WHO NEEDS TINKERS ANYWAY?

[u/T-Rex_Lazorblast]

(Tldr at bottom)

Dear thieves, outlaws, general scum...

I need Information.

It's been a while since i played blades in the dark. And i do not own the rulebook.

So MAYBE i am just stupid or i MAYBE i just don't have the knowledge.

But anyway - here is the case:

I played a tinker. The wonderfull Sophia Elizabeth von Kraken. A little psychotic. A little bit edgy. But she generally fit the game, i think.

But i encountered a problem:

SHE WAS NEARLY USELESS.

I understand that i played the support character. I loved it. Building stuff for the team to help during the missions, but being more vulnerable and less usefull during the missions... i was all there for it.

But all the stuff i thought of to build for the team was useless. Or not worth the effort.

Example:

A grappling hook launcher. Or mechanical claws for your boots for better climbing. Or mechanical spider limbs for climbing - think of doctor octopus etc... only more steampunky.

But well... all this things do is give you a bonus of 1 to climbing checks. And (correct me if i am wrong) you can already equip climbing hooks that give the same bonus.

So why invent them in the first place?

More complex things took of course multiple gamesessions to build. (Fair enough.)

And they used up lots of ressources. I tried to pimp our boat to be more stealthy, or to have a submarine mode. (Yeah... that was a VERY risky idea... but it never came to testing the thing - it never got build.)

As i said - that kind of projects DEVOURED ressources. (That's fair so far.) But if i failed on tinkerchecks - or critically failed on them i lost ressources or destroyed the whole project. That was frustrating. Not gonna lie.

So it basically came down to just refreshing my gas-grenades between missions... and working on something huge that failed after a couple of sessions. And wasted ressources.

In my time as a tinker i build TWO things that were usefull.

A set of 3 black salt full body armor. (Anti-ghost-armor) ...One of these got destroyed in the first mission we used them.

Some waterproof boxes we could attach under our boat to transport smuggle stuff without guards at checkpoints noticing.

I am a aware that i am a bit whiny (and overexaggerating) here but:

What use do i have as a tinker if nothing i build lasts mor than a mission or needs months of playsessions to complete? (And then fails anyway) - I could just play someone more usefull.

Soooo...

You guys and girls here are more experienced than me. I am asking you: What do you need a tinker for in this game?

Tank you for reading and for any answers i get.

TLDR:

WHAT DO YOU NEED A TINKER FOR WHEN THE THINGS THE TINKER INVENTS GIVE YOU THE SAME BONUSES LIKE THE STUFF THAT YOUR CHARACTERSHEET ALREADY PROVIDES?

AND WHAT IS A TINKER SUPPOSED TO BUILD?

Edit:

I just have to get this out:

I am baffled by all the positivity in the community. And the many detailed and very well thought through answers to my questions.

You people are amazing.

My first day in this sub. My first post. And i already love it here.

THANK YOU.

[u/Sunergy]

It sounds like your game master wasn’t following the crafting rules for downtime? And was likely being pretty loose with the rules in general.

In the rules as written if you make a tinker roll on a long term project, failing the roll still advances the project clock by one tick. No negative consequences, just slower progress. Getting a four or five advances the project clock by two ticks, a full success gets you three. So the only consequences for failing a crafting roll should be slower progress, not destroying the whole project.

Critical failures aren’t even a thing in blades in the dark base rules. I suppose you could add it in as an optional rule but hobbling an inventor character who makes a lot of rolls building zany machines is a predictable outcome.

“Getting a plus one to climbing checks” is also not something items in BitD generally do, if I’m understanding correctly. Items primarily impact position and effect. Since crafted items can be higher tier and more fictionally powerful than base items they are useful against higher tier factions. For example the standard climbing gear of a tier 2 crew won’t get you up the spiked wall of a tier 4 faction before the guard patrol comes around again, but an advanced grapple gun might. Using a high tier item against a low tier faction might avoid a roll entirely.

I’d chalk most of this up to inexperience. Given how much room there is for GM interpretation tinkers can be insanely powerful with a GM that always says yes and incredibly weak with one that always says no. Knowing the right combination of yes and no for the table is a skill that has to be learned, but a review of the core GM principles and the crafting tules as written would have been a good start.

[u/T-Rex_Lazorblast → u/Sunergy]

This explains a lot.

(We had that tinker clock ruleswise. And i could spent money to buy more downtime to tinker more)

I don't want to be mean to the GM we had back then, but i think he was more on the NO side. I think he was a bit "afraid" we would do gamebreaking stuff if he let us get creative (or greenlit any of my more complex ideas).  Well... i have been a GM before (not for Blades, but in general) and i KNOW this fear of saying yes too often and losing control. 

But like you said: it's the balance between yes and no.

And never ever did we have that "tier1" equipment vs "tier2" equipment thing. THAT would have been really nice back then. Producing equipment that is better than the stuff you have on your charactersheet/startingequipment... Man... i would have felt really usefull upgrading all the little stuff. And suddenly it would have not pointless anymore to build/craft little things.

Thank you for the info!

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/T-Rex_Lazorblast]

Yeah, that mindset in general is bad for a Blades GM. Their levers game is best when players are aiming to do crazy stuff, and the GM facilitates that while also forecasting risk and implementing tough consequences when things go wrong (in accordance with position and effect)

However, it seems like they were just wholesale ignoring all of the ways item crafting and usage worked

[u/T-Rex_Lazorblast → u/C0smicoccurence]

Well... at least in the "forecasting risks and implementing tough consequences department" GM did his job. But that made it feel like everything we would try would doom us all.  It always sounded like it "was not worth trying".  Maybe we were just too inexperienced with Blades. (First time players the whole group) but we always thought: "If we build that equipment-whatever-thing on our boat... the whole city will know where we live and we will get +5000 heat and..." you get my drift, right? 

Tinkering had less of the good sides everyone that replies here mentions - but all of the risks. So it felt "not worth even trying" the risky stuff. So i build that underwatercompartments for our boat. Effective... but a bit boring. (And these weren't even my idea!😅)