Clockwerk (Sentinel)

Clockwerk Sentinels come in many shapes and sizes, depending on their designer’s intent. Unlike Enforcers and Titans, Sentinels tend to be small and compact, shaped like metal hounds, giant brass insects, levitating orbs, or even porcelain-faced humanoids. While the Clockwerk people are a sentient race with a society all their own, Clockwerk Sentinels are machines that lack free will and follow programmed orders. All Sentinels are powered by a sliver of lodestone that animates a series of gears and mechanisms within their chassis. The Sentinel is the most humble of Clockwerk drones, with minimal tactical acumen or combat capability. Its general purpose is to detect intruders or debilitate them until more capable Enforcer models can be alerted to the situation.

As a GM, you can run a Clockwerk Sentinel as a sort of animated trap or peril that ups the stakes of the encounter. A Sentinel is rarely encountered by itself (they are ideal candidates to be used in mobs) or too far from a means to raise the alarm. Like the Clockwerk Enforcer and the Titan, the Sentinel is governed by axiomatic behavior that limits its freedom of choice, and it possesses an automation vulnerability the party can exploit if they spend the time to research the model. A Sentinel is typically equipped with a single weapon that it uses as a last resort, and/or a mechanism that effects a maleficence best suited for the fiction. Flavor the Sentinel with a variation that suits the intentions of its designer: your average Artificer might litter his laboratory with arcane Sentinels; a Cult of the Mundane might outfit their Sentinels with antimagic; and a maximum security prison might have purchased Sentinels networked together via a hivemind to deter escape or intrusion. The satisfaction players derive from defeating Sentinels derives as much from figuring out how they work as smashing them to bits.