D&D 5E Gnomes/clockwork/making sense of it

[SkidAce]

Clockwork devices are constructed using non-euclidean math and leads to "things that should not be known"*.





* i. e. gnomes are mad because of Cthulhu.

 

[Oofta]

Heh. The player also wanted a steam-powered Harley Davidson. I certainly applied rule-zero there! Nothing wrong with that idea, by the way - but not in this campaign. For one thing, there are no serviceable roads, and they live in a swamp, so the vehicle would be abandoned/written off in session 1...

The player in question is very enthusiastic about her character concept, and I'm happy to bend the rules of the setting (bend, not break; no Harley) to accommodate the players' ideas. In the past, I'd have said "no". Now I'd rather say "yes" than "no". As DMs, it's great if we have enthusiastic players (I am lucky to have four very enthusiastic regular players), so I certainly want to work with them when I can.

I don't think Gnomish tech will cause any problems (my conclusions on this are set out above). The tech does exist in my world, just not in the area they'll be playing in - so there's ample justification.

I had a player like that in my world as well. We decided he was a sorcerer (wild mage) and that his "inventions" were all just spells. So his cantrips were "guns" the Harley could have been a phantom steed, that kept breaking down, burning hands was a flame thrower etc. Of course all of his inventions were stored in a special pocket dimension that could only store his inventions.

By doing it that way he could have all the crazy inventions he wanted, as long as they replicated, and followed the same rules as, spells. Making him a wild mage was also thematic, sometimes his inventions blew up or functioned in unexpected ways.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Nothing wrong with limiting stuff for a campaign if it works with the world you are creating.

Personally I think subconsciously I switched to the game I'm running because there are no gnomes in it. Especially no gnome paladins.

 

[Unwise]

I'd say that Gnomes are savants when it comes to this stuff. Their brains simply don't work like human brains do. They see cogs and just know how they fit together and where a tiny spark of magic, or a spring, is needed. They have a part of the brain that senses that stuff, the same way that dogs can make sense of smells that humans cannot. It is physiological difference, not a cultural one or an academic one. You could flavour it as a blessing from Gond or whatever your craftsman/invention god is.

 

[Slit518]

I'm currently in the process of setting up a new 5e game, and I (perhaps) made the mistake of saying that players could pick any official races and classes. One player has gone for a gnome, and now I've got to get my head around all this clockwork nonsense works.

The main issue I have is that clockwork is a massively advanced technology for my world. It's not like magic, where some character can just do it while other can't: if Gnomes can make it, I don't see any reason why everyone else can't reverse engineer it and then churn out clockwork devices. Then you have a world full of vastly advanced tech. Presumably that isn't the intent (or effect) of this in most 5e games. So how are we actually meant to get this to make sense in our campaign worlds?

I would like the player to be able to play the character of their choice if at all possible - so has anyone else managed to make any of this make sense without huge elephant-in-room contradictions?

I feel a Gnome can do Clockwork without the other appropriate proficiencies/tool sets.

For example, if a character wanted to make Clockwork creature, they would need proficiency in Tinker's Tools, and Smith's Tools.

Smith Tools to make the metal pieces they need, and Tinker Tools to make the mechanisms and pieces that operate the Clockwork.

 

[77IM]

Yeah, just allow non-gnomes to make clockwork stuff too -- it's just harder. Nothing in the racial description says clockworks are unique to gnomes. For another example, the lizardfolk (from Volo's Guide to Monsters) are able to automatically craft stone and wood spears and daggers and stuff, and surely that's not meant to imply that lizardfolk are the world's sole suppliers of stone implements.

Let's see, it takes gnomes 1 hour and 10gp... so I'd say non-gnomes also need to make a DC 15 Intelligence (tinker's tools) check. On a success, you make the thing in an hour, just like a gnome! On a failure, you wasted an hour but can try again with the same materials; if you fail by 5 or more, you wasted your hour AND your 10gp of materials.

 

[Tonguez]

1 Gnomes are small and only the very small have the manual dexterity to match the inricate work of the clock maker

2 Advanced Mathematics is condemned by the Church as Mortals should not dabble with such diabolism

3 Note that in the real world clockwork mechanisms have been known since ancient times. In 3 BC Yan Shi, an 'artificer' presented the king of Zhou with a life-size, human-shaped figure. The Greek engineers also had mecahnical devices but none of them ever started an industrial revolution and clockwork remained an expensive, difficult novelty

 

[Leatherhead]

Why would you need to use a steam engine to push things around when you could make a skeleton horse, which doesn't require fuel and needs very little maintenance, instead?

 

[Grainger]

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