WOW d20 - Tinker Base Class

[Chronologist]

I'm going to be playing in an advanced technology D&D campaign. Same rules as standard 3.5, only with a steampunk pallet-swap, if you will. Naturally, I decided to play a Tinker from the WOW d20 book.

First of all, has anyone played this class before? I understand the rules for it, but at some points it feels either extremely overpowered, or extremely underpowered. Devices that deal 1d6 damage per 3 TL of the device are awfully weak, but steam armor that gives +1 AC per TL and damage reduction seems really, really powerful.

The main concern is that with Scavenge and Scavenge Materials, explosives and simple devices are cheap as free. On the other hand, anything really worth making takes weeks and weeks of downtime, which is not much fun.

My idea for a good fix would be to increase the price of all the devices (about 2 times over), remove Scavenge and Scavenge Materials, but reduce crafting checks to a single day instead of a week. In addition, damage would increase, but armor bonuses and vehicle speed would decrease.

Does anyone have any fixes for this? Any comments on how this could be more balanced? i've seen the Warcraft d20 version, and it's even more broken.

 

[Doctor DM]

I haven't seen the WoW Tinker, but a friend of mine plays the Tinker base class from the ORIGINAL Warcraft RPG. Great class imo, really fun.
A little overpowered with 1d6 damage per TL. I do really like the invention rules in that book though, very complicated and hard to understand at first, but once you get it, they're great.

They have a ton of fun abilities too, like bomb bouncing, fire resistance, and the ability to take 10 on a skill check at ANY TIME x/a day.

Super fun class, I'd recomend it.

 

[Chronologist]

Thanks for the feedback Doctor DM.

I've played the Inker from the Warcraft book, and it's a lot of fun to play as well. I was 5th level and I burned down a small fleet of pirate ships with 6d6 damage fire bombs that exploded in a 15 foot radius.

The WOW Tinker does 1d6 damage per 3 TL, or 1d8 per 2 TL for double the cost. That's about as effective as an Eldritch Blast (which is to say not very much).

I feel that the TInker should be able to do almost as much damage as a Sorcerer, since they lose tons of versatility in return. Tinkers can basically make 5 things; firearms, siege weapons, explosives, small equipment, and vehicles. These vehicles can sometimes come in the style of WTF HAXXOR MECHA variety, but if you use the Magic and Mayhem rules, they're nerfed pretty badly (think 10 times the price for 1/2 the benefits). Unless the DM is allowing such things as stealth cloaks and holograms, Tinkers are basically limited to some weak Abjuration, Evocation, and Transmutation effects.

Here is my proposed fix so far, comments would be nice.

1: Craft DC is now 1/2 the item's Function Difficulty (how complex the task it does is) + the sum of the TL of all the features of the item (this is the same as the Complexity Score). This makes devices that do cool things like copy handwriting possible, but limits how ridiculous a single item can be (no more +14 AC, DR 3/-, 150 foot fly speed, 600 foot land speed armors with Hardness 15 and 120 HP... at level 6, no less).

2. Items can be made with a Malfunction Rating of 0. Feats and class features that reduce malfunction rating can reduce it to 0. However, items with a malfuntion rating of 0 cost 25% more to create, but have no increase in market value. Some tinkers want cheap, others want reliable and are willing to pay for it. When your jet-boots blow your feet off, no one is happy.

3. The following changes are made to enhancements:
Damage: 1d6/2 TL
Armor Class Bonus: 2 + 1/2 TL
Movement Speeds cost Double

4. Special Materials give different bonus, to be posted later

 

[Doctor DM]

Yeah I think 1d6 per 2 TL is perfect. 1d6 per 3 is too low, and I think 1d6 every level is just a TOUCH too much. 2 just right though, on track with say, a Rogue's sneak atk.

 

[darjr]

played in a campaign with a friend who ran a tinker goblin. he spent a ton of time building a 'mech' witch had a penchant for freezing up in combat and becoming a bunker to blowing a gasket and endangering us all. he had a hired goblin that would help run the thing who was constantly tossing needed rare tools as weapons

 

[Chronologist]

so... you don't like the class?

darjr, any advice on how you think the class could have been improved? I've already set up a rule so that you can reduce Malfunction RAtings to 0, so for example that Mech wouldn't have freezed up at all in combat.