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I feel that Misfire for the firearms and Unstable for the Inventor's contraptions are basically the same thing, though they apparently work in opposed ways. They are both based on the idea that if you do not take proper care when dealing with higher tech items, they are likely to malfunction.
Please, for those as well as for future-proofing, design a general Reliability rule, with a Reliability rating that can be set by the GM at the relevant value, that can be applied to any item with such a risk of malfunction.
This way we only have one new rule to learn.
Note that Overcharging wands also feels similar to this.
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I feel like they are, mechanically dissimilar enough that this would just become confusing in it's own right.
And it would be a disservice to the inventor to lower it to being on par with missfire.
I also am hesitant of gm appointed mechanic's like that.
My thoughts at any rate.
It's a solid thought, but similar to trying to cram Unstable into the Focus paradigm, I'm guessing it would be a bigger headache and not really of any benefit to players or GMs.
But perhaps there is an elegant system that would let it work! I personally haven't been able to think of a balanced and less complicated way to do it, but I'm not as smart as many here. :)
Hrmm maybe instead of forcing the GM to decide an unreliability rating, it could be something inherent to the item itself? For example guns could have an 'unreliable: 11' trait that means if you have to roll reliability then its a flat DC 11 type of thing. The inventor's innovation could set a high/moderately-high number and then maybe lower it over time.
Maybe making it so that guns, if not properly maintained (as it is now with misfire), have to roll reliability checks so they aren't having to risk failure with regular shots. Inventors have to do it for their second unstable (or what ever it would be called now) action. Gunslingers could possible then get a few feats that allow them to roll a reliability check (or force the gun to start rolling them) for large damage effects or something like that. Be interesting to see if these could be streamlined into one core set of rules that the Inventor and Gunslinger play around with, but also allows for future rules to pick up and play around with.
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I feel that Misfire for the firearms and Unstable for the Inventor's contraptions are basically the same thing
They aren't though. They have very little mechanical similarities, and the only real link is they are both in the same document.
Misfire is a mechanic to add additional risk to certain feats, and basically just costs an action to undo- you can keep doing actions that may trigger Misfire all day if you want.
Unstable is a mechanic that limits specific actions to a single use per combat, in a similar fashion to Focus Points, with the option to try again at a high chance of simply failing to do anything.
Any rule that tried to combine both of these into one thing would end up being six paragraphs of text, half of which would only apply at a time.
They are not the same and I do not like this idea or any manner in which these two concepts might be merged. Misfire is to actively be avoided with clear drawbacks if you don't. Unstable addresses a key trait of many of the Inventor's feats and can sometimes provide a desirable outcome for inventors with certain feats. Unstable has a very different feel and place in the rules than Misfire.
I see how they are both addressing a similar concept of a malfunction, but Misfire is addressing a lack of regular maintenance where it is needed to be explained for the sake of verisimilitude for non-magical, technological firearms with a proven design that can potentially be mass produced and purchased by any character, whereas Unstable is an innate malfunction that can occur regardless of maintenance because it is the incomplete design of a unique and experimental item that is a work in progress and can only be used by 1 specific character.
Have to disagree about them being similar. Just about the only commonality is that they both ask you to roll against a DC and something bad happens if you roll under it.
But that's literally the whole game.
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I agree with Ashanderai - I think of Unstable as a mechanic with a lot of associated parts - there are Inventor abilities that key off the Unstable tag. Misfire is more a result of lack of due preparation in downtime.