BECOME THE SQUAD COMMANDER! (And pay 20% less doing it!)
This convenient bundle contains "Top 10 of 2013" nominated base class The Tinker: Master of Modular Mechanical Mayhem; the Rogue Alpha archetype, which explores what happens when the tinker dies and his greatest creation remains; The Innovator, a prestige class all about inventing an amazingly complex custom weapon; The Mechromancer, which blurs the line between two of the greatest minion pools in The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game; Tinkering 201, a collection of inventions that hit the high points that were missed the first time; The Steamsinger, which converts the tinker into the builder and lead singer in a mechanical band; and Super Mega Ultra Mecha Fighting for You, Me, and All of Our Friends, which simultaneously glorifies and makes fun of just about every giant robot trope ever.
Product Availability
Fulfilled immediately.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
store@paizo.com.
For a pretty good price you get a lot in this bundle. You get the Tinker class, two books of class options for it, and three different prestige classes. A great deal! But the backbone of it is exactly how good the Tinker is.
I purchased the Tinker when I had little idea on what was out there to make my dungeonpunk campaign a reality. I was tired of medieval stasis and wanted to get into the world of high technology and wizards in the same room. So the Tinker was a random risk buy to try to get an artificer class in the options I presented.
The Tinker itself is a bit hard to grasp. The basics of it is that you need to learn some inventions to make blueprints to make small robots. You can only have so many robots up at a time, and at 4th level you get a big robot which is your main robot. The best way that I can grasp it is that you get some small robots that simultaneously function as pets and spells. The small robots are made up of multiple inventions that form their blueprint. They can attack and stuff but also do a bunch of little tasks like injecting potions or exploding. You can also make one as a standard action a certain amount of times a day depending on what blueprints you have prepared so they kind of have a spell feel to them but are pretty much a customizable Summon Monster that you have to spend action economy to direct. Your big robot is kind of like an eidolon in that it can do stuff in more relative independence. Plus it's a bit tougher and can use feats. There's more class features but the small disposable robots and your big robot is your bread and butter. This PDF package comes with a whole lot of inventions to customize your robots and makes for an interesting robot making system. It allows you to be creative and clever, mixing and matching the inventions you can put on your robots, and once you grasp what's going on the class becomes very open and unique.
I do have some gripes however. At it's heart it's a pet class. Which isn't what I wanted out of a technomancer class, or at least not the only thing I wanted. Thankfully the need for directives makes this not a nightmare to manage and it isn't much of an 'army of me' kind of classes. I also have the gripe I have with any other technomancer, that they have exclusive technology when that's not how crafted technoloty works but that won't be against it's final score. The last gripe is also unfair and won't stand against it. I own a lot of technomancer products for pathfinder and this is not in my top three list. Its just that other technomancers have robot pets as options but can do other things. That said this is the most interesting means of using and making robots rather than just being a construct animal companion so that criticism holds a bit less water.
The Prestige classes are I don't care. Nothing bad or anything but Prestige classes don't appeal to me. Unless they're like the Rogue Alpha, which is amazing. It's listed as an archetype but how it works out makes it look like a prestige class. Basically if your Tinker dies or his big robot gains sentience and goes all I Robot, the big robot can become a character in the form of the Rogue Alpha. It is about as beautiful and hilarious as it sounds.
Last but not least is some more support that can support you making giant robots.
Overall the class is fun varied and goes far. I don't get many chances to use it though because honestly I have a few technomancer classes that I like better and it is stuck in the robo-mancer sub niche. It sounds harsh but I'm giving it five stars because those gripes are truly not fair. They're just warnings so that you won't buy this product and get disappointed because you thought it was something else like I did. If you want a general technology based class look class there are other options, but if you want a class to robomance your pants off in cool ways that other techno classes don't then this is the class to get and this package is the package that you need to make it come to life.
So, I've realized that this bundle effectively gives away new tinker expansions to early adopters of the tinker base class. I've been thinking about it, and, honestly, I'm perfectly okay with that, at least until I hatch a scheme and make one big book out of all of this content.
I'll have to doublecheck my SRD sales, but I think we're at 250. Another expansion will be in the works when my plate is a little cleaner.
My 4th Kickstarter will be Ultimate Tinkering, and the robo-tech presented in this system will be spread to some other base classes, like rogue, wizard, and druid.
