New playbook (draft): The Metal Beast

Sure. You could think about this idea, too, it's pretty out there: when you are in your suit, you can roll+harm to perform augury.
("harm" being how much you've marked on your clock)

That would be pretty awesome... I'll think on it.

Oh, also! You need 2 gigs and moonlighting as an advance. Robo-suit should be a super-busy guy. Otherwise this suit is going to fall apart from lack of money to maintain it!

Yeah, I agree with Johnstone that maybe you nerfed him a little *too* much, but I think it's closer to right. I wouldn't be shy about letting the suit count as a gang, I mean a gunlugger can do that with a fucking crowbar and this guy is robo-cop.

You ditched the drones, right as I had the notion that you could count them as one of your crazy big guns. Maybe do the same thing with the recon drone? I'll have to think about it to offer any suggestions, but I think you'll want to figure how much you want the recon drone to be a trade off for, say, fighting like a gang vs having a rail gun or what have you.

Are you still defaulting to 3 armor? If not, I'd say that upgrading to 3 armor as one of your 'weapon' slots makes sense.

Augury is wacky, but we had fun with it in my game. It could definitely take the playbook in a cool/weird direction.

I expanded out the recon drone as one of the optional moves:

Spyfly: You have a little flying drone that you can use to recon things remotely. You need to be in your suit, paying attention to control it (otherwise it just hovers). When you try to find something out with it, roll +Sharp. On 10+, ask the MC 3 and on 7-9 ask 1: where is a particular person, vehicle or place? what’s the best way to get from here to some particular place? what’s something new it spotted? what is a particular person or group doing? On a miss, it’s got lost, caught, or smashed up.

I think that does what I want with it. The combat drone was kind of a neat idea but getting too far off the cool core of the character.

I've also taken Johnstone's suggestion on the Heavy Armour move - it now gives +1 armour and a strength, and the beginning armour rating is 2.

Plus, being a gang is back as an optional move rather than the half-assed version.

And the augury and open your brain stuff is definitely staying in there somewhere, just to get a have Evangelion/RahXephon style trippy stuff as an option.

Draft now viewable at https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1OFxCzhXmnqxhbrEDSsyEFVwT4YrN3Dv5lMDzTFffTWQ, so I don't have to keep posting about changes.

Here is a little something to consider: Can other playbooks steal moves from this one?

"Yes they can but first they have to get powerarmour" is the current answer, but that's not too interesting... Especially since a lot of the moves could probably be taken by other playbooks if the wording was slightly different. A driver with Walk Through Walls or a savvyhead with Spyfly, or possibly even a gunlugger with Heavy Suit are all things that easily make sense, no?

That's true.

I've modified a few of them to apply "when in your armour" so that other characters can qualify, even if they don't have powered armour. A couple of others can work in other ways, so I've reworded them to be more open.

Looks suggestions:
+angry face
+staring eyes
+meek body

Spyfly question suggestions (it being the drone):
what's the best path between me and it?
what has it spotted?
where is _____?
what is _____ doing?
(ugh, not the easiest move to write questions for... those could still be better...)

"Dear [Savvyhead Name Here], my name is WAR EAGLE. I will be sleeping with you during this session in exchange for repair services.  Do not be alarmed, I am a tireless and experienced lover!

XXX OOO,
WAR EAGLE"

I had another idea, maybe this is far off the mark, but it is building off the idea that the armored guy is a one-man gang.  I used to be in the Army and knew some tankers, and a tank is a beast that sucks up unbelievable amounts of preventive maintenance and spare parts.  Sure, AW is not the game for a careful simulation of combat technology, but I would start off a lot of narration for this player like, "So, Gunhead!  You're sitting in your room oiling the lower bogey assembly and working out the kinks in the left knee joint when Boo bursts into your room..."

How 'bout if he gets a "Armor move" that he has to roll for at the start of each session, analogous the moves that hardholders or hocuses get with their people, and if they fail, they get problems with their armor breaking down or attracting unwanted attention? 

P.S. Thinking about this character type has made me realize that what I really want is a separate playbook about actual cyborgs, for some full-on Cronenberg style body horror.  I gotta work on that.

I just realised that this class should be called the Juggernaut, so now it is.

I've made a few more changes, taking into account most of the comments so far.

I'm not sure about my move "Heavy Fucking Armour" that changes armour from 2 to 3. I wonder if having anyone able to grab that move as one of their other playbook advances would be too devastating for PCs to have? Thoughts? Vincent?

I think it works fine. You'll probably need a small army to take down someone if they somehow end up with 4-armor, though.

I dunno, go back to making "Heavy Fucking Armor" say "your power armor goes up to Armor 3"? That way, Joe Gunlugger can't just sneak up to armor 3 with his first advance, but if he works his butt off and finds some Experimental exo-armor (but for some reason is still more a gunlugger than a Juggernaut) he could take that move.

On the other hand, any game that has one of these fuckers running around is probably going to be geared more towards dealing with heavy armor, so it might not be that big a deal :)

Bret, I worded it as "improve some armour from 2 to 3" rather than "add 1" so there's no danger of armour 4 in the mix. That would be too much, I think, given that there are a few 4-harm weapons but 5-harm really only comes in for people specializing in causing immense harm.

Jeff, I'm not too concerned that a gunlugger will grab the move right off per se. It's more that I'm not sure whether having 3 armour available is going to unbalance how combat goes, and make some PCs untouchable.

I suspect that it won't, given the amount of damage my Battlebabe has inflicted and suffered. If he had an extra point of armour, I don't think the story would have played out much differently.

I'm interested to hear if the rest of you agree with me on that or not.

Bret, I worded it as "improve some armour from 2 to 3" rather than "add 1" so there's no danger of armour 4 in the mix.

There is when combined with moves from other playbooks.