Summary: Construct Mechanus is a great source of ideas and concepts, and has beautiful artwork and layout, but the rules as presented are not usable without tweaking.
Disclaimer: I have not playtested any of this. These are only my opinions.
Most of Phil Reed's products are works of art. I really like the style he and Christopher Shy bring to RPG "books." He also has a definite flavor to his writing that I like. In those respects, CM shines.
However, I don't think that a lot of the rules in CM are usable as written. Take, for instance, the Stilts "race." It is pegged as having a +4 LA. It gets an effective +4 attack bonus with a given melee weapon (+2 Str, +2 racial bonus, free Weapon Focus), a +5 AC bonus (+2 Dex, +3 natural armor, +1 deflection) and four free feats (Endurance, Expertise, Toughness, and Weapon Focus). In addition to all of this, Stilts are built using a point-based system that allows them to have quite a few extras with little penalty to offset the benefits. Given those gripes, I still really like the Stilts, and their bigger cousins, the Abombinus.
CM also includes two core classes, specially designed for mechanus characters, the Tanker and the Mystic Defender. I have some reservations about both of them. The Tanker has d12 HD, Ftr BAB, a non-standard save progression, and one special ability per level. At 20th level, these abilities amount to +11 armor bonus to AC, +6 HP, DR 6/-, a charged magic item/weapon that does 1d10 damage as a free action, +2 damage on all ranged attacks, Fireball 2/day as a 10th level caster, and a few free feats. And honestly, the Mystic Defender is even less balanced. Bonus Feats every other level, Clr BAB, quite a few spell-like abilities (usable only once per day, but still), a frightening Absorb Magic ability. Worst of all, the Mystic Defender can cast spells as a wizard (up to 7th level spells) with only requiring three hours of rest in between.
There are also a number of feats, some better than others. The final chapter includes rules for firearms that are pretty good, I think. Alas, there are no images for the cool sounding weapons (Flair, Imp, Marauder).
Anyway, Construct Mechanus is an extremely atmospheric work that has a ton of great ideas. It just suffers a bit from lack of experience with the d20 system. I still recommend it. After all, for $5, how can you go wrong?
Jason
jason_aults@hotmail.com
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