Woo. I'm back giving advice.
Anyways, just change your material type to a multi/sub-material. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe that button is the one with the sphere and the arrow pointing to it in the material window. What you get with this is (I believe) the ability to have 1024 (could be less) different materials in one material. Each one is assigned a material number. You can directly modify the material number on a mesh by selecting a polygon and changing it's number to correspond to the correct material. You can also apply a material modifier to an object. I dont have MAX in front of me at the mo, so you may just want to double check my advice in the MAX help windows.
Good luck with your project. And as always, happy animating =^P
-Robby O
oshortwan@Hotmail.com