Identity
Ship Engineers are the people in oil-streaked coveralls who know exactly which conduit to slap before the reactor scrams. They live in engine bays, on hangar decks, under chassis. Aurelion solar-cruisers run on Ship Engineers tuning the heliosail array between watches; Halcyion Federation tenders have Tech-Priest Ship Engineers running plasma-furnace liturgy at every shift change; frontier traders keep one on retainer because the alternative is dying twelve parsecs from anyone who would care. The Ship Engineer's Apparatus is rarely a discrete device — it's usually integrated into the vessel itself, and the vessel is, in practice, the engineer's body extended.
Features
- L3 Bound Vessel
You bind your Apparatus to one vessel of size Large or larger that you have spent at least 8 hours tuning — typically a starship, gunship, transport, mecha, or similar. The bond persists until you transfer it (8 hours of work on a new vessel) or your current Bound Vessel is destroyed. While aboard your Bound Vessel: • You have advantage on all checks made to operate, repair, navigate, or diagnose the vessel and its subsystems. • You always know the vessel's current HP, fuel/charge state, and the operational status of each of its named systems (engines, weapons, shields, life support, hyperdrive, sensors, etc.). • You may use the vessel's hull and conduits as your channeling focus — you do not need your handheld Apparatus to cast channels while you are physically connected to the vessel (touching a bulkhead, jacked into a console, or seated at a control station). Additionally, when you complete a short rest with your Bound Vessel in active maintenance (you in the engine bay, hands on the deck), you regenerate 1 additional Charge.
- L7 Emergency Repair
As an action and a cost of 1 Charge, you patch a damaged system with channeled paste, jury-rigged conduit, and direct force of will. Choose one of the following effects: • **Hull Mend.** Your Bound Vessel (or any vessel, ground vehicle, or large construct you can touch) regains hit points equal to 3d8 + your Engineer level. If used on a non-creature, it instead repairs that many points of structural damage. • **System Restart.** One named system on your Bound Vessel that has been disabled, destroyed, or critically damaged is restored to operational (at 1 HP if it was destroyed). A given system can only be restored by Emergency Repair once per combat encounter. • **Adjacent Patch.** One ally within 30 ft who is wearing armor, riding a mount, or piloting a vehicle regains 2d8 + your INT modifier hit points as you stabilize the load-bearing equipment around them. You may spend 2 additional Charges (total 3) to take Emergency Repair as a bonus action instead of an action.
- L11 Combat Tuning
Your channel work pushes your Bound Vessel past its rated specifications. As a bonus action and a cost of 2 Charges, you select one of the following Combat Tunings, which apply to your Bound Vessel for 1 minute: • **Overdrive.** Vessel speed and maneuverability increase by 50%. Vessel attack rolls have advantage on the first attack each round. • **Hardened Shields.** Vessel gains temporary HP equal to 4× your Engineer level. Energy and explosive damage against the vessel is halved while these temp HP remain. • **Targeting Lock.** Vessel weapons deal an additional 2d8 damage per hit, and the vessel's pilot may re-roll one missed weapon attack roll per round. A vessel can have at most one Combat Tuning active at a time. Activating a new Tuning ends the previous. After the duration ends, the vessel is treated as having taken minor structural strain (GM discretion; typically 2d8 hull damage and disadvantage on the next maintenance check), reflecting that you ran it hot.
- L15 Vessel-Bound Channeling
Your Bound Vessel is integrated into your channel pool. While aboard your Bound Vessel: • Your Charge maximum is increased by your proficiency bonus, and the bonus Charges are drawn from the vessel's auxiliary power systems. These bonus Charges only refresh while you are aboard the Bound Vessel on a long rest. • You may cast Engineer channels of up to 3rd level by spending the vessel's main-battery power instead of your Charges. The vessel takes 1d8 hull damage per channel level cast this way, and you must be physically connected to the vessel (hand on bulkhead, jacked in, or at a system station) to do so. This bypasses your normal Charge cost entirely. • When the Bound Vessel takes damage that would reduce it below half HP, you may use your reaction to spend 2 Charges and reduce the incoming damage by an amount equal to 2d10 + your INT modifier, routing the energy through your own channel pool. You take 1d6 force damage as feedback. A vessel cannot be Bound by more than one Ship Engineer at a time. If you and another Ship Engineer attempt to bind the same vessel, the most recent binding takes precedence.
- L18 Hyperdrive Lock
Once per long rest, as an action while aboard your Bound Vessel and at a cost of 5 Charges, you initiate a Hyperdrive Lock — a single-jump emergency translocation of your Bound Vessel and everything aboard it. The vessel and all creatures and cargo within it instantaneously translate to any location you have personally visited that lies on the vessel's normal-space transit network (a docked port, a stable orbital position, a known star-route waypoint). The translation ignores intervening obstacles, fuel reserves, and ordinary jump-window constraints. It does not cross planar boundaries. At the GM's discretion, this feature may instead represent a desperate one-shot reposition in tactical-scale vessel combat: the Bound Vessel translates up to 10× its normal movement allowance, ignoring intervening enemies and obstacles, and arrives at the destination with all systems functional but the hyperdrive offline for 24 hours. After the jump, the Hyperdrive system on the Bound Vessel is offline for 24 hours (or until you complete a long rest and 4 hours of repair work, whichever is longer). You cannot use Hyperdrive Lock again until you complete a long rest. The maneuver is enormously expensive in component wear and is not something you do twice in a campaign-week without a very good reason.