Artificer tips and tricks!

[GodGoblin]

Hey playgrounders! Ive recently been looking into the Artificer class (3.5) and Im thinking of playing one soon most likley over PbP. Have you guys got any tips or fun tactics to help me with this? Example builds would be awesome too!

Theres no actual character concept or class level yet so ill accept any advice about race or multi-classing. No restrictions! And as always thanks in advance! :smallbiggrin:

[panaikhan]

My last artificer was a Warforged, who took levels in Juggernaut. A spellcaster that can heal and buff themselves is fairly useful I think.

Tricks.
Well, use the 'clay tablet' potion variant and you can make fireball grenades pretty cheaply.
If you use enough XP to keep yourself consistantly behind the party by one level, you actually earn experience faster (so more toys).
I tended to use action points to reduce the casting time of full-round buffs (mainly for weapon Bane's)

[jiriku]

Nifty tricks:

Encourage another player to play an archivist. You can create scrolls of any divine spell, which he can then permanently add to his prayerbook. He can in turn cast these spells for you during your item creation, eliminating the need to worry about passing UMD checks. You two will be BFFs.

Wandificer: Using the artificer class feature to juice up a wand with metamagic, combined with the artificer infusion that does the same thing, you can turn a wand of enervation into a wand of twinned split ray enervation, effectively producing four rays per activation. It's an expensive trick because it burns so many charges, but most monsters go down hard when hit with 4d4 negative levels. Makes a nice panic button. Make sure you can manage the the ranged touch attacks.

Armorficer: The armor enhancement infusions are your best friend. Get to know the armor enhancements in the Magic Item Compendium like the back of your hand, especially the ones that allow healing and teleportation. Between item-crafting (woo belt of healing) and the healing and greater healing armor enhancements (provided via infusion), you can be the party's primary healer.

Forge homonculus: I think I'm remembering the name of it wrong, but there's this little homunculus in ECS that does item-crafting for you. You spend an hour on the project setting things up, then the homunculus takes over and finishes it for you, leaving you free to go adventuring. I'm pretty sure you can have more than one of these handy little guys.

People will often look to you to be the party's utility man, able to come up with just what's needed when the party is stumped and can't proceed. You'd best excel at this. Learn your party's strengths and weaknesses, and try to discover the things that they can't do or do poorly. If they've got a weakness that could manifest as an emergency, try to have a handful of scrolls or potions on hand to address the weakness. For example, suppose the group has no cleric or paladin: normally, the inability to cast remove curse or cure disease wouldn't be a major problem, as such issues come up rarely, but if you're heading into a tomb and might encounter mummies or death scarabs, mummy rot and consumption by death scarabs are possible threats, and a few scrolls or potions of remove curse and remove disease are in order.

As an artificer, you can do essentially anything at all. But you very often can't do it without a few minutes to prepare the right infusion or a few days to craft the right item. Get into the habit of planning and thinking ahead; you need to be one step ahead of events at all times, proactively preparing. If you try to play reactively, responding only to what's in front of you, you'll be at a significant disadvantage.

[GodGoblin]

Thanks for the advice so far!


Well, use the 'clay tablet' potion variant and you can make fireball grenades pretty cheaply.

Ah yeah Ive seen the clay tablet variant, but how does that make fireball grenades if potions dont? That sounss sound pretty cool though.


Encourage another player to play an archivist. You can create scrolls of any divine spell, which he can then permanently add to his prayerbook. He can in turn cast these spells for you during your item creation, eliminating the need to worry about passing UMD checks. You two will be BFFs.
Does this even overcome the 'Artificer scrolls' rules?


My last artificer was a Warforged, who took levels in Juggernaut. A spellcaster that can heal and buff themselves is fairly useful I think.
Speaking of warforged, whats everyones thoughts on the Renegade master maker?

[Kansaschaser]

Step 1
Go buy a Luck Blade with at least one charge of Wish left. Then take it home and add the Morphing quality to the blade with your Craft Magice Arms and Armor feat.

Step 2
Then, turn the luck blade into a small staff. Now that it's a staff, you can use Power Surge on the "staff" to give it extra charges. Now you basically have unlimited Wish spells.

Step 3
Watch your DM's mouth hit the floor.

[GodGoblin]

Step 1
Go buy a Luck Blade with at least one charge of Wish left. Then take it home and add the Morphing quality to the blade with your Craft Magice Arms and Armor feat.

Step 2
Then, turn the luck blade into a small staff. Now that it's a staff, you can use Power Surge on the "staff" to give it extra charges. Now you basically have unlimited Wish spells.

Step 3
Watch your DM's mouth hit the floor.

Kansaschaser do you kiss your mother with that mouth!? That is disgusting. Well done :smallcool:

[Kansaschaser]

Kansaschaser do you kiss your mother with that mouth!? That is disgusting. Well done :smallcool:

Well, what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

A friend of mine started playing an Artificer just a few weeks ago and he came to me for advice. I had never read over the Artificer class, but once I read the infusions, I started to understand what they were capable of.

I told my friend about the Power Surge/Luck Blade combo and he started laughing. He can't wait to use that cheese in game.

[Thrawn183]

Remember, you can do the infusion that grants a +1 enchantment to a weapon. It's pretty tough to beat Bane.

[mikau013]

Nifty tricks:

Encourage another player to play an archivist. You can create scrolls of any divine spell, which he can then permanently add to his prayerbook. He can in turn cast these spells for you during your item creation, eliminating the need to worry about passing UMD checks. You two will be BFFs.
<snip>

This actually doesn't work since the ecs errata :

"Magic items created by an artificer are considered
neither arcane nor divine"

available for free on the wizard site:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a

Thus all scrolls created by an artificers are not divine, while an archivist needs them to be divine to be able to learn them.

[Kansaschaser]

Oh, my friend just reminded me that you don't need Craft Arms and Armor. You could just use the infusion that gives a +1 weapon quality. So here is my revised list.

Step 1
Buy a Luck Blade with at least 1 charge.

Step 2
Use Weapon Augmentation, Personal to give the Luck Blade the Morphing quality and change the Luck Blade into a small staff.

Step 3
Use Power Surge to give the "staff" extra charges. Use your extra Wish charges to wish for more magic items. You can then use your Artificer ability to deconstruct the magic items using "Retain Essence" to give you a bigger crafting reserve.


There, I think I've caused enough harm.:smallbiggrin:

[Aharon]

@Luckblade
That's nifty, but the wishes contained in the Luckblade aren't explicitly called charges, so, depending on the wording of Power Surge (which I don't have at hand, unfortunately), it may not work.

=> Another Tip:
Use the 4th level Infusion called Concurrent Infusions from Magic of Eberron. It allows you to get the effect of 3 different first level infusions at the same time. One of these should be Spellstoring Item - effects don't include XP costs, so you essentially can get every 1st to 4th level spell in the game whenever needed, with 1 minute preparation. This means insane versatility.

It can also be abused: Create a Schema of Concurrent Infusions. Use your Metamagic Spell Completion on it, together with Chain Spell. I don't remember all the necessary steps, but if you do it right, you can get lots of persistent 1st to 4th level spells (limited only by preparation time).

[jiriku]

This actually doesn't work since the ecs errata :

"Magic items created by an artificer are considered
neither arcane nor divine"

available for free on the wizard site:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a

Thus all scrolls created by an artificers are not divine, while an archivist needs them to be divine to be able to learn them.

Bummer. Guess this trick only works for warlock + archivist, then.

[shadow_archmagi]

Okay, well, first off, you'll want this (http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/rules/DnD3.5Index-Infusions-Artificer.pdf)

Not only is it every infusion, but it's also got just about every armor and weapon enchantment. Take particular note of Whirlwind armor, since it's effectively allowing you cast Fly with the added bonus of turning into a tornado at will.

Second off, read the magic item compendium. Since you have access to all of it, you should be at least touchingly familiar with all of it. There may come a time when you say "You know, what I really need is a Bolt Shirt."

Third off, read the spell compendium. Once again, you have access to all of it. In particular pay attention to spells of 4th and lower level, since you can cast those more or less directly via Spell Storing Item (AKA: Make a scroll in 1 minute.)

If you're going to be playing an artificer in a P&P game, it helps to get a three-ring binder with dividers so that you can keep track of all the spells, infusions, and items you'll have access to.

[shadow_archmagi]

This actually doesn't work since the ecs errata :

"Magic items created by an artificer are considered
neither arcane nor divine"

available for free on the wizard site:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a

Thus all scrolls created by an artificers are not divine, while an archivist needs them to be divine to be able to learn them.

I seem to recall a logic trip somewhere where

1. Other people can contribute XP into the item's XP cost
2. Whoever contributes the most is considered the creator
3. Ergo, have the archivist pay for the scroll in gold AND xp, and then he gets a divine scroll!

[Urpriest]

Bummer. Guess this trick only works for warlock + archivist, then.

Aren't items made by warlocks by default arcane? Or am I misremembering?

[Dusk Eclipse]

I don't know... it would make sense they are arcane, but they can even make items requiring Divine spells, by upping the UMD check to 25 + spell level; so it is ambigous imo

[Telonius]

Oh, my friend just reminded me that you don't need Craft Arms and Armor. You could just use the infusion that gives a +1 weapon quality. So here is my revised list.

Step 1
Buy a Luck Blade with at least 1 charge.

Step 2
Use Weapon Augmentation, Personal to give the Luck Blade the Morphing quality and change the Luck Blade into a small staff.

Step 3
Use Power Surge to give the "staff" extra charges. Use your extra Wish charges to wish for more magic items. You can then use your Artificer ability to deconstruct the magic items using "Retain Essence" to give you a bigger crafting reserve.


There, I think I've caused enough harm.:smallbiggrin:

Power Surge does not work that way, and neither does Morphing.

A Luck Blade is not a spell trigger item, and Power Surge (per the table) works only on spell trigger items. The text doesn't disagree with the table's description, merely calls out wands and staffs specifically.

A "Staff" is not a weapon, it is a Staff (a particular sort of magic item). Morphing only allows you to change one weapon into another weapon.

[HunterOfJello]

First of all, familiarizing yourself with the Artificer Handbook (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872330/Artificer_Handbook_(rough_draft)) and Unofficial Artificer Player's Guide (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5929.0) would be highly useful.

~

For an artificer you really need a copy of the Magic Item Compendium. A copy of the Spell Compendium would help a great deal also (not to mention your own copy of the DMG so you don't have to borrow from the DM midsession).

A very useful spell that you'll want to keep on hand for magic item crafting is Transference (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060526a). Using this spell will allow you to make magic items for your party members without spending your own XP for it. The Talisman of Transference would also be a highly useful item to tote around with.

~

I would ask your DM to allow retraining based on PHBII rules so that you could take Shape Soulmeld (Mage's Spectacles) to boost your UMD skill at lower levels. You could then replace the feat with something else once you no longer need so many ranks in the skill.

The soulmeld Mage's Spectacles is a sort of buff that lasts all day and gives you +4 to UMD, Decipher Script and Spellcraft. It also makes cool glowing blue spectacles appear in front of your face. (This is much better than the lousy +3 UMD you would get from the Skill Focus: UMD feat.)

~

I might remember more later, but other things of note include:

There are other homonculus you can craft featured in (I think) Magic of Eberron. The walking chest is a fun one since it can feed your allies potions.

[Kansaschaser]

Power Surge does not work that way, and neither does Morphing.

A Luck Blade is not a spell trigger item, and Power Surge (per the table) works only on spell trigger items. The text doesn't disagree with the table's description, merely calls out wands and staffs specifically.

A "Staff" is not a weapon, it is a Staff (a particular sort of magic item). Morphing only allows you to change one weapon into another weapon.

According to the description of staffs from the DMG, "A typical staff is like a walking stick, quarterstaff, or cudgel." That means it can be used as a weapon.

The morphing quality will work to change the luck blade into any other weapon of the same size. Since the luck blade is typically a medium (one-handed) weapon, you can change it into a medium cudgel or a small staff. According to the wording of Power Surge, you would need to morph the blade into a small staff.

Power Surge states, "By touching a wand or a staff...". Power Surge was specifically made to work with Wands and Staffs. It does not say "spell completion" or "spell trigger" in the description. As long as the item has 1 charge and it's a wand or a staff, you can use Power Surge to give it temporary charges.

[jiriku]

Aren't items made by warlocks by default arcane? Or am I misremembering?

Huh. I'd think they couldn't be, else every wizard in the multiverse would be knocking it the warlock's door asking him to help them scribe arcane versions of divine spells.


Back on quasi-topic, I suppose the artificer's best friends would be factotums, rogues, warlocks and other characters with limited/no spellcasting but ready access to UMD. Although the relationship is more one-sided in that the artificer is basically just vendoring cheap magic items to them and not getting much in return. Make sure the cads pay the gold and XP for the items you craft on their behalf -- save your crafting reserve for your personal use or for items that benefit the party as a whole.