There is the squish bot add on for flexbots. In it they say to use bioweave armor. So I say squishbot should allow things like synthetic mask. Course as a GM when asked by a Player I try to work with what they want. So I'd for sure let you synthetic mask a flexbot. But I'd limit it to being effective in a set number of situations. Course I would also let you add modular design to a Reaper and let it be the core of a flexbot amalgam. So I guess I'm permissive.

Most flexbots can morph to make their overall shape be pretty much whatever they want to. A helicopter, a hovercraft, a truck, a dog, a human (just the overall shape and functional form - they would still obviously be a flexbot). I think of them as a bunch of Lego Technics parts suspended in a shapechanging material. The Technics parts are strong and fast and form the chassis, engine, actuators, axles and limbs and so on, and the smart material is relatively weak but it cover it all, protect any fragile internal bits, provide an aerodynamic shape, is able to move parts around internally, etc. EDIT: clarity

Actually, considering they can create up to micrometer-level components for manipulators, I doubt they've have all that hard a time approximating a human shape, if given enough modules. Now, that said, if one applies a synthetic mask, I'd say it'd look authentic enough…. until it used any of it's shape-changing abilities - the mask would shred apart. Unless it was able to 'get out of sight' during a transform, and heal/repair the mask during that time, it'd be perhaps better to choose a different morph to do the 'flesh-shaper' trick.

DivineWrath wrote:

There is a humanoid flexbot example. In the Tranhuman sample characters, there is the Flexbot Traceur on p. 230 with a humanoid shape. It uses a Flexbot (Rouge) model.

I am 90% sure that illustration is being recycled from elsewhere because someone was in a hurry. It really doesn't fit the description of a flexbot at all, really doesn't fit that particular module, and doesn't make sense for that character. That said though, I could absolutely see a flexbot with even just 5 or 6 modules Voltroning together into a roughly humanoid shape no problem. It's still going to be made of twitchy little sprawls of tiny little clasping robo holding up pieces of an outer armor shell to cover itself as best it can though.

Clunker wrote:

Actually, considering they can create up to micrometer-level components for manipulators, I doubt they've have all that hard a time approximating a human shape, if given enough modules. Now, that said, if one applies a synthetic mask, I'd say it'd look authentic enough…. until it used any of it's shape-changing abilities - the mask would shred apart. Unless it was able to 'get out of sight' during a transform, and heal/repair the mask during that time, it'd be perhaps better to choose a different morph to do the 'flesh-shaper' trick.

They don't really create manipulators. The way they're generally described is that what you essentially have is a bush robot- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_robot Picture a telescoping metal rod. Now picture there's a robo-hand stuffed in one end that has 4 nicely articulated little rod "fingers" on it that can retract or pop out as needed. Now picture that stuffed down the tips of each of those rods is another, 1/4 scale robo-hand, with its own 4 articulated telecsoping fingers and so on and so on until the rods are too tiny to keep stuffing smaller bits in. NOW picture you have a few of these fractally branching messes all grabbing each other and linked up software wise, so you just have this big tangled mess of little robo fractal trees in a confusing heap. Depending on how much they're telescoped out and which hands are/aren't popping out from the ends of various fingers, the whole thing can look like just a pile of a few sticks, or some fuzzy indistinct mass like this- http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1540522/thumbs/o-SPIDERS-facebook.jpg Either way though, you can push one of the thicker limbs out just about anywhere and keep the really small fingers safe inside, while just using the main few to grab stuff, or heck, hold out another base rod out from the main pile to get a real properly beefy arm structure going. The whole confusing mass can "change shapes" in the sense that you can stretch it out along one axis, or telescope all the arms out to increase the overall volume, or rig up elbows with one two of the base rods just kinda holding hands for the joint, but it's still an ugly pile of metal twigs. So lets hand out a bunch of little hardened plates, that some of the tinier hands can hold up like a phalanx forming a shield wall. Easy enough with all those points of articulation to get a default shape with a practically seemless armored skin to protect and hide all the little fiddly bits. If you're really clever about it, you can probably even get two or three layers of shielding with arms poking through the cracks of the inner layers to hold out wider plates. There's pretty much only going to be one idea configuration where you have a smooth unbroken surface over the whole thing, but if you don't mind various sizes of seams, you retain all that stretchy telescoping flexibility, with ugly bits poking through. Tada. That's a single flexbot module. Well, that and you have a cyberbrain wedged in the middle somewhere along with some sensors. The different module types also have some specialized tools mounted on some of the smaller arm branches like extra sensor clusters or lasers or little rockets and whatnot. Or some of them are just plain other little robots with similar grabbing fingers on the edges so they can hook together as well as two normal modules. The only real weird outlier is the Bouba module, where you skip the armor plating and instead just dump the whole finger tangle in a bag full of jelly (like a Stretch Armstrong doll) for even MORE flexibility, at the cost of not being able to poke delicate little hands and tools right out the sides, just kinda tent the surface out with fat gooey pseudopod fingers. Still, with enough of those you can told stuff just fine, and the whole handholding angle still works. I don't see any reason at all you couldn't design a flexbot with a default smooth-shell shape that nicely conforms to the contours of a humanoid limb/head torso, well enough that in the ideal configuration it forms a nice frame to lay a synthetic mask (which, to my understanding, is pretty much just the original Terminator's skin, just literally thrown over a whole robot like a mask), but as soon as you attempted to do anything at all you would ever want a flexbot to do, that fleshy mask is just going to be instantly shredded to a nasty red pulp. Even if you're really careful and just trying to walk around, not stretching the skin past its limit, it would look really screwy to any careful observer. The whole contraption is not at all rigged up like a human body with squishy muscles contracting and relaxing. It's all angles and super intricate telescoping rods on the inside. You might be able to hide the weird jury rigging in the elbows, but there's so many moving parts involved if you wanted to do a head turn I just don't see it happening in non-horrifying fashion. The real issue here as I see it though is just that synthetic masks absolutely do not do what they're being asked to do here, before flexbots even come into the mix. Skinflex is the mod you want to be looking at for any sort of shapeshifting disguise, but I'm pretty sure the Shaper morph already takes that to the limit (which could stand to be more clearly defined, but I think they're always going to look like a splicer)

I think the image on page 201 was just an image and nothing at all to do with flexbots. It was simply an area laid out in the morph section for an image. Like all morphs flexbots are likely to have hundreds of models and manufacturers for the same set of in game stats. The issue is however that a flexbot is not made to pass a human or humanoid. Its small size and more made for utility. The images we have other than the oddball on page 230 of transhuman all show the same type of thing. Boxy or roundish units with flexible walls and lots of little connections and skeletal limbs. So while a Malatav works Flexbot and a ares arms series III flexbot( totally made up models) may not look alike( the morph guide does bring that up) they are still the same morph stat wise. To even make a rough humanoid shape you will need at lest 2 flexbots for size alone. I do find it odd they do not have the "Can't use a syth mask" note but I simply do not see how one could ever pass as anything but a synth.

When I first read about the Flexbot, I mentally saw something like this.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reconfiguring_modular_robot The best picture/representation is just over half-way down.........or, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4leg2Cat.jpg Here's a demo video showing how it might happen, {featuring plenty of hardware failure}...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYizuooEs7s Of course, Transhuman came out and changed everything, making it much more macro-scale for the modules, whereas I was going nanoscale.

As the Liquid Silver variant of the Steel Morph can't take a synthetic mask (and it has shape adjusting, but is less flexible than a flexbot) it seems pretty simple to say that a flexbot can't take a synthetic mask. EDIT: On the other hand transhuman says that a flexbot can't have a synthetic mask without every module having one, but seems to allow it, which seems strange in light of the LS Steel morph lacking that ability.

DivineWrath wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

The further rules list that it can make wings, propellers and rotors to fly. It can make long limbs to counteract and enemy's reach advantage in melee combat. As a walker it can extrude extra limbs that allow it to run much faster than humans and get a Freerunning bonus.

Point of clarification. They don't make these things. It's repeatedly stated that they aren't some amorphous wad of nanites, and while Transhuman lists an alternate module you can swap in with an engineer swarm hive for constructing things, that's not something the rest have, and they still have the mobility options. These parts are always in there. It's just a swiss army knife situation. Lots of gadgets wedged inside until it's time to flip them out.

They are not an amorphous wad of nanites. However: "Much of a flexbot’s mass is composed of a reconfigurable lattice of microscopic structural components. Using the flexbot’s shape-adjusting augmentation, this lattice can be configured into gross structural features such as a torso, hands, head, appendages, and mobility systems, as well as mechanical features such as pistons, ball joints, and skeletal struts." Transhuman 200 They don't have a rotor packed away swiss-army knife style; part of their mass becomes a rotor, ball bearings, etc. As far as allowing synthetic mask, the player I have who was interested made it a no-brainer for me by playing a Synth, than adding modular and shape-adjusting. This makes him technically a flexbot module, but normally human-sized. [Both from common sense (a Synth is human sized) and from a rules standpoint (base DUR 40 makes a flexbot Medium sized)]. We talked it over and agreed that he could have synthetic mask (skinflex too), with the understanding that almost any shape changing he did would damage his skin, to a greater or lesser degree. He bought seperate medichines for his skin. So if he grows an extra pair of arms, that would damage his skin. If he wants to shift to rotor-powered flight, that will shred it beyond repair.

As this thread has been resurrected, I might as well post to provide an alternative: If I was confronted with this, I would say that the Mask would be in pieces attached to specific components which self-seal together when correctly positioned, but are stored internally the rest of the time. Essentially, the synth would have a skin-suit which it can carry around and put on as needed.

DivineWrath wrote:

Edit: I'm not entirely sure how well the devs understand flexbots anyways. I've came to the conclusion a while back that many flexbot modules are way too pricey. It can be difficult to afford to buy several of the stock models and combine them as flexbots as they were intended to do.

And that's ignoring the fact that to have a flexbot morph that can stay competitive, you need to buy armor and neurachem 1 for each module. A Synth can get speed 4 for 40,000. A 2-module flexbot has to spend 80k. And while it's nice that you can then become 2 morphs with speed 4 in a pinch, if that configuration is better then why make your two morphs flexbots?