My son has returned from his adventure in human lands, and brought back a number of rare books he purchased with the profits. At first I thought he was going to sell them here as part of a secondary profit-making venture, but then he started reading them every spare minute that he has - and, after seeing what the books are about, I approved of his new interest whole-heartedly. They're a series of treatises on the design and construction of automata, an excellent and deeply traditional dwarven field, and I'd like to encourage his newfound interest in it as much as I can.
Unfortunately, it's also a field that I don't even know the basics of. My own training, prior to becoming an adventurer, was as a surveyor; I never learned even the simplest of smithing, let alone the mysteries of fine gears and precise weights. I'm sure that my ever-curious son will soon think of questions to ask me - and I'd like to avoid disappointing him with my answers, so I need at least a layman's knowledge of the field.
I've been pouring through my own library to glean what I can, but there's one question that continues to elude me: Are automata magical?
It was a certain bestiary that put the question in my head; According to page 148 of Lairs & Encounters, "All constructs are enchanted creatures." The idea seemed absurd at first; We dwarves have no gift for sorcery, and rarely know much about it. But then I considered that we do make fine alchemists, and that may be considered a kind of magic in itself, or so my human mage friend has told me. For all I know, skilled dwarven mechanists make use of minor natural magics in constructing their machines - it would certainly explain how they can make ranged weapons that need no ammunition and clockwork that runs without being wound...
Or perhaps I'm being too fanciful; I was rised on tales of gold ribbons stronger than iron chains. Have I simply mistaken fantastic tales for true accounts? I do not want to sound like a fool when answering my son. Please tell me, Autarchs: Are automata constructs, and thus magical? And, if they're not constructs, then what are they?
two points of confusion, each them a delightful flavor of nerd pedantry :-)
1. Automata, which are made by dwarven machinists, are not constructs and are not magical
2. Dwarven Craftpriests, imbued with divine power, are able to make CONSTRUCTS, not automata, that are very much magical. Dwarves eschew ARCANE magic, but are absolutely comfortable with DIVINE magic.
[quote="Jard"]
1. Automata, which are made by dwarven machinists, are not constructs and are not magical
[/quote]
Are they, though? Honestly, I don't know. It's true that nothing explicitly says they are constructs, and they are (flavourwise) significantly different from golems and gargoyles... but nothing explicitly says they're not constructs, either, and (again flavourwise) they fit better into the constructs category than they do into animals, beastmen, fantastic creatures, giant humanoids, humanoids, oozes, summoned creatures, undead, and vermin - and there are no other 'Monster Types' listed in Lairs & Encounters. It's possible they're supposed to be their own monster type, but given that they were introduced in the Player's Companion and Lairs & Encounters was released some time later, it seems strange that they're not included in Lairs & Encounters' presumably-comprehensive list.
[quote="Jard"]
2. Dwarven Craftpriests, imbued with divine power, are able to make CONSTRUCTS, not automata, that are very much magical. Dwarves eschew ARCANE magic, but are absolutely comfortable with DIVINE magic.
[/quote]
Yep. Dwarves can't use one specific flavour of magic, but there are multiple other flavours that can provide most, if not all, of the same effects. In addition, alchemy provides an example of crafting magic items even without the ability to cast spells. Which means I can't draw any conclusions about this question from the fact that dwarves can't cast arcane spells.
Is there an Autarch stance on this, or is it one of those "every campaign is a law unto itself" things? I mean, I could easily make something up, but an offical answer is less likely to conflict with later-published materials than something I've invented myself.
1) In the text, it's noted they cannot be made immune to non-magical weapons, which is a good delimiter for whether or not magic is involved.
2) This may be me reading a bit too much into it, but my read of the design rules indicates that the automaton initiates any 'special' powers by attacking, a physical action, which also leans toward the non-magical. This is reinforced by the limits on damage die and range. So, as a Judge, I might say that a dwarf that wants an automaton that can do Hold Person (as a magical example) is (a) having to make an attack throw and (b) is shooting some sort of...webbing like Spiderman to do the effect.
Dwarven automatons are not intended to be magical, no. Dwarven craft-priests create magical constructs, while dwarven machinists create non-magical automatons.
That said:
The lines are certainly blurry, in the Tolkienesque sense that sufficiently superior craftsmanship could be seen as magic of sorts; and
There's nothing to prevent them working together. For instance, a construct might wield a weapon designed by a machinist.