Steam automaton skill
Skill 'steam automaton', a clan skill of the Artificers.
- This is a passive skill, it works automatically.
Usage: craft automaton, then use chassis
Every Artificer gets the blueprint of a steam automaton from the Guild's courier. The skill stands in for a craft profession: no other trade is needed to build it. The blueprint says what goes into it. Craft the chassis at a lit forge. The chassis belongs to whoever it was made for, and only that master can wind it up.
Winding takes three stages: the key, the coal and the switch. Walking away, getting into a fight or losing the chassis stops it. Then Sir Threepio wakes up, a protocol automaton fluent in six million dialects of Thera and not one word of courage. He follows you, fights beside you and comments on every step: puddles, sand, rain, your plans and the odds of your survival, which he works out from the real numbers.
The better your jacket, the tougher he is. There is no timer: he serves until someone takes him apart, and then leaves some of his metal in the scrap heap. One automaton at a time. After you leave the world he waits where you left him: say "follow me" and he falls in again. Say "deactivate" and he folds back into a chassis, dropping everything he carried on the floor. Wind him up again whenever you need him: he comes back exactly as strong as he was.
Got a better jacket or a few levels? Build a new chassis and wind it up with the old automaton at your side. He moves into the new body with every item he carried, worn things back in the same slots, and comes out rolled fresh for your current level and jacket. An old automaton left somewhere else falls apart where he stands, and his things stay on that floor.
CLAN UPGRADE steam-automaton+ from the clan catalog: the automaton comes out tougher and hits harder. Once per fight, when you are badly hurt, it tears off a valve and blasts steam at everyone fighting you in the room, and may daze them for a moment. An automaton wound up before the purchase keeps its old strength until you rebuild it, but vents all the same.