One of my players in intrigued by the inventor class and would like to play one in our upcoming SoT game. Since it is uncommon he is asking if it would be a good fit for the campaign. I haven't read the volumes out so far so I was wondering if this had come up anybody else's game? The players guide for the campaign doesn't mention the class because it hadn't come out yet.
My gut reaction is to tell him yes its ok but to steer the theming of his character towards more nature grafting or arcane enchanting as opposed to steampunk.
I think so long as the character showed a respect for nature, rather than being a 'mad scientist' who leans into destructive habits, it's perfectly fine. We've seen magical living wood prostheses among the Ekujae elves, so that's an angle for anyone who takes free Druid, while a character seeking to create enchanted inventions could go for free Wizard.
Book 5 might have something very interesting for an Inventor to look at.
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Just as background, in Guns & Gears the start of Chapter 2 describes three broad categories of fantasy-tech: clockwork tech, steam-powered tech, and stasian tech, with the latter two described as extremely recent inventions and clockwork as by far the most common. If you look at Nantambu's section in Lost Omens - The Mwangi Expanse, there's a small sidebar that reveals there are a few makers of clockwork devices in Nantambu owing to the city's good relationship with Axis, seeing as it's bastion of order in the region. (there's even a picture of a Nantambyan with a clockwork) More generally, the Mwangi Expanse is scattered with ancient Shory technology that could serve as a basis for an Inventor character - I think an Inventor works perfectly well in Strength of Thousands.
Also, if you wanted to accommodate your inventor or open things up for them later, Nantambu is a major trade hub that could see advancements in technology reach it. Alkenstar to the east is the nearest bastion of technology, and there's a sidebar for the very cool Sterling Dynamo prosthetic-centric archetype in Guns & Gears explaining how the advanced clockwork prosthetic is the result of collaboration between an inventor in Alkenstar's Dongun Hold and a researcher in Absalom's Clockwork Cathedral. Clockwork technology or advanced technology of any kind could conceivably flow from Absalom to Alkenstar and then eventually find its way to Nantambu.
This is a killer reply, and hits on some angles I missed! The Axis connection with Nantambu is something I missed, and was noted to have a population of Jistkan Automatons in 1e - something to inspire any construct Inventor!
On the Shory stuff, you have two likely routes; the Uomoto people (a human ethnic group that live around the ruins of a crashed Shory flying city) are native to the Mwangi Expanse, while Guns & Gears introduced in brief detail the Southern Garund nation of Eihlona, which has taken Shory magic-technology and continued to innovate on it.
Much of Alkenstar's trade flows west through the Ndele Gap to Kibwe, and then from there into the broader Mwangi Expanse; you might have followed this route to the Magaambya (as a human or Dongun dwarf inventor, potentially carrying a firearm), looking to study magic in the way the unreliable Mana Wastes makes impossible.