Mechanist Guide

Introduction

The Mechanist is an Intelligence-based martial character that enhances their equipment and fights similarly to the Fighter. With the ability to buff yourself and your allies by augmenting their items, the Mechanist can be a powerful force multiplier, both buffing allies in combat and providing useful utility options.

The Mechanist fills a similar role in the party to the Fighter, serving as a Defender and a Striker. The Mechanist’s high Intelligence also allows them to serve as your party’s Scholar, covering crucial knowledge skills like Arcana. Selecting the right skill and tool proficiencies can let you serve as your party’s Scout, but little better than any other DEX-based character.

Because the feature is so central to playing the Mechanist effectively, I encourage you to also read our Mechanist Augments Breakdown.

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
Green: Good options. Useful often.
Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Comparisons to 5e’s Artificer

There is conceptual overlap between 5e’s Artificer and ToV’s mechanist. Both classes have numerous proficiencies in tools and are themed around crafting and enhacing items.

Mechanically, 5e’s Infusions and ToV’s Augments work similarly and should feel familiar for 5e players. However, the Mechanist can use the same Augment on more than one item, allowing you to have multiple copies of easy go-to options and to keep more situational options in reserve. The Mechanist also doesn’t get Augment options that boost your defenses, removing the Artificer’s problematic AC and save bonus stacking. Of course, Empowered providing up to a +3 to attack/damage on top of magic items presents its own math issues.

The Mechanist notably doesn’t cast spells like 5e’s Artificer. They’re a purely martial class focusing on using their equipment to great effect rather than being a spellcaster who likes to make items.

Mechanist Class Features

Hit Points: d10 is standard for front-line martial characters.

Saves: Con saves are excellent.

Proficiencies: Medium armor, shields, martial weapons.

Eyes of the Maker: Only situationally useful. You can get this information from taking a Short Rest while touching a magic item. And, just as if you were identifying and item while resting, it doesn’t tell you if an item is cursed.

Shard of Creation: Mostly useful for Inspire.

Inspire: Easy, reliable, and consistently useful.
Transform: Neat, but rarely impactful. If your GM is strict about you needing to touch the shard to use Inspire, turn your shard into a shield and keep it in hand.

Augment: The Mechanist’s signature feature. Managing your Augmented Items is a huge part of the class, and you’ll need to do some basic planning to be effective.

For help selecting Augment Effects, see our Mechanist Augments Breakdown.

Efficient Action: Very few of the published Augment Effects are activated using an Action, and of the few that exist, only Propulsive’s effect is useful in combat, so Use an Object as a Bonus Action isn’t especially useful with your Augments. Of course, that’s not the only item that you can use.

Much like the Thief Rogue’s Fast Hands feature, you can use items like Caltrops or Alchemist’s Fire, turning your Bonus Action into a great way to provide both utility and additional damage output. If you do take the Propulsive Augment Effect, you can float into the air as a Bonus Action to get yourself out of most creature’s melee reach, then fight from safety using a ranged weapon.

You can also use a Weapon Option as a Bonus Action, which is massively useful. Weapon Options provide a lot of utility for martial characters, allowing you to impact the battlefield in ways that go beyond damage.

Subclass: Mechanist subclasses are briefly summarized below.

Metallurgist: Create a powerful suit of armor to enhance your capabilities in combat.

Multiattack: Essential for almost every martial character.

Rapid Augment: Only situationally useful, and you’ll likely struggle to use all of your limited daily uses, but the option to bring in situationally useful augments like Detecting and Phosphorescent makes those options much more useful.

Greater Creation:

Inspire: A modest improvement, but the ability was already excellent, so I’m not complaining.
Transform: Transform your shard into a shovel, a chest to carry loot, a barrier to take cover behind, or a big heavy block to block a door or hall. This doesn’t limit your choice of material, so your GM might allow you to turn your shard into an adamantine pick to break through a wall. This doesn’t prohibit any specific sorts of items, but Perfect Creation specifies that you can choose structures and vehicles, so it’s possible that the designers didn’t expect you to use Greater Creation to produce chariots and small sheds.

10: Heroic Boon:

Curse of Unmaking: The placement of some of the parentheticals here can make this easy to misinterpret. If you put this on a creature, they’re vulnerable to all damage, and don’t get a save until after they take damage. As long as you hit with the spell attack, you get the benefit at least once. Unfotunately, CON saves are high on average, so don’t expect this to last long. Put this on an enemy, then have an ally hit them with the biggest single source of damage that your party can muster. A paladin dropping a huge smite or someone casting Disintegrate or Harm are great examples, but a Sneak Attack will suffice, too.
Curiously, this effect doesn’t expire on items. If you put this on a wall, that wall is cursed permanently. As a GM I would allow Remove Curse to end the effect (“Curse” is in the name, after all), but even that isn’t mentioned as a possible remedy.
Mend the Broken: The amount of healing is good enough that you can justify using this in combat despite it taking an Action. I would probably still save this for when an ally is at 0 because hit points, but it’s enough hp that your target likely won’t lose all of it to the next source of damage.

13:

Engineer’s Insight: Massively useful for searching with either Investigation or Perception, as well as for using tools for things like picking locks or disarming traps. It appears that combat is essentially the only thing that disrupts this, so you may even be able to use this in social situations. Combined with Shard of Creation (Inspire), you’re well equipped to handle essentially any ability check regardless of proficiency.

14:

Ranged Augment: Only situationally useful.

17:

Always Prepared: I have to imagine that the intent here is to use an Augmented Item. You could use this with Propulsive to float into the air and get out of reach, or maybe you could use Collapsible to return a collapsed object to its original size to create a barrier. The wording says “when you would take damage”, so maybe your GM will let this interrupt an attack, though I’m not certain if that’s the intent.

At the very least you can do things like throw Alchemist’s Fire on the creature that’s attacking you.

18:

Perfect Creation:

Inspire: Another modest improvement.
Transform: Transform your shard into a wagon or a small house to rest in. Or transform it into a siege engine. Don’t let me limit your creativity.

20: Epic Boon:

Creative Engine: Up to +7 to every save. Monitoring the 60-foot radius is a minor inconvenience, but for +7 to every save it’s absolutely worth the trouble.

Mechanist Ability Scores

With medium armor and class features defined by Intelligence, the Mechanist’s Ability Scores are slightly MAD, but not so much as the Paladin or the Ranger. You’ll feel a bit like an Intelligence-based cleric.

The biggest challenge for the Mechanist is figuring out how they’ll attack. Most Mechanists have very little reason to build around Strength, so Dexterity is a must. If your subclass provides a way to attack with Intelligence, you don’t need to invest heavily in DEX, but you need enough to fill out your armor, and you need to survive to reach level 3.

One notable exception: The Metallurgist’s Juggernaut feature makes Grapple/Shove an appealing option. If that’s appealing, you’ll want to rely on Strength over Dexterity. Grab heavy armor as soon as possible, then cling to life until level 3 when Mystic Metal comes online.

It’s very tempting to take an 18 in Intelligence at level 1, but it’s really not necessary. The attack and damage bonus from the Empowered Augment Effect will already put you ahead of the Fundamental Math, so distributing those points more evenly is usually a more efficient investment. Of course, how you plan to spend your Improvements is just as important, so be sure to plan long-term and figure out what ability scores you’ll increase and when.

Str: Dump unless you’re a Metallurgist.

Dex: AC, weapon attacks, Weapon Options.

Con: HP and saves.

Int: Your primary ability score.

Wis: Skills and saves.

Cha: Dump.

	Point Buy	Standard Array
Str	8	8
Dex	14	14
Con	16	14
Int	16	16
Wis	11	13
Cha	8	10

Mechanist Lineages

For melee builds, look for damage resistances and other ways to improve your durability. Darkvision is also a great choice since the Fighter typically can’t cast spells.

Beastkin ⁽⁾: Avian is perfect for ranged builds, and Durable gives Dexterity-based melee builds a small AC boost compared to Studded Leather. You can also get proficiency with Perception.

Dwarf ⁽⁾: Darkvision, poison resistance, and bonus hit points.

Elf ⁽⁾: Heightened Senses is great if you’re also proficient in Perception, and Fey Ancestry is occasionally usreful, but none of the Elf’s traits are consistently useful.

Human ⁽⁾: One skill, one Talent from any Talent list. Fantastic for any class.

Smallfolk ⁽⁾: Grounded is a fantastic defense, especially on a front-line character who will frequently draw attacks. Gnomish provides a fun utility, but Halfling’s protection against charm/fear will do a lot to compensate for the Fighter’s poor mental saves.

Mechanist Heritages

Heritages typically provide a skill proficiency, plus some other unique benefits. Look for options which complement your ability scores and your role within the party.

Cottage ⁽⁾: Temporary hit points for yourself and a growing number of your party members. The skill isn’t great for the Fighter, unfortunately, but the temp hp is enough even without the skill proficiency.

Diaspora ⁽⁾: Advantage on saves against fear is helpful for a class that typically has mediocre mental saves.

Supplicant ^(CRB): Some great tactical options for any melee character.

Mechanist Backgrounds

Criminal ⁽⁾: Helpful if you intend to fill the Scout role within your party.

Scholar ^(CRB): The skills are great, offering access to Nature and Religion, which are the two knowlegde skills not on the Mechanist’s class skill list. However, you don’t qualify for two of the Talents, and Polyglot may not be appealing on a class that dumps Charisma.

Soldier ^(CRB): The skills are poor, but the Talents are good.

Mechanist Skills

Mechanists get a weirdly small number of class skill options. It’s not really a problem, but it is unusual.

Arcana (Int): An important knowledge skill.
History (Int): An important knowledge skill.
Investigation (Int): Not quite as useful as Perception, but mostly because people forget that they’re supposed to use Investigation to search things instead of Perception.
Perception (Wis): Th most important skill in the game.
Sleight of Hand (Dex): Extremely situational.

Mechanist Talents

Mechanist has access to both Martial and Technical Talents.

Armor Expert ^(CRB): Simple, reliable, and works on any build.

Armor Training ^(CRB): Upgrading to heavy armor means that you can dump DEX in favor of STR and wear heavy armor, but you’ll then need 15 STR to avoid the speed penalty. You could use this with 16 DEX to stay in medium armor and match heavy armor’s AC. If you don’t care about Stealth checks, Armor Expert is a better choice.

Aware ^(CRB): Consistently useful, but not always impactful.

Combat Conditioning ^(CRB): Helpful, but no more useful for the Mechanist than for anyone else.

Field Medic ^(CRB): The Medicine skill is largely useless, so the first bullet rarely matters. The healing action is helpful for rescuing downed allies in combat, but most of the time you’ll use it before a rest to get everyone in the party some extra healing. In-combat emergency healing should be handled with Healing Word, or you can use potions.

Furious Charge ^(CRB): A great talent, but the third bullets reliance on STR makes it less useful since the Mechanist favors DEX.

Opportunist ^(CRB): Helpful on any melee martial character. You can use Efficient Action to use the Trip Weapon Option as a Bonus Action, allowing you to consistently knock enemies prone and then hit them with the Opportunity Attack from Opportunist when they stand up.

Physical Fortitude ^(CRB): A helpful deense, but you’re already proficient in CON saves which will protect you from the listed effects, so be careful not to over-invest.

Quick ^(CRB): This is what the Propulsive Augment Effect is for.

Touch of Luck ^(CRB): Helpful on any character, though no more helpful for the Mechanist than for anyone else.

Vanguard ^(CRB): Helpful on any martial melee character.

Weapon Discipline ^(CRB): With the Empowered Augment Effect, you’re going to lock yourself into one weapon. Another +1 to attack and damage is absolutely a good idea once your ability score hits 20. This gets even better if you have something that improves critical hits, such as the Metallurgist’s Heavy Hitter, which lets you crit on a 19 or 20.

Magic Talents

1st-level talents from the other lists may be available from your Lineage, your Heritage, your Background, or your Subclass. Keep in mind that these Talents may not be better for your build than the Talents which you can access normally.

Mental Fortitude ^(CRB): Always a helpful defense.

Psycanist ^(CRB): Tempting since you have high Intelligence like a Wizard, but you don’t have a spell save DC, so RAW it’s unclear what happens if you try to forcibly move a creature.

Mechanist Weapons

The Mechanist is proficient in martial weapons. Efficent Action allows you to use Weapon Options as a Bonus Action, making Weapon Options a hugely important part of choosing weapons. The opportunity cost to apply Empowered to your weapons makes it difficult to switch weapons quickly to change Weapon Options.

A few weapons have some nuance that’s easy to miss:

Crossbow (Any) ^(CRB): There is very little reason to use a crossbow. The Heavy Crossbow does slightly more damage than the Longbow, but the moment that you get Multiattack, that stops mattering. We’re not going to solve that problem with the Loading Enhancement Effect because we just use an Empowered Longbow.
Whip ^(CRB): Spectacular despite the low damage die. Reach, Finesse, two good Weapon Options, and you can still use a shield.

Mechanist Armor

The Mechanist is proficient in medium armor and shields. If you’re building around DEX, stick to medium armor until you hit 20 DEX. Otherwise, get the biggest medium armor that you can afford. In either case, expect to use a shield. There’s little reason for the Mechanist to use a two-handed weapon or engage in two-weapon fighting.

Mechanist Multiclassing

This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.

Fighter: A single level for Martial Action (Quick Strike) is fantastic for two-weapon fighting builds. A Metallurgist can get a big damage boost out of two-weapon fighting this way. Last Stand also makes you more durable, allowing you to compensate for lack of a shield.
Rogue: The Thief Rogue’s Fast Hand features lets you take the Use an Object Action as a Bonus Action. This isn’t useful for the Mechanist since you have Efficient Action, but allies might be able to use your Augmented Items to better effect. Unfortunately, only Propulsive will be useful when used in combat this way, so there’s little reason to do this.

Mechanist Magic Items

Common Magic Items

Anklets of Alacrity ^(CRB): +PB to initiative, no attunement, won’t conflict with other magic items that you care about, and costs as little as a greatsword at just 50gp. Stellar on literally any character.

Uncommon Magic Items

Broom of Flying ^(CRB): The most accessible and reliable flight option in the game. There’s a reason it costs 16,000 gp compared to 8,000 for Winged Boosts.
Cloak of Protection ^(CRB): Great on any character.
Stone of Good Luck ^(CRB): Good on any character.
Stone of Good Luck ^(CRB): Good on any character.
Weapon, +1^CRB: Simple and effective, and it stacks with your augments.

Rare Magic Items

Armor, +1^CRB: +1 AC, no attunement. Nothing fancy, but very effective.
Ring of Protection ^(CRB): More expensive than a Cloak of Protection with the same effect, but you can only wear one cloak, so a ring may be easier if you have a cool magic cloak. The two also stack, providing a ton of protection.
Weapon, +2^CRB: Simple and effective, and it stacks with your augments.

Very Rare Magic Items

Armor, +2^CRB: +2 AC, no attunement. Nothing fancy, but very effective.

Manuals of Advantageous Exertion ^(CRB): Stellar on any character. Absoutely worth dropping all of your gold to get as many as you can find.

Weapon, +3^CRB: Simple and effective, and it stacks with your augments.

Legendary Magic Items

Armor, +3^CRB: +3 AC, no attunement. Nothing fancy, but very effective.
⁽⁾:

Mechanist Example Build – Hendrian Kaska, Valant Six Metallurgist Mechanist

The Valiant Six are six official characters representing some of the plaable classes in Tales of the Valiant. This build starts from the options selected for the official pregen character, and takes the build from 1 to 20.

Ability Scores

The Valiant Six apparently use the Standard Array rather than point buy.

We don’t typically include ability scores at every Improvement in the table below, but in since this build is based on a level 4 pregen, we’re making an exception.

	Level 1	Level 4	Level 20
Str	16	16
Dex	14	14
Con	13	13
Int	15	16	20
Wis	8	8
Cha	10	10

Lineage

Heritage

Background

Skills and Tools

Between our Background, the Trade Skills Talent, and the three tool proficiencies from Mechanist, we’re proficient with Alchemist Tools, Construction Tools, Smithing Tools, Thieves’ Tools (double PB), and Tinker Tools.

Improvements and Talents

At level 1 we’ll take Trade Skills. This gets us another skill proficiency, double PB in Investigate, and a tool proficiency.

At level 4 we take +2 INT.

At level 8 we take +1 INT and Weapon Discipline with our Mystic Metal gauntlets.

At level 12 we take +1 INT and Opportunist.

At level 16 we take

At level 19 we take

Levels

Level	Talents and Features	Notes and Tactics
1	Talent: Trade Skills Eyes of the Maker Shard of Creation	For starting equipment, take a warhammer, the light crossbow and bolts, scale mail, tinker tools, and a dungeoneer’s pack. Use Shard of Creation to get yourself a shield. We have the +2 DEX modifier to fill out medium armor, giving us a total AC of 18. Pretty good for level 1. Keep in mind that Hendrian’s Ability Scores are not what I would recommend for a Mechanist. If you’re building from scratch, you’ll likely dump Strength, making the Warhammer a poor choice. Instead, grab a rapier or a whip for your melee weapon. We’re pretty boring at this level, unfortunately. Shard of Creation (Inspire) is our only active class feature. Fortunately, level 1 is usually quick.
2	Efficient Action Augment Augmented Items: 3 Augment Effects Known: – Detecting – Empowered	Efficient Action is awesome. We can now use our Warhammer’s Bash Weapon Option as a Bonus Action, allowing us to consistently apply Disadvantage to an enemy’s next attack. If you don’t feel like using Bash, grab some caltrops and alchemist’s fire. The pregen build has Hendrian at level 4 with the Detecting, Empowered, and Loading Augment Effects, plus Absorbing from the Metallurgist subclass. We won’t use Loading because you can sell your light crossbow and go find a Longbow, but I am trying to stick to the build at least. If you have an ally who’s very emotionally attached to a Heavy Crossbow, we’ll pick up Loading at level 3 and you can help them out. We get three Augmented Items at this level. Every one of them is likely to be an Empowered weapon. We’re only using one of them, so you’ll want to share.
3	Subclass: Metallurgist Augment: Absorbing Mystic Metal New Augment Effect Known: – Loading	Absorbing is really good. Remember that you gain the resistance after reducing the damage by double your INT modifier, not after you take the damage. So you reduce the base damage by double your INT mod, then halve it thanks to resistance. You can do this even if you already have resistance, giving you reliable protection against elemental damage and poison. Mystic Metal gets us 13+Int AC and an Intelligence-based melee attack comparable to a short sword. We could try Two-Weapon Fighting with the Gauntlets, but there there’s little reason for us to do that until we get Heavy Hitter at level 7. The Absorbing augment is great. Put it on your armor. You’ll need to drop one of your Empowered weapons, but it’s worth the cost.
4	Improvement – INT 14 -> 16	This is my best guess at the intent for the Hendrian’s pregen build. Now that we can use Int for both attacks and AC, we need to start improving our Intelligence. 16 INT gets us the same AC as our medium armor, and our gauntlet attacks are now comparable to our warhammer, though our warhammer is still better, so we’ll keep using it.
5	Multiattack Augmented Items: 4 New Augment Effect Known: – Detecting	Multiattack, an additional Augmented Item, and another Augment Effect make this a great level. Two Empowered weapons and two sets of armor with Absorbing on them mean that you an another front-line ally can be very durable. You could certainly put Absorbing on both your armor and your shield, but that provides diminishing returns compared to sharing it with an ally. Unless you’re the only character fighting in melee and drawing attacks, I don’t recommend it.
6	Rapid Augment	This lets us bring Detecting online whenever we need it, then quickly switch back to Absorbing when we no longer need fancy visiion.
7	Heavy Hitter (d6) New Augment Effect Known: – Repellant	A consistent, simple damage boost. We get two attacks thanks to Multiattack, so our augmented warhammer deals a total of 1d8+1d6+4. Heavy Hitter also gives us a passable reason to explore two-weapon fighting. We don’t absolutely need to go that route, especially since we would need to Augment both gauntlets, but it’s an option. Also remember that Efficient Action gives us a good way to use our Bonus Action consistently. This is the first level at which we know more Augment Effects than our number of Augmented items. That doesn’t change how we operate, but it is neat. We’ll add Repellant so that we can launch enemies away when they hit us. If you’re not sharing your Augmented Items, you should now have an Empowered warhammer, Absorbing on your fancy armor, and Repellant on your shield. You’ll have one spare to share or you can keep Detecting running.
8	Improvement – INT 16 -> 18	Choosing an Improvement here is hard. Intelligence gets us a lot thanks to the Metallurgist’s subclass features, and since we only have 16, we have a long way to go before we reach 20. It’s not very exciting, but let’s take another +2 INT to boost our attacks and AC. This makes your gauntlets a better attack option than our warhammer, so we’ll move that augment from our warhammer to one of our gauntlets. You can still keep your warhammer in hand to use Bash, but you’ll do the actual fighting with your fists. Our AC is now 19 with our armor and a shield.
9	Heavy Hitter (d8) Greater Creation Augmented Items: 5 New Augment Effect Known: – Propulsive	This level is all improvements to our existing features. We get an additional Agumented Item, which we’ll use to add Propulsive to our existing setup. At this level our Augment effects improve. Empowered improves to a +2 bonus, Repellant now launches enemies 30 feet, and Propulsive gives us a +10 ft. speed bonus.
10	Heroic Boon: Mend the Broken	Either boon would work for us here. If your party has a character that can deal big damage from a single source (spells, Divine Smite, etc.), Curse of Unmaking can work very well. Otherwise, Mend the Broken is a safer choice.
11	Juggernaut	This doesn’t specify what happens if you’re already proficient in Athletics, so I’m assuming that a redundant proficiency would simply be wasted. If your GM is kind, they might let you pick another skill in which to gain proficiency. Advantage on check to initiate Grapple or Shove is a huge benefit. With even mediocre Strength, this makes the Grapple/Shove combo very effective, allowing you to force enemies Prone and then hold them there unless they send their Action tring to escape. However, don’t get Advantage on the opposed check when your target attempts to escape the grapple, so you may need to repeatedly grapple enemies and let them keep wasting their actions. Advantage on an attack after you move 15 feet is both excellent and easy to capitalize upon. Your speed is 30 feet base with a 10-foot boost from Propulsive. The movement’s direction isn’t restricted, either, so you’re free to run in circles around an enemy without provoking Opportunity Attacks and punch them every 15 feet. If you add Longstrider or wait for level 1 when Propulsive improves to +20 feet, you have enough speed to race around an enemy and get Advantage on up to 3 attacks, which covers you if you’re using two-weapn fighting. If you have both Longstrider and Propulsive’s +20, you could take a level of Fighter for Martial Action (Quick Strike) and make 4 attacks all at Advantage.
12	Improvement – INT 18 -> 19 – Talent: Weapon Discipline (Mystic Metal Gauntlets)	We’ve been very patient, and I think we deserve a Talent. We’re going to take Weapon Discipline. I typically recommend waiting until we have our primary ability score at 20 to do this, but this is a weird build since we’re starting from the pregen. Weapon Discipline adds +1 to attack and damage, which is great, but we also get an additional damage die when we crit. Combined with the expanded crit range from Heavy Hitter, that’s very appealing. Our gauntlet attacks are now made with +11 to hit (+4 PB, +4 INT, +2 Empowered, +1 Weapon Discipline) and deal 1d6+1d8+7 damage. We have east advantage from Juggernaut and crit on a 19-20, so we’re critting 19% of the time for 3d6+2d8+7 damage. The actual damage numbers aren’t crazy, but we’re so reliable that our DPR is good. With all of these options stacking up, we can at least consider two-weapon fighting at this point. We have a spare Augmented Item that we could put on our second gauntlet, making it nearly as effective as our first gauntlet, though we still don’t get to add our ability modifier to damage. We’re certainly more effective at TWF than the vast majority of martial characters. Of course, it would mean not using Efficient Acton to use a Weapon Option, and that’s arguably more effective.
13	Engineer’s Insight Augmented Items: 6 New Augment Effect Known: – Any	Engineer’s Insight is a great improvement to our ability checks. We get yet another Augmented Item and yet another effect known, but we have everything that we actually need. Pick something that sounds fun, and use the extra Augmented Item to buff an ally.
14	Ranged Augment	Neat, but rarely impactful.
15	Full Metal (d10)	RAW this doesn’t take effect until after you are dropped to 0 hit points, which means that you’re dying but can’t take B/P/S damage for one minute. That’s great if someone heals you and gets you back into the fight. I think the intent is that Full Metal triggers when you would be dropped to 0 hp and blocks the impending damage. Talk to your GM about how they want to handle this.
16	Improvement – INT 19 -> 20 – Talent: Opportunist	Finally 20 Intelligence! We’ve been limping along with relatively poor AC for a while now, so it’s good to finally hit 18 (not counting a possible shield). We also get even better attacks and can use some of features more times per day. Opportunist combines very well with Juggernaut making it easier for us to knock enemies prone.
17	Always Prepared Augmented Items: 7 New Augment Effect Known: – Any	Even more improvements to our existing capabilities. Always Prepared is neat, but probably the best we can do with it is to throw Alchemist’s Fire. We might instead use our Repelling shield to knock enemies away, so Always Prepared may not see consistent use.
18	Perfect Creation	More linear improvement to Shard of Creation.
19	Improvement – CON 13 -> 14 – Talent: Combat Conditioning	With 13 CON for most our career, we’ve been relatively frail compared to other front-line martial characters like the Fighter. This level fixes that.
20	Epic Boon: Creative Engine	+7 to all of our saves!

Mechanist Guide – ToV