So I just realized that the steel defender could be used as a mech suit. (by a small creature) What you could do is create the mech to be a humanoid form, have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks, not a bonus to ac as it is not technically armor. If the steel defender died, you wouldn't be able to move it, and would have to get out in order to do anything. Also, the steel defender will still work, even if you aren't piloting it. If there is something I missed please let me know
Edit:
A lot of you are saying that you wouldn't be able to control the mech very easily, (let alone fit in it) and that you wouldn't be able to see outside the defender.
First of all, as an artificer I would think that you would be more than capable of making a control interface. And I forgot to mention before that this would only work with a small character. Second, I don't think that seeing outside of the defender is a problem, as you can just add a tempered glass windshield of sorts.
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
So IMO as a DM I would say no to this unless you like ONLY getting the steel defenders turn. This is all from my view as a DM. RAW its a construct you don't know what's inside of it and DnD doesn't tell you things need to be inside of it, but it would be fight just to move things on your own.
In combat, the defender shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. If you are incapacitated, the defender can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge.
The issue is a few things.
Play an Armor artificer cause then this would work out. (ok now that the snarky comment is out of the way)
Think of this like Iron mans armor except you need to command it to do the things you want every time you want to do it AND you need your bonus action to even do what you want to do. So like "Jarvis let me attack that goblin: (uses bonus action to let attack go threw) but cause the steel defender only gets one attack that would mean you only get one attack. This is if the DM allows any of this, but also from the last line in its description That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. If you are incapacitated, the defender can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge. With that last line.... you cant even tell it to let you make the attack cause its not part of its stat block.
So I just realized that the steel defender could be used as a mech suit. What you could do is have the mech be a humanoid form, hollow, and covered in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks, not a bonus to ad as it is not technically armor. If the steel defender died, you wouldn't be able to move it, (you might be able to try to wear it as heavy armor) and would have to get out in order to do anything. Also, the steel defender will still work, even if you aren't piloting it. If there is something I missed please let me know
I don't think this will work for several reasons:
DM will say no.
If the defender is the same size as you (both medium), then it likely can barely even move you, let alone when you are preventing its joints from moving...
This pretty much makes you useless (everything as full cover from you too, and you can't really move independently).
So I just realized that the steel defender could be used as a mech suit. What you could do is have the mech be a humanoid form, hollow, and covered in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks, not a bonus to ad as it is not technically armor. If the steel defender died, you wouldn't be able to move it, (you might be able to try to wear it as heavy armor) and would have to get out in order to do anything. Also, the steel defender will still work, even if you aren't piloting it. If there is something I missed please let me know
Well, nothing of the things you said would really work if you want to play by the rules.
First of all, there are no rules forbeing *inside* the steel defender. You can mount it if your size allows it but that is not the same thing.
Second of all, no rules for metal plates preventing attacks to come through. Even if that was true, if the enemies can't reach you, you can't reach them.
No, you can't wear steel defenders as heavy armour.
As mentioned, you wouldn't really be abel to do anything while inside the steel defender. You can't see out of it so you can't target enemies. You can't move your limbs and you can't use any weapons or tools. You can't even move since the steel defender controls its own body.
In short, a hollow steel defender makes for a worthless mech suit but can work pretty well as a sensory deprevation chamber.
Now there are ways to get kind of a mech suit without cheesing the rules (which, as we have learnt, doesn't even work) but it takes a bit of reflavouring and still has it's limitations. If you play as a small size creature, say a halfling, you can easily construct your steel defender to be a medium bipedal creature. This means you can mount it. The rules for mounting doesn't say that it has to be in a particular manner, just that the anatomy needs to work. So you could sit on the defender's shoulders Master-Blaster or be strapped to the front like a 40K dreadknight. This would allow you to be useful in combat (since you can actually do things) and it would offer some protection due to the Deflect attack reaction. That said, you are still somewhat restricted since to be able to gain the benefits of the independently acting steel defender it will move on it's own turn, which is directly after you.
Now, if you think playing by the rules in this way doesn't ruin the idea you had I, if I were the GM, probably wouldn't have a problem with reflavouring the defender into something akin to a semi-autonomous mech suit. Enough of the artificer would steel be exposed to allow for targetting and taking damage and you wouldn't get any actual gameplay advantages (which is just fair).
Generally you can’t end your move in another creature’s space, and you can only mount a creature if it’s at least one size larger than you.
I can maybe see a small artificer using a medium iron defender as a mount and narrating it as wearing armor, but there are rules preventing that when they’re the same size.
There's already an Artificer subclass for when you want to wear a suit of special armor.
I know. But this is entirely different, as This would be considered riding a creature, and since you can only ride a creature larger than you, you would need to be a small race such as a gnome or a halfling
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
There's already an Artificer subclass for when you want to wear a suit of special armor.
I know. But this is entirely different, as This would be considered riding a creature, and since you can only ride a creature larger than you, you would need to be a small race such as a gnome or a halfling
But is it actually riding a mount if you are inside it? You could consider it an uncontrolled (independent) mount per the mounted combat rules. But if I was DM and allowed this I would not give you full cover or any cover, for that matter, so it would be treated as if you were actually riding (on the outside) a mount like normal, for balance reasons.
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
I'm not following what exactly you want a citation for. Do you want rules for being inside another creature in such a way that you have total cover? I think that's what you're asking for. Page numbers are challenging on here, so I'll just provide direct rules support and then some examples from the Monster Manual (there are more in 5E, but I'd rather not list everything in the game).
Just in case you want the rules for having a cavity inside your Defender large enough to hold a Small PC:
You determine the creature’s appearance [...] (and other than the number of legs and of course the statblock listing its size, there are no other rules available covering the Defender's body shape, so I can't cite them). See the Defender's statblock if you're confused why the interior of the body doesn't need a circulatory or digestive system, which is what primarily resides in the main body cavity of e.g. a donkey.
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
I'm not following what exactly you want a citation for. Do you want rules for being inside another creature in such a way that you have total cover? I think that's what you're asking for. Page numbers are challenging on here, so I'll just provide direct rules support and then some examples from the Monster Manual (there are more in 5E, but I'd rather not list everything in the game).
I will politely suggest that citing a bunch of monsters that have specifically defined mechanics for engulfing creatures that the steel defender definitely does not have is maybe not the slam dunk "absolutely trivial" case you think it is.
There is still the problem of: if you have total cover from everything, then everything has total cover from you.
Of the 3 things preventing this from working that I initially pointed out, only 1 is solved by being small. I suppose 1 depends on the DM. So that only leaves the fact that your character now can't do anything and you are playing as the steel defender...
If you have access to Dragon of Icespire Peak, take a look at the barrel crabs in Gnomengarde. That's the closest official thing to what the OP is trying to accomplish.
Notably, it gives total cover from attacks from outside the crab, but is not airtight. The occupant can use their action to either move the crab or make an attack with its claws.
An important thing is that you would not want an airtight compartment. Being engulfed/airtight means that you'll be unable to breathe.
If you have access to Dragon of Icespire Peak, take a look at the barrel crabs in Gnomengarde. That's the closest official thing to what the OP is trying to accomplish.
Notably, it gives total cover from attacks from outside the crab, but is not airtight. The occupant can use their action to either move the crab or make an attack with its claws.
An important thing is that you would not want an airtight compartment. Being engulfed/airtight means that you'll be unable to breathe.
That would be a funny scene. The artificers exclaims “Behold!! My magnificent Steel Defender mechanical suit!” They hop inside and start showing off its maneuverability then collapses after a few rounds as they run out of air.
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
I'm not following what exactly you want a citation for.
A page that backs up your claim that what the OP wanted is something that "Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial." And, if you missed it the first two times, what OP wanted was "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks". Could you please provide us a page number for where it says you can do that?
A page that backs up your claim that what the OP wanted is something that "Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial."
I just provided the rules citations for this directly.
And, if you missed it the first two times, what OP wanted was "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks". Could you please provide us a page number for where it says you can do that?
No. I linked you to the rules here on DDB. If you want to back-solve the page numbers from the rules links, be my guest. But you've been given all of the necessary rules to accomplish OP's goal.
A page that backs up your claim that what the OP wanted is something that "Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial."
I just provided the rules citations for this directly.
Not really, no.
And, if you missed it the first two times, what OP wanted was "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks". Could you please provide us a page number for where it says you can do that?
No. I linked you to the rules here on DDB. If you want to back-solve the page numbers from the rules links, be my guest. But you've been given all of the necessary rules to accomplish OP's goal.
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
I'm not following what exactly you want a citation for.
A page that backs up your claim that what the OP wanted is something that "Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial." And, if you missed it the first two times, what OP wanted was "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks". Could you please provide us a page number for where it says you can do that?
Can you ride inside a ship, or is one required to stay above decks, regardless of ship design? If 'yes,' then 'riding' does not automatically mean 'on.'
When you are riding inside a ship, i.e. below decks and not looking out a porthole, do you or do you not have full cover from any attacks coming from outside the ship?
But wait, you say. This is a creature, not a ship. So, in anticipation of that question, if you are behind a large enough creature, say, a dragon or something similarly massive, do you or do you not have full cover against any attacks coming from 180 degrees the other side of the dragon? If not, why not?
Not sure what any of these has to do with what I wrote about. Are you suggesting there are rules for being inside a dragon, controlling it? Or do you mean that you can control the dragon by standing next to it or that, if you stand next to the dragon you have full cover from the thing on the other side of it but the thing on the other side of it doesn't have full cover from you? I'm a bit confused as to what point you're trying to make and how it is relevant to OP's question.
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So I just realized that the steel defender could be used as a mech suit. (by a small creature) What you could do is create the mech to be a humanoid form, have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks, not a bonus to ac as it is not technically armor. If the steel defender died, you wouldn't be able to move it, and would have to get out in order to do anything. Also, the steel defender will still work, even if you aren't piloting it. If there is something I missed please let me know
Edit:
A lot of you are saying that you wouldn't be able to control the mech very easily, (let alone fit in it) and that you wouldn't be able to see outside the defender.
First of all, as an artificer I would think that you would be more than capable of making a control interface. And I forgot to mention before that this would only work with a small character. Second, I don't think that seeing outside of the defender is a problem, as you can just add a tempered glass windshield of sorts.
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
So IMO as a DM I would say no to this unless you like ONLY getting the steel defenders turn. This is all from my view as a DM. RAW its a construct you don't know what's inside of it and DnD doesn't tell you things need to be inside of it, but it would be fight just to move things on your own.
In combat, the defender shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. If you are incapacitated, the defender can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge.
The issue is a few things.
Play an Armor artificer cause then this would work out. (ok now that the snarky comment is out of the way)
Think of this like Iron mans armor except you need to command it to do the things you want every time you want to do it AND you need your bonus action to even do what you want to do. So like "Jarvis let me attack that goblin: (uses bonus action to let attack go threw) but cause the steel defender only gets one attack that would mean you only get one attack. This is if the DM allows any of this, but also from the last line in its description That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. If you are incapacitated, the defender can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge. With that last line.... you cant even tell it to let you make the attack cause its not part of its stat block.
I don't think this will work for several reasons:
Well, nothing of the things you said would really work if you want to play by the rules.
In short, a hollow steel defender makes for a worthless mech suit but can work pretty well as a sensory deprevation chamber.
Now there are ways to get kind of a mech suit without cheesing the rules (which, as we have learnt, doesn't even work) but it takes a bit of reflavouring and still has it's limitations. If you play as a small size creature, say a halfling, you can easily construct your steel defender to be a medium bipedal creature. This means you can mount it. The rules for mounting doesn't say that it has to be in a particular manner, just that the anatomy needs to work. So you could sit on the defender's shoulders Master-Blaster or be strapped to the front like a 40K dreadknight. This would allow you to be useful in combat (since you can actually do things) and it would offer some protection due to the Deflect attack reaction. That said, you are still somewhat restricted since to be able to gain the benefits of the independently acting steel defender it will move on it's own turn, which is directly after you.
Now, if you think playing by the rules in this way doesn't ruin the idea you had I, if I were the GM, probably wouldn't have a problem with reflavouring the defender into something akin to a semi-autonomous mech suit. Enough of the artificer would steel be exposed to allow for targetting and taking damage and you wouldn't get any actual gameplay advantages (which is just fair).
Generally you can’t end your move in another creature’s space, and you can only mount a creature if it’s at least one size larger than you.
I can maybe see a small artificer using a medium iron defender as a mount and narrating it as wearing armor, but there are rules preventing that when they’re the same size.
There's already an Artificer subclass for when you want to wear a suit of special armor.
I know. But this is entirely different, as This would be considered riding a creature, and since you can only ride a creature larger than you, you would need to be a small race such as a gnome or a halfling
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
From a game balance perspective i feel like this would step on some Armorer toes.
Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial. The mounted combat rules, such as they are, explicitly allow you to ride a larger creature into combat, and you can explicitly dictate your defender's body shape, meaning you can leave a cavity inside it large enough for the artificer and leave eye-holes. Creation bards can make a mech suit (theirs can fly!) out of a wardrobe in a similar fashion, and NPCs can do something akin to it, too - an ogre howdah has 4 goblins inside the ogre's map space.
But is it actually riding a mount if you are inside it? You could consider it an uncontrolled (independent) mount per the mounted combat rules. But if I was DM and allowed this I would not give you full cover or any cover, for that matter, so it would be treated as if you were actually riding (on the outside) a mount like normal, for balance reasons.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Can you please tell us the page which has the rules for "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks"?
I'm not following what exactly you want a citation for. Do you want rules for being inside another creature in such a way that you have total cover? I think that's what you're asking for. Page numbers are challenging on here, so I'll just provide direct rules support and then some examples from the Monster Manual (there are more in 5E, but I'd rather not list everything in the game).
Just in case you want the rules for having a cavity inside your Defender large enough to hold a Small PC:
You determine the creature’s appearance [...] (and other than the number of legs and of course the statblock listing its size, there are no other rules available covering the Defender's body shape, so I can't cite them). See the Defender's statblock if you're confused why the interior of the body doesn't need a circulatory or digestive system, which is what primarily resides in the main body cavity of e.g. a donkey.
I will politely suggest that citing a bunch of monsters that have specifically defined mechanics for engulfing creatures that the steel defender definitely does not have is maybe not the slam dunk "absolutely trivial" case you think it is.
There is still the problem of: if you have total cover from everything, then everything has total cover from you.
Of the 3 things preventing this from working that I initially pointed out, only 1 is solved by being small. I suppose 1 depends on the DM. So that only leaves the fact that your character now can't do anything and you are playing as the steel defender...
If you have access to Dragon of Icespire Peak, take a look at the barrel crabs in Gnomengarde. That's the closest official thing to what the OP is trying to accomplish.
Notably, it gives total cover from attacks from outside the crab, but is not airtight. The occupant can use their action to either move the crab or make an attack with its claws.
An important thing is that you would not want an airtight compartment. Being engulfed/airtight means that you'll be unable to breathe.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
That would be a funny scene. The artificers exclaims “Behold!! My magnificent Steel Defender mechanical suit!” They hop inside and start showing off its maneuverability then collapses after a few rounds as they run out of air.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
A page that backs up your claim that what the OP wanted is something that "Of course you can do this. Absolutely trivial." And, if you missed it the first two times, what OP wanted was "have the chest be a hollow cockpit and cover it in metal plating to prevent attacks from passing through. This would give you full cover from attacks". Could you please provide us a page number for where it says you can do that?
I just provided the rules citations for this directly.
No. I linked you to the rules here on DDB. If you want to back-solve the page numbers from the rules links, be my guest. But you've been given all of the necessary rules to accomplish OP's goal.
Not really, no.
Not really, no.
Not sure what any of these has to do with what I wrote about. Are you suggesting there are rules for being inside a dragon, controlling it? Or do you mean that you can control the dragon by standing next to it or that, if you stand next to the dragon you have full cover from the thing on the other side of it but the thing on the other side of it doesn't have full cover from you? I'm a bit confused as to what point you're trying to make and how it is relevant to OP's question.