Talk:Mystical Engineer (3.5e Class)

Rating

Power - <<<5>>>/5 I give this class a <<<4>>> out of 5 because <<>> --Semperfi0888 14:07, 25 April 2012 (MDT)

Wording - <<<4>>>/5 I give this class a <<<4>>> out of 5 because <<>> --Semperfi0888 14:07, 25 April 2012 (MDT)

Formatting - <<<4>>>/5 I give this class a <<<4>>> out of 5 because <<<while it met all the guidelines i thought you could put what level the engineer gained the skill or feat in the description.>>> --Semperfi0888 14:07, 25 April 2012 (MDT)

Flavor - <<<5>>>/5 I give this class a <<<5>>> out of 5 because <<<as i was reading it i had a picture of a quirky techno savey guy/gal with huge glasses to boot, great character design.>>> --Semperfi0888 14:07, 25 April 2012 (MDT)

Critiques

Abilities: The description states that they need dexterity, wisdom, and intelligence for various reasons, but none of these abilities are used by any of their class features.

Skills: Concentration is effectively a dead skill on a class that does not have any spells or abilities requiring concentration. The given class and knowledge skills seem to fit thematically, but none of the class's features require or make use of them. Change craft skills to craft (any, taken individually) and add profession since all crafts and professions are available to all base classes, and probably also add disable device and open lock. Maybe consider reducing the 6 + int skill points to 4 + int.

HD: This class is built around creating other creatures fight for, is described as not caring about strength or constitution, and comes with no weapon or armor proficiencies to indicate that it could take or deliver a hit on its own. Why does it have 1d8? Should probably be 1d4, but can probably get away with 1d6.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears: What does it mean to imbue a machine with life in the context of game mechanics? If another ability says it creates a machine that acts as a creature, is this ability necessary at all?

Mechanical Pet: Either terribly underpowered or terribly defined. With no listed duration, describing it as functioning "as Summon Nature's Ally" means you're spending 3d6 hours on a pet that lasts 1 round/level. It says it creates mechanical versions of animals, but does not actually change their creature type to Construct. The ability also says that it costs nothing if parts are provided, but does not tell how much it costs if parts are not provided, nor does it suggest how parts might be obtained. It's also worth noting that Summon Nature's Ally allows for the summoning of elementals, outsiders, magical beasts, and fey, meaning that as written "as Summon Nature's Ally, but creates a mechanical version of the animal" means that this ability allows the engineer to create non-mechanical elementals, outsiders, magical beasts, and fey.

Builder: Same issue as Mechanical Pet, not providing sufficient information regarding the cost of parts. Also, what does "All created constructs are considered to be of the Mechanoid race and has their racial abilities/modifiers" mean? Does the ability only allow the creation of creature that are of the Mechanoid race? Or does it allow the creation of any construct, but add Mechanoid traits to that construct as if it were a template?

Upgrades: Could be more specific in how it works. Do you learn one upgrade when leveling up which can then be added to any pets you create? Or can you add any upgrade from the list to each created pet for each time you have acquired the ability? Some also seem much more powerful than others, with the auto-repair presumably making things indestructible unless they can be one-shot.

Scrapper: Same issue as Mechanical Pet. This ability does not assign any value to the scrapped parts, and they therefore have no value in terms of crafting. For this to function in-game, the scrapped parts should either have some value in GP (the scrapped parts have a value of 25% of the scrapped construct's market price when used to craft a mechanical construct, for example), or some value in HD (the parts can be repurposed to create any number of mechanical constructs whose HD equals half the scrapped creature's).

Fine Tuning: Doesn't seem terribly overpowered on its own, but a flat bonus would certainly make it a lot easier to balance around than a multiplier. It also feels like this should have a duration attached to it, with machines needing to be occasionally wearing down and needing to be fine tuned again to restore peak performance.

Mechanical Man: Disguising your creations seems fine and dandy on its own, but combined with upgrades... if I see a dire wolf with wheels and a pair of arms sticking out of its sides with longswords at the ends of them, there is absolutely no level of disguise check that's going to convince me that monstrosity is real.

Mechanical Helper: Seems kind of pointless. Everything already takes long enough to craft that the character is going to be doing everything during extended downtime anyway.

Human Engineering: Same issue as other abilities, with no mentioned crafting costs, durations, etc. Some upgrades seem fine for pets, but would be far too powerful to allow a character to potentially grant permanently to their entire party. For example, fine tuning with wheels adds up to a substantial movement speed multiplier, which is fine for a mechanical pet whose speed is inherently reduced to begin with but becomes ridiculous when applied to the party's barbarian.

Mechanical Fusion: How does fusing affect the creatures' stats and abilities? It just sounds like they share initiative and attack at the same time for a large number of attacks on a single turn, with no other benefits, which seems strictly worse than allowing them to move independently and attack separately. If this is all it does, it's a fairly underwhelming ability. If it does anything more than this, it is a poorly defined ability.

Mechanical Weapon: This seems like something that should become available much, much sooner, considering the class has been deliberately deprived of any weapon proficiencies other than their own crafted weapons. Like everything else, this one is missing crafting costs.

Mechanical Mount: The mount does not reference any base creature to draw a stat block from and has no listed stats of its own other than movement speed. Also, creatures that can be used as mounts can already be crafted via Mechanical Pet, some of which have a higher base speed even after being halved and some of which even have fly speeds. This ability does not say that it can be upgraded, while Mechanical Pet can. Unless Mechanical Pet has some sort of duration that does not apply to Mechanical Mount, or an HD limit attached to it that the Mechanical Mount is exempt from, there is simply no reason for this ability to exist.

Recycler: Same issue as Scrapper. Since nothing related to this class has any listed crafting costs, this ability simply has no discernable in-game effect unless the rest of the class is revised to account for it.

Mechanical Warrior: Same issue as Mechanical Pet. Any just about everything else. Needs stats. Needs limitations. Needs costs. If an ability gives a character a summoned or crafted creature, they need to know what that creature's ability scores are, what traits and features it has, how many HD the creature has, how long the creature lasts, and what it costs to summon or create such a creature.

Mass Production: Scrap the Mechanical Helper ability from earlier, and allow them to be crafted as part of this ability. They don't need to be modified with additional crafting time to make them compatible with each other, since Download/Upload already wires them together telepathically. This ability also seems just a little bit redundant, though, since the Mystical Engineer could presumably just make Mechanical Warriors with the Mystical Engineer class that could craft more machines for him.