tobmind's page

I like the inventor as "someone who has already invented an automaton/power armor/etc. and is working on field testing it/refining it, rather than "someone who invents technological solutions to things every six seconds."

The actual work of "okay, how do I make the arms telescoping" is something you come up with in a quiet, free moment and work at for a while rather than "okay, let's swap these two wires" then you get it.

Yes, I also like that view for the inventor. I am not proposing that the inventor makes many tiny solutions. I still want them to keep the weapon, armor, and bot things and have the ability to tweak the build slightly like the current design. However, I think the inventor's tweaks and rebuilds shouldn't be automatic "you got exactly what you wanted" because then why would you need to be testing it? I also do not like how the inventor currently seems to rely on causing catastrophic explosive failures to their inventions as those are generally something one wants to avoid.

This sounds, to me, like a system that leaves developers with no real baseline for where the Inventor's power will fall at any given level. Somewhat akin to rolling for HP, but with a lot more variance. It also seems a bit more complicated than necessary, like the class is jumping through extra hoops to get their baseline abilities that other classes just get. While I'm sure there's design space for a gambling/random outcomes sort of playstyle, I think that as a baseline baked-in feature for a class, it's an idea with a lot of stumbling blocks.

The inventor currently has a class ability it gains at 3rd level for the player to rebuild and change the abilities of their invention themselves. Since the player will be able to change their baseline in Paizo's current design I do not think my proposal would actually create more hoops the player needs to jump through since the chance of not getting what you picked would go away with some leveling and you would have a chance to get something better than you intended.

The way the class is currently built doesn't seem quite like you're trying to invent something. The process of invention goes: see a problem a tool would simplify > figure out what the tool should do and build it > look at how your tool id malfunctioning and learn from the mistakes to improve it. The advancing abilities your invention can have definitely fit this but the unstable effect with constant explosions and also just having a fully functional device at level one makes the class feel less like an inventor and more like a pesh head with a screwdriver that stole a toaster. Which is definitely a kind of inventor but shouldn't be the base in my opinion.

A alternative to the current design that i think might fit the general theme of inventor, and should allow many of the themes that are currently present to persist is as follows:

The abilities your inventions can have at different tiers have die numbers assigned to them within their block (all the level one weapon abilities would be one block). When an inventor takes time to rebuild/tweak their invention they have to roll against a crafting DC. Each tier should have its own DC that is difficult for when an inventor first has access to the tier but is very doable when the inventor is about to move up to the next. This shows the inventor making many mistakes when they're starting and slowly stepping it up as they learn from mistakes. The results of the check against that DC could go as follows (may need balancing):
Crit success: player can pick an ability or roll a random one from the next tier of abilities.
Success: player gets to pick an ability.
Failure: player has to roll a random ability.
Crit Failure: player has to roll a random ability and if they critically fail a roll that uses the invention (attacks for the weapon, saves for the armor, the robot doing anything on its own) the invention will explode and be rendered non functional until rebuilt. However, if the inventor takes rime to study the broken parts of the invention they get a bonus (+5 maybe) to the next check they make to rebuild it.

I feel like this setup, instead of over pumping machines and making them explode a lot, would better represent the process of invention, improvement, and attempting to implement your tools; even if they aren't quite working as you wanted.

So the effect of the spell Spellwrack requires that a creature is affected by a spell with "a duration". It will then deal damage to that creature and reduce the duration of the spell effecting them by a round, each round.

Sigil can be cast on a creature.

level 9 Sigil has a duration of infinite, but still a duration. Or 5 minutes to scrub off (if you leave it somewhere they can reach it, or if they know its there)

Sigil + Spellwrack = death.

So androids being able to survive in the vacume of space and all gave me the idea to hop (or grapple) from my crews space ship to our opponents and deal damage to their systems from the outside. There are no rules for anything dealing damage to ships except for other ships. There are also no explosives that i can use with the detonator exept grenades (which makes it kinda useless). Final point, with all of the classes that work with tech there is a huge lack of destruction ability as far as ive seen. (I may have overlooked things so if there are rules pretaining to this please let me know)