June 7, 2015

Magitech Update

Any sufficiently pervasive magic is indistinguishable from science.

While the more traditional fantasy settings postulate that a world suffused will stagnate its technological development around the Middle Ages, the more ambitious propose that's not quite true. This is where Eberron comes in. Always a favorite D&D setting, Eberron develops a world of living machines, advanced airships, lightning trains, and artificers. In such a setting, and those with even more advanced technology, we need to update our classes so as not to seem archaic. The following update does it's best to you give a solid foothold in converting your steampunk, cyberpunk, and magitech classes into the new edition.

Next, we plan on moving into the world of our favorite horror writer with the obligatory Lovecraft Update, because who says that only warlocks of the Great Old One get to have any fun? Stay tuned for that.

Also, we take pride in our willingness to edit our classes when we can improve them. As such, take a look back at Class Pack 1 and see if we've updated it since your last download.

Finally, if you have any class suggestions, questions for the DM and the Orc (seriously, we need more of these), or if you have any questions about the rules of our classes, leave them in a comment on any post, or email middlefingerofvecna@gmail.com.





Art credits:
Wizards of the Coast
The Avengers - Iron Man by theDURRRRIAN
Spartan by AxelMedellin

The Middle Finger of Vecna sparks with evocation magic, crackling with hideous eldritch energy as if to describe how much it hates you.


Changelog; Magitech Hero - Armored Sentience, Propulsion, and Explosive Energy now limit your movement as well as your actions for 1d4 rounds.
6/8/2015: The Machine - Eldritch Fist restricted to once per turn, wording changed slightly for clarity.
6/10/2014: Magitech Hero - Powerfist clarified to deal bludgeoning damage, Armored Sentience, Propulsion, and Explosive Energy edited again to specify incapacitated.
6/10/15: Battlefist clarified to deal bludgeoning damage
6/19/15: Eldritch fist limited to Charisma mod per long rest
7/28/15: Eldritch Fist rewritten entirely.

18 comments:

  1. A change I was thinking on for the Mechamancy school; Instead of equating it to your proficiency bonus, maybe you have construct points equal to half your wizard level, rounded up? At the end of the day, that leaves you with 10 construct points. That's enough for a second knight, 2 more automatons, or 4 more spiders at level 19/20.

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    1. Interestingly enough, the entire mechamancy class was balanced based on the number of construct points being equal to your proficiency bonus. The idea here is that at high levels, one can swarm the field with mostly useless spiders, deploy 3 automatons (for a total of 3 attacks a round) or use a single powerful tank in the form of a clockwork knight. This limit was intentional to both make the decisions about which minions to create easier, and to limit the amount of time spent controlling your minions in combat. Let's not forget that this is not a full class, and the wizard can still cast fireball.

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    2. Why don't you use the crafting rules in the Downtime Activities? It saves you the trouble of making up mechanics, just costs for the constructs. xP

      Engineering Savant
      Beginning at 2nd level, you can create constructs that you can command. You have proficiency in tinker's tools. You can also craft one or more magical constructs, with a total market value not exceeding 20 GP.

      This becomes 30 GP at 5th level, 40 GP at 9th level, 50 GP at 13th level, and 60 GP at 17th level. See the Crafting rules in the Player Handbook on page 187 for more information.

      A day of downtime is 8 hours for the purposes of this ability. You can also craft a construct in 4 hours, but the total market value is halved. You can also repair constructs by crafting. You can repair a number of hit points equal to the total market value you craft.

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    3. It also gives the Wizard an actual RP reason to go adventuring, because building constructs and researching and designing them are incredibly expensive.

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    4. Designing constructs with gold prices in mind is problematic in its own right. Let's say a wizard completes an adventure and is rewarded handsomely. While the fighter might invest this new-found wealth in a new magic item, the wizard has a choice: learn spells or gain minions with his hold. Without a limitation like construct points, it becomes exceptionally easy to exploit the action economy with a horde of minions. On the other hand, a wizard that doesn't have enough gold simply can't use these features.

      Moreover, how do you gauge gp vs minion strength? We can approximate the types of scaling minions could have for each spell level, because we have summoning spells like animate dead to compare against, but without a table for gold price against minion strength, this is extremely difficult to price. It's just as likely that wizards will find that combat with their minions will cost far more than they gain back. Quite the opposite of a rp reason in that case. As a matter of procedure, I use things I can calculate, and gold prices are exceptionally challenging in this case.

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  2. Your homebrew was reviewed by /r/boh5e and received a 8/10! All of the archetypes fit the theme extremely well, and grants your players a ton of versatility in both roleplay and combat. The errata issues are still present and noticeable, keeping it away from a 9, but besides that, great work!

    To see the full review, click here: https://www.reddit.com/r/boh5e/comments/3j8zwx/magitech_by_middle_finger_of_vecna/

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  3. Changelog reports "6/19/15: Eldritch fist limited to Charisma mod per long rest.
    7/28/15: Eldritch Fist rewritten entirely. Now uses spell slots and deals more damage."

    These doesn't show up in the pdf.

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    1. Weird, I checked this PDF, the original PDF and that post's text, and they all agree. We must have changed all three and not updated the changelog (I blame the Thumb)

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    2. Should Eldritch First entry look like this?

      "Eldritch Fist
      At 10th level, you have mastered using your battlefist and spellcasting to crush your foes. When you use the Attack action to attack a creature with your battlefist, you may use a bonus action to cast an evocation cantrip targeting that creature. Treat this cantrip as if it had a range of touch."

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    3. Right, that's precisely the entry I see here, and which the Machine standalone post seems to have. Do you see something different?

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    4. Is the Eldritch Fist limited to Charisma mod per long rest (as it says in the change log)? If so, can it be added to the pdf entry? Thanks by the way for all the help.. love the creation.

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    5. It is not Cha mod/rest anymore. That part was dropped when the entire feature was rewritten. I really salute you for holding us to these logs, by the way!

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  4. Mecha Transformation
    "You also has advantage on Strength checks and
    Strength saving throws." has != have

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  5. On the items such as Flamethrower or Armored Servos, where they can be used once and then require "a short or long rest" before the next use, would it be overpowered to suggest they be able to be used twice per long rest, with a short rest regaining one use out of the two?

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  6. Hey, I just found out about these cool stempunky classes, and I have a question about the Machine Warlock? Is the battlefist a magic weapon, and would you be able to use it as a blade pact weapon?

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    1. I have been running it as such. You get one, and then you certainly could use your Pact weapon to summon a SECOND one.

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  7. If you make an automaton out of a longsword, does it deal 1d8+mods or 1d10+mods? In other words, if you have a versatile weapon, does it count as one hand or two?

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    ReplyDelete