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Jack Mann
2007-03-29, 02:39 PM
Okay, I recently got into an argument with another player on these boards. He doesn't believe that there's anything wrong with artificers, and that they won't be broken unless you try to break them. I disagree. I think they're one of the classes with which you have to actively try not to cheese things up, because their abilities are so good. Would anyone like to help me by giving some examples of this?

marjan
2007-03-29, 02:43 PM
How about mind blank two levels earlier then any other caster?

Bears With Lasers
2007-03-29, 02:43 PM
Metamagic Item. Metamagic Infusion (metamagic for free is always a very, very bad thing). The ability to turn magic items you find into reserve XP that you can then use to craft magic items the party wants without personally losing out. The ability to make scrolls/wands/staffs of any spell in the game.

The class can do pretty much whatever it wants. If you have a player who's watching carefully to make sure that he's not doing anything too horrible, great, but that's not how you judge a class' balance. By that reasoning, nothing's broken, because the player could just restrain themselves.

Telonius
2007-03-29, 02:56 PM
Craft Homunculus, for a Dedicated Wright. If it's in a safe location, you don't have to take a break from your adventuring in order to craft items. (That's even setting aside cheese like keeping it in a bag of holding).

As far as magic goes, anything that a wizard, cleric, druid, bard, or whatever can cast, an Artificer can put into an item. Add Metamagic Spell Trigger - Quicken to that, and you have Supermage. And he can make any item at a reduced cost due to the Craft reserve. And he gets trapfinding. And medium armor.

Person_Man
2007-03-29, 03:05 PM
They're severely broken for a variety of reasons. However, a responsible player could choose to play them in a balanced way, just as a responsible Wizard avoids Polymorph and a responsible Cleric avoids Divine Metamagic. But in the Artificer's case, its choosing not to abuse overpowered class abilities, not just an optional spell for feat.

selfcritical
2007-03-29, 03:11 PM
While the theoretical power limit of an artificer is definately the highest of the classes, I've found that for some reason people don't just fall into invincibility the same way they do with the cleric or the druid. Not sure why, but i've never seen a semi CoDzilla style guy out of the three artificers i've played with(small sample, statistically meaningless)

PinkysBrain
2007-03-29, 05:29 PM
Putting an effective spell level cap on metamagic spelltrigger (like the one from complete mage) and disallowing persistent spell helps a lot.

Stephen_E
2007-03-30, 02:00 AM
In a party of 5 an Artificer who starts making magic items for the rest of the party, at say 80% of markets cost, after taking the Artificer craft feats, will end up with having about as much worth of magic items as all the rest of the party put together, for at most 1 level behind (and a lot of the time you'll probably still be the same level)

Stephen

Aquillion
2007-03-30, 02:28 AM
They can do just about anything any caster class can do, they can do it at least two levels earlier, and often they can do it better. They get a first-level 'spell' that can, at the cost of a handful of xp, let them spend ten minutes to prepare up to any spell up to fourth-level spell, from any list--and this isn't even considered their main forte, just a fringe benefit.

Don't forget the fact that they can abuse shortened caster lists and early domain spells. Lots of domains get spells a level earlier than anyone else, while classes like Paladin, Ranger, and Bard often learn key spells at lower spell level to account for the fact that they reach those levels earlier. An artificer reaches those caster levels faster than a wizard--a level three artificer can access spells intended for a level fifteen Paladin or Ranger.

A lot of people worry at first about spending xp, but you have to realize--that's why they get to mimic spells up to two caster levels above their artificer level. No matter how spendthrift a player gets with their xp, they're just not going to end up more than two levels behind everyone else... which means, in effect, that artificers are getting every spell in the game at the lowest level they're available anywhere and the ability to prepare as many copies of them as they want at no real cost.

PinkysBrain
2007-03-30, 05:26 AM
Without caster level boosts the best a third level an artificer could do is scribe a 3nd level scroll from the Paladin/ranger list. Equivalent to an 11th level ranger/paladin.

Scrolls/wands/staffs still cost money.

Accolon
2007-03-30, 10:30 AM
I'm not sure that Artificers are broken. They do need to make skill checks to do a lot of the stuff and the DC can be set at anything the DM wants. Just because the book says DC 25 doesn't make it so. If you think it's too easy, up the DC, make him spend his points to be able to do those things. The way Eberron is set up, Artificers are necessary. Another way to control an artificer is control his infusions. Make him find ALL of them, even the ones on his list. Again, you're the DM, there's nothing wrong with that.

kamikasei
2007-03-30, 10:37 AM
I'm not sure that Artificers are broken. They do need to make skill checks to do a lot of the stuff and the DC can be set at anything the DM wants. Just because the book says DC 25 doesn't make it so. If you think it's too easy, up the DC, make him spend his points to be able to do those things. The way Eberron is set up, Artificers are necessary. Another way to control an artificer is control his infusions. Make him find ALL of them, even the ones on his list. Again, you're the DM, there's nothing wrong with that.

Isn't having to make it harder for him to use his abilities, in order to keep his power level in check, kind of an indicator that he is, in fact, overpowered?

Emperor Tippy
2007-03-30, 10:42 AM
Isn't having to make it harder for him to use his abilities, in order to keep his power level in check, kind of an indicator that he is, in fact, overpowered?
Don't point out to people that they are using house rules to balance something and then claiming that its not broken/overpowered.

They get annoyed at me all the time when I do it. ;)

Lord Tataraus
2007-03-30, 11:17 AM
Isn't having to make it harder for him to use his abilities, in order to keep his power level in check, kind of an indicator that he is, in fact, overpowered?

Yes, yes it does. Exactly what I was thinking. That is why I never use them, they don't exist where I'm concerned. I don't like changing classes to make them not so overpowered because they either seem like overly doctored with too many checks and balances or are underpowered crap.

Bears With Lasers
2007-03-30, 02:00 PM
I'm not sure that Artificers are broken. They do need to make skill checks to do a lot of the stuff and the DC can be set at anything the DM wants. Just because the book says DC 25 doesn't make it so. If you think it's too easy, up the DC, make him spend his points to be able to do those things. The way Eberron is set up, Artificers are necessary. Another way to control an artificer is control his infusions. Make him find ALL of them, even the ones on his list. Again, you're the DM, there's nothing wrong with that.


So... Artificers aren't overpowered, because if you make their overpwered abilities less powerful, they'll stop being overpowered.
Mm-hmm.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-30, 02:06 PM
So... Artificers aren't overpowered, because if you make their overpwered abilities less powerful, they'll stop being overpowered.
Mm-hmm.

Ah, circular logic, tool of those in denial everywhere.

SerroMaroo
2007-03-30, 04:55 PM
When we had an artificer in our group we actually found that the most limiting factor on his power was the amount of time everything took to do. A wizard may only get a few fireballs a day, but the artificer can get a wand with 50, however he needs about a week of uninterrupted work to do it. If the DM keeps things coming hard and fast the artificer can even end up far underpowered compared to the rest of the group.

JaronK
2007-03-30, 06:30 PM
Well, the thing about Artificers is that they're not actually as powerful as most think... they just can be incredibly powerful, given all the right resources. To do all the powerful stuff they can do, they need downtime and they need money. Artificers simply have the ability to do more with those two resources than any other class... in fact, given an unlimited supply of those two things, they can nearly become gods.

In a low money fast paced game, however, Artificers really suffer.

It's like Wizards, really. Very powerful, but if you enforce the costs for scrolls and don't give them a lot of time to scribe new ones, they're in serious trouble.

JaronK

Rigeld2
2007-03-30, 08:30 PM
It's like Wizards, really. Very powerful, but if you enforce the costs for scrolls and don't give them a lot of time to scribe new ones, they're in serious trouble.
Agree on Artificers, disagree on Wizards.

Krimm_Blackleaf
2007-03-30, 08:46 PM
One drawback I see, although not as a severe one as say, a favored soul is their multiple stat dependency with two stats that don't commonly both remain high on the same character;Int and Cha.

JaronK
2007-03-30, 08:58 PM
Meh, they don't need charisma that much. They only need it for their UMD checks, but they can also just create a ring of +10 circumstance bonus to UMD, which pretty much solves that problem.

Again, they need the time and money to do so.

What it really comes down to is that the Artificer has more potencial than any other class, because they can use money and time so effectively compared to the others.

JaronK

CharPixie
2007-03-30, 09:09 PM
I don't see how using a shortened spell list ISN'T trying to break the artificier.

As I see it, it's like being a wizard. You can have godlike powers, and can shut everyone down if you play your character right, but if you choose the less intense, non-optimal way of playing, it's not that big of a deal.

(Oh, and isn't making a profit off your party a Bad IdeaTM? They might start charging your everytime you want something done.)

Rigeld2
2007-03-30, 09:10 PM
(Oh, and isn't making a profit off your party a Bad IdeaTM? They might start charging your everytime you want something done.)
Or... you could not craft the items, and they can go find the items for full market value. They have that choice.

Aquillion
2007-03-31, 02:22 AM
Re: Everyone who mentioned downtime.

This is technically true, to an extent. If you manage to run a game that is, straight from level one onward, entirely Oh my GOD the Lord of Blades and Vol want to kill you personally and also you're wanted in every city in the known world and if you stay in one place for more than two hours the bombs in your brains blow up and also also the Dragon Below destroys the world in thirteen days goGOGO!, yeah, artificers would lose a bit. But the thing is, even if they only get enough time to make one or two wands every level, they can still do obscene amounts of damage with those... and, at the end of the day, D&D isn't really suited to this kind of game. Lots of classes, features, and abilities are designed with the assumption that players can get downtime whenever they want.

Re: Everyone who mentioned limiting funds.

This actually makes artificers stronger, relative to other classes. Everyone still needs magical items, and now the Artificer is the only class who can get good ones easily. Cutting down the money makes it slightly harder for the artificer to get the fun stuff, yeah, but they're still getting it cut-rate by making it themselves; that means nobody else can get it at all.

Strict cash-per-level guidelines are actually one of the artificer's advantages, not one of their limiting factors, since they're always going to be ahead of the curve in terms of magical items they can get their grubby little hands on.


(Oh, and isn't making a profit off your party a Bad IdeaTM? They might start charging your everytime you want something done.)Normally, yes, but artificers (and magical item creation in general) is a special case: Remember, they have to devote either a portion of their craft reserve or a portion of their exp to creating an object, plus downtime they'd otherwise be spending on themselves. It's perfectly fair for them to demand something in return for that.

If you ask your Wizard to cast Wish entirely on your behalf, they'd usually expect something in return too, wouldn't they?

Quietus
2007-03-31, 04:49 AM
I'd say that the appropriate balance, in terms of what they should be asking for, is around 70-80%. That is, 70% is essentially the material cost + 5x the exp cost, while 80% makes it a little more certain that your teammates will only ask you to spend your exp if they really need that item and can't find it somewhere else. AND can afford the downtime.