Hydraulic armor & steam powers

[Raptor]

Just wondering what steam powers people think would be good combinations with hydraulic (or clockwork) armor. Just to start things off, I'll give you a fairly obvious one: Hydraulic armor + boiler = really strong armor. I count the doubling effect of the boiler as doubling the strength bonus not the base number, but this still increases it to 26 strength (+8 bonus).

[Raptor]

Opps. Sorry, it should be 30 strength (+10 bonus).

[Reese]

i think that you would need to lower that bonus to a +2 at most; as it is, it's hidiously over-powered for a single use of a steam power

when you consider that a magic item that boosts strength by +2 costs 2000g and a boiler costs 50g, it's seriously unbalancing to allow someone to us a single boiler for a +10 bonus (5x bonus for 1/40th the cost)

imagine attacking the stronghold of an evil coglayer who has put single boilers on 10-20 suits of hydralic armor and equiped his best warriors with it, which would you rather face?

[MagusRogue]

I think Mr Goodman said once that adding a boiler to steam armors increases the Str by +2 and/or doubles the carrying capacity, your choice.

[Raptor]

Where is the posting, please?

[Reese]

luckily for you, i ahve nothing better to do at the moment than look up odd tidbits

http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... c&start=89

As for stacking a boiler with it, yes, the intent behind the steam power rules is to do cool things like that, so sure! But your DM has the final say, especially when it comes to something that could massively multiply your PC's Strength! I'd say each boiler applied to hydraulic armor would grant an effective +2 to Strength, or something along those lines. Boilers are supposed to be the kind of item that start off weak (because they double things that start at low numbers) but end up strong (because eventually 2 to the Nth power gets pretty big) so a +2 Str bonus would allow the hydraulic armor to slowly get more powerful.

[Alekzandr]

A combination I find interesting is this:

Metal Ear
+
Targeter + Ranger
+
Discriminator
+
Animator
+
(Automator/Noisemaker) Integrated parts
+
MW Hydraulic Armor
+
MW Medium (Cogling) Steam Gun + Boiler +Flywheel

Cast a custom 5th level spell on the Discriminator (Awaken object, Object recieves 3d6 for new Int, Wis, and Cha scores) and you have a playable Robotic character. Needs 5 levels of coglayer though to meet the costs of its own construction and cost to cast the "Awaken" spell, in addition to being able to maintain its own steam powers to move and exist.

Total Cost: 7,415 Gold (of 9,000 = 1,585 pocket change)

Total Space: 122 (used) / 128 (total space in Hydraulic Armor)

Advance as a construct, gaining all the perks and disadvantages of the Rebuild Soul spell (pg. 51 DragonMech), except Darkvision; the Ignoring Fuel for your steam engine bit, gaining the Steam Engine [ex] ability of steamborgs inetead; and new physical ability scores (Strength is 20, Dexterity 10, No Constitution score)

[goodmangames]

That's a cool idea.