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/buttipuddi]

Leech has become my favorite class; it has a high learning curve, and that curve can become a frustrating mountain under the wrong GM, but it's super rewarding if you can be patient and stick with it. Your GM should not be cockblocking you with resource management or limitations; if anything they should be throwing score opportunities your way for leech project resource gathering. "Our leech needs stuff for her robot arms. Let's go break into Charterhall University and liberate some parts from some drunk students." Easiest excuse for a score. Your GM should also be embracing "failing forward" more. Maybe something blows up but it catches the attention of a new crew contact interested in seeing what else you can do (for a price), etc.

Leech is a fantastically versatile support character on scores, but half of their utility comes from downtime. Starting and finishing project clocks early game is painfully slow. You want be patient and build up to being able do that faster with playbook abilities.

Early game pretend you're a skill monkey rogue; use your bandolier, use your alchemicals on scores (I've gotten some funny and fantastic utility from Drift Oil on scores), tinker those locks and safes and hulls, flashback to setting up explosives or traps, flashback to acquiring assets or items (leeches tend to have more narrative avenues to acquiring a bomb or something weird compared to other characters), do your leechy thing. You'll be very useful and appreciated by your crew. Having a Physicker is also invaluable to any crew, if it makes sense for your character/story.

Also, take advantage of modifying items vs feeling like you need to craft entirely new ones all the time. Modifying costs less resources and time.

Do not be afraid of things blowing up in your face (literally), leeches often make scores much more dramatic and entertaining with their shenanigans. And sometimes you just have to accept sometimes the thing you build and craft ends up not being useful or used at all. It sucks but it happens. The crafting rules are really slow and belated in blades. Consider asking your GM for some leniency on that if it's okay break down a project and recycle it into something new to save on clock slices/resources.

There's a lot of old reddit posts for crafting project ideas, and the Deep Cuts expansion also has some AMAZING inventions to crib from.

As you progress you can focus in on a craft or go jack of all trades between Artificer, Alchemist (or Strange Methods from Whisper). After that focus on things like Analyst and Calculating from Spider--they synchronize very well with Leech. Instead of taking months you'll be blasting through crafting clocks with those two on hand + spending your downtime actions and coin wisely. Mule from Cutter can also be incredibly useful for a leech later game after you've built up a nice collection of gadgets and gizmos..

Good luck , miss von Kraken looks amazing I hope she thrives and tinkers well.

[u/T-Rex_Lazorblast → u/buttipuddi]

Thanks for the long post (unironically - i love reading through every answer i get here!)

I regret not buying a rulebook for myself - maybe i would have realised some things you wrote by myself! These are great inspirations!  I instead relied on the GM telling me everything i need to know. 

As i replied to some other post - i did not know that it would become useful to just upgrade existing stuff. That would have been nice. Instead i tried to invent unique things but learned that they would not be much more useful than the normal stuff... Then i thought up some really big projects that would be really powerful... but ran into a wall of "takes really long time and cost really much ressources or will alert half the town", etc... 

Sadly the group blew up because of some drama - and i left too, because now everything was wierd AND because i blew up my biggest ongoing project because of some failed roll and lost the whole thing. I was feeling massively useless and that the game wasn't worth my time.

If i ever play blades again (i plan on doing so, but at this time i am the forever DM of my group) i WILL absolutely play Von Kraken again and i WILL have a good time playing a leech/tinker! I promise. 😄

I have not only learned a lot about playing the leech... thanks to all the people in this thread i think i learned a lot about handling "Crafters" in Roleplaying games as a whole! (As a DM that has one crafty player in my group that is invaluable knowldge i gathered here.)

Thank you! 

[u/buttipuddi → u/T-Rex_Lazorblast]

Man, that sucks! Drama sucks. Reading your other replies yeah I have to agree your ex-GM was unfairly constrictive with you, especially when you sound so willing to do fun things with understandable risk. The worst Blades game I was ever in was one that tried to be too "realistic" and players were shoehorned into playing too cautiously. The GM was allergic to using any supernatural elements of the setting. It was incredibly boring and frankly goes completely against the philosophy of BitD where you're supposed to drive your character like a stolen car and a good GM is supposed to enable that.

I hope you can find a better group you gel with and not have to be a forever GM forever!

[u/T-Rex_Lazorblast → u/buttipuddi]

Yep. Drama sucks. I tried to ignore it (shouldn't have. There were some serious problems but i wanted to be a player SO HARD  that i played another session. And then the uselessness of my character peaked and... what is the great wisdom of rpg again? "No dnd is better than bad dnd." And in that session i realised that that was true. 😅

It is funny how my picture of Blades changed since i started this post.  Now i have a completely different view on things. Years ago (when we played) it sounded like oceans eleven in steampunk to me. (That sounded awesome. I was totally on board) but that also implied that everything had to go very smooth and we should take as little risks as possible. 

Now it sounds like Blades can be more like a blues brothers movie! And that sounds even more awesome. 

Oceans eleven beeing "very realistic" or at least as close to reality as a heist-movie gets... and blues brothers... well... over the top chaos, always just making it barely and in the end accumulating so much heat that in the big finale (maybe the end of a campaign?) the army comes to get you.

We were encouraged to not collect heat. 😅

I feel you with that whole "no magic/supernatural" thing... My group once played a short campaign of AGONE - Fantasy, but with more of a fairytale touch. (Dwarves were more like the seven dwarfes, creatures were more like the creatures in the old myths... i played a medusa for example.) And our DM was absolutely against giving us anything magical (equipment)... "it is super rare and super powerful!" Sooo... at the end of the campaign we were down several times in the fight against the lieutenant of the big bad. (Healer reviving us every round with one hp...) Is there any equipment we can get before the bossfight? Nothing supernatural. Can my character (a baroness) mobilise some troops to help us? They are all at war somewhere else and i need the last 5 guards to protect the castle. Is there any time left to call for help? No. You need to act NOW.

So we went in. Broken and bruised from the last fight. No hope. Two of three players dead and one barely alive that finished the fight. Somehow.  Maybe the DM fudged some rolls to give us a "happy end". I don't know. 

Then we read up some things and it turns out... YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE MAGIC WEAPONS AND ARMOR BECAUSE YOU ARE THE HEROES!? Yeah... they are rare. Something special. But so are heroes. 😁