[3.5] Can someone explain to me the artificer?

[The Rabbler]

Been a while, playground.

I'm about to start up a campaign with some friends who are back from college for the summer and one of the players asked me for some help with an artificer. Now, I'm the most knowledgeable player at our table, but I was dumbfounded. I've heard tales of artificers snapping campaigns in half far worse than any wizard and how they're damn near impossible to not break, but I just don't see it. I see the utility infused (ha) to the class, but I don't see the same raw power of a wizard.

Would someone be so kind as to explain what I'm missing?

[deuxhero]

You not only break WBL in two, but you effectively "cast" from any list (where the Wizard only has the Wizard list)

[The Rabbler]

You not only break WBL in two, but you effectively "cast" from any list (where the Wizard only has the Wizard list)

But creating enough scrolls to cast as often as a Wizard would take up a sizeable chunk of the xp you'd use to break WBL in half. Even when you're riding the one-level gravy train, to have the raw power of all of the other T1s, you can't possibly have that much extra money.

I've read all of the artificer handbooks and while the wandificer's damage is cute and the meleeficer is fairly interesting, I'm just not seeing the real power of the class. There's utility out the ass, but no real power. You can only put so many spells into wands after all.

[Madcrafter]

Provided he can get his hands on loot, a well prepared artificer can snap wizards and clerics over his (now magical) knees.

At the lowest levels, the artificer is mainly a support and combat beast, using his scrolls to get the party out of jams and using any obscure spell that fits their current need, and slamming away in a fight with an X bane crossbow, where X is whatever you happen to be fighting.

At mid levels, the artificer is mainly a support and combat beast, using their favorite spells in wants (either buff or blast) and hitting like a truck (or letting their minions do it if that is their thing). Being able to whip out any spell needed at any time (either via scroll or infusion), he can be an ideal out of combat jack of all trades.

At high levels, the artificer is mainly a support and combat beast, seeing as they have used their riches to ascend themselves and their party to near deific status.


I can get more into the mechanics if you'd like.

[The Rabbler]

Please do. So far, the artificer seems like a melee cleric with better items and worse BAB.

[Boci]

Magic items allow you to do an aweful lot. You can make constructs, focus on using wands, or just make sure your allies have really good gear.

That's your grafting abilities. Then you have the infusions. Generally situational, but can be fun. Like enchanting your allies armour or weapons with just what they need for this particular fight.

[Eonir]

1. An Artificer gets all the item creation feats, meaning all your magic items you will be getting at half off.

2. Golems. And golems have no HD limit like undead, so they can have as many as their WBL allows (which as previously mentioned has been completely broken).

3. They can quite literally pull out any spell to solve the problems, a well prepared Artificer is nigh-unstoppable.

4. Wandaficer. Artifcers can apply metamagic to wands and can do it for free a few times a day. Persistant wands of rhino's charge?

They can blast, melee, tank (or get golems to tank for them), support, control, skill monkey, trapfind, and produce all of this by themselves. They are a one man party.

[Madcrafter]

Well then let's go.

Firstly, at low levels, as I have already mentioned, we have the Personal Weapon Augmentation infusion. This nets you a +1 bonus ability on your weapon, of your choice. Thing is, you will almost always choose Bane. Now, using your first turn to buff your handy crossbow with this (or, if you are prepared, before combat) you are now popping out 1d8+2d6 damage per hit, with a +2 to the attack roll. At level 1. You are now a ranged power attacking greatsword fighter. You likely will be able to do this most fights.

Now, despite your best efforts, some five of the original thirty hobgoblins are still alive, and reinforcements are on the way. The party can't take another thrity, so you look down at your scroll case and pick up and obscuring mist (or the escape utility spell of your choice), making your escape. Now this is only possible if you have come prepared, but since you are an artificer, you have. Scrolls are your backup and rare use utility spells. You will likely be able to have at least one for every eventuality (and there are only really like ten or so before the mid levels that would ever need). This is one half of your versatility.

The other half of course, is your second godly infusion, Spell Storing Item. Now this infusion costs XP to use, but its more than worth it. If you have a minute (or if rushed, a round and an action point), you can literally pull any spell in the entire game (level 4 or less once you get higher level) out of thin air and cast it. That's versatility for you.

That's for level 1-4 or 5ish. These tactics remain relelvent at higher levels, but bane takes a back seat to wands then.

EDIT: Hah, knew the swordsages would show up. Continuing.

[Tyndmyr]

Been a while, playground.

I'm about to start up a campaign with some friends who are back from college for the summer and one of the players asked me for some help with an artificer. Now, I'm the most knowledgeable player at our table, but I was dumbfounded. I've heard tales of artificers snapping campaigns in half far worse than any wizard and how they're damn near impossible to not break, but I just don't see it. I see the utility infused (ha) to the class, but I don't see the same raw power of a wizard.

Would someone be so kind as to explain what I'm missing?

Well, first off, they need wealth. A non wealth campaign doesn't really work well for an artificer. That said, players usually get their mitts on some eventually. And then...

Well, they can cast(effectively). They have access to spells a level higher than a wizard. Also, they have full BaB. So, yknow, gishing it up isn't hard.

Then, eberron has a coupla nifty crafting feats and spells and things practically tailor made for the artificer. It's fairly easy to make that gold stretch along ways, and keep a lot of spells on tap.

[RFLS]

The group I play with has a hard nerfed artificer who's closer to balanced than a regular one (Still OP, just....not world breaking). We drop infusions entirely, limits his scrolls and potions to cure spells, limit the stacks of the XP/gold reduction feats, and limit his spell list to an arcane list of his choice.

[Madcrafter]

Now for the mid levels.

This is where artificers start to diverge into their future specialties. However they will all likely have a few things in common.

Firstly, item creation reduction feats. Someone above mentioned them, but most every artificer will be paying less gold and XP to make items (the less time one can be a bit of a trap). This in general is a good thing, allowing them to make more gear for everyone.

Also mentioned above, free item creation feats. They can make everything. Also, homonculi start popping out now, maybe only a clockwork crafter, or possibly a huge army of metal minions. Either way, the crafter means the artificer no longer has to worry too much about having time to craft anymore. More adventure = more loot = more powah.

At around this time, they will have also amassed enough wands to start using them in earnest. Every artificer will have a use for wands, no matter what they do, and this is mainly their bread and butter for the mid levels. They will likely start picking up some metamagic feats to fit their style (blaster or buffer) and applying them using either their class feature: Metamagic spell trigger (if they are not prepared), or the infusion of the same name (if they are). This allows them to metamagic those wands to their hearts' content.

They still have their scrolls and spell storing infusion for any other situation that could possibly come up, so their versatility has not changed; there are some more good infusions hanging around too. They have now become sorcerers with unlimited spells known, and free metamagic.

[Answerer]

they're damn near impossible to not break
Ah, see, this is where you've gone off the mark.

Artificers have immense potential power. But they're not trivial by any means. In fact, they're probably among the hardest classes in the game to play. Without a nigh-encyclopedic knowledge of the items in the game, you're not going to be breaking anything.

The only class I can think of that's hard to avoid breaking is the Druid; all you need to do is actually use all three of its main class features, and you're 1.5 Fighters (if not more) + a full-caster.

The Artificer is a very cool class, and can be quite powerful. It is not automatically so. Plus it's pretty trivial to rebalance wealth in the face of casual crafting; you should let the Artificer shift WBL a bit higher than expected since that's a major class feature that you shouldn't negate, but if it gets to be too much it shouldn't be too hard to just reduce the discovered loot some (just make sure that reduced loot + Artificer craft > expected WBL; it's not cool to shaft players without warning like that).

I would warn your friend that Artificers can be a lot of work to play. You need to keep very careful track of their items. Last time I played one (at a meager level 6), I had a huge spreadsheet calculating how I was spending my money on what, how much XP I'd lost or gained or whatever. You have a lot of things to keep track of if you play one.


Also, for the record, this redone Artificer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146315) looked solid to me, if your friend wants something easier.

[Suddo]

Someone else will have to link the article but XP is a river is a very important concept. Basically if you stay 1 level lower than the entire party you'll gain more XP and that will allow you to craft more things and become more powerful. I forget how much extra XP it is but its enough that you'll be making as many wands as you want.

[Madcrafter]

Answerer is once again, right on the mark, and has spoiled what was going to be my final points.

The artificer, is bar none, probably the hardest class in the game. To play one, you need a good understanding of the rules, to play one well you do need to have "nigh-encyclopedic knowledge" of the game. I have heard of people who used multiple excel spreadsheets to play their artificers; I managed with my single character sheet (Eberron, so it was bigger) and a stack of 20 books at the gaming table (i'm quick at looking things up). Even with good knowledge, you probably still need to have good reference material (It really helps when you are able to go "We are stuck with problem X, and I know just the spell that can solve it *flips through SpC* ah right, I cast Y!")

A canny DM can make the artificer perfectly balance, and possibly even bump him down a tier or two, with careful management of the party wealth. I agree that a good DM will let them exceed the planned WBL though, since it is a class feature (basically).

EDIT: And I have to disagree with Suddo. While the XP river concept is important for any other crafter, the artificer's craft reserve and ability to eat magic items for XP means he will likely never need to be lower level than the party, unless he spends an awful lot of downtime crafting.

[The Rabbler]

huh. Well, thanks for the quick responses. After reading this, my friend has become disinterested in the artificer (and fallen in love with the warblade :smallsigh:). Looks like the Artificer needs to really be played to be understood, putting it on my To-Do List right behind shadowcrafter/truenamer gestalt.

Again, thanks for the responses, looks like there's still more to learn about this crazy game.

[Madcrafter]

Well thats ok. Warblade is a nice easier to play class. Hopefully the fun will be doubled.

My apologies if I accidentally crit him with a wall of text though.

[Big Fau]

But creating enough scrolls to cast as often as a Wizard would take up a sizeable chunk of the xp you'd use to break WBL in half.

Assuming you use only scrolls, yes. But Artificers shouldn't be using scrolls at all past level 3 except to cannibalize them for making Wands/Staves/Schema/Scepters.

[Chronos]

Artificers have a funny interaction with WBL. On the one hand, they increase the wealth of themselves and everyone else in the party by making all of their equipment for them. On the other hand, though, they're expected to burn through wealth (usually in the form of wand charges) in nearly every encounter. One of these times I want to go through and make a table of how much wealth an artificer can burn per encounter at each level in order to break even.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Artificers have a funny interaction with WBL. On the one hand, they increase the wealth of themselves and everyone else in the party by making all of their equipment for them. On the other hand, though, they're expected to burn through wealth (usually in the form of wand charges) in nearly every encounter. One of these times I want to go through and make a table of how much wealth an artificer can burn per encounter at each level in order to break even.

Now that's a table that I'd dearly like to see.

[Bloodgruve]

Well thats ok. Warblade is a nice easier to play class. Hopefully the fun will be doubled.

My apologies if I accidentally crit him with a wall of text though.

Mad, I am bookmarking this post. Great explanation and I will refer back here in the event that I ever get to play an artificer.

Blood~

[gorfnab]

Here's the Artificers Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5929.0)

[sonofzeal]

"What you want is not impossible; it's merely expensive."

Unlike almost every other class, Artificers have very little power in and of themselves - they're mostly a mechanism for turning gp into pwnage at varying rates. By mid levels, almost any Artificer can do almost anything... given sufficient time and gp, either or both of which might be limited. The difference between Artificers mostly comes down to efficiency.

I speak from experience when I say they're definitely T1, but much more highly campaign-dependent than other T1 classes. If a Wizard goes three sessions without getting loot he might not even notice, but the Artificer certainly will. I do consider them fun though, if you don't mind spreadsheets.

[sonofzeal]

The only class I can think of that's hard to avoid breaking is the Druid; all you need to do is actually use all three of its main class features, and you're 1.5 Fighters (if not more) + a full-caster.
No. I crunched the numbers once - at mid level, a S&B Fighter going Weapon Focus is a superior melee combattant to a Druid and their pet put together unless there's at least some level of optimization (specifically, Barding/AfUC or Wildling Clasps for the Wildshaped Druid).

It's more like 0.75 Fighters + a full caster. Which is still pretty epic. The Druid spell list is actually pretty awesome, and their class features are indeed nice. But let's not exagerate - you need to know what you're doing to make Wildshape a viable melee force and not get splattered all over the landscape the first time something survives to Round 2.