burning tech, character building, free traits?

Burning Empires Tech Burner
1

page 378

“For one point a character may buy any weapon, form of protection, or vehicle listed in this book that is appropriate to his characters station and index. Choose the weapon, armor, or vehicle from the list of items provided in the relevant chapters. Those pieces come with extra traits for free!”

Those pieces come with extra traits for free!

What exactly does that mean?

Does it mean, as I am in low index, when my lord pilot anvil buys his suit of iron for 1 resource, I also get 4 points of tech traits to spruce it up?

Or does it mean for 1 resource, I get iron, with all it’s traits and hinderances, but later in the game if I forget to buy iron, I’ll need to basically build it from scratch, 8 techpionts for av 4, avatar 12, eva 8, foam 27, massive -14 complex -6 etc etc for some 70odd tech points, = 17 ob for the resource test

second, either with free points during character burning, or by converting resource points into tech points, I desire to increase the amount my iron suit ups my power stat. I see pg 386 Device:advantage

Is it allowable to build off of power assist and invest 2 tech points to allow power assit to give +2d power

or

is it allowable to build a second very similar advantace, say called ‘power enhance’ for 4 tech points to give +1d power, so then the character in the armor gets +1d power from power assist, and +1d power from power enhance, for a total of +2d power

or

Must I invest 6 tech points for Improved Power assist which gives +2d power, and ignore the basic power assist, for a total of +2d power

2

Point 1: Answer b.

Point 2: Answer c: you’ve got to buy the new trait whole. You have to pay for the +2D.

3

so what if I built the device:advantage onto the weapon. Now obviously, switching to a different weapon, the advantage would be lost, but if I created ‘weapon powerpack forcefeed multiplier’ for 4 tech points to give +1d power, so then the character in the armor gets +1d power from power assist, and +1d power from forcefeed multiplier, for a total of +2d power

4

Uh, sure. Then it’s a part of the weapon. Not the armor, though. So it can more easily be taken away from you and stuff.

5

Playing devil’s advocate here for a minute.

For building in a limitation, to reduce the cost of some tech you are burning, wouldn’t this ruling allow potential abuse?

Say a weapon is already unweildy (-1 ob to close combat) and you pile on a bunch of nifty stuff like a bigger ammo capacity, longer range, potato chip dispenser, etc. And then to offset the cost, you give it a -2ob to close combat, so you pay for the -2ob…and that isn’t addative?

Try this trick and your GM will probably smack it down, however, it seems taht your ruling does leave open potential abuse.

You are already paying a bit of a premium to add tech onto an existing platform (+1D whatever already incorporated at 4tech points, adding a new tech on top of it for +2D, thats +6 tech points, for a total of +3D for 10, however, building a +3D from the very start is only 8 tech points)