The Hutt Shell Armor is, of course, irresistibly awesome and insanely badass. But the rules don't do it justice. I mean, there's no way to handle its shoulder-mounted E-Web heavy repeating blaster! How would you solve it, rules-wise? I guess we'll count it as a mod that takes hard points, as it isn't mentioned in the basic rules for the armor?

Which of course begs the question; what would you do with the remaining hard points? And what other weapons would you give this badass mercenary hutt?

And how should the armor's stated ability to float up to five meters in the air really be handled in regards to close combat and the Athletics skill?

I could swear there was a weapon harness attachment for armor. I built a powered exoskelton with 2 LRBs for a nemesis once, using only things I found in books. I didn't spend too much time fretting over hardpoints. The downside is that one of my PCs ended up with the dual LRB+ harness rig, but fortunately he favors chopping to blasting.

With a 5m hover range, I'd imagine nets and goo grenades and all sorts of goodies would be great additions to the obvious neuronic whips and poison gas launchers.

There's the Merr-Sonn Hands Free Weapon mount in dangerous covenants that can be put on an armor for just 2 hard points, but it's limited to just encumbrance 4 weapons. Encumbrance 4 is enough for a blaster rifle, but we dont want that. We want to go big! The stripped down attachment from Special Modifications can remove up to 3 points from a weapons encumbrance giving us an effective limit of 7... which is sadly still not enough for a heavy repeating blaster.
But hey, a light repeater is still plenty nasty and would fit just perfectly with a hard point to spare for the obligatory laser sight. Because Predator.

5 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

There's the Merr-Sonn Hands Free Weapon mount in dangerous covenants that can be put on an armor for just 2 hard points, but it's limited to just encumbrance 4 weapons. Encumbrance 4 is enough for a blaster rifle, but we dont want that. We want to go big! The stripped down attachment from Special Modifications can remove up to 3 points from a weapons encumbrance giving us an effective limit of 7... which is sadly still not enough for a heavy repeating blaster.
But hey, a light repeater is still plenty nasty and would fit just perfectly with a hard point to spare for the obligatory laser sight. Because Predator.

I wonder if there's a way someone could specially modify a weapon to have an even lighter encumbrance value.

3 minutes ago, themensch said:

I wonder if there's a way someone could specially modify a weapon to have an even lighter encumbrance value.

or we could just give the Hutt three levels of the Burly talent, thus lowering encumbrance of all weapons by 3. It's a bit up to interpretation if that would do it, but I'd argue it could because of the awesomeness it would create in this case.

2 minutes ago, Natsymir said:

or we could just give the Hutt three levels of the Burly talent, thus lowering encumbrance of all weapons by 3. It's a bit up to interpretation if that would do it, but I'd argue it could because of the awesomeness it would create in this case.

Hm, I would require excellent work on the harness and the weapon since it seems to me the failure point is not the character's brawn, but the harness'. But throwing Burly in there is probably a good idea, as is some Force: Enhance to allow him to jump to other range bands as a maneuver.

to my great dissapointment, it seems Merr-Sonn Hands Free Weapon mount doesn't allow weapons based on the Gunnery skill :-(

1 minute ago, Natsymir said:

or we could just give the Hutt three levels of the Burly talent, thus lowering encumbrance of all weapons by 3. It's a bit up to interpretation if that would do it, but I'd argue it could because of the awesomeness it would create in this case.

But that would bring our upper limit to encumbrance 10, so why bother with just a piddly enc 9 heavy repeater? Go for Sorosuub HOB heavy repeating blaster. It's debatable if it's better, but at enc 10, it is by all definitions bigger.

And that's what counts.

29 minutes ago, themensch said:

Hm, I would require excellent work on the harness and the weapon since it seems to me the failure point is not the character's brawn, but the harness'. But throwing Burly in there is probably a good idea, as is some Force: Enhance to allow him to jump to other range bands as a maneuver.

I love the Idea of a force jumping hutt!

I was toying with the idea of adding a grapnel launcher to to a shoulder mounted weapon, enabling the hutt pull his leisurely floating body around on tow lines, like some kind of obese slug version of spiderman.
In fact...

20 minutes ago, Natsymir said:

to my great dissapointment, it seems Merr-Sonn Hands Free Weapon mount doesn't allow weapons based on the Gunnery skill :-(

Dont fret! We can take the light repeater and add underbarrel or secondary weapon systems to it, to give it a more majestic encumbrance score! It might take a tinkerer or something to pull it off, but that's what the kowakian monkey-lizard is for, right?

Eh. Seems you cant, as the mounts eats an hard point as well. You'd need tinkerer just to get laser sights on them.

29 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I love the Idea of a force jumping hutt!

I was building a Warrior: Aggressor Hutt to do just that, but I thought I might enjoy that more as an NPC to torment my players.

Okay, so, a working but basic build (without cheating with Burly or custom-hutt-weapon mounts). I give you, with help from penpenpen; Dakka the Hutt:

Hutt Shell Armor (Soak 3, Defense 2, Encumbrance 5; Hard Points 0/4; Merr-Sonn Hands Free Weapon Mount, Superior, Vacuum Sealed).

Shoulder-mounted Light Repeating Blaster (Encumbrance 4; Hard Points 0/4; Armor-mounted, Stripped down attachment).

This doesn't give us a lot of encumbrance left to play with, as he'll likely only achieve Brawn 4 (and Agility 2) until he's leveled up (don't ask how he afforded the armor...). But we can give him a backpack! This gives him +4 encumbrance threshold. Let's imagine the backpack is part of his shoulder-monted Repeating Blaster loadout, containing ammo or something. Add then some load-bearing gear, for a further +3 encumbrance threshold. It can be a cool combat vest on top of his awesome armor.

Now for some more awesome!

Two Wrist-mounted (i.e, armor integrated) Heavy Blaster Pistols (Encumbrance 4; Hard Points 0/3; Paired, Wrist-mounted).

For close combat, we want to use his awesome Brawn score, but also stack something with his armor's high defense, and we don't care at all about his hands not being free, because he can use his guns anyhow. So we have (ofc fully kitted out with serrated edge and monofilament, and a magnetic weapon tether so he doesn't risk dropping it):

Czerka "Czerhander" VX Vibro-Greatsword (Melee; Damage +3; Crit 1; Encumbrance 4; Hard Points 0/3; Defensive 1, Pierce 4, Quick Draw, Vicious 3

We've now pushed over his encumbrance treshold by one, but he'll be a Heavy and have Burly, so that's not a problem. Here we have it, the galaxy's most pimped Hutt gunlugger. But he'll desperately need a slave who can tinker with his equipment. Err...and money to buy it all to begin with...the armor alone'll set him back 30 000 credits, and the rest of the stuff around 10 000, not counting the almost-necessary slave.

19 minutes ago, Natsymir said:

...and money to buy it all to begin with...the armor alone'll set him back 30 000 credits, and the rest of the stuff around 10 000, not counting the almost-necessary slave.

You can get a decent starfighter with that kind of money. Any Hutt worth his slime would take pride in that.

"How dangerous can a single Hutt be?"

"Opppps!"

12 hours ago, penpenpen said:

You can get a decent starfighter with that kind of money. Any Hutt worth his slime would take pride in that.

You can get a crappy, bottom of the list Starfighter for that much. Good Starfighters generally cost > 100k. There are a few exceptions, like the Y-wing, but even tat cost 80k.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

You can get a crappy, bottom of the list Starfighter for that much. Good Starfighters generally cost > 100k. There are a few exceptions, like the Y-wing, but even tat cost 80k.

Depends on what you call decent, I guess. I'd call the cloakshape just short of a steal and the Cutlass an insult to junk everywhere.