This week they did Ironman. I read both of their descriptions and disagreed heavily with both of them. That tends to happen when I see someone playing around with the high concepts of one of my favorite characters though. The first one made him into a power/steam armor Fighter, while the second made him into an Alchemist. The Alchemist build is closer to what I would consider to be a more accurate build, but it is still very far off from what I would consider to be Tony Stark. The Steam Armor Fighter build I’d think would be more accurate for Warmachine or one of Tony’s enemies, but not Stark himself.
That is what both of these are missing. The Alchemist build gets some of it right, but falls short of what you’d expect from Tony Stark. His strengths are not in his combat abilities, they are in his ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence. Take away his suit and he’ll just build a better one. He learned science while following in his father’s footsteps creating some of the most advanced technology in the Marvel Universe, and I mean he personally helped design and create this stuff. There is a very clear path to take here and that is a crafting Wizard.
Now as I go through this build you need to understand how I’m going about this. I am not trying to build an actual playable version of him, just trying to design him as he should be in keeping with his character themes, concepts and abilities. I am going to assume that he his funding is unlimited and I might downplay some aspects that are common characteristics of Superheroes because they don’t follow character creation rules.
So first we are going to start with his race and class. Obviously he’s Human, with Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma as his highest stats. His physical stats aren’t all that important because his crafted items will make up for them later. Very clearly he will be a Wizard, that’s the closest thing to an actual scientists that this setting has in it. He deals with insane theories, formulae and then crafts powerful items with that knowledge. Alchemist would work if they could craft to the extent that a Wizard could. I don’t see alchemist as his kind of thing because the bombs just don’t fit as well as the idea of him crafting wands of Scorching Ray.
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So for a full 20 levels of progression, the Wizard has 15 Feats, plus 2 more for Flaws, which he definitely should have. His list of feats must include Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Wand, Craft Construct, Forge Ring, Craft Rod, Arcane Armor Training, and Arcane Armor Mastery. The last two need to have the character to have some type of armor proficiency and so rather than having him waste two feats allowing him to get access to those feats he will take one level of Magus with the War Warder Archetype or one level of Fighter.
I put Create Construct in there for a very good reason. In the Ultimate Magic book there is a modification for any crafted Golem called Construct Armor. It basically turns your construct into a suit of power armor that only counts as a Breastplate for purposes of wearing it, which means that a guy who constructs Golem armor who also has feats reducing his penalties for casting while wearing armor is going to be able to fully utilize it in combat.
These items are the core of the character build. Without these you can’t have the Iron Man armor. Now the creation of the Construct Armor is a problem because of the way D20 systems run their construct creation systems, basically he either needs to be a high level Bard, Cleric, or be able to cast Wish in order to complete these constructs himself. With unlimited funding, as Tony Stark should have, obtaining the requisite ability to cast a 6th level Cleric/Bard spell (Animate Objects) shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s just annoying.
Anyways. After you work out how he’s building the armor you can move on to the easier stuff, creating magic items that mimic the abilities of the Iron Man Armor. Everything is just a handful of Spellcraft rolls away from this point on. Lasers/Repulsor blasts, flight, “sensors”? Easy to create magic items that do all of that. The only thing that will limit him at this point is funding.
Once you get the armor, the rest of this happens naturally |
My only problems with this build fall under the “little details” section. As usual, D20 class based systems don’t account for things that comic book superheroes are just able to do. It’s hard to simulate Tony Stark’s Craft Skills, Knowledge, Professional Knowledge and Charisma with such a low skilled character class.
Not sure what else I could really delve into on this particular entry. Anyone else got some thoughts on it?
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