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| Mechanist player characters.; Have a player who wants to play a Mechanist, but I'm not sure there's a build for that.... | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 25 2014, 06:58 PM (591 Views) | |
| RockstarRaccoon | May 25 2014, 06:58 PM Post #1 |
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Hex Maniacal!
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Hi there! I'm running a campaign of Pokémon Tabletop United cold, as in I've never used the system before. Makes enough sense that I think I can do it. (not the case with Adventures) I have a player who said instead of playing one of these kids who drop out of school to go make animals fight, he wanted to play one of the professors aides or something: someone who actually works towards a profession involving Pokémon-world technology. Problem: there's not an easy way to do that in the system. I mean, Scientist deals with chemistry and man-made pokemon, and Researcher[Gageteer] deals with a couple pieces of technology, but there's nothing in there that would make him build something like, say, the Pokéball Cannon from Do Porygon Dream of Mareep. I want him to be able to work towards being a technologist or whatever, like the guys from Silph Co., but he can't within the rules. I'm thinking of giving him "blueprints" and having him work on those, or something like that. Anyone have any thoughts on this? |
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| castfromhp | May 25 2014, 07:05 PM Post #2 |
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Mawile Ace
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The Engineer class covers this pretty well. It's still a section I need to elaborate on, but you can use the Pokébot building rules to create items that aren't exactly autonomous machines like Pokébots are. For example, you might put together a backpack with a set of robotic arms that the Engineer can build, and it would be statted just like a Pokébot - it might use Thunder Punch to attack, have a Power Capability for lifting, etc. I wanted to explicitly avoid making a lot of the tech in the sci-fi splat into stuff you had to take a Feature to create. So if you want him to create items like the Poké Ball Cannon, then I'd say you could let him discover blueprints (I would not charge Features or Edges for this - just make it part of RP), put a requirement on minimum Technology Education Rank to understand a blueprint, and just let him build the items at reduced cost. Between this, Engineer for more sophisticated contraptions, and Researcher (Gadgeteer) for simply improvised tools, you can pretty much cover all your bases. |
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| RockstarRaccoon | May 26 2014, 11:47 AM Post #3 |
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Hex Maniacal!
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Engineer isn't in the core rulebook, so I wanted to avoid it, but you're probably right. I'm gonna run a few sessions before I try messing with the rules too much, but after that, I'll open up the engineer class for him and modify it like that.
Well, obviously I wouldn't charge those for simply being able to build a single item, seeing as they're so rare. I was thinking with the Pokéball Cannon he's given a blueprint by one of the Professor's contacts at a Pokétech company and told he can tinker with it because they scrapped the project when they realized it wasn't really viable. (it's expensive, potentially dangerous, and who's seriously going to use a cannon to catch Pokémon?) 'Nother question. I noticed that the ball-crafting features don't seem to include Ultra Balls, only special balls. Would it be a bad idea for me to give him access to a third feature which allows him to build UlraBalls? Obviously the prereq would be a 5 in tech and the Pokéball crafting feat. Also, how about the idea of, later on, giving him blueprints and components that add up to a Master Ball and having the party acquire one that way? Another Idea I had floating around was that the shops have more advanced versions of toolkits which would lower costs, increase efficiency, and make more things possible, because having better tools means you can do better work. As the game progresses he can go ahead and buy more of those with battle-money. What do you guys think of this? ....I like how the other two PCs, a Magikarp-Training Underdog and a Martial Artist/Aura Guardian, were totally straight-forward to build by the way.... |
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| castfromhp | May 26 2014, 12:32 PM Post #4 |
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Mawile Ace
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Don't shy away from using splatbook material. We like to think of PTU's splats being a much more natural extension of the core system than, say, D&D sourcebooks and the like. They're packaged in with everything else after all, and we definitely want you to use them. The material is sorted out more for the sake of classification, and as an example, Rune Master and Elementalist used to be in the core and are now in Fantasy because it makes more sense organizationally. In your case in particular, Engineer is the essential tech-head class, and its existence sort of precludes us from making anything too similar that might go into the core. You don't really need to modify the Engineer class to make it work the way I described either. It's just a matter of fluff, honestly. A small pokébot could just as easily be a robotic arm frame as an actual robot. I wouldn't make Ultra Ball creation into an entirely new Feature. It's just not worth it at all. If you want to let your player make them, just allow the Poké Ball creating Feature to apply to Ultra Balls once he reaches Expert or Master Technology. Making Master Ball acquisition into a personal plot arc the way you seem to have it laid out sounds solid. The advanced toolkits idea sounds pretty neat. Just be mindful of how it affects your item economy in the game, and you should be fine. |
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7:43 AM Jul 11
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Pokéball created by Sarah & Delirium of the ZNR






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7:43 AM Jul 11