Crafting a robotic armor (homebrew armor with gadgets) - Need help and ideas

[Bobur]

One PC of the 3.5e Dragonlance group that I reside over is a human blacksmith /cleric of Reorx.
He has a long-running task of studying metals, collecting, and gathering new ideas and mechanics to build his own full plate at some point.

He has come quite far by now so I have to come up with a design for him.

Material: He has found a dragon metal vine - so basically mithril to keep it simple.

Bonus Gadgets: He has studied some gnomish inventions and although tinkering is not his thing I would like to give him one or two gadgets to his armor.

Fast-Donning Straps: Just an item, I cant remember from which book.
Armor with fast-donning straps
has been fi tted with a simpler system of straps and buckles,
making it much easier to don hastily. Whenever you don
fast-donning armor hastily, you do not incur the normal
increase in armor check penalty (although the armor’s
armor bonus to AC is still 1 point less than normal).

Light: basically a torch holder, might as well be some sort of magical light source.

Emercency shut off: Drop your armor as a single move action. However, doing so increases the time of donning it again to 1 hour.

Robotics: Maybe something like a limited energy or fuel source (thinking like the iron man core): Fuel to reduce the ACP by 2 or Fuel to increase a STR check by 2.
I am not certain how I could go about limiting these in uses or fuel. Or perhaps I let him choose which effect he wants so he only gets one of these.

What are your thoughts on this? Too much? Ok? Do you have other ideas? Maybe there is something like this already in one of the many 3.5 books ?

Thanks

[Tzardok]

If you are open to 3rd party stuff, the d20 WoW RPG includes rules for tinkering stuff, including power armor. I'm not sure how well balanced it is, but you can find it both in the WoW RPG basic rule set and in the sourcebook More Magic and Mayham.

[Bobur]

Thanks, sadly I dont have those and it doesnt seem to be a free book.

I googled around a bit and stumbled on some more ideas

so perhaps I can make a collection of optional gadgets and he can just pick 2 to build them into his armor.

Light, 5min water breathing, stable at 0, +2STR for carrying, +2 for Str checks, count as 1 category lighter for donning armor etc., reduced ACP -2 for a moment, maybe a small rocket launcher or a grappling hook? a build in dagger (hidden weapon) ?

I can imagine that he would want to expand on this later on. Maybe giving him some "advanced robotics" feat if he find a gnomish teacher.
Like a flamethrower (~fire cone ish) or a laser (searing light)

Should these items count against enchantments? Or should he still be able to slap a +1 etc on this? I dont really see why not to be honest.

Still not sure how to limit the uses. Most of these dont matter that much but some that give a bonus to Str should either be permanent but weak or need a use+fuel. Like 10 charges in the armor that you can use for whatever you want, but you have to replace the fuel after that for... 1k GP and crafting?

EDIT: I was checking out Pathfinder for options and inspirations and they have some additional stats that you can add to an armor that are not enchantments. Although I am pretty sure you can find something similar as a magical effect. The more fitting ones are nimble or one that lets you sleep in your armor more easily. They come with some downsides though, like higher ARCP or less armor.

[rel]

If you're looking for easy limiter on uses for advanced powers, you could always use the clerics turn undead attempts as fuel.

You could have wands loaded into the gauntlets, similar to a wand chamber on a weapon. That gives you more powerful effects with a built in limited use. And the player can swap them out as needed.

There are already a bunch of alchemical and mechanical items scattered about the various books (look up 3.5 lists of useful items for inspiration).
You could base your armour upgrades on those.