Artificer vs Crafting Wizard

[Azul]

So, without having actually played one myself, I've looked over the Artificer class. I have to admit being underwhelmed. A wizard or cleric or archivist could pick the right item crafting feats, and make plenty of magic items without losing his primary spellcasting ability. An artificer seems to have these going for him:

1. UMD for unknown spells. This is big, but not too much so. Unless your DM is really mean (then just go cleric) most spells are findable. If a primary spellcaster invests as much time into his items as an artificer, they'd be able to produce more than 50% of what an artif can make, as there is some overlap between spell lists.

2.Free feats: meh. A crafter could just burn the feats he'd otherwise have to get crafting, and keeps his tier 1 spellcasting, while our hypothetical artificer would most likely just get feats that won't make nearly the difference a spellcaster's power does.

3. Craft Reserve: Isn't this slightly superfluous? If our crafter PC does his job, XP should catch up whenever he lags behind and he would remain competitive.
Overall, why can't (or how could) a decent crafter upstage an artificer at his own game?

[Segev]

You've dismissed some pretty big things. An Artificer can make 100% more items than a crafting caster? That's nothing to scoff at! They also do it faster (needing less downtime or producing more in the same downtime) and cheaper (so gold stretches further and they get more stuff for the XP they set themselves back). They're very good at what they do.

You don't NEED to play one to be an effective crafter, but if you want to be very good at crafting, artificers let you do it.

[Ellowryn]

Imagine being able to cast any wizard spell, and also any cleric spell, or bard spell, or paladin spell, of any level at character level 10. And all it costs you is some downtime and a pile of the mostly useless +1 items you get from adventuring. Thats it.

And the great thing about artificers is that they don't NEED to take any crafting feats, they get all the important ones for free. This frees up your normal feats for leveling to take things like metamagic feats to dramatically increase your "casting" ability.

So yeah, a wizard can be a good crafter while being a tier 1 caster, but an artificer can be all the tier 1 casters with little to no investment.

[dascarletm]

They also can make items 2 levels earlier than other crafters.

[Tvtyrant]

Look up playing a tier 0 artificer. Basically an Artificer is the second best class in the game behind a Spell to Power Erudite because it gets access to every spell ever, and two levels before the classes which actually cast those spells.

[daremetoidareyo]

Craft Reserve: Isn't this slightly superfluous? If our crafter PC does his job, XP should catch up whenever he lags behind and he would remain competitive.
Overall, why can't (or how could) a decent crafter upstage an artificer at his own game?

The way that you upstage an artificer as a crafting wizard is to deny them downtime. That way, your crafting abilities kind of equilibrate, especially when you go on to make your own fast time demiplane with your enslaved clone working for you.

The best way to deny an artificer downtime is to follow every single lead the DM throws down. Don't let the party stay in a single town for longer than a day.

A crafting wizard, however, cannot go toe to toe with a an artificer because the artificer can put any combination of spells into an item. You want a wand of a 4th level paladin spell with holy avenging bayonet? Ask the artificer. You want a wand of magic missile? Ask your wizard or the artificer.

Look at the sheer number of crafting related feats that class gets. They get more bonus feats per level than a fighter: 15/20 feats per level vs. 10/20 FPL. Meanwhile your wizard get 4/20 bonus feats that you can apply to item construction, as well has half of the skill points and no UMD.

Given that, I'm confident in declaring that any given typical wizard is far worse at crafting than any given typical artificer if we're gonna compare them level by level in their abilities. Even with the wizard prestiging
out.

[unseenmage]

Don't forget the Psionic Artificer variant which basically gets all of the Psionic versions of the Magic Item creation feats for free.

Having played Wizards, sorcerers, Clerics, and Artificers all as Construct/Item creators. Artificer wins hands down. It is definitely tier zero.


That said, being disallowed Action Points and being constantly surprised during combat will limit or even neutralize an Artificer's effectiveness. I have had this happen, it sucks.

Having the magic-mart be taken away and limiting access to basic materials will also limit an Artificer's utility. Simply denying them access to infusion/spell components is enough to cut away all of their higher potency infusions.


The Artificer is also heavily dependent on their holy trinity gp, xp, and TIME. Minimizing or removing any of these three components hamstrings an Artificer and keeps it from doing what it is built to do. Proportionately allowing too much (or infinite) of any one of these components will cause the Artificer to just win the game; but that's true for about any character one supposes.
Infinite gp can buy you infinite xp by the way. Never did find a way to buy infinite time though.

(The above experiences were all with a low level Artificer in a resources starved, surprise heavy game which did eventually allow Action Points. Higher level Artificers, like any higher level character, will not be as susceptible to interference. )

[Azul]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. So, the *brilliant* scheme to sneak a Wizzard//Artificer as a single-classed Wizard is probably not be the success I envisioned it to be. Pity.:smallsigh:

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

You've just got it the wrong way 'round. Be an Artificer that plays as a Wizard.