Initiators trade attacks into single, much better, attacks all the time, is this a downgrade?
Secondly: You're getting Trapfinding, a Sleep spell, a melee touch at-will (Does Static Trigger, as a melee attack, count for the damage bonus as well?), or a permanent light source, or an invisibility detector, an awesome compass o' glory, or a huge Jump bonus....
You're trading an attack at a -5 to hit (when you can easily get three anyway without it), for a lot more than free bonus damage.
I'm totally happy with the +2 damage limit, because that stops it from being *totally* awesome.
The engineer basically has a combination of permanent class features and/or healing/damaging abilities they can change day by day, even at level 1.
I actually like this a lot, maybe they could have an "inventions known" list and pick up one or two "cross-archetype" inventions as they levelled from other disciplines?My intention for the engineer was to have a greater day-to-day variety, but be restricted in the kinds of effects they can produce. That's why most of their inventions are damage-dealers, with a few exceptions. One option for reducing the power of the engineer is to have their archetype dictate which disciplines they can use - a sawbones could use chemistry and medicine, but no others, for example.
I'd be happy with this, or possibly a total "pool" of "invention points" maybe? So for example at level 6 they can prepare 12 "points" worth of abilities. This could be four level 3 abilities, but you'd get overall more if you went with 2/2/2 instead.A certain number of level 1 inventions, level 2, et cetera. Perhaps like so...
It may be an interesting exercise to list the "possible effects" available to each class at basic level 6 with their resources. I'll possibly have a go at it when I have some time on my hands, should be interesting.Yes, but the poet gets some pretty decent power from his songs. The engineer pretty much only has inventions.