While developing their skills as inventors and engineers, some tinkers invariably feel the pull to totally different realms of thought, just to mix things up a bit. Other tinkers really don't find this to be unusual at all; in fact, most are so busy with their own little obsessions to really bat an eye at another tinker's source of amusement. Some find themselves drawn to the classic motif of the man at arms; however, rather than honing the art of combat to an instinct, the innovator turns it into a science. Upon beginning the process of translating the idea of combat specialist into something he can understand, the innovator comes to the conclusion that besting those who have been combat specialists their entire lives would be facilitated by confusing them. To achieve this, the innovator starts with one of the most complicated weapons available and starts making it completely incomprehensible to anyone but himself.
The first in a series of prestige classes released every 50 sales of The Tinker: Master of Modular Mechanical Mayhem, The Innovator: A Martial Tinker Prestige Class focuses on getting the tinker out of the back and into the front lines where any self-respecting squad commander will be.
An innovator's signature ability is the acquisition and customization of a signature weapon. Starting off as a standard exotic weapon, the innovator makes five "breakthroughs" over the course of his career, adding robotic arms, an automated mortar, wand slots, flamethrowers, or really sparkly glitter to his weapon. These abilities are contained in three tiered trees: alchemical, construct, and magic. Each time the innovator receives a breakthrough, he can select the lowest remaining tier in one of the three trees, allowing for dozens of possible designs.
His capstone ability, the masterpiece, allows for the further customization of the signature weapon, though the ability may also be spent to bolster the poor automatons he's nearly forgotten this entire time...
The following are examples of breakthroughs:
Alchemical, Tier 3 - Integrated Lobtube (Ex): A hopper with the storage capacity to hold five flasks, tanglefoot bags, smokesticks, or other similarly sized alchemical goods now hangs from the innovator's back. A thick hose runs from the hopper to a hollow cylinder attached to the innovator's signature weapon. Once per round using its own action, a signature weapon with the integrated lobtube breakthrough can launch a single object held in the hopper at a creature within 60 feet. Treat this as a ranged attack made by the innovator using his signature weapon. If the signature weapon is a melee weapon, treat it as a non-improvised ranged weapon for the purpose of this breakthrough. If the attack hits, it deals 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage and the alchemical good activates. If the attack misses, the alchemical good scatters 1d4 x 5 feet in a random direction and activates where it lands. Reloading the hopper is a standard action for each item added to it that benefits from the Rapid Reload feat. Should the innovator's signature weapon ever leave the radius of his master's presence class feature, the lobtube ceases to function.
Construct, Tier 1 - Mounted Mini-Crossbow (Ex): The innovator mounts a small crossbow on his signature weapon. Whenever the innovator deals damage to a creature within 30 feet of the innovator with his signature weapon, the crossbow fires, dealing an additional 1d4 points of piercing damage. The crossbow reloads automatically, but only does so at the beginning of the innovator's turn.
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Having a melee tinker in my group, and seeing how much he appreciates playing it, I decided to look into more options for his character. “A martial tinker prestige class” seemed like an obvious choice for that!
At first I believed the Innovator placed inventions on his weapons instead of an automaton, but that's a different class, called the Gadgeteer. This fellow here actually gains access to a new system with unique ways to customize one weapon, based on alchemy, wands and/or mechanical parts.
You can only pick it up at level nine, though, so my player is far away from playing one. But as soon as he saw this material, he started looking into which magical wands would better integrate with exotic melee two-handed weapons, alongside with an alchemist fire hose. He loved the idea.
So, no real gameplay experience yet, but it looks really solid and weird on paper. It's definitely going to see play in my table in the months ahead.
This pdf is 6 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 4 pages for the PrC for the Tinker-class, so let's take a look!
Rules-wise, the requirements for the PrC are neither too steep, nor too easy to qualify for: 3rd level inventions, 8 ranks in Craft (weapons) and exotic weapon proficiency. The class gets 1/2 fort and ref-save progression and full BAB-progression as well as 5 levels of invention-progression over 10 levels. The PrC gets 4+Int skills per level, d10 and no additional armor and weapon proficiencies. With regards to his/her automaton's and alpha's HD and ability scores, the innovator's class levels fully stack.
So what's the deal with this class? Remember a certain gnomish illusionist/rogue in Baldur's Gate 2 and his crossbow that no one but him could use due to being insanely complex? Yeah. This essentially lets you make your own signature weapon - so insanely complex that "even magic gives up" when trying to grant proficiency in it to others. Said weapon also gets weapon focus, specialization, greater weapon focus/greater weapon specialization over the levels.
At 1st level and every 2 levels after that, the Innovator gets so-called breakthroughs, which belong to one of 3 different categories: If you want to go into a category, you get the lowest tier of that category and the categories are alchemical, construct and magic. The alchemical category allows you to add dazzling flash powder to your weapon attacks. Here is a weird typo "Unlicing creatures" - are immune to flash powder. Neither thesaurus nor dictionary-searches turned up something for that one, so I assume "unblinking" or something similar was meant - or I'm just not cool enough to know the proper slang. At tier 3, the weapon may lob alchemical goods at foes within 60 ft. Tier 4 finally adds more capacity for alchemical items and adds fire to the weapon.
The construct category nets access to an added miniature crossbow that adds +1d4 damage to your weapon's damage, reload after each shot and add said damage to any attack (yes, that means to any hit by e.g. the flamers...) with the weapon, add a robotic arm to the weapon (which can wield weapons, shields and impede foes) and even a second arm - yes, your weapon can wield two-handed swords or even a tower shield (though the latter makes using the signature weapon impossible as long as the shield is held).
The magic breakthroughs allow you to add wands of progressively higher power and integrate them into the weapon. The class also gets to choose between not one, not two, but 7 (!!!) capstone abilities and they are glorious: Launch automatons via signature weapons, reduce BP-cost of one invention, increase the bonus of robotic arm-held shields and weapons, get infinite flame-enhancements, infinite acid for the lobber or infinite magic missile-spamming capacity - though I REALLY don't like that one. Any kind of auto-hit, even if it's only a magic missile, should NEVER be available without restriction.
The pdf also includes a small FAQ that explains how the breakthroughs stack.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good, though not top-notch - the "unlicing" had me stumble a bit, but that's honestly a little glitch that can be neglected. Layout adheres to Interjection games' two-column b/w-standard and the pdf comes with unobtrusive, thematically fitting stock-art. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
All right, let's get this out of the way: This PrC is damn cool. The weapon-customization is an idea that could carry a whole alternate class and honestly, I found myself wishing for a full-blown martial tinker-alternative instead of a PrC. Why? Because the automatons move into the background when compared to the weapon and due to, apart from one capstone, do not really feature in the PrC's unique options. This is all about the new weapon and due to the weapon getting 5 out of 12 breakthroughs over the 10 levels, I would have enjoyed to see more of them, even though the potential for combinations makes me grin my vile DM-grin.
So is this worth your money? Yes, it is - if modifying an exotic weapon to unknown heights of complexity, making it weird or if a certain gnomish scoundrel from a popular Bioware-game was one of your go-to-characters - then take a look, for this pdf indeed offers a neat PrC. While I can't help but wish it provided a tad bit more on the breakthrough-side, I still consider this a well-crafted option for the Tinker-class and hence will settle on a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform due to the low price.
Now available! (Pugwampis appear to have gotten a hold of the cover image, though. Currently arming myself with a blessing from a Desnan priest and going to... take care of the problem.)
@Endzeitgeist. The "c" and "v" are next to each other on QWERTY keyboards, so I'm guessing that "unlicing" is supposed to be "unliving" which is a catch-all phrase designed to encompass Undead, Constructs and any other creature type/subtype that is created in the future. It might be nice to be given some examples, but that's how I would take it. Hopefully the developer can chime in and clarify.
Bradley already did and I am aware of the QWERTY-layout - I just didn't get it while reading the file and writing the review. Yes, I'm sometimes stupid like that. ;P Still, thanks for pointing it out, Caedwyr! :)
Correct! Fixing that line will be part of QA Day once my copywriting career is going hard enough for me to stop creating content to slow down the hemorrhaging of the bank account.
Until then, anything that isn't catastrophic to the function of a product will simply have to be. Given the rate at which one of the companies I am trying to work for is moving, I expect this to continue to be a problem through, say, mid-August.
