Mechanist
An Engineer Discipline that binds its Apparatus to one vehicle or mech and pushes it past its rated specifications.
Identity
The Mechanist is the Engineer Discipline of engine rooms, hangar decks, chassis pits and gantries. Aurelion solar-cruisers run on Mechanists tuning the heliosail array between watches, Halcyion Federation tenders keep them on the plasma furnaces at every shift change, and frontier haulers keep one aboard because the nearest help can be twelve parsecs away. A Mechanist's Apparatus is often built into the machine.
Features
- L3 Bound Vessel
You bind your Apparatus to one vehicle, mech or vessel of size Large or larger that you have spent at least 8 hours tuning, such as a starship, gunship, transport or mecha. The bond lasts until you transfer it, which takes 8 hours of work on a new vessel, or until your Bound Vessel is destroyed. While aboard your Bound Vessel: You have advantage on all checks made to operate, repair, navigate or diagnose the vessel and its subsystems. You always know the vessel's current hit points, fuel and charge state, and the operational status of each of its named systems (engines, weapons, shields, life support, hyperdrive, sensors and so on). You can use the vessel's hull and conduits as your channeling focus. You do not need your handheld Apparatus to cast spells while you are physically connected to the vessel (touching a bulkhead, jacked into a console or seated at a control station). When you complete a short rest with your Bound Vessel in active maintenance (you in the engine bay, hands on the deck), you regenerate 1 additional Charge.
- L7 Emergency Repair
As an action, you can spend 1 Charge to patch a damaged system with channeled paste and jury-rigged conduit. Choose one of the following effects: Hull Mend. Your Bound Vessel, or any vessel, ground vehicle or large construct you can touch, regains hit points equal to 3d8 + your Engineer level. If you use this on a non-creature, it repairs that many points of structural damage instead. System Restart. One named system on your Bound Vessel that has been disabled, destroyed or critically damaged is restored to operational (at 1 hit point if it was destroyed). A given system can be restored by Emergency Repair only once per combat encounter. Adjacent Patch. One ally within 30 feet who is wearing armor, riding a mount or piloting a vehicle regains 2d8 + your Intelligence modifier hit points as you stabilize the load-bearing equipment around them. You can spend 2 additional Charges (3 in total) to use Emergency Repair as a bonus action instead of an action.
- L11 Combat Tuning
As a bonus action, you can spend 2 Charges to choose one of the following Combat Tunings, which apply to your Bound Vessel for 1 minute: Overdrive. The vessel's speed and maneuverability increase by 50 percent. The first attack roll the vessel makes each round has advantage. Hardened Shields. The vessel gains temporary hit points equal to 4 × your Engineer level. Energy and explosive damage against the vessel is halved while these temporary hit points remain. Targeting Lock. The vessel's weapons deal an additional 2d8 damage per hit, and the vessel's pilot can reroll one missed weapon attack roll per round. A vessel can have only one Combat Tuning active at a time, and activating a new one ends the previous one. When the duration ends, the vessel suffers minor structural strain. The GM decides the effect, with 2d8 hull damage and disadvantage on the next maintenance check as the default.
- L15 Vessel Power
While aboard your Bound Vessel: Your Charge maximum increases by your proficiency bonus. The bonus Charges come from the vessel's auxiliary power systems and refresh only when you take a long rest aboard the Bound Vessel. You can cast Engineer spells of up to 3rd level by spending the vessel's main-battery power instead of your Charges, which bypasses the normal Charge cost entirely. The vessel takes 1d8 hull damage per spell level cast this way, and you must be physically connected to the vessel (hand on bulkhead, jacked in or at a system station). When the Bound Vessel takes damage that would reduce it below half its hit points, you can use your reaction to spend 2 Charges and reduce the incoming damage by 2d10 + your Intelligence modifier, routing the energy through your own spell pool. You take 1d6 force damage as feedback. A vessel cannot be Bound by more than one Mechanist at a time. If you and another Mechanist try to bind the same vessel, the most recent binding takes precedence.
- L18 Hyperdrive Lock Capstone
Once per long rest, as an action while aboard your Bound Vessel, you can spend 5 Charges to initiate a Hyperdrive Lock, a single-jump emergency translocation of your Bound Vessel and everything aboard it. The vessel and all creatures and cargo within it instantly travel to any location you have personally visited on the vessel's normal-space transit network (a docked port, a stable orbital position or a known star-route waypoint). The jump ignores intervening obstacles, fuel reserves and ordinary jump-window constraints. It does not cross planar boundaries. In tactical-scale vessel combat, the GM can instead run this as a one-shot reposition: the Bound Vessel moves up to 10 times its normal movement allowance, ignoring intervening enemies and obstacles, and arrives with all systems functional except the hyperdrive, which is offline for 24 hours. After the jump, the Hyperdrive system on the Bound Vessel is offline for 24 hours, or until you complete a long rest and 4 hours of repair work, whichever is longer. You cannot use Hyperdrive Lock again until you complete a long rest.
