Tell me about playing an artificer

[Kobold Esq]

Mostly a general question. I've never played one before, never been in a game that had one. I will be playing a low level Eberron game soon, and I want some backup characters prepared, so I figured I'd give artificer a shot.

Are there any existing guides out there for someone new to the class? I am not looking for a minmaxing character building guide, but more of a "here is what you are good at and what you should do" sort of thing.

[tuesdayscoming]

Artificers can be great at a pretty wide variety of things. The best artificers, however, will definitely choose to specialize. Common specializations include "blastificers," who use metamagiced wands to shoot laser beams until the enemy is nice and toasty, and "hordeificers" who spend most of their time creating an ever increasing army of constructs and homunculi, and then serve as a buffing/support role in combat.

Unfortunately, the minmaxboards (at minmaxboards.com) are down right now. There you can usually find an index for a great number of class handbooks. I would highly recommend that you check it out some time.

In the meantime, however, you might check this handbook (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872330/Artificer_Handbook_(rough_draft)). I make no promises as to the quality of its content; however, my cursory glance at it suggests that it covers the basics.

[Tvtyrant]

My massive list of handbook hyperlinks is down, so I cannot link you to anything :C

Basically an Artificer does everything through items. The types of items an Artificer specializes in is indicated in optimization speak as (role)ificer. So a blaster type Artificer is a Blastificer, an archerficer shoots arrows, etc.

The biggest problems with the Artificer are creating items while adventuring, and the number of options available. The former is dealt with usually by a Bag of Holding and a Dedicated Wright (a type of construct.)

The options is more difficult, as there are truly numerous types of items you can make. I tend to concentrate on items which help my team first (healing wands, buffing items) and then my personal role (I like hordes of constructs, but they are fairly weak.)

[Aharon]

Searching for "artificer handbook" yields the cached minmaxboards-version.

Infusions are your friend. Especially with the weapon and armor augmentations, you can get a lot of effects (i.e. blink, summon elemental,...)

I played an artificer in a very permissive campaign (stats 18, 18, 16, 16, 14, 12 before racial modifiers for everyone, high base hp, additional skills), that used WBL.
Calculating what to create was time-consuming, it took me the better part of a day for a 7th level character.
Bufficer works, but eats wands insanely fast in large groups (5 players +2 NPCs + my character). I often ended up buffing only myself and the Warblade.

For offense, I used Spell Fangs (an obscure spell from the adventure "Anauroch - Empire of Shades; the DM was very permissive concerning sources, too).

I had lots of fun playing the character, he could afford being generous and often spent loot on improving comfort of living for his party (item of Magnificent Mansion 1/day, using create lantern archon + bag of holding to go shopping for food in different locations,...)