Artificer help needed

[Mrgone]

Ok. I'm building a 5th level artificer stats are as such 13 /14/17/18/14/16. I want to make a semi optimized buffer or construct themed warforged artificer. I've read a lot of the guides but am still a bit confused on how I should run my feats. Mostly I don't want to castrate him but I don't want to upset game balance with a blaster. Also are the body feats worth it?

[Slipperychicken]

Unarmored Body, if you plan on swapping out your Armor/Robe slot. Otherwise, you're better off either getting Adamantine Body, or saying "screw it" to your AC and not getting a Body feat.

Alternatively, just get your friendly neighborhood caster to slap you with Greater Luminous Armor (Sanctified 3, BoED) every morning. Being a Sanctified spell, Good-aligned Clerics may cast it spontaneously, and other prepared casters need not learn it to prepare it, so there's no excuse. Also gives you +8 AC and none of the drawbacks of Fullplate (like auto-drown, reduced speed, etc).

[Seer_of_Heart]

Alternatively, just get your friendly neighborhood caster to slap you with Greater Luminous Armor (Sanctified 3, BoED) every morning. Being a Sanctified spell, Good-aligned Clerics may cast it spontaneously, and other prepared casters need not learn it to prepare it, so there's no excuse. Also gives you +8 AC and none of the drawbacks of Fullplate (like auto-drown, reduced speed, etc).

Wouldn't you just need to UMD it yourself?

[Slipperychicken]

Wouldn't you just need to UMD it yourself?

It's a spell, and not on the Infusions list. I could be wrong, but I don't think he would be able to make the effect himself without making an item for it.

[Urpriest]

It's a spell, and not on the Infusions list. I could be wrong, but I don't think he would be able to make the effect himself without making an item for it.

Yes, but it's not very hard to make an item for it, is I think the point.

[Mrgone]

Any thoughts on feats. I have 3 misc feats and two bonus. Thinking about buffing but not sure if persist spell works the same for infusions or if the 3 feat investment is gonna hurt me elsewhere. Otherwise I would love to craft a family of constructs. Also I want to steer away from hand to hand. We have a martial cha for that.

[Urpriest]

Any thoughts on feats. I have 3 misc feats and two bonus. Thinking about buffing but not sure if persist spell works the same for infusions or if the 3 feat investment is gonna hurt me elsewhere. Otherwise I would love to craft a family of constructs. Also I want to steer away from hand to hand. We have a martial cha for that.

Persist won't be easily applicable to infusions, but it's great on wands and staffs once you have metamagic spell trigger. That said, that is a couple levels from now, so you might want to wait until then.

[Slipperychicken]

Any thoughts on feats. I have 3 misc feats and two bonus. Thinking about buffing but not sure if persist spell works the same for infusions or if the 3 feat investment is gonna hurt me elsewhere. Otherwise I would love to craft a family of constructs. Also I want to steer away from hand to hand. We have a martial cha for that.

Metamagic Spell Trigger comes next level and you can totally Persist it up.

Extend, Persist, Quicken. Get the spells off quicker, make them last longer.

If you feel like delving into the wonderful world of Wand-blasting, Empower, Split Ray, and Maximize seem like fine choices. Your burst can get pretty crazy, so maybe you just get one or two of these metamagics. It looks like you can get some great mileage with even just a Scorching Ray. I would recommend Enervation, but that's just too strong.

There's also the cost-reduction line of feats (Exceptional/Extraordinary/Magical Artisan), undoubtedly mentioned in the handbooks you've perused. Because wand charges ain't cheap, and you're going through them like a 4 year old through a pack of gum. Talk to your DM about the effects of stacking them.

[Alienist]

Metamagic Spell Trigger comes next level


No. Check the errata. Level 6 is Craft Wand, level 7 is Metamagic Spell Trigger.

(It makes a lot more sense this way, otherwise you get the ability to modify something you can't create yet)


Persist won't be easily applicable to infusions, but it's great on wands and staffs once you have metamagic spell trigger. That said, that is a couple levels from now, so you might want to wait until then.



and you can totally Persist it up.


No. Persisting can be done, but that is surely the wrong way to do it.

Metamagic Spell Trigger uses extra charges to pay for the metamagic. AKA put your head between your legs and kiss your WBL goodbye. The one and only true way to use Persist with a wand is with the Metamagic Item Infusion. Which he already has.

Metamagic Spell Trigger (the class feature, not the infusion) should be used for cheap metamagic only. It is ideal for energy substitution, and not too bad for extend.

Okay, so if you're going to make use of those two possibilities you want a super cheap metamagic, and an expensive metamagic. Extend and Persist gives you that. However you also want a metamagic that costs no more than 2, for use on your scrolls. (There's a level 1 Infusion for that)

So if you start down this path basically you have to pick three metamagic feats (NB: extend does a passable compromise here between a cost of 0 and a cost of 2) But you can't have all three and also do the other cool stuff you want to do. Some compromises are going to have to be made.

But hold on. Do you have a lot of feats to spare? I think not. Are you even going to craft many wands? Note that you only want the super expensive metamagic if you're going to commit to having a bunch of wands lying around, and that will suck up your cash and your third level spell slots. Or is your cash going into creating an army of minions instead? Persist is going to do diddly/squat for your minions.

If you're going to go down the golem/minion-ficer route, then you should
(a) consider the racial substitution levels
... since you'll take Craft Construct sooner rather than later anyway
(b) abandon the idea of Persist entirely.*

*Or at least until level 11, when you can revisit the decision for buffing from scrolls (warning: requires UMD out the wazzoo though)

I believe there is ONE Infusion which can be persisted, and that is Natural Weapon Augmentation, Personal. As a Warforged, you can give your slam attack the bane property. Huzzah! However, if you're not going to melee, and you're not going to craft a bunch of wands (because you're making homunculi/golems instead) then Persist does nothing for you.

At level 5 most of your buffs are going to last 5-50 minutes each, so extend isn't even that big of a deal either.

In the case of Natural Weapon Augmentation, Personal, you're probably better off just making a couple of scrolls of it, and casting as required and dependent on the situation.



Metamagic Spell Trigger
Extend, Persist, Quicken. Get the spells off quicker, make them last longer.


Quicken does so little for an Artificer it's not even funny.

If you want to cast infusions quickly, write them down. Scrolls are the cheapest way to cast infusions quickly, since they're just a standard action to complete..



If you feel like delving into the wonderful world of Wand-blasting, Empower, Split Ray, and Maximize seem like fine choices.


Twin beats all of those hands down.

It doesn't beat them all combined, but by the time you could do all that you could be doing Twinned Flamestrikes instead, which is better damage for one third of the cost (in feats).

Twin is better than maximise for blasting, it is better for healing and it is better for summoning. Split Ray is exceedingly narrow, there are only a small handful of spells it can be used on, whereas Twin can be used on a broad range of things.

If you want to get into wand blasting, there's an infusion which lets you spend a little bit of xp to put a temporary charge into a wand. At level 5 it is cost effective, once you hit level 10 it is twice as good.

Past level 8 however, you're usually better off with a Staff than a Wand. (If you love Scorching Ray shooting out three fiery bolts of doom for instance, (as compared to just, oh I don't know, nuking the site with your orbital ion cannon) it's cheaper in a Staff than a Wand)

Also, Flamestrike in a staff!!! Ooooooh yeah. Cheap, nasty, and will see you through to level 15+.

Sadly you don't get Craft Staff until level 12.

However, if you have two wands, one for offense, the other for buffing, that should see you through quite a few levels.



Your burst can get pretty crazy, so maybe you just get one or two of these metamagics. It looks like you can get some great mileage with even just a Scorching Ray. I would recommend Enervation, but that's just too strong.


Those are both fine spells. And then there's Flamestrike.



There's also the cost-reduction line of feats (Exceptional/Extraordinary/Magical Artisan), undoubtedly mentioned in the handbooks you've perused. Because wand charges ain't cheap, and you're going through them like a 4 year old through a pack of gum. Talk to your DM about the effects of stacking them.

It's a trap! The trap has two parts: firstly, none of those are much good. The best one is the time reduction one. Money you should be getting in abundance from crafting things for your other party members.

They do stack, but only in the sense that they have absolutely no interaction with each other. If you think that reducing the gp cost might also reduce the xp cost of crafting, I invite you to reread those sections more carefully. Reducing the gp price simply reduces the price you pay, it does not change the base price, and xp is calculated off the base price.

The second part of the trap is that if you start reducing crafting costs too much, then it gets ridiculous. Once you're down below 10%, congratulations you've broken the game.

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Advice:

Wands:
Twin if you like blasting.
Twin if you don't like blasting and want to do something else instead.

Scrolls:
A metamagic that costs 1 or 2.

Homunculi:
Craft Construct Feat (if warforged racial substitution levels)
Improved Homunculus (from Magic of Eberron)

The sad thing about being a warforged minion-ficer is that it slows down the level at which you can start cranking those bad boys out. But don't be deceived, you can't actually make homunculi at level 4. You need to get to level 5 before you can emulate the right spells. Take Craft Construct at level 6 and you're only one level behind. As it happens, the priority for level 5 crafting is usually getting everyone in the party a magic weapon, otherwise even a single Shadow or Allip might TPK the party.

The difference is that a normal Artificer could take Improved Homunculus at level 6, whereas you have to wait till level 8.

I'm not sure if you can avoid taking the level 5 substitution level if you take the level 1 and level 4 substitutions. If you can avoid it, you might want to think about doing so. Why? Because at level 4 you're doubling your crafting pool for:

Making constructs, adding properties to constructs, creating or enhancing weapons armour and shields.

And now we see that retain essence adds the xp into your crafting pool. If you can add it in, then pull it out doubled, you have another use for those wands of magic missile (37 charges) that seem to litter the countryside, as you're getting twice the xp out of the salvage as went into it. (This would be nigh useless for a wandificer, but for a minion-ficer it is better than gold).

[thethird]

Note that you can use metamagic spell completion with persist spell and schemas (schemas are cool)

[Alienist]

Note that you can use metamagic spell completion with persist spell and schemas (schemas are cool)

Schemas are cool.
You can have clericzilla-like levels of persistent buffing.

However, there is a cost: 3 feats, and hundreds of thousands of gold and tens of thousands of xp.

Spend that and you're good to go with levels of persisting not seen since Mugwump the Paranoid cornered the nightstick market in '67.

There is also the Eternal Wand as an alternative, but since they're command word activated (not completion or trigger), your metamagic won't work on them.

The other problem schemas (and eternal wands) have is that their caster level is fixed. Unlike a staff, or a wand, you can't make schemas and eternal wands with higher caster levels.

That means that even though you personally at level 12 could make a Mage Armour last for 12 hours, if you use a schema or an eternal wand it will only last 1 hour.

Then there's the other other problem, which is that you can't get schemas until level 12, which is when Craft Staff comes online, which is usually a better option, both for creation and for using.

[Mrgone]

Here is what I'm looking at. Mithril body. Extraordanary artisan reach spell and twin spell. I'll take craft construct next level and aim for improved homunculus soon. Only reason I say Mithral body is cause of my high dex it averages a higher ac with no movement penaltys. I'm really kind of in the air about the body feat anyway. I'm sure it could be better served else where. As for twin I like it but won't get much use out of it till a little later but won't have the feats to spare then so I got it out of the way now. Also to answer your sig. Hypno toad. I love that show.

[Alienist]

Here is what I'm looking at. Mithril body. Extraordanary artisan reach spell and twin spell. I'll take craft construct next level and aim for improved homunculus soon. Only reason I say Mithral body is cause of my high dex it averages a higher ac with no movement penaltys. I'm really kind of in the air about the body feat anyway. I'm sure it could be better served else where. As for twin I like it but won't get much use out of it till a little later but won't have the feats to spare then so I got it out of the way now. Also to answer your sig. Hypno toad. I love that show.

Mithral Body: you have a starting AC bonus of 2, this increases it to 5.
Effectively, you spend a feat to get a Mithral Breastplate which cannot be removed, saving yourself ~1500 gold. This is not a good trade-off. By about level 8 you will be kicking yourself for taking this feat.

Extraordinary Artisan: reduces gp cost (only) of crafting magic items by 25%. So you will make items for 37.5% of base price.

Whether this one is any good depends on how your party interacts. If your party is willing to pay 75% of market price, then you might look at it and say "Wow! I'm going to be rolling in money!".

Here's the problem. That is true whether or not you take the feat. The difference between your buddy paying you 4gp and you pocketing 2, and your buddy paying you 4gp and you pocketing 1 really isn't going to matter much. By about level 10 you will be kicking yourself for taking this feat.

That's why I say it is a trap.

Reach spell is interesting. You have at least one Infusion that I think combos nicely with it, Iron Body (available at level 8). I think it might also be good for the various repair damage spells?

At low levels I think Arbalester is worth considering, in which case it hangs back with you anyway...

Some people view Reach Spell as a way to jujitsu the exceedingly vast number of spells which do not allow persisting into persisting. It is debatable, and probably worth reiterating that although persisting is very good in some situations, it does very little for you.

The upside of Reach Spell, is that it costs 2. Huzzah! You can use this one with all of your scrolls by slapping on them the level 1 Infusion Metamagic Scroll.

If you pick good scrolls to use this on, you will never regret it.

Pro tip: scrolls can contain more than one spell. :D Metamagic Scroll will work on all of them on that scroll (but only lasts 1 round per level)

Twin Spell is great as soon as you pick up a wand, and start using the level 3 Infusion Metamagic Item. Even something as lowly and pathetic as a wand of magic missiles or wand of scorching ray is going to be good with this. I'd go for Flaming Sphere myself, and have fun cleaning up the battlefield of any mooks and minions. Scorching Ray is more of a boss killing spell.

If you run into any bosses, don't forget you can Heat/Chill Metal them. It's only 8d4 damage, but it's 8d4 damage from a second level spell slot.

Twin Spell is always going to be useful to you. If you have some spare cash, ask your DM if you can pick up a wand of whatever with a limited number of charges (5-10). Otherwise scrolls are a good choice.

---

Did you take any of the Warforged Substitution levels? Level 1 has no drawbacks.

[Urpriest]

Extraordinary Artisan: reduces gp cost (only) of crafting magic items by 25%. So you will make items for 37.5% of base price.

Whether this one is any good depends on how your party interacts. If your party is willing to pay 75% of market price, then you might look at it and say "Wow! I'm going to be rolling in money!".

Here's the problem. That is true whether or not you take the feat. The difference between your buddy paying you 4gp and you pocketing 2, and your buddy paying you 4gp and you pocketing 1 really isn't going to matter much. By about level 10 you will be kicking yourself for taking this feat.

That's why I say it is a trap.


Why are you assuming your party is paying you anything? I've never met a party that would pay more than crafting cost. Remember, usually there's only one guy in a party who bothers figuring out how much gold the party has, so most of the party's wealth ends up pooled.

[Alienist]

Why are you assuming your party is paying you anything? I've never met a party that would pay more than crafting cost. Remember, usually there's only one guy in a party who bothers figuring out how much gold the party has, so most of the party's wealth ends up pooled.

To answer your 'Why' question:

I have never played with pooled gold.
None of the artificers that I've played with ever thought that charging the crafting amount was a good idea.

Hence, given the parameters of the play styles I have encountered, it seems like a reasonable assumption.

Of course, I realise that there are other styles of play, I just haven't encountered them.

Magic Item crafting is a social contract with the DM based on trust, and with the other players, also based on trust.

If I bought an Artificer into a group which had a pre-existing social contract that said the cost to the other player is the same as the material cost I would of course abide by that.

Then I'd immediately begin subverting it. :D (This is 3.5 after all)

Step 1: stop crafting for other players after my crafting pool was gone.

Explanation:
I've got plenty of projects I can work on for me. From about level 5 and up there's simply no conceivable time at which I wouldn't be crafting.
I'm happy to spend my crafting pool on stuff other people want, but after that I'm top priority.

Step 2: offer a 'priority processing' fee. This bumps their request to the top of the queue. And hey, I'm an honest politician, I stay bought (so no bidding wars, that erodes trust, and trust between players is a real thing, and hence is by far the more precious commodity than imaginary gps).

Explanation: now it is a question of what the market will bear. If they stick to their social contract that's fine, they'll still get some good stuff, but I'll spend most of my down-time making stuff for me.

However, even if market forces (demand for magic items vs supply of magic items) drag the equilibrium price point away from the lower bound of supply, I may still need to say "no". Not because I'm a scumbag, but simply because I need to make stuff for me too.

[Mrgone]

I ended up dropping the body feat like a bad habit. Still considering the gold cost reduction only cause I plan on eventually making golems. That stuff gets expensive fast. As for twin spell there is a solid chance it's making the list. I took sub levels 1 and 4. And am hung as to wether I should lean towards point blank and precise. TO avoid the firing into melee hate. Reach spell I think is going to be top notch I think, so it's gonna make the cut. Im liking the golem/hordeficer with party support as my secondary gig. ( heals / buffing) level 6 feat is craft construct and the next bonus feat will be improved homunculus.

Guess it may look like this.
Point blank shot
Extraordanary artisan
Twin spell
Reach spell

Point blank shot still being decided on. As far as crafting cost. I'll probably charge them what it costs me plus a small till to cover xp cost. Still in the air as it depends on rp. Lol being chaotic good I'm sure to cut a good pc a deal and tax the not so nice pc for the difference