artificer help

[CryptbornAkryea]

This class seems to have SO MUCH potential!

My curiosity right now concerns magic item creation.

Let's say I'm a lvl 6 warforged artificer.
I have a tentacle whip and a storm stalk.
First, what is preventing me from crafting an amulet of Mental Pinnacle at this time?
Second, upon activating the amulet, could I ensure my trusty symbionts shared the spell along with me?
And third, for the fun of it, is there any relevant cheese that might top this dish well?

Thanks in advance, giants!

[CryptbornAkryea]

No input, guys?

[strangebloke]

Artificer indeed has potential. It is one of the most powerful classes in the game, beat out only by archivists and erudites.

Those items are cool, I guess, but how are they relevant? I can't say I even know what a 'storm talk' is, and it doesn't come up on a quick search.

You can't make an amulet of mental pinnacle because it is a sixth level spell. Plain and simple.

At sixth level, your effective caster level for determining what kinds of items you can make is 8th, which means that you can only make items using 4th level spells or lower. At 9th level, you can make such an amulet, although when activated it will only last 9 rounds per level, despite costing as much as though you made it at caster level 11th. You're best off waiting until you're level 11 for this sort of thing.

Unless you're somehow boosting your caster level massively, but you didn't specify that.

Moreover, such an item is rather expensive for someone of your level. Item cost for an infinite use item is (spell level x caster level x 1800) which for you is (6 x 11 x 1800) = 118,800, which means 59,400 gp, 4752 xp, and two years of crafting time. Make something else.

Actually, the spell has a costly material component (300 gp) so I'm not sure how that effects the price of making a command word-activated item. The 50-charge wand costs around 35,000 so that's more doable, but you can't make it for a few levels anyway.

If you usually share buffs with your symbionts, this spell is no different.

As to extra cheese... I don't really know what you are trying to accomplish here, beyond a pack of psionic symbionts. Artisan feats reduce the cost of making this thing. Wand mastery lets you keep the buff for a few extra rounds, but that's no big deal.:smallconfused: I don't know.

[Owl Prowler]

I'm not even sure if Artificer is a class you can cheese. Its base abilities are already so powerful and versatile that I'm not sure why you'd even want to. I guess you could do Thought Bottle or extract pain shenanigans, but it's not like those things aren't inherently broken anyways. The artificer has little to do with it.

Keep in mind that while a full 20 levels of Artificer is extremely powerful, you basically stop getting class features after level 16. That gives you 4 class levels to dip around with, which can exponentially increase the versatility and power of your Artificer. Use them to focus on one of your Artificer's specialties, or pick up a Cloistered Cleric dip for access to tasty tasty domains, plus native access to any divine or arcane (with Magic Domain) wands without having to use UMD.

[CryptbornAkryea]

That should have read 'stormstalk'.

Thanks for the assist, giants