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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kelleris" data-source="post: 2807575" data-attributes="member: 19130">That's true.  Actually, it reminds me of one plane in Beyond Countless Doorways where formians are invading a forest dominated by aranea.  Giving aranea tech in that scenario would make for a very strange game, thematically, I would think.Heh.  Yeah, it really isn't hard to find D&D races or monsters that would make sense using fantasy science.  I'm not really sure why that is...And I checked out that thread.  The "metal god" scenario would be interesting, although I myself prefer less thematically-organized settings.  Hmm...  You could do something strange there and say that FS is powered by or otherwise requires the god's blood, which also has magic-suppressant properties.  A strange resource like that to fight over makes sense, and it's doubly interesting if the blood is having some strange effect on its users or slowly killing "the world" or something.The defensive item problem was actually a flavor issue.  I wanted each device in the book to have some kind of cool thing attached to it, whether that's flavor or a unique mechanic or an interesting decision the device forces you to make to use it.  I doubt very much that I succeeded, but the goal made it hard to design yet another force-field or alchemical-armor device - there's only so many unique mechanics and flavor variations in that area.  But it is supposed to be a strength of the class, so it's on my list anyway.Venhicle, of course, have the problem of being inactive when not activated, like all devices.  But most vehicles are also impossible to move when they don't move themselves, and so make for poor adventuring gear, to my mind.  The various mechanical workarounds I came up with all seemed really clunky.  The other problem with vehicles is that, flavor-wise, they have a much larger "footprint" on the setting - they stand out a lot more than personal equipment.  Since I wanted to preserve the magic-dominance assumptions of the game and not force anyone to make heavy use of FS to use it, I wasn't completely comfortable with making vehicles for those reasons.And of course D&D spells are notorious for being disproportionately adventurer-friendly.  But I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing.  When the book has severe space limitations, as mine did, it's best to just put in the devices that will affect game balance the most and see the most use by adventurers and leave the conceptual stuff to the DM (as well as including device design guidelines, of course).However, my solution to making FS more prevalent was actually going to be a series of feats that grant mastery and limited use of a single device.  So you need X ranks in Craft (weaver) and Craft (technology) [and significantly more of the former] and Skill Focus (Craft (weaver)) and you can use a fabricacious fabricator some number of times per day.  Elite city guards in my campaign are basically just warriors that have access to the pocket ballista through such a feat, and that's worked out well - adds that extra bit of oomph to the whole "move and I'll shoot" bit when the crossbow bolts do 2d8 base damage.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />   It's also good for flavor - common equipment of significant power rewards players for keeping track of the setting by allowing them to plan ahead ("We see guards in green and blue livery?  Better break out the entropic shield spells...").  But I didn't get too far along this line of thinking before it became clear that there simply wasn't room for much optional material like this in the book.Good.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I think the second commentator on RPGNow.com agrees with you, and Cabe Zeree did as well in his ENWorld review.  So the consensus seems to be that that chapter was more useful than I had anticipated.  Good to know.</blockquote>

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