Mechanical Servant

Whether through the inginuity imbued by your race, or by years of study in a selected class, you have the knowledge and skill to create a mechanical beast, which can be outfitted to suit your needs. The goal of this homebrew is to give certain races inclined to inventing a more interesting and broad set of options when it comes to character creation.

Choosing a Model

The size and shape of your Mechanical Servant is mostly up to you. Depending on where you attain this feature, its Maximum Size and Challenge Rating will change. You are typically restrained to choosing a beast from the monster list for the servant's base stats, but you can alter its appearance however you wish, so long as it is fitting for its abilities. If it's able to fly, for example, it would need some sort of propulsion.

Mechanical Servant Capabilities

The Mechanical Servant obeys your commands to the best of its abilities, and functions in combat to protect and assist you. Once you have chosen an appropriate model, it has the following modifications:

•It is a construct instead of a beast.

•It can’t be charmed.

•It is immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.

•It gains darkvision with a range of 60 feet if it doesn’t have it already.

•It understands the languages you can speak when you create it, but it can’t speak.

•If you are the target of a melee attack, and the servant is within 5 feet of the attacker, you can use your reaction to command the servant to respond. using its reaction to make a melee attack against the target.

The servant follows your commands to the best of its ability. It will roll its own initiative and act on its own in combat.

If the servant is slain, you can bring it back to life via normal means. In addition, if you have access to its body, you can repair it over the course of a long rest. It will return to life with 1 hit point at the end of the rest. If you cannot make sufficient repairs to the servant, you are able to make a new one over the course of one work week (eight hours each day) and 1,000 gp of raw materials.

Upgrading your Servant

Each Mechanical Servant will start with two upgrade slots. These upgrades will be detailed further down this document.

If at any point you would receive this feature more than once, you get an extra two upgrade slots in addition to the features granted by the class.

Races and Classes with Access to this Feature

As stated before, the goal of this homebrew is to allow for a somewhat broader set of options when it comes to character creation. Below is a list of currently considered races with access to this feature, and what it would replace.

Rock Gnome (race)

Source: PHB, Page 37

Rock Gnomes have a knack for inventing. As it stands, this knack is given very little representation. A Rock Gnome would be given this feature in place of the Tinker feature.

A Rock Gnome would still have proficiency with artisan's tools, and be given a set of unique upgrades for their mechanical servant that they can choose from, which would reflect their innate inventiveness. In addition, Rock Gnomes only need to spend half as much time and money to repair or replace their servant.

Choose a Small or smaller beast with a challenge rating of no more than 1. Use these statistics for your servant.

You can also pick two upgrades available to you to start your servant off with.

upgrades to come

Gremlin (race)

Source: Goblin (5e Race) homebrew

Gremlins, like Rock Gnomes, have a reputation for tinkering with small machines. Their inventions have a tendency to blow up, and this would be reflected in both how their servant operates, and the unique upgrades they get access to. This feature would replace the Gremlin's Dangerous Tinker feature.

Additionally, as an action, you can command your servant to explode, destroying it irrepairably. Creatures in a 30ft radius must make a dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, they take 2d6 fire damage, or half as much on a success. This damage increases by 1d6 at 5th level, and again at 9th level, 13th level, 17th level, and 20th level.

Choose a Small or smaller beast with a challenge rating of no more than 1. Use these statistics for your servant.

You can also pick two upgrades available to you to start your servant off with.

upgrades to come