Salvage ops

[kurohyou]

So, I'm GM'ing an Iron Gods game for a group of friends and I've got one player whose character is seriously interested in the tech of the androffans. I'm looking for some ideas on how the party could salvage tech from defeated enemies (specifically robots and the like). I've house-ruled in a robotic companion for the party (essentially a robotic version of the floating disc spell) that I have some vague ideas of eventually allowing the party or specific players to modify and augment.

Right now for the salvage I'm thinking:
Knowledge (engineering?) with technologist to determine if there is salvageable material in a robot corpse
Craft (mechanical?) with technologist to actually go about salvaging.

[kurohyou]

Maybe a d% roll to determine if there is salvage to notice as well.

[Solomani]

Hi Kurohyou,

I've started doing this. I included it as part of the Technologist feat and engineering skill - renamed to Gearhead and Cyberthurgy in my home brew. I posted the info for my players on my D&D blog. Feel free to pilfer.

[kurohyou]

Hmm, OK, that helps quite a bit. Although, I'd want to have a scale of DC's since these are going to be more like equipment/craft components than cyphers. I'm thinking make the knowledge check a knowledge/perception check and have it based on the creature's CR, and then have the salvage check be craft and the DC based on the craft DC of the item being salvaged, maybe a few points higher to reflect the difficulty of removing it from the robot intact. Have something like a 25% chance that there is useable salvage to notice in the first place?

Probably need to make a table of possible salvage for tech enemies. This salvage will of course have the timeworn property if removed from ancient tech, and maybe have a chance to have timeworn if removed from fresh made tech based on the success of the salvage roll: beating by 5+ results in no additional damage to salvage, succeeding by less than 5 results in the timeworn condition, or an additional glitch if already timeworn. Failing by 5+ results in a glitch triggering, abilities that modify glitches(such as the techslinger class skills) can be used to modify the glitch. Not sure what the result of positive glitches would be though, I'm tempted to make it beneficial to the deceased creature, but that won't always work, maybe beneficial glitches give alternate salvage opportunities. For example, the party tries to salvage a fun of a robot, fails, but the glitch recharges a power cell which can then be salvaged. That could work.

[Solomani]

You will find there is a lot of tech loot as you go along and all of it needs tracking and its use is not intuitive (what does hemochem 2 do exactly? How is a black hypo gun different from a green - lots of admin). It becomes overwhelming. That's why I decided to keep it as simple as possible and also made the rewards straightforward one use items.

I also changed timeworn so instead of characters having to track charges I just have them deplete on a 1 in 20. Pristine items never deplete. Less bookkeeping.

[captain yesterday]

Do you have the Technology Guide Solomani or are you using the PRD primarily, having the actual book helps with all that jazz :-)

At least in my experience, everyone has their own way of doing things :-)

[kurohyou]

I'm running on roll20, so I'll just be noting most of the admin stuff in character/item entries.

[Solomani]

I have the tech guide PDF. But since I need to convert stuff to 5e it's only useful for me as a reference. I end up putting converted stuff on my blog which has helped a lot.

So yeah, kind of self inflicted :)