Battlespring Umbodoben (Construct Figther)


This post is a bit early, but I figured why not publish it since it's ready to go. This is another gnome NPC. It might be off the beaten path, but I thought it was a neat idea. 

Battlespring Umbodoben

(BATTLE-spring um-BOW-da-bin)
"Nothing will stop this lovely once I've installed the full scale version of my fire infused clockwise momentified water cooled long biter hyperdrill extension encasement unit and reinforced the armor plating with this here dragon scale."


Battlespring (N) is a competitive, 66-year-old, male rock gnome who enjoys a good brawl as much as he enjoys tinkering. It should come as no surprise then that he is devoted to the gnome sport of construct fighting, an inventively brutal pastime that pits clockwork inventions against each other in no-holds-barred pit-fight matches for fun, profit, and inebriation. His artificial champions have won a respectable number of bouts but he has not yet qualified for Regionals or any other championship event. He devotes all of his meager resources working toward that goal though, borrowing from friends, family, and anyone (or anything) else who will sponsor him. He does have a small but steady income from Cheapsail Weddal, the gnome merchant lord who financially supports the burrow Battlespring calls home, as well from Heavyhand Bumportter, a “businessgnome” involve in numerous shady, if not outright illegal,ventures. But even those funds are not enough to cover the costs of reaching his dream. The only thing Battlespring values as much as his clockwork constructs is his friends. He’ll do whatever he can to help out a friend in trouble. He’s quite reliable in that way.


Deathmaster

Deathmaster was the first construct Battlespring successfully built after a long string of embarrassing (and dangerous) failures. She (because Battlespring thinks of all his constructs as female) resembles a panther in both appearance and behavior. Her form is more angular, and perhaps slightly more clumsy, than that of a real panther but from a distance the difference is difficult to spot. Her strategy in the ring is simple; bite and claw her way victory. That strategy has paid off so far as Deathmaster is the most successful of Battlespring’s two constructs.


Sting King

Battlespring managed to build a couple more constructs after Deathmaster but none of them were effective in the ring. (Of the failures only Nightstalker still functions and she is “retired,” helping Battlespring around the workshop.) Inspiration hit when his cousin, Bumbleguppy, tried to steal honey from a beehive. All the young gnome got for his troubles were dozens stings that swelled his face and arms for days. The aerial assailants were a perfect model for Battlespring’s next construct, which he calls Sting King. While slow on the ground, its flight capabilities have proven valuable in the ring, along with the acid damage its stinger deals.



Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes includes new "clockwork" creatures, constructs created by gnome inventors for a variety of purposes. Part of those rules provide a table of Clockwork Malfunctions which can (and probably should) apply to the above constructs (as well as any clockwork constructs for that matter).

Using Battlespring

Ideal: I'm loyal to my friends, not to ideals.
Bond: My constructs are everything to me. Together, we’ll take the championship.
Flaw: Violence is my way out whenever I can't find another answer.

 Play Battlespring as a good-natured bruiser needing little to no encouragement to jump into a fist fight. Don’t shy away from starting one or two of your own either, especially when the drink is flowing. Hold no grudges afterward though; after all, these brawls are only a bit of fun. Be much more restrained when it comes to your constructs. Construct fighting is an expensive career. Every challenge can lead to costly maintenance. You don’t want to miss out on a real opportunity to advance your ranking because some pointless hooliganism left your fighters inoperable and you with no money to make repairs. You’re proud of your work but not so much so that you can’t admire and praise the technical ingenuity of others. Always be open to learning new ideas and new designs so that you might improve your fighters.

Recurring Appearances

The party will either encounter you at a local drinking establishment or bump into you at a match. There’s a 50% chance that anyone who follows construct fighting has heard of you and a 20% chance that they’ve seen one of your constructs in a fight. More likes indicate your willingness to welcome the party into your life as friends. More dislikes indicate a desire to avoid them, perhaps dismissing them as crazy fans or troublemakers who pose a threat to your dreams, your constructs, and/or your friends.

 Strongly Like: technological ingenuity, helping a friend out of a difficult/dangerous jam
Like: a friendly fist fight, appreciation for either construct fighting or tinkering, helping a friend
Dislike: lack of appreciation for either construct fight or tinkering, pacifism
Strongly Dislike: holding a grudge after a friendly fist fight, not helping a friend when they really need it

One Off

You’re hired to stop an attack during a construct match. The perpetrator is one of the following: an obsessed fan whom Battlespring rejected, a rival who sees Battlespring as the last obstacle to fame and fortune, thugs who hold a grudge against Battlespring, a criminal who tried to get Battlespring to throw a match and wants revenge because he refused to go along with the plan.

Story Arc

Members of the Sprockets and Spears League are disappearing under mysterious circumstances and the party must find out who or what is behind it. The cause is one of the following: a construct that has gone rogue, the ghost of a former league champion wants to protect his/her league record, an obsessed fan is removing the competition so that Balttlespring can win the championship, a deadly magical disease is infecting the constructs and their tinkers.

Side Quest

Battlespring enrolls the party to aid in one of the following: find patrons to help fund his efforts, report any interesting news or information regarding constructs and their design, spread the word about the glory and excitement that is construct fighting, return any magical components used to build and/or repair constructs that the party might harvest during their travels.

Gadget: Tinker Station

The greatest glory of inventoring is the opportunity to devise a truly wondrous solution that leaves folks begging for more! Of course, that sort of brilliance requires a level of focus that, let’s face it, most gnomes lack. This is especially true when you consider that many innovations are really only a clever recombination of tried-and-true (as well as appallingly dull) bits reused and recombined in new ways. No tinker wants to waste their precious attention span on such banal pursuits as fabricating these common parts. 

 Fortunately, there is a solution. The Tinker Station! This cutting-edge utility gadget is, for lack of a better description, a self-motivated workbench that can execute simple, repetitive tinkering tasks. Have a few hundred gears to press out? Is there a thousand yards of chain that needs to be made? Well those are the sorts of mind-numbing tasks at which the Tinker Station excels.

 To use the station, simply strap yourself into the memory armature encasement and perform your task as usual over the period of 1 hour. At the end of the hour, activate the gadget and the Tinker Station will repeat your movements over its duration. Oh, you don't have to be buckled in after that first hour, so you'll be free to do the important work.

 At the appropriate interval, make a tinkering check to see whether the station successfully completed the task. For example, if repairing an item, make a check every hour (per the repair rules for a Tinker tools in Xanathar’s Guide). The station gets neither an ability bonus nor a proficiency bonus on this roll. The Tinker Station will continue to perform the programmed task over its entire duration, as long as it has the correct materials and items on hand. So someone has to stick around to provide them as needed. The Station requires a Tinker tools set, which must be purchased separately and will add to the overall weight of the gadget.
The following is the stat block for this gadget, using the rules in my Epic Gnomish Inventing supplement available on the DM's Guild (link below).


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