In which I post a cool picture because I can't think of anything funny here.
This starts out listing variants of existing spells. The variants are pretty much uniformly all designed to work with mechs or gears, and only available to Clockwork Rangers or the Constructor wizards.
I actually like how it saves space by going "speak with constructs(variant of speak with animals, affects constructs)". That's actually sane editing, rather than trying to bulk out pagecount.
Anyway, it pretty quickly goes into talking about the College of Constructors as an organization. They have 200 GP a year membership dues, and have a lot of proprietary spells that any PCs will have to keep proprietary. If a non-member turns up casting the spells, the College will try to steal their spellbook and shit.
The Constructors have work labs specifically for building constructs like golems. They're on a lot of the dwarven city-mechs and also house in their own mechs. A Constructor lab, in addition to saving the 500 gp of building your own, reduces the construction costs for golems by 10%. Nice touch there.
They have exclusive spells (which even members have to take the Spell Mastery feat to learn, so it isn't written down."
And last, they can build clockwork version of normal familiars; the only changes are Construct type, darkvision, natural armor, and gaining "speak with constructs".
They take normal wizard spells, but are considered specialized in 'constructor' and have a bunch of spells that they can prepare as their specialist bonus spells. It makes a point to not that their spells fall across all the spell schools except necromancy, in a subtle bid to encourage you to take necromancy as your banned school. (Because Necromancy is eeeeevil)
Then there's the Ranger and the Riftwalker spell lists.
Then we get to the Engine domain, granted to clerics of Dotrak. They get a lot of constructor spells in there.
Onto the spells themselves:
There's an Animate Gears spell. Then a sort of mechanical-based Entangle called Enginemaster's Grasp.
Then comes the cool bits: Ferrous Soul lets you transfer a living soul into a construct. Even yourself. Will save negates, and it's a one-way trip only. It's kept from being a combat spell by a 10-minute casting time.
The next spell is Ironclad, a weaker version of Iron Body. Reading it, it appears to turn you, visually, into a Vessel of Dotrak, and gives a bunch of bonuses. I'll detail it if someone wants me to.
Credit for this picture goes to Wen-M and his commissioners at Anima. Go look at them and give them money if you think they're worth it.
Next is Rebuild Soul, a sort of construct-based Reincarnation whose rules take up most of a page. You transfer a dead person's soul into a mechanical body. They wake up and receive pretty much all the physical bonuses, and a few of the drawbacks, and don't get all the immunities. Again, I'll detail it if someone wants.
Really cool bit: You can put explicitly use this to put someone's soul into a mech. Not cool bit: That functionally negates the Assimilated PrC.
Not really cool bit: It's hard to use resurrection or reincarnation, or even this spell, in Dragonmech. The character being raised has to make a DC 10 Will save to come back. If they're a cleric or paladin, the DC's 10+ their class level. See, the gods are in a bind with this war and need all the asskickers they can. So if you don't pass the will save, they conscript you into the war and you can't be brought back at all, ever.
To get around there, there's a spell called Soul Box. You have a charm, you must be truly willing (no charms or compulsions), if you die, the charm catches your soul and holds you there so you can be brought back without having to arm-wrestle Pelor for it.
Next, Summon Nature's Ally I-IV can be used to call up the wildlife that's adapted to live in the insides of mechs. Grease lizards and crumble bugs and such.
There's an anti-construct spell called Tick Tock Knock that has some cool fluff--it fucks with time and space and physics enough to throw anything non-magical and mechanical out of whack; it stuns them for 1 round per caster level and bypasses the normal construct immunity to stunned. A will save reduces it to Confused. The target has to have an engine in there, so it can also affect Steamborgs.
Next is Transpose Spirit, where you use a little doll to call a golem's animating spirit out of the golem body and into the doll so you can trash the body. It removes the body's animating spirit. The doll has to be made of elemental stuff appropriate to the golem and costs 300 GP, and the spell involves promising to protect the doll/golem's spirit while it's there. It mentions how the elemental spirits to power golems are pretty much forced into it against their will, so giving them a chance to go elsewhere without having to obey any orders is well-received (though one can resist if it wants to). Anyway, the spell lasts 1 round/level. Harming the doll pisses the spirit off and it goes back to the golem body to take the fight back up.
The last spell is Vanquish Spirit, which is targets any construct animated by the things like rebuild soul, soul box, or final-level Assimilated. If the target fails the will save, their soul is unbound from its metal body, killing it.
All in all, I like the spells. My absolute favorites are Ferrous Soul and Rebuild Soul. Golems are animating by a spirit, right? Well these spells let you use a spirit to animate a construct (albeit they'll still be free-willed). And that's an awesome bit of working out. Transpose Spirit also indicates that someone thought about golems and constructs and how those can be messed with.
Even the others at least show some creativity in fluff. Ironclad is just plain cool.
There's more Steam Powers than I remembered, so I'm breaking this into two posts.
That's beautiful. xD
