Niccolo “Nails” Nazaretti and his wife Paulina “Puff” Nazaretti would, in ideal circumstances, settle comfortably in a secluded village near the forest. Nick would be happiest as a toymaker. Paula as a herbalist – perhaps a village pharmacist. But the world is not ideal. And although they have a very Gnomish mindset they also have a strong sense of purpose. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and problems are made to be solved. No matter what they are.
Village suffering from a proliferation of plague carrying rats? Puff will set up a clinic and Nails will get to work with the rat traps. Fields dying in an extended drought? Puff will divine the location of an aquifer and Nails will rig up an irrigation system. Country being menaced by a Necromancer summoning an army of skeletons in his gloomy castle? Nothing that can’t be solved with a couple siege engines and a liberal application of explosives. Take ten and call me in the morning.
That’s the thing with these two – there’s no sense of scale. All problems – big and small – are just puzzles to be solved. Take your time, figure it out properly, use the right tools for the job, and then move on to the next impediment. Doesn’t matter if its a roof that needs patching or an overlord that needs defenestrating.
And there’s one other big difference between them and most adventurers. They stick around to finish the job. After the dragon has been slain, the undead laid to rest, the bandits driven off… as far as they are concerned the job’s just begun. There’s fields to plow, homes to rebuild, injuries to tend. They have the long-lived view of events few humans can appreciate. Settling in for a few years to make sure everything’s *really* fixed before they move on just comes naturally.
“Nails” is a tinkerer extraordinaire. His great love is toys, but he has a very expansive definition of the term. Plows, windmills, windup horses, bizarre clockwork farm equipment, crossbows, trebuchets – its all in his wheelhouse. When he goes on a “field experiment” his favorite weapons are crossbows. But he has a similarly loose definition of the term “crossbow” – which for him covers just about anything that mechanically launches pointy things in the general direction of the enemy.
“Puff” may be happiest as a herbalist, but she is well versed in all things alchemical and an accomplished surgeon to boot. From poultices and potions to explosives and gasses she always has a few tricks up her sleeves. And always keeps numerous pouches on hand, because you never know when you might slay the odd wyvern or beholder on a lazy Sunday jaunt that has some useful bits and bobs to store for later.
They get along very well with Roland because they have a similar “simple and direct” approach to morality and putting the world to right. There’s no excuses. There’s no ifs and buts. There’s just the issue at hand and the application of enough elbow grease to correct the matter. And they are very good at advance scouting. Evil overlords pay little attention when a toymaker and an herbalist set up shop in town. Why would they? And its the perfect disguise because that is, in fact, exactly what they are. They just also happen to be perfectly capable of taking on just about anything they put their minds to – with the help of Roland and company or without.
I was reminded of these two when I started putting together a band for Roland and Kat to make a run at IWD. And I remembered why they seldom make it out into games nowadays. For one they are inseparable, so it just doesn’t feel right to include one and not the other. For another there are very few game systems that support either of them properly, much less both. Wizardry-style Alchemists and Gadgeteers have few close equivalents in modern games systems, and almost none support both. Pathfinder makes a good enough Alchemist to do Puff. DND 5E provides Artificer variants to cover Nails. I’ve never seen both in a game since Wizardry 8.
The challenge with both of them is making them look mature without looking *too* old, making them clearly Gnome and not Dwarf, Halfling, or Garden ornament, and getting their essential character to shine through. “Nail”‘s procilivities, however, make perfect use of CoPilot AI’s tendency to do bizarre things with crossbows. Its just what he would do.
“Nails”
“Puff”
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