Inventor (D&D feat)

Unofficial rules compendium

Your head is full of new ideas.

Prerequisite: Int 13, Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) 1 rank.

Benefit: You are good at devising and building gadgets; odd devices that produce seemingly magical effects through mundane means. You are highly inventive, and can easily come up with new gadgets. You know of or can come up with any gadget described in any sourcebook allowed in the campaign, and can instruct another craftsman on how to make them at normal cost. If you can craft such items yourself with the proper Craft skill, tools, and raw materials, you do so at half the regular cost in materials and time.

You can come up with creative uses for things you encounter that have no application in combat but bring you some utility. For example, you could use Brown Mold to make a refrigerated cupboard, but only you or another character with this feat could use such a device safely, at least until it has been perfected (in the DMs opinion).

All Special Substances And Items and Gunpowder are considered inventions. There are many examples of inventions in Complete Scoundrel and among the list of Special Equipment. Exotic weapons are also inventions.

In addition, you are free to come up with inventions of your own, as long as you can convince the DM that they could possibly work and it fits his idea of the world. You can only invent new devices that are within the limits of available technology. The DM is the final arbiter of what is possible, and should see to it that inventions progress in small steps and not in leaps and bounds; for example, if firearm inventions are allowed, you might have to invite and perfect matchlocks and wheellocks before you can invent flintlocks.

Your inventions start out as unstable prototypes. This is not a problem as long as you are around to advice and fiddle with them, but to make a marketable version takes quite a bit of refinement and a minimum of 3d6 prototypes being made. Once perfected, inventions can be copied by any skilled craftsman, though it will take some time for the idea to spread and you might very well wish to keep it a secret.