Technomancer Gadgets

[What's in the box?]

I am trying to understand how this works:

I want to make a Gadget "Staff of Fire." I need to be level 8 (since the CL of the staff is 8) and then I spend 50 gil per 1000 (I rounded to a total of 950gil), and at level 8 I would have a minimum of 16 Invent points and with an INT of 18 that would give me 20 total and the item requires 19 to make. So all good there. And this all takes an hour...

Now I have a 950-ish-gil Gadget/Staff of Fire that only I can activate. It has 10 charges. Can the party black mage recharge this even if only I can use it? Would the Technomancer have no means of recharging this staff without the assistance of the party black mage?- is there a feat to compensate for that?

[NeloAngelo]

I would consider it one of those General gadgets. I havent read much into technomancer but looking through it for this is seems no other way than to have a black mage recharge it.You can use your flash augmentation but thats about it from what im seeing. Unless im not seeing something you can do, maybe you can pay half or 1/3rd of the cost of the 950 (that would be around 317) to take an hour to recharge it but thats up to your GM there. Until Vil or someone otherwise more keen with the class can answer it thats mine.

Flash augmentation or have a blm do it. I mean you created it. Just say you created it in mind to be recharged by a mage. Technically speaking t just says activate, not recharge. Otherwise activate it for someone to recharge it outside. Unless they are not truly considerd staffs for the purpose of being a gadget then just Flash Aug.

[What's in the box?]

Lol, ok I am glad I wasn't the only one having some issues with the mechanics of that

Even with that little hiccup of re-charging (which I would assume is Black Mage/Scholar/Red Mage/etc. specific) that is 1/20 the price for purchasing that staff, or 1/10 for creating it myself... So I could make 10 to 20 of those and worry about the recharge the next time I am in town lol. And that pricing is before any REDUCTIONS!!! Wow Technomancy is kewl!

[dairius_chi]

Eh, I believe it states that when items with charges are depleted they just break apart, freeing up your Tech points... this would be the case for a Staff as well, if uncharged by the group mage.

Also, because of the vastly cheaper cost, I'd personally rule they can't be recharged...

And I forget if the Technomancer has a feature that gets around this, but normally a Staff requires spell slots (or an MP pool) to make use of, since it runs off your own Casting modifier, which is nothing if you are not a caster.

I don't even think UMD lets you use a Staff without the proper abilities... but I could be wrong.

[What's in the box?]

Then why would technomancy allow for creating staff if gadgets can only be used by Technomancers but staves can only be used by casters?

Also there is the statement that Invention points are not spent when used they just represent an amount of complexity an invention can possess. There is also mention of "General Gadgets" being usable by others besides the technomancy, but I can't seem to find what a "General Gadget" is? Is this a feat?

[Archmagel]

If it helps, UMD can be used with staves, but it uses either the caster's level OR the staff's caster level.

[dairius_chi]

Alright, if UMD works for them then that'd be why a Technomancer can craft them I suppose...

I'll be honest I haven't looked the class over thoroughly since it was released but I think by the points not being 'spent' it means that they are temporarily 'occupied' by the staff, but when it's freed up so are they. No such thing as a permanent expenditure unless the item in question never disappears.

Being able to make endless items at 1/20th the cost is just too much, any and every GM would regret the class's existence >_> It's kind of like with the Buster, you can make 2 of them for TWF or whatever- go for it, but you have to use your one pool of points to craft the both of them.

You have have 8 gadgets, go for it, but they can't all be worth your maximum amount available...

This is also why I figure the items aren't meant to be recharged. You use them till they break, or you break them, and then you have your points freed up again.

[What's in the box?]

Idk, I think this class (at least to me) appears to be a new approach to the cheap class.

Like a Monk. Monk's have no real need to invest their cash into armor and weapons, which tend to be the more expensive items of Martial classes, and there is not Spell resource (scroll learning) to pay for/update like there is for the Spellcaster classes.

Here you have a character that can create/build extremely powerful weapons/armor/gadgets/etc. and have them ready for use, but ONLY he can use them. So you are still reducing the cost associated with THIS character- Fighter still gotta get his own weapons, Mage gotta get her own scrolls.

The class seems to depend on being able to have all of these things available at once and then using action economy to whittle down the options. Which sorta incorporates the Wizard aspect into the Technology theme: I have a trick for everything, it took me time to get it ready, but now behold the AWESOMENESS OF MY SCIENCE!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I haven't played a Technomancer. I like the idea and reading through it was confused how mechanically the Staff aspect worked since... it would seem that in order to make ANY staff you are investing basically ALL of your invent points which would mean that you have NO constructs, armor, busters or additional gadgets if those points are kept hostage for 10 charges.

The line under Invent that says "These points are not spent when creating inventions, but are a limit to the level of complexity of any one invention. A technomancer may not build an invention that uses more invention points than the technomancer has." At least to me says that this guy pretty much ALWAYS has the best stuff. Since there isn't much in the way of class abilities outside of his stuff I would think that he is expected to be maximizing the potential of his stuff.

I just read something a little surprising though. Technomancer qualifies for Scribe Scroll and knows EVERY spell there is... She can basically fund the Magic Learning of the party casters... This class gets CRAZY cool.

[dairius_chi]

The invent points you have are a limit per category- if you have 20 points, you can spend 20 on Gadgets, 20 on your Buster, 20 on your Suit, and 20 on any constructs you build.

Having the time and money available doesn't mean you can make 8 different 20pt busters, three 20pt suits, an army of 20pt constructs, and literally millions of gp worth of magical items at a twentieth of the price. THAT would be too much. The points are not spent, they are invested, if you make a 10pt construct that means you can still make another 10pt one or two 5pt ones, but if they are destroyed those points are freed up... they are not lost permanently.

It's a cheap class, but some of its abilities require you to reup every once in a while... you'd still be going through 200 charges on a staff before you meet what a regular caster would have to pay for theirs, keep that in mind.

[What's in the box?]

I don't see how that can be interpreted from what is written down for the class though.

[dairius_chi]

Alright- use it however you want then, I can't rightly convince you otherwise. Vil basically had me in the co-pilot seat when it came to proof-reading the class and modifying some abilities but to be honest looking back on it I don't remember half of this stuff. What you're suggesting the class can do is outright broken, even if the Technomancer is the only one capable of using the item. Cheap is one thing, Broken is another. I do not believe the class was built to be broken, but the wording certainly works for it.

As for the points being a separate pool for each ability, meaning 20 suit/20 buster/20 gadget, I know for a fact was the intention. I had to confirm this with viladin himself when I almost built one in another game.

He's just gonna have to chime in here and say whether you can make 50 items at your max points or not just cause you have the time and money available, because you're not listening to a thing I say.

[Viladin]

I am, most likely, going to take this class down anyways. Seems to be a headache for many of people (including me).

[What's in the box?]

For the question of inventions a line could be added that states: "Invent points are limited to each category: Gadgets, Busters, Constructs, and Suits separately."

But for the secondary issue of how a gadget staff would be recharged or could be recharged is something that may be endemic to the complexity of the class and can likely cause confusion.

I honestly did not see this as an argument but as a means of clarifying the text of the class.

[dairius_chi]

I wouldn't have categorized it as an argument either, it's just a case of the class being unclear and the intentions contradicting the words. It might have been a case of an issue being pointed out and the update never being made cause Vil was having his own health issues to deal with, either way the class is an outlier...

It does some interesting things but the mechanics for a lot of it were built from scratch and possibly not properly tested before being put out- I proofread the thing but I never ran numbers on a lot of it, so I can't rightly say how it works in practice.

I think a more crafty Engineer Archetype might be the better way to go for this, as a Hybrid class it's a little strange anyways since it lists Black Mage as a parent class but aside from being able to craft and make use of magical items like Staves or Wands, it doesn't really have anything to do with the Black Mage, and those aspects can be linked to all magic-using base classes.

There's a 3rd party crafting class, the Artificer, for Pathfinder... while it too is very wonky and weird in a lot of ways as a lot of 3rd party material is, it might serve as a better base on how to handle the 'random inventing class' that isn't already covered by Engineer or Chemist.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-part.../artificer

[Viladin]

I think Technomancer will go the way of an Archetype, with simpler mechanics.