Inventor construct companion, what am I missing?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


Maximum expert defense and attacks (both at 14, trained before then). Max dex mod of 7, giving it worse than caster defense and worse than caster attack accuracy. Compared to animal companions, for the same feat cost, it has lower movement speed, 3 less ac, and 1 less hit bonus. It has a lot of immunities, but it also can't be healed by spells.

It seems to be complete garbage and certainly not worth using as one's invention. What am I missing? Why wouldn't an inventor just go Beastmaster and retheme it rather than use its own class feats?


It feels complete garbage to me too ( but nothing new since we already have STR companions off balance if compared to DEX ones ).

The lvl 15 "wall" perk is cool though.


They are identical to animal companions aside from their defense. That does seem odd. You should take a look at the 10th level feat "Lock on". pretty handy.


They also get more ability scores than animal companions to help their armor, although they can't wear barding.


rnphillips wrote:

Maximum expert defense and attacks (both at 14, trained before then). Max dex mod of 7, giving it worse than caster defense and worse than caster attack accuracy. Compared to animal companions, for the same feat cost, it has lower movement speed, 3 less ac, and 1 less hit bonus. It has a lot of immunities, but it also can't be healed by spells.

It seems to be complete garbage and certainly not worth using as one's invention. What am I missing? Why wouldn't an inventor just go Beastmaster and retheme it rather than use its own class feats?

There are 2 things here:

As such, they are pretty bad and if you hesitate between a Construct and a Dex Animal Companion, go for the Dex Animal Companion. As a side note they are better than Strength Animal Companion.

As an Innovation, they seem actually playable. Before level 10, they hold their ground thanks to their damage bonuses. Sure, they aren't very tough but they hit quite well considering that your Inventor is also a martial and as such can strike, too. They are also very interesting to position your Explode/Megavolt as you basically have a free move action to position them every round. At higher levels, you will certainly choose to use them as mounts, combining great mobility, martial abilities (yours) and spell like attacks.
The Construct Inventor is more focused on Explode/Megavolt than the Weapon and Armor Inventors. As such, it's a bit hard to determine if it's better or worse than the other 2 types.
Now, if you want to use your Construct Innovation as your main attacker, you can use Lock On at level 10+, but even if it allows your Companion to stay a valid stricker, the lack of defenses and the action cost of Lock On makes it a sub par choice.

As a side note, when I wrote the Inventor guide, I started with your vision of the Construct Inventor. But I took some time searching what I could do with a Construct Innovation and ended up finding a few interesting things. Still, if your fantasy is the big Construct that kills everything with the Inventor playing with a remote control at range, that's not something you'll achieve with an Inventor. You should play a Construct Summoner instead.


SuperBidi wrote:
rnphillips wrote:

Maximum expert defense and attacks (both at 14, trained before then). Max dex mod of 7, giving it worse than caster defense and worse than caster attack accuracy. Compared to animal companions, for the same feat cost, it has lower movement speed, 3 less ac, and 1 less hit bonus. It has a lot of immunities, but it also can't be healed by spells.

It seems to be complete garbage and certainly not worth using as one's invention. What am I missing? Why wouldn't an inventor just go Beastmaster and retheme it rather than use its own class feats?

There are 2 things here:

As such, they are pretty bad and if you hesitate between a Construct and a Dex Animal Companion, go for the Dex Animal Companion. As a side note they are better than Strength Animal Companion.

As an Innovation, they seem actually playable. Before level 10, they hold their ground thanks to their damage bonuses. Sure, they aren't very tough but they hit quite well considering that your Inventor is also a martial and as such can strike, too. They are also very interesting to position your Explode/Megavolt as you basically have a free move action to position them every round. At higher levels, you will certainly choose to use them as mounts, combining great mobility, martial abilities (yours) and spell like attacks.
The Construct Inventor is more focused on Explode/Megavolt than the Weapon and Armor Inventors. As such, it's a bit hard to determine if it's better or worse than the other 2 types.
Now, if you want to use your Construct Innovation as your main attacker, you can use Lock On at level 10+, but even if it allows your Companion to stay a valid stricker, the lack of defenses and the action cost of Lock On makes it a sub par choice.

As a side note, when I wrote the Inventor guide, I started with your vision of the Construct Inventor. But I took some time searching what I could do with a Construct Innovation and ended up finding a few interesting things. Still, if your fantasy is the big Construct that...

Explode is very good for construct, but you would have to fall back on strikes with yourself and your construct once you run out of unstable uses. What else would you be doing?


aobst128 wrote:
Explode is very good for construct, but you would have to fall back on strikes with yourself and your construct once you run out of unstable uses. What else would you be doing?

How long do your combat encounters usually last? I find that 3 to 4 rounds seems to be the norm. A turn getting into position/setting up, a turn Exploding (likely triggering the unstable)... after that having Overdrive on hand, and still having a decent companion isn't bad, I feel. That said, I don't have an inventor in any of my games, but I don't think that unstable is the limiter it appears to be given how quick combats typically are.


Ruzza wrote:
aobst128 wrote:
Explode is very good for construct, but you would have to fall back on strikes with yourself and your construct once you run out of unstable uses. What else would you be doing?
How long do your combat encounters usually last? I find that 3 to 4 rounds seems to be the norm. A turn getting into position/setting up, a turn Exploding (likely triggering the unstable)... after that having Overdrive on hand, and still having a decent companion isn't bad, I feel. That said, I don't have an inventor in any of my games, but I don't think that unstable is the limiter it appears to be given how quick combats typically are.

You'd likely get 1 use or 2 by 14th level. While it's good, and a likely tactic, most of your turns will be doing something else. Technically, every inventor is built for explode since there's no upgrade to it, only other options with the unstable trait. I guess the idea is to not go with the other options and stick with explode/megavolt to be optimal in terms of damage with construct, but the same would be true for the other 2 innovations.


aobst128 wrote:
Explode is very good for construct, but you would have to fall back on strikes with yourself and your construct once you run out of unstable uses. What else would you be doing?

Yes.

The Construct is better for Explode/Megavolt as it makes it easy to position them properly. And once you have no more Unstable use, you can strike with both your Construct and yourself. So, better for Explode, a bit worse for Strikes, it's balanced.
As a side note, the Construct Inventor only loses the extra 1d6 points of damage at level 9, so you are very close to an Armor Inventor in terms of damage output.


Well, weapon inventor only really edges out in damage at 15th level and instead has more versatile weapons, so the innovations would be pretty equal for the most part then. I do wish there was an option to pick yourself or your construct for offensive boost, but people would probably always pick themselves, Because of accuracy.

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