[3.5] Armor jockey

[Thurbane]

Hey all, looking for some help on an NPC idea I have.

The NPC will be a Jermlaine Cleric (or similar), who rides around in the chest cavity of an animated suit of Mechanus Gear armor, posing as a medium sized creature.

How would the mechanics of this work? What sort of action would the “pilot” need to control the armor? Also, how would he go about throwing spells without revealing himself?

This is just a thought exercise at the moment, so all suggestions are welcomed. Usual caveats for my games: no psionics, no ToB, no icarnum, no Dragon Mag material. Also, trying to avoid FR or Eberron specific stuff where possible. Generally no homebrew, unless there is some kind of homebrew that captures this concept perfectly...

Cheers - T

[gbprime]

What about sizing a Shield Guardian down to medium (which would reduce both it's price and its hit dice) and utilizing ventriloquism and a hat of disguise? That's like a 90,000gp solution though. Depends on your level.

[Cog]

Animate Object doesn't seem like it would scale very well. As a cleric, though, one option might be to load the armor up with a skeleton of your own creation; there's still plenty of free space for a jermlaine, and you've got free shelving installed too. You can swap the skeleton out as you become capable of controlling more powerful critters.

Cityscape has Deceptive Magic, a +1 metamagic that lets you make spell effects seem to originate from elsewhere. This provides no mechanical benefits to getting around cover or the like, but it should do for making it look like the suit's casting instead.

[Thurbane]

Yeah, the Shield Guardian is an interesting idea, but not exactly what I'm looking for.

Good call on Deceptive Spell. I'm guessing being inside the chest of the armor would mess up spells that require line of effect...unless the armor has an inbuilt "arrow slit" or similar? Do things like Monster Summons require a line of effect?

I'm also thinking of the armor being made of a special gear - maybe Aurorum, Star Metal or Riverine.

What spells could the pilot throw on the armor from the inside to augment it?

...what I'm going for is an NPC that the party defeats, only to have a little man pop out of it's chest to continue the fight, or flee.

[Ashtagon]

Green Ronin's Mindshadows has rules for "juggernauts", which are basically personal mecha armour in fantasy terms. You could take a suit of armour and re-crunch it as a juggernaut.

[Cog]

Random thought:

Savage Species has a Symbiotic template. Secrets of Xen'drik has Quorcraft Warforged, a template that can be applied to Warforged to make them true constructs; they lose feats and such, but they don't lose class levels (and the sample one is even a 4th level Barbarian, so this is intended, despite their null Int score). Now you've got a power armor with the abilities you like, scalable by class levels if the suit itself manages to make a new appearance, and the Symbiotic template gives you rules for combining their actions and ability scores. You could pair Symbiotic with another medium construct of your choice, of course. Disclaimer: constructs don't actually qualify for Symbiotic, and it becomes an aberration. Those are pretty handwaveable for an NPC, though.