Pathfinder Artificer

[Kid Jake]

I've got a player interested in building a minionmancer in an upcoming Pathfinder game and he's set his sights on a 3rd Party(Adamant Entertainment) Artificer (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/adamant-entertainment/artificer). I've not heard too much about them, but they seem pretty different from the one I remember in Eberron so I was hoping to get a second opinion before I turn him loose.

Weird Science seems like a nifty ability and I can't help but imagine magical tommy guns and Team Fortress styled healing rays; but I'm not sure how they'd fare at higher levels since it caps at 4th level spells.

[icefractal]

It's unclear how the Weird Science ability works. It has a chart (presumably the number of inventions you can have at once?), but then says an invention can have any number of spells in it.

So at 3rd level, for instance, do you have:
A) Three inventions, one of which can have an arbitrary number of 2nd level spells in it, the other two can have an arbitrary number of 1st level spells each.
B) Three spells total. So you could have an invention with a 2nd level and two 1st level spells, or you could divide them into separate inventions.
C) Something else.

The answer to that would be pretty important. In the first case, the Artificer is godlike up to at least 7th level, then still quite strong up to 12th or so, and even after that quite potent in combat but starts falling behind in utility.

In the second case, they're pretty good up to 7th level, if lacking in stamina and with a tendency to be a one-trick pony. And after that they start falling behind (although not that quickly) if they want to keep much stamina. If they're fine with, say, 8 shots a day plus what they can UMD though, they can keep up as either a non-versatile but effective blaster, or a really potent buffer (by sticking a bunch of spells in each invention).

[Kid Jake]

I don't remember where, but I ran into some errata the other day that said the chart represented how many total spell levels you can put on inventions. So at 7th level you can either 3 level 1 inventions, 2 level 2, and 2 level 3 which are each usable 4 times a day before you start having to make UMD checks OR 1 Invention that fires every spell you know as a standard action up to 4 times a day.

One thing that stood out to me was that it doesn't cost material components to use the inventions, so you can spam stuff like Stone Skin or Animate Dead that would normally only be for special occasions.

The Salvage ability at Level 5 also seems pretty nifty; it looks like you can basically turn any magic item into one of equal or lesser value given a little time.