Help with building a Voltron in D&D

[EkulNagrom]

Hello! Sorry if the title was confusing, but I couldn't really explain the whole issue in just the title. I'll explain more now.

My current group is changing up the DM, and the new DM is someone who really likes a lot of action and high damage numbers. He told us that for his new campaign he wanted everyone's characters to all be the same race so we could be like the dwarves from the Hobbit movie. Brotherhood and a shared background and all that. He also told us that he wanted our background to be something along the lines of "We were powerful and we lost everything, now we're starting over."

So I came up with this ridiculous idea that everyone in the party should be a bunch of Conjuration wizard Rock Gnomes. Our backstory was that we "Built the ultimate fighting machine". The machine was destroyed and now we're starting over. But because we're conjuration wizards with Minor Conjuration, the five of us can each summon a portion of the ultimate machine and form some sort of Voltron together. (We each summon a 3 by 3 foot cube of some lightweight metal like mithral that all joins together into some sort 9ish foot tall warrior that can house 5 really short rock gnomes...). Luckily, the DM is ok with this (We bribed him with the thought of Voltron blowing things up), but no one knows what this unholy-Voltron-thing's stats should be.

I've never made a creature like this, so I was hoping for some help. I have thought of some things, for example, how Voltron's HP could be all 5 wizard's HP combined. And maybe how combat would work, where every gnome can use their action to cast spells like normal (probably buff Voltron or cast Evocation spells) or use their action to make Voltron do something. The gnome in the arm with the sword gets to make Voltron attack sort of thing.

I'm just asking if anyone else has any amazing ideas. And if you do, thank you.

[Crisis21]

If your Voltron has less than your 5 party members' combined hp, there's something wrong.

To begin with, treat your Voltron like, say, a warforged combiner. Five warforged, each with their own stats, joining together as one. Combined hp of course (maybe with fighter-class hit die instead of spellcaster), AC to reflect being made of mythril, and his stats reflect (at minimum) the highest stats of each of his parts. Or maybe divide stats by 3 and add them together or something (getting an average of five thirds each part's strength for the combined beast).

I like the idea of using it as a medium for spellcasting.

[EkulNagrom]

I haven't been able to find anything on what a Warforged Combiner is. But I'll keep looking.

I do like the idea of splitting the stats up. Do you mean something like where Voltron uses the INT and WIS stats for the gnome who controls Voltron's head (Black Lion)? And uses the STR score of whatever gnome is making the attack?

[RazDelacroix]

While I am currently eating, I would like to toss in my two coppers. 5 unique warforged/effigy critters of the large variety. Constructs of an Owlbear, a Direwolf (skinned as a dire fox), an Ox, a Giant Eagle, and a Lion. That should be a starting point! To activate/combine them into VOLTFORGE! each 'pilot' must donate a spellslot. Each level's worth of spellslots determines the number of rounds the mech is active. If each pilot spent a 1st level slot, it would be active for 5 rounds, and so forth. Each pilot can use an action to either use one of the mech's attacks, cast a spell, or spend a spellslot to keep the mech active for longer.

[EkulNagrom]

Each pilot can use an action to either use one of the mech's attacks, cast a spell, or spend a spellslot to keep the mech active for longer.

Our basic idea was that each player could use an action to make the mech attack or use a spell. It's good to see that other people are thinking along the same lines as me. I didn't think of using spell slots to "power" Voltron though. Your idea is a good one. Otherwise the whole idea would be a little broken.

I think the party will get a kick out of choosing their own "Lion" to pilot. I don't know if anyone will want to pilot an Owlbear though.

Voltforge is a better name then we've come up with so far. The other names in the running are Nortlov, Wattron and Chuckles.

Thanks for your two coppers

[Crisis21]

I haven't been able to find anything on what a Warforged Combiner is. But I'll keep looking.

Probably because your group may be the first to do it. Or at least the first to do it and post the event online.

Warforged are, of course, D&D robots.

Combiners are robots that join together - i.e. combine - to form bigger robots. The term originated with Transformers if I'm not mistaken.


I like RazDelacroix's suggestion regarding spell slots being used to power your combined creation. But don't forget to make the individual warforged mechs have their own perks! Just like Voltron, you won't always be able to use the big guy in every encounter, and sometimes it might not even be the best idea!

[EkulNagrom]

Ah. That makes sense. Google-ing Warforged Combiner only gave me Warforged Homebrew races and pictures of Transformers.

[EkulNagrom]

So my friends and I finally got together and used Voltron last night.

It seemed to be a success, except for two small problems. The first problem was combat, but it's easily fixed. My DM underestimated us and we cleared out all the monsters at a ridiculous rate.

The second problem was Voltron's speed. We guessed that a creature of his size (about 12ft was what we decided) would probably have a movement speed of 35. The problem occurred when we told both of the pilots controlling the legs to dash, and someone cast Expeditious Retreat, so both of the "legs" dashed with their action and bonus action. Unless we did our math wrong, we moved about 580 ft in one turn.

We'll probably figure it out (we plan to make a character sheet for Voltron himself, so we don't get his stats confused) but I just wanted to thank everyone for their ideas. So far, everything is working out great with everyone's suggestions.

[Darthteddybear]

Sounds like you had fun! Maybe the DM could make other voltron like robots to fight you, that would probably solve the power imbalance.

[Crisis21]

Wow. That's kind of awesome. Wish I could have seen the looks on your faces.

[EkulNagrom]

To be honest, we couldn't stop laughing. When we originally tried to calculate our current speed we messed something up, and ended up with 22,000,000 is feet per second. We killed the party when we tried to stop Voltron from moving, which only made us laugh harder.

We figured out the math after that and corrected our mistake. But even then Voltron is still ridiculously fast.

Also, DarthTeddyBear, I'm currently begging for the DM to have us fight a giant rubbery Godzilla-type monster in a battle where we inevitably destroy half of of a huge city.

[demonslayerelf]

To fix the speed debacle, you might say that each player(Not just the legs) can move Voltforge 10 feet, and can't dash. Or that the legs could move him 25 feet, and can't dash(Each leg being the equivalent of a dwarf in this regard).

It's a big robot, and it's control is split between 5, so it probably wouldn't have the speed of a Tabaxi Wizard-Monk with Mobile feat, 5 times(Hypothetical wizards in a party).

This would mean that Voltforge can move 50 feet across the turn. Faster than people, but not 600 feet in one turn fast.

[EkulNagrom]

To fix the speed debacle, you might say that each player(Not just the legs) can move Voltforge 10 feet, and can't dash. Or that the legs could move him 25 feet, and can't dash(Each leg being the equivalent of a dwarf in this regard).

It's a big robot, and it's control is split between 5, so it probably wouldn't have the speed of a Tabaxi Wizard-Monk with Mobile feat, 5 times(Hypothetical wizards in a party).

This would mean that Voltforge can move 50 feet across the turn. Faster than people, but not 600 feet in one turn fast.

I'll bring this up with my Party, but something tells me they like Voltron the way he is. I did have an idea where for every (x amount of time) we force Voltron to run at that speed; he gains exhaustion levels (or some other name like it... wear and tear?).

And I'll bet we won't be moving at 580 ft in combat. That would be a waste of spell slots and actions. The only reason we ran so fast was because the DM had an NPC that was supposed to lead us to the "resistance base" and he said "Catch me if you can".

We caught him.