Powered Armor and Non-Medium Characters

[HastyMantis]

I can't find any information on how powered armor works with charachters other than medium size. The armors have a size of their own and there's a rule that medium PA counts as a char using their own arms, but not large PA.

If a ysoki puts on a battle harness, do they count as medium? Are their cargo lifters still large?

The harder question: what about large PCs? Can they wear a battle harness? Do they become medium if they do?

[Pantshandshake]

Armor Size

Armor comes in different sizes for different creatures, and you might have to adjust a suit of armor to fit you if it wasn’t made for your race. A ysoki can’t effectively wear armor made for a human, and a kasatha needs to adjust armor that was made for a two-armed creature. If it’s in doubt whether a creature can fit the suit, the GM decides whether the armor needs to be adjusted. When you buy armor new, the purchase price includes any adjustments.

Adjusting Armor
If you get secondhand armor that wasn’t tailored for you, you can have it adjusted, which requires a successful Engineering check (DC = 10 + 2 × the armor’s level). Alternatively, you can spend 10% of the armor’s purchase price to have it adjusted by a professional—typically an armorsmith or anyone with multiple ranks in Engineering.

[Poison Dusk]

Pg. 203 Core Rulebook: Size
A suit of powered armor has the listed size, so you may take up more space when you’re wearing it.

[Robert Gooding]

Yes but none of this answers the second part of the question does a large creature wearing medium power armour become medium and does a large creature in large power armour use its own arms ?

[JiCi]

Hmmm... just a human wearing a Flight Frame counts as Huge, a ysoki wearing a Battle Harness will count as Medium.

As for Large PCs, well... they cannot shrink down to fit a smaller powered armor ^^; They might need to pay extra to adjust it to the correct size (Large Battle Harness) OR to be of a relative new size. For instance, a dragonkin might want to wear a Flight Frame that is Gargantuan instead of Huge (2 size larger than Medium).

[kaid]

Basically if you are bigger or smaller or just flat more alien than what the armor was designed for you would do the armor adjustment modifiers to resize the suit. Starfinder is designed with a lot of handwavium so that you can have really alien things still able to use loot with minimum of hassle.

[Ravingdork]

I imagine a large character wearing medium powered armor tailored for him would be treated as large.

Why overcomplicate it? The arms issue is a bigger point of discussion if you ask me.

[JiCi]

Ravingdork wrote:

Why overcomplicate it? The arms issue is a bigger point of discussion if you ask me.

If they can readjust an armor, I think they can readjust to accomodate limbs.

You talk about a kasatha's extra arms, but a formian's extra legs or a bantrid's lack of limbs is just as problematic ^^;

[Dracomicron]

I see Bantrid power armor as being a little tank. It operates the treads by spinning its ball.

[Ravingdork]

Dracomicron wrote:

I see Bantrid power armor as being a little tank. It operates the treads by spinning its ball.

Just like Bonapart! lol!

[HastyMantis]

Ravingdork wrote:

I imagine a large character wearing medium powered armor tailored for him would be treated as large.

Why overcomplicate it? The arms issue is a bigger point of discussion if you ask me.

In a home game, I think that would be an easy ruling. I do society play, so getting some consensus is important: I'd like to know how my char works when I show up at the table.

[CorvusMask]

Would be nice to know this yeah.

Like if izalguun wears large sized powered armor that is adjusted to their size with 10 feet reach, does izalguun gain 10 feat reach while using four legs? Can they use their own hands instead of armor and do they remain 10 feet sized creature or become huge?

[Pantshandshake]

CorvusMask wrote:

Would be nice to know this yeah.

Like if izalguun wears large sized powered armor that is adjusted to their size with 10 feet reach, does izalguun gain 10 feat reach while using four legs? Can they use their own hands instead of armor and do they remain 10 feet sized creature or become huge?

I think the intent from the books is that a large sized power armor is designed for a medium creature to be riding inside a pseudo-cockpit. But given that mechanically the only difference is using your own own hands or controlling the suit's hands, I would generally assume that when a large sized PA was adjusted to fit the weird biology, you could decide if the character was wearing it like same-size PA or bigger-size PA.

Power armor does not say it adds the character's native reach to the total reach, just weapons. So, much like the speed changes, switching the Izalguun's stance wouldn't change the reach from the PA.

They would become huge if the armor was huge.