Expanded Race Option · Advanced

Refined Magecrafted

The Gilded Servants

A variant of the MageCrafted. Where common magecrafted are assembled for the job at hand, a Refined is commissioned like a portrait: a precious-metal chassis, filigree in a house's colors, the family crest worked into the body, and a cut gemstone at its heart. Each is a work of art — and on rare occasion, the art wakes up.

History

The maker-houses never set out to create people. They set out to create taste — butlers who never age, footmen in permanent livery, a lady's companion with a voice tuned like a music box. And on rare occasion, the art wakes up: the same threshold as any magecrafted — a true soul, all memory of service wiped clean — except a Refined awakens wearing someone else's heraldry, permanently. Under the Bill of Hastings it is now legally a person; to the house that paid for it, it is a scandal, a lost fortune, and a walking piece of the family crest that no longer takes orders. Sages have called them the elves of constructs, for their reputation for frailty and delicacy. Adventuring Refined spend their lives proving that reputation wrong — or dying to it.

Physical Description

Satin-polished metal in the commissioning house's palette, articulated plate anatomy sculpted for grace, vine-fine filigree, and hair of flowing metal strands. The heart-stone sits displayed at the sternum — its cut, color, and setting were the owner's aesthetic choice — with luminous veins spreading from it through the chest seams. Like all magecrafted they need no sleep, food, or air, but must periodically consume magical reagents or diluted potions to sustain the core.

Society and the Maker-Houses

Ateliers, not factories. Each maker-house guards a Standard — a pattern book of approved lines, finishes, and instruction-sets — and competes at seasonal exhibitions where new commissions debut like couture. Every Refined carries its house's mark chased into a discreet plate at the inner wrist or nape of the neck; the mark is its papers, and a forged mark is a scandal that has ended houses. When a Refined awakens, house agents arrive quietly with a writ of defect and an offer of "repair" — kidnapping in all but name. Awakened who escape face a choice worn on their own skin: keep the livery, or pay a smith to re-chase the heraldry into a design of their own. Those who do the latter are the self-marked, treated with quiet reverence by their own kind.

Alignment and Religion

Protocol runs deep; most Refined trend lawful, their courtesies burned in beneath memory. Awakening tips some into headlong self-invention instead. In faith they gravitate to deities of craft, stone, hearth, and beauty.

Names

A Refined wakes owning a commissioned name, usually an ornament: Sterling, Vesper, Cadence, Filigree, Aurum, Meridian, Argent, Damask, Ormolu, Regalia. Some keep it; others take a chosen name at awakening, and treat being asked "which name?" as the single most intimate question their kind can be asked.

Racial Traits

Ability Scores: +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, −2 Strength. Sculpted for grace and presence, never labor. (Replaces the base MageCrafted's flexible +2.)

Type: Construct (Living Machine). Full construct immunity suite, Constitution score retained, resurrection permitted, Darkvision 60 ft., Low-Light Vision. Unchanged from base MageCrafted.

Repair Dependency (Ex): Unchanged from base MageCrafted.

Clockwork Fragility (Ex): A Refined's internals are delicate precision clockwork. Whenever a Refined takes bludgeoning damage, that damage increases by +1 per damage die rolled.

Heart-Stone (Su): The gem sheds light (as the light cantrip) at will and serves as an arcane or divine focus for the Refined's own spellcasting. The heart-stone is not a weak point — it is as durable as the rest of the chassis. The Refined's only structural frailty is its clockwork, not its jewel.

Refined Grace (Sp): Prestidigitation at will, mending 1/day.

Size / Speed / Senses / Languages / Racial Feats: Unchanged from base MageCrafted. Medium; 30 ft. Rapid Repair and Module Override remain available.

Body Modification Modules

A Refined gets 8 module points at creation, permanent except via the Module Override racial feat. All base MageCrafted Utility modules remain legal; two new categories are added below.

A Work of Art, Not a Weapon A Refined may spend no more than 4 of its 8 module points on Defensive and Offensive modules combined.

Parlor Modules (Social)

Etiquette Matrix (2 pts): +2 racial bonus on Diplomacy and Sense Motive, and both are always class skills; Knowledge (nobility) is also always a class skill.
Memory Archive (2 pts): Perfect recall of anything seen or heard; +2 on two Knowledge skills of your choice, which are always class skills; can replay conversations verbatim.
Butler's Pantry (2 pts): An extradimensional space woven into the chassis behind a seamless panel holds up to 15 lbs. (about 2 cubic feet) of nonliving material, weightless to the bearer. Stowing or retrieving an item is a move action that does not provoke — the desired object is always at the top. Does not function inside another extradimensional space; contents are inaccessible but not lost in an antimagic field. Undetectable by mundane inspection; detect magic reveals a faint conjuration aura.
Gilded Livery (1 pt): Heraldry and house colors worked into the body; +2 Diplomacy when dealing with nobility, gentry, or anyone who respects the displayed crest.
Melodic Resonator (1 pt): Voice tuned like an instrument; +2 Perform (sing or oratory); can reproduce any voice or sound heard (+2 Bluff to mimic).
Serving Protocols (1 pt): +2 on one Profession skill; unseen servant 1/day.

Attunement Modules (Casting)

Spell Matrix (3 pts): One 1st-level sorcerer/wizard spell, chosen at creation, usable 1/day as a spell-like ability (caster level = character level).
Resonant Heart-Stone (2 pts): +1 caster level to one school of magic, chosen at creation.
Glamered Chassis (2 pts): Disguise self at will, but only to appear as a living member of a single humanoid race chosen at creation.
Capacitor Bank (2 pts): A spellcaster can store one touch spell of 2nd level or lower in the Refined, who can deliver it as their own touch attack within 1 hour.
Focusing Chime (1 pt): +2 racial bonus on concentration checks.
Attuned Conduit (1 pt): You gain Eschew Materials as a bonus feat.
Cantrip Suite (1 pt): Choose two, usable at will: mage hand, ghost sound, detect magic, message, open/close.