard 1d12 damage.
Against everything else it deals 3d12 damage plus some AP.

3d12 is similar to a mounted 30mm HMG. In effect that is something Ratchet has when compared to humans.

[Mister Andersen]

Well, standard D20 rules for handling upscaled weaponary increases the damage die one step, so an equivalent of a 9mm handgun scaled for a cybertronian is going to do 1d12+1 damage. I seem to recall that in addition to this, upscaled weapons increase caliber by 1 grade. However, that's going to put a lot of toys out of people's reach.

I've considered using the CUL tag, but that's likely to lead to all sorts of ugliness. So, looking at costs, I've scripted the following:

Cybertronian Weapon
Prerequisite: Weapon must be purchased by a character with the Cybertronian origin and Cultures focus.
Cost: 2 upgrades.
Benefit: The die type used to determine damage is increased by 1 step - for example a 9mm service pistol with this upgrade would deal 1d12+1 base damage. Additionally, it gains the AIR quality.

Change Base Damage Type - Explosive
Prerequisite: Cybertronian Weapon
Cost: 2 upgrades.
Benefit: The non-melee weapon to which this upgrade is applied deals explosive rather than lethal as its base damage type.

Change Base Damage Type - Laser
Prerequisite: Cybertronian Weapon
Cost: 4 upgrades.
Benefit: The non-melee weapon to which this upgrade is applied deals laser rather than lethal as its base damage type.

Change Ammunition Damage Type - Incindery
Prerequisite: Small arms sabot ammunition.
Cost: 1 upgrade.
Benefit: Converts the damage done by 1 load-out of sabot ammunition from lethal to fire.

Explosive damage doesn't normally possess the AP quality, but does lots of nasty damage to meatbags, as well as tending to replicate the effects of weapons seen in the film. The Cybertronian upgrade sort of costs the same as bumping a weapon up a caliber, but in a way that makes it more affordable outside of a Big Budget campaign.

The increase in size means that logically handguns will now have access to rifle-only ammo such as sabot and API, so you're looking at increased damage potential there as well.

Additionally, I'd fully encourage allowing players to apply the Razor Sharp upgrade to ranged weapons in addition to melee ones.

[Krensky]

So you're thinking something sort of like the Mega Damage from the old Robotech RPG?  That would be pretty cool!

Dear gods no... Mega Damage was/is (did Siembieda manage to hold together after the embezzelment scandle?) the single worst element of Palladium.

Probably the simplest way of handling the large, vehicular scale weapons would be to use vehicle weapons.  The aformentioned Ratchet's gun is really just a 20mm (or maybe 30mm) machine pistol, or near enough to it not to matter.

[Maldroth]

Palladium is alive and kicking, they survived the embezzelment scandal.

Going the route of different damage scales woudn't really be good since TFs come in all sizes if you want to expand the coversion beyond just the recent movie.