Mekaniak - Manic Mechanics

[Lestat]

Homebrew Exaltation - Mekaniak

Mekaniaks. That's mech obsessed maniacs. The Great Wheel is littered with species upon species piled into creaking masses they call Spelljammers; hurdling through the Warp traveling from one Crystal Sphere to the next. How did it get this way? How could such technologically deficient savages not only saturate the skies, but even escape their backwater Sphere millennia before they should be developmentally ready? Well not all tech works on quantifiable actions and reactions, some technicians get by on confidence alone.

You won't be able to convince a Mekaniak that it is so, but their little machines don't work - that is they shouldn't work. We all know that a vacuum tube connected to a box of spent bullet casings can't fire, that you can't connect medical electrodes to a metal helmet and call it a "Spelljamming Helm", and that having twelve grunts below deck pushing up against the ceiling won't create lift. However despite these amusing facts the truth is that the Mekaniaks are very real and very dangerous. Attempts to forcibly educate and debate away their incorrect beliefs has had limited success, they continue to build, innovate, and iterate on designs that only work in the confines of their own mind projected into reality and made hell for species who believe themselves both technically and culturally their superior. Simply put underestimating the unenlightened is a fast route to the grave.

Tell: Mekaniaks show off their tell exclusively through their tech. Before any TEK is spent an observer might misinterpret a gravitational flux shield as a half melted antique, or a custom trike-bike with double nitro boost engines for a child's scrap project. Once the TEK flows and the switch is flipped parts begin to wibble and wobble, rays of impossible energy are emitted from thought empty micro-batteries, and the true cunning of the Mekaniak is brought to light on the greatest show floor.

Powers:

Intuition: You use Wisdom in place of Intelligence for all Crafts and Tech-Use rolls, add twice your Ingenuity to rolls to craft, repair, or diagnose objects.

It Just Works: You operate poor quality items as if they were normal quality. If an object is broken or malfunctioning you can spend 1 TEK and a half action to replace some kind of component with a hack job that brings it up to operating order for the rest of the scene, ignoring the underlying issue and most logic.

Machine Shop: You can spend TEK as a half action or engineering action to repair a vehicle, Spelljammer, a creature with the Machine trait, or an Exalted who is classified as a machine due to their particular Exaltation. The recipient gains either 1 hit point, undoes 1 point of critical damage, or regains 10 hull per TEK spent. You can also repair broken armor and weapons over the course of an hour. You don't need other background dots to support vehicles.

TEK Eclipses Knowledge: Your Intelligence can't be raised above your Wisdom, and if it would temporarily become greater you lose all TEK and Mekaniak powers until you become dumber or wiser. Your understanding of technology is a gut feeling, and incomprehensible to non-Mekaniaks, technical information shared between you and a non-Mekaniak is too alien and not useful which also bars Aid Another on this topic. Vehicles you create are too unsophisticated for any kind of vehicle AI.

Power Stat: Ingenuity
It is extremely difficult to discern what quality a successful Mekaniak holds that less successful ones lack. For some it appears as confidence, for others it is greater precaution, but overall the greatest Mekaniaks have ingenuity. New ideas, new methods, and new possibilities are opened for the Mekaniaks that are bold enough to go where they are pretty sure no engineer has gone before.

Resource Stat: TEK. Your maximum TEK is 10. You gain 1 TEK for salvaging a Rare or greater item, 2 TEK for salvaging a 150 VP or greater Vehicle, and all TEK for salvaging any Spelljammer. If you salvage a cobbled object instead get back 1 TEK. If needed you can slowly recover TEK in a scrapyard at 1 TEK per week of salvaging broken worthless junk.

Ingenuity	Power Gained
★	Cobble - You can craft poor quality versions of any non-Spelljammer object by making a Crafts test against the TN to acquire the poor version of it, or 1/10th its VP if its a vehicle. The maximum TN you can craft starts at 25 and increases by 5 each time you increase your Ingenuity. This costs 1 TEK for items up to TN 25 plus another TEK for every 5 above that, and takes as many hours as TEK spent. You can maintain (Ingenuity x 3) crafts, vehicles count as 1 craft per 100 VP (round up), and items cost an extra craft for every 10 points above 25 their TN was. Unmaintained items turn into 1 TEK per object at the end of the session.
★★	Insane Insight - You can spend TEK on a Crafts or Tech-Use test to choose a die rolled and keep it. This doesn't count against your maximum TEK spent if you take 1 Insanity.
★★★	Spare Parts - Each time you spend TEK for a purpose other than Cobbling roll 1d10, on a roll equal to or less than your Ingenuity don't lose the TEK.
★★★★	Customize - You can add two +1 or one +2 property to a weapon while Cobbling it, but the effective TN increases by 15. You can customize a vehicle or Spelljammer to your unique specifications which utterly ruins it for a non-Mekaniak engineer, but gives it +30 VP or +20 BP.
★★★★★	Crunch - You craft, salvage, and repair objects in a fraction of the normal time. You complete these activities in an equal number of minutes not hours, hours not days, days not weeks, weeks not months, and months not years. You can fully staff the Engineering wing of a Spelljammer not using crew at all when you make tests with your own statistics. Machine Shop can be activated as a free action.

Mekaniak Degree Assets

Color Theory
It is known to certain Ork Mekaniaks that colors can subtly influence an object's power. When a weapon (personal or otherwise), suit of armor, vehicle hull, or Spelljammer hull is painted by you they provide or gain the following powers:
Red: Weapons gain +1 RoF or +1k0 to hit. Armor, vehicles, and Spelljammers gain +1 speed.
Blue: Weapons reroll 1s on damage. Armor, vehicles, and Spelljammers gain +3 static defense or TN to be hit.
Yellow: Weapons deal X damage and any Blast radius is increased by 1. Armor, vehicles, and Spelljammers explode when destroyed as a frag grenade, Arrow IV Launcher, or Cruise Missile depending on scale. Spelljammer weapons gain +3 disruption.

Freestyle Fabrication
You begin play with the Customize power, and at Ingenuity 4 you gain the Improved Customize power.

Improved Customize - You can add a single extra +1 property, or gain a +3 property in place of the normal options when using Customize.

King Toyota
Vehicles you Cobble have extra slots equal to half your Ingenuity rounded up, and you are proficient with vehicle weapons. Roll your Ingenuity as bonus rolled dice instead of level for this proficiency.

Quality Assurance
Items you Cobble still count as poor quality to acquire and craft, but they function the same as normal quality items. At Ingenuity 3 this improves to Good quality, and at Ingenuity 5 it improves to Best quality.

Spelljammer Crafting
The ultimate technology, the gateway to the stars: the Spelljammer. You made one in your backyard. You can Cobble Spelljammers the same as vehicles, but their TN to Cobble is 25 for Holdings 1 plus 5 TN for each subsequent tier, and they take up 1 craft per 50 BP (round up). They also take weeks instead of hours to craft. You can install duplicates of any console into an appropriate slot. This Spelljammer still needs a crew supported by other background dots to function, though it can be any ally's.