Your automatons and the dead are at your beck and call.
First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who has purchased a copy of the Tinker thus far. 100 sales in 40 days is absolutely phenomenal for a small .pdf publisher like myself. Every product I am currently cooking up is living in this little bugger's shadow and, really, that's not a bad position to be in. So, yes, thank you so very much! As I've said time and time again, it's you who keep the hamster wheel turning around here!
Given their ability to command hordes of mindless and subservient minions, there has always been a bit of a rivalry between tinkers and necromancers. It is not a blood feud, by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, it can be thought of as much like the rivalries that exist between various educational institutions or between two professions that rub together the wrong way at times, much like alchemists and physicians. This rivalry, in a rather amusing paradox given how the two parties dislike each other, brings about an exchange of culture. Invariably, such a cultural exchange (the sort with a bit of acid between the two parties) brings about those individuals who attempt to bridge the gap between the two by embracing the tenants of both at once. These are the mechromancers, tinkers who have delved deeply enough into the necromantic arts to command both a squadron of mechanical minions and a squadron of undead minions. As they progress down this path, the line between machine and corpse blurs until it finally becomes one, at which point the two camps whose views they were attempting to integrate invariably agree that the mixture of the two concepts is an abomination and the mechromancer must be banished.
The mechromancer is a mixture of spellcaster and tinker. Requiring both the alpha and the animate dead spell to qualify, among other, lesser requirements, the mechromancer fills the role that the mystic theurge does for conventional casters: useful abilities piled onto full progression in both of your esoteric arts. Unlike the mystic theurge, the mechromancer is only a 5 level prestige class. Also, given magic and tinkering tends to mesh less well than magic and more magic, the class has a glut of small, useful abilities to help blend the two ideas together in a logical fashion.
The Mechromancer at a glance:
Full spell and invention progression
The Blue Screen of Undeath ability, which allows the mechromancer to raise fallen automatons as "zombie robots"
Mechromantic Grafts, which allows the mechromancer to add dead tissue to each of his blueprints for some rather potent benefits
Beacon of Undeath, which causes the mechromancer's alpha to emit a permanent desecrate effect, and eventually some benefits of the unhallow spell
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This PRC for Interjection Games‘ awesome Tinker-class is 5 pages long, 1 page front cover,1 page SRD, ½ a blank pages, leaving us with ~2.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look, shall we?
Mechanically, the Mechromancer is a 5-level PrC that has a slow BAB-progression, gets d6, needs to be not of a good alignment and gets good will-saves. As to be expected from a class offering a theurge-approach, it offers +1 level of spellcasting and +1 level invention-usage per level, meaning mechromancer-levels stack with tinker-levels for the purposes of determining maximum number of available build points per blueprint, max amount of blueprints, inventions known and maximum invention level known as well as effective level of inventions and automatic HD-progression. I’d also comment on the amount of skill points per level, but unfortunately, the pdf lacks this crucial information. – Especially relevant since the PrC only offers two class-skills – this might have been intended as a means of balancing the class, but I can’t ascertain that.
Now fluff-wise, the Mechromancer is a blending of necromancer and tinker – i.e. of the two classes offering the most minions. Prerequisite-wise, this is reflected in needing to be able to cast animate dead as well as having an alpha. Now the first ability already had me chuckle “Blue Screen of Undeath” allows you to resurrect an automaton that has died within 1 minute mechromancer class levels times per day. Said revived construct only persists for a limited duration and counts as undead for the purpose of what affects it without gaining the undead traits. The reanimated automaton also can be directed sans using actions. Unfortunately, the ability fails to specify whether said reanimated automatons count towards the maximum amount of automatons a tinker can have deployed at a given time.
At 2nd level, the mechromancer learns to add one single mechormantic graft to each of his/her blueprints, including the alpha, which, at 4th level, gets a second graft. A total of 15 such grafts are provided and they range from a stomach that allows an automaton to heal 10 HP when digesting food for an hour to +3 natural armor via the addition of a skeleton, +5 to perception, an increased reach (only for combat maneuvers by 5 ft.) or the option to be healed by negative energy – but harmed by positive energy. There also is a graft that replaces the damage dealt by the kamikaze invention by negative energy – including a minor typo that speaks of “Customkaze”, but oh well. More significant are other glitches: Take adding a mechromantic brain-graft: It allows for the addition of a brain to an automaton – at the cost of counting as two deployed automatons. The automaton does deactivate when leaving the tinker’s master’s presence radius, though, paying thus for being autonomous. However, this does entail some peculiarities, as does the existence of reanimated constructs: Do these automata (either normal undead or those with a brain) get the awareness to make AoOs? What about combat maneuvers? Can automata with a brain be revived temporarily via Blue Screen of Undeath? The text mentions “irrevocable shutdown”, which makes me not so sure.
Another issue would be that adding a lymph system adds channel resistance +3 as well as +3 to fort-saves for the automaton – per se nice. However, channel energy usually deals damage to the living or undead – not constructs. It requires the variant channeling provided by the Forge portfolio to heal constructs via channel energy and damaging them via the channeling of an opposing energy is impossible until the mechromancer reanimated the automaton – prior to that, constructs are neither harmed, nor healed by positive or negative energy since they are neither living, nor undead. – i.e. channel resistance only applies once the automaton has been revived – prior to that, the ability implies that automata can be hit by negative or positive energy, which they RAW can’t.
Mechromancers may also add a secondary bite attack to their arsenal, I assume at the standard 1d4 for small creatures, but actually listing the damage said attack deals would have been helpful.
The Mechromancer’s Alpha also starts to radiate a permanent aura s per the desecrate spell and later adds the channel resistance provides by unhallow to its array, but not the other abilities of aforementioned spell.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are not up to the level of quality I’ve come to expect from Interjection Games – from the missing skill points per level to non-italicized spells and minor typos, for such a short pdf the amount of glitches is too high for my tastes. Layout adheres to Interjection Games’ neat 2-column b/w-standard and the product does feature some nice b/w-stock artworks. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
I really wanted to like the mechromancer- it really caters to my sentiments and has a delightful mad science-feel in concept. In execution, though, I think it unfortunately falls rather flat: From the missing skills per level to the uninspired capstone, the PrC feels a bit raw and less imaginative than its concept deserves – while the necromantic additions to the automata are great, as is the option to temporarily revive them, they do suffer from some problematic uses of the rules-language and over all require more clarification regarding when/if they count as undead, constructs etc.. And they only cover one half of the equation: “Theurge” implies a duality and this pdf misses the awesome chance of adding inventions to the undead – the class essentially is a one-way street, only one side of the coin, and feels honestly cut down, like it was supposed to be so much more. Were it only for unrealized potential, I wouldn’t have rated this pdf down as much – but with the glitches that actually severely impede the functionality of the class, I am left with no choice in spite of liking the concept of this PrC: My final verdict will clock in at a final verdict of 1.5 stars, rounded up to 2 for the purpose of this platform.
