Just finished reading the post, and had an idea on inventions malfunctioning.
When creating an invention, the player rolls to see how well they created it. (Probably adding their intelligence modifier) then rather than a base target number, you have a couple of different categories.
Higher rolls as well made inventions which don’t malfunction
Medium rolls are decent, they function, but tend to have unexpected/unwanted elements
Low rolls may work some of the time, but are mostly detrimental.
Do you think this would work the way you want? Or do you have something different in mind?
As to how their gadgets are powered wether by magic or by electricity or by steam power or whatever I would stick that under flavor and let your players decide how they want their character to feel
It doesn’t need to affect the abilities
It doesn’t need to affect the actual way they are played but it empowers players to go in so many different directions
My artificer has a massive generator on his back that fuels his inventions
Mine has magic runes carved which grant them power
It just allows for a roster of different characters from the same class
As far as limits and machines
I would give them a health bar which requires maintenance and downtime to fix (nothing major but it means they have to be aware of how they are using them in combat and if they’re reckless they can’t use it till they find a time and place to repair it)
And I like Benjamin’s idea of malfunctions but I would do it when they take damage maybe when it reaches half health you roll to see if it malfunctions if it does you roll to see what it does
Does it explode?
Does it just deal itself extra damage?
Who knows maybe something breaks but it makes it run double time and does its job even better!
I would make a table they have to roll on if it malfunctions
I am hoping to play this class some day, and yet I struggle for ideas. I think it would be fun to specialize but have options to expand. So a character that is really good at weapons could maybe build a non weapon widget which might perform better if they could equate part of the functionality to something in a weapon.
So for example a device could have a trigger mechanism the could repurpose from a gun.
I like adding alchemy and blueprints reminds me of my chemistry teacher saying he'd allow us to do any experiment we wanted provided we outlined the reaction first. (To avoid blowing up the lab.)
I love that things could degrade or develop bugs. Sounds fairly realistic. I could also see a character who develops a tendency to developing questionable things that might become surprisingly useful at some point.
Just finished reading the post, and had an idea on inventions malfunctioning.
When creating an invention, the player rolls to see how well they created it. (Probably adding their intelligence modifier) then rather than a base target number, you have a couple of different categories.
Higher rolls as well made inventions which don’t malfunction
Medium rolls are decent, they function, but tend to have unexpected/unwanted elements
Low rolls may work some of the time, but are mostly detrimental.
Do you think this would work the way you want? Or do you have something different in mind?
this is really interesting
Here’s how I would do it
As to how their gadgets are powered wether by magic or by electricity or by steam power or whatever I would stick that under flavor and let your players decide how they want their character to feel
It doesn’t need to affect the abilities
It doesn’t need to affect the actual way they are played but it empowers players to go in so many different directions
My artificer has a massive generator on his back that fuels his inventions
Mine has magic runes carved which grant them power
It just allows for a roster of different characters from the same class
As far as limits and machines
I would give them a health bar which requires maintenance and downtime to fix (nothing major but it means they have to be aware of how they are using them in combat and if they’re reckless they can’t use it till they find a time and place to repair it)
And I like Benjamin’s idea of malfunctions but I would do it when they take damage maybe when it reaches half health you roll to see if it malfunctions if it does you roll to see what it does
Does it explode?
Does it just deal itself extra damage?
Who knows maybe something breaks but it makes it run double time and does its job even better!
I would make a table they have to roll on if it malfunctions
I love that a malfunction MIGHT make it work better...hehe.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
I am hoping to play this class some day, and yet I struggle for ideas. I think it would be fun to specialize but have options to expand. So a character that is really good at weapons could maybe build a non weapon widget which might perform better if they could equate part of the functionality to something in a weapon.
So for example a device could have a trigger mechanism the could repurpose from a gun.
I like adding alchemy and blueprints reminds me of my chemistry teacher saying he'd allow us to do any experiment we wanted provided we outlined the reaction first. (To avoid blowing up the lab.)
I love that things could degrade or develop bugs. Sounds fairly realistic. I could also see a character who develops a tendency to developing questionable things that might become surprisingly useful at some point.