I have a starfighter ace in the campaign I'm GMing, who is starting to look at building his own vehicles. One thing that came up was building a small land vehicle that is basically "power armor" from Fallout. I don't have access to the Guardian book that covers armorer but this would fall in as a vehicle anyways.

Is there any official material on a small walking vehicle. I saw the mono cycle but thatshe not exactly what I'm looking for. I planned to allow him and about 5 or 6 hard points (1 for each limb, torso, and hemlet/back). Not sure what kind of WT and ST this kind of power should be allowed to be balanced. I have yet to see the group fight a vehicle while not in one. That makes me unsure as the balancing issues.

Any advice? Or general rules on vehicle vs non vehicle combat.

I have a starfighter ace in the campaign I'm GMing, who is starting to look at building his own vehicles. One thing that came up was building a small land vehicle that is basically "power armor" from Fallout. I don't have access to the Guardian book that covers armorer but this would fall in as a vehicle anyways.

Is there any official material on a small walking vehicle. I saw the mono cycle but thatshe not exactly what I'm looking for. I planned to allow him and about 5 or 6 hard points (1 for each limb, torso, and hemlet/back). Not sure what kind of WT and ST this kind of power should be allowed to be balanced. I have yet to see the group fight a vehicle while not in one. That makes me unsure as the balancing issues.

Any advice? Or general rules on vehicle vs non vehicle combat.

I'd really not recomend allowing this to be a vehicle unless you don't mind him just destroying everything. Vehicle vs personal scale combat goes as follows.

Vehicles have armor, 1 armor = 10 soak, 1 damage vehicale scale = 10 damage personal scale. So basically even with 1 armor and 1 damage (the bare minimum) of vehicle vs personal scale you typically see vehicles absolutely destroy people on personal scale levels.

If I ever considered letting a player have power armor I'd instead go more the route of providing a boost to brawn whilst wearing it as this would cover both increased physical damage, increase soak, and increased encumbrance. The amount though would be arguable but this would allow a player a boost without making them to god like in personal scale.

There's already power armor, but it's in Dangerous Covenants. It operates on personal scale and has no integrated weaponry.

I'm gonna agree with the Dark Bunny Lord on this one.

(I love this sentence)

Vehicle scale is a separate scale for a reason. When you start mixing boots on the ground with a blaster in hand, vs an armored Humvee with a mounted machine gun up top, the odds are rather greatly in favor of the truck driving away with fond memories of ending your mortal existence.

Everybody looks at movies like Iron Man, where small arms fire goes unnoticed, heavy weapons fire is shrugged off, and a single firecracker of a missile is enough to destroy a Tank. The problem is, then the GM has to escalate the difficulty of the game to a point where it's a challenge for you in your suit. But anything remotely challenging for you, is going to decimate your team in a single blow.

Suddenly, you're standing in the spotlight as the only one who can survive stepping onto the battlefield. Or the GM has to coax the team into splitting up, so they can throw a big monster at you and small minions at the rest of the team. And hope that you don't hesitate for a moment to mow over all the minions first, ruining the game for the rest of the team.

If you add a jetpack to the mix you basically do have a vehicle. You still depend on Soak and personal scale weapons, but you'll have a System Strain Threshold.

So if you follow that idea, you could arguably make a in-between thing.

Consider it a vehicle - because of the obviously built-in jetpack,.

You could go two ways with this. The simplest is probably basing it off a speeder bike. Give it perhaps 2 Hull and either armour 0 or 1, but considering it's going up against troops mostly and to keep it ... "balanced" ... give it max armour 1. This is quite a powerful option as basically any damage under 10 is arguably ignored, but also anything below 20, as you don't really have to count the 2 left over damage from a successful 12 damage hit, because Hull.

The other way you could go to solve this, is to give it separate Wounds and Soak. Let's say Soak 4-5 and 15-20 wounds, more or less the same wound/hull as above, but you're not ignoring lower than 20 damage and you're not soaking everything below 10. You keep track of these separately, just like you would a vehicle, the suit also receives vehicle critical hits. When damage exceeds the suit's Wound Threshold it's useless and you'll have to exit it.

But I think just adding a jetpack to the mix is more than enough to become a vehicle. It's powerful enough just the movement thing. You don't need hull and armour, I think wounds and soak is good enough. The powered armour in Dangerous Covenants provides 1 defence and 3 soak, +1 brawn, visual enhancement, athletics enhancement, toxic and vacuum survival ... add the jetack and, well ... what more do you need?

Keeping the Peace also has Armor Crafting. One of the templates is called "Augmentative Armor." It starts at 2 defense, 2 soak, 6 encumbrance, and 6 hard points. Make it seal-able (1 advantage on the crafting check), give it the strength enhancing system attachment (2 hard points), then call it power armor. It still has 4 hard points do stick a weapon (or two) on it and fill it with gadgets like a multi-optics suite and whatnot. Slap on a jetpack or rocket boots for flight.

Why exactly do you want it to count as a vehicle? Because as most people have mentioned, vehicle armour and weapons it will make him grossly overpowered. If it's just a question of letting him use his vehicle based skills in personal combat I'd suggest looking at the Jetpack from EotE CRB. Moves like a vehicle but not as deadly to personal scale opponents.

But I think just adding a jetpack to the mix is more than enough to become a vehicle. It's powerful enough just the movement thing. You don't need hull and armour, I think wounds and soak is good enough. The powered armour in Dangerous Covenants provides 1 defence and 3 soak, +1 brawn, visual enhancement, athletics enhancement, toxic and vacuum survival ... add the jetack and, well ... what more do you need?

Do you want a suit of armor that also lets you fly around? Cus that's what Boba Fett had, and he managed just fine.

But when you officially stamp "Vehicle" onto the description, you move into a higher category of effects. You no longer calculate personal scale defense and damage, now you multiply everything by 10. If your vehicular armor suit has Armor 1, that means it soaks 10 damage automatically. If your vehicular armor suit does 1 damage, that means it blasts people for 10 points. And when it comes to combat, the opposition need to deal a whole lot of damage to your vehicular armor suit before they can even hope to injure the occupant inside. Which is why Vehicle combat has ship parts flying off and ship systems powering down, but no real personal damage until they exit the vehicle.

If you want "a mode of transportation" that's fine. But you can't have a Vehicle scale shell around you, preventing you from taking damage unless it's sufficient to destroy the Tank you're hiding inside.

It entirely depends on how you want your campaign to run, but here is my suggestion:

Roughly follow the Beast Riding guidelines in Stay on Target and the armour is just armour, it enhances brawn (by 1), soak (by 2 or 3) & Defense (by 2). Speed is 1/2 agility. Jet pack makes flight Speed 2. All Soak, Wounds and Strain is still Personal scale. If the suit looses power it's too heavy to move in.

Then if he wants bigger tone down an AT-ST. But never give it Vehicle scale weapons.