Elxir_Breauer
2016-05-04, 04:03 PM
Maybe look into Renegade Mastermaker, which is an Artificer-based Prestige Class. It basically covers the fluff of what you're looking to do with the character, by, effectively, slowly turning yourself into a Warforged by the end of the class. For the cohort-type stuff, look at actually taking Craft Construct (which may be necessary for making Construct Grafts as well anyway) and then Improved Homunculus. Using those two feats you can make Effigies and improve your Homunculi into pretty amazing helpers for combat purposes. One of my favorite ways to go with Improved Homunculus is to make them Infusion Storing and give them wings, and pump their hit-dice as high as you can to make them survive as long as possible. Give them a Repair X Damage infusion to use when they get low on HP, or maybe even a buff they can use (they can store it indefinitely, as with a Spell Storing Weapon), if you have access to the Mass version of a buff, you can give the whole party a bunch of buffs in one round using this with a few Iron Defenders. Effigies are pretty awesome too, they're construct versions of animals and pretty much superior in every way except for the lack of natural healing (and immunity to Conjuration (healing) spells.)
Eisfalken
2016-05-04, 08:40 PM
I really need a lot of help
Okay. First, we need to cover the bad.
You seem to want something close to anime, based on your other post. Sorry, you can hang this one up. Constructs are not robots: you can't "modify" them by "adding" things to their body. Doesn't work like that. You "modify" them with equipment. Armor, weapons, wondrous items, etc. Almost all of them are mindless, so you also have to give them directions and commands often; they do not function well at all autonomously. Imagine the dumbest effing robot you can, that's a D&D construct. They are NOT at all anywhere close to anime-style robots.
Secondly, you seem to think that you can cram infinite items into your character somehow and get loads of cool things to do. False. There are two limitations at work in D&D here.
The first of these are equipment slots, which governs exactly how many items you can have in a given "slot". Head, Face, Neck, Arms, Hands, Rings x2, Torso, Body, Feet. That's it. Some things don't take a slot, no. Most of those have to be held... meaning you have select either holding an item or a weapon or a shield. This limits how much stuff you have access at any given time. Non-slot items generally also cost twice as much as their slotted types do. So you have a very hard limit on what you can pay for off the bat. (FYI, one of the ways you "break" this game is breaking what we call Wealth By Level or WBL. That's how much money you are "supposed" to have at a level. Go over that, and you start being able to buy more tricks to get you out of trouble.)
The second limitation is what we call action economy. Basically, you can take a swift, standard, and move action in a round, or one full-round action. Attacking is a standard action, so you can move your speed and attack once each round. If you have multiple attacks from base attack bonus, you have to take a full-round action to use them... meaning you can't move. Oh, and if you move? You can't split the move around a standard action. You move as much as you want and then take a standard... or you take a standard, and then move as much as you want. You can also have a single swift action on your turn, but just one.
So you're probably thinking, "That sucks, I can't do that much each turn." Ah... that's what this forum is about, sometimes: finding all the tricks to break action economy. Feats, spells, class abilities, racial abilities, etc., all exist to let you do more than you should. For example, if you obtain the ability to pounce as monsters to, you can charge (double move action) and do a full attack at the end. Spellcasters look for feats and spells that allow them to fire off multiple spells at once.
The problem comes in that artificers don't have a lot of inherent abilities to break action economy. Infusions are very limited in effect and scope, and they aren't really front-line fighter types at all (well... by original design, anyway). Wizards can cast five or more spells at a time at high enough level; barbarians can hurl themselves across a battlefield with blinding speed and rip up a dragon with a similar number of attacks. You don't got none of that, even at 20th level. What you have are infusions, and some skills.
But there's something else you have that evens the odds slightly: magic item creation.
For anyone else, magic item creation is a sucker's bet. Wizards and clerics alike can reach unthinkable levels of power just with their spells (clerics arguably more so, with class abilities that can be warped into power that even wizards are envious of sometimes). Making items takes loads of feats (one feat per type of item), takes a lot of time that most DMs simply don't give you, and worse than that burns away your XP to fuel the creation. There is not a single "Item Creation Guide" for any spellcaster, and likely never will be, because common wisdom is that if you can't get Leadership and pass this off to a cohort, you are a fool for worrying about making stuff (aside from, possibly, scrolls, wands, and/or potions).
And yet.... artificers are the glaring exception to that rule. Why?
First, they don't have to sacrifice nearly everything just to make stuff. They get almost all item creation feats for free, and the few they need and don't have can be had easily. More than that, artificers also get a little pool of XP to craft things with, making it trivial to make some nice things early on to keep alive with (like potions).
Second and more importantly, they can melt magic items to get out the XP that was used to make them, via retain essence. This is a huge thing to have, because it allows you to grind up useless things you find (+1 weapons with no enhancements, for example) and recover the XP used to make them so you can make something far better. Keep in mind, you lose any excess when you level up, so you have to really be quick with using up XP for items.
You still aren't as effective without focusing even more on making stuff. The first three feats you should consider grabbing are the feats for Exceptional, Extraordinary, and Legendary Artisan. These cheapen the time, money, and XP for making stuff, respectively. Time is extremely important here; if your DM is keeping things humming along, lowering the time to build vital stuff is clutch. Money is slightly less important if you learn how to scrape more together. But that XP discount is huge. I'd aim for Legendary first (XP discount), then Exceptional (time), then Extraordinary (money).
But what has this got to do with action economy? Easy, my friend. At 6th level, use your character level bonus feat to get Craft Construct (which you qualify for at that point). Now you can make constructs. The way this helps your action economy is easy to see, because now you have minions to do what you tell them. Granted, this requires you to devote actions/time to instruct them every round in what to do, but if you're smart this won't be a huge imposition. "Kill all goblins." "Attack anything that attacks this person (the cleric, the wizard, whatever)." You can't exactly turn your back on constructs sometimes, but as long as you're there to stop them from doing something bad or useless, you'll get loads of mileage out of them.
This also applies to your lovely homunculus, and while they are not exactly the best fighters around, they have a load of special uses. The best one, really, is the dedicated wright; basically, instead of you doing all the work of building stuff, this little guy does it while you go on adventures. You still burn XP and gold and stuff, but long as this guy is safe, you're producing items 24/7. Make a decent guard to keep it safe, and/or put it somewhere that it can't be easily harmed. (A lot of players love the portable hole trick, where you build a little workshop inside the portable hole magic item. Normally, people suffocate in there with no air to breath, but... your homunculus doesn't need air. Meaning you can pull out a handkerchief-sized item every so often, reach inside, and now you have another item to use.)
But what about combat? I mean, that's what we're here for, really. And oh, buddy, there's a lot of good options.
Early on, you can't actually afford a big ol' iron or stone golem to stomp around and smash stuff. So you need to get Complete Arcane and look up the Effigy template. Long story short, it's basically a construct template you apply to a list of corporeal creatures (you can't make certain "weird" stuff a construct).
Let's cover the bad stuff first. Effigy critters lose a lot. No Con score (thus no bonus to hit points or Fort saves), no Int, average Wis, terrible Cha, and a penalty to Dex. They can't have any supernatural or spell-likes, and no extraordinary ability based on Con (meaning, usually, they can't have any special abilities; almost every venom/poison attack a monster has is based on Con, as are breath weapons and such). They lose all skill points, and all feats other than those that increase their attacks. RAW, they lose any special senses like low-light or darkvision (which constructs are supposed to have both of, but I'm not sure if RAW on effigy gives it this).
What they get makes them, essentially, combat mooks. They get a bonus to Str, bonus hp based on size, more natural armor, some DR/adamantine (based on HD), and one or two slam attacks. They keep weapon profs; talk with the DM about armor profs (if you lose them due to construct qualities saying so, you should in fact also get low-light and darkvision). Because of the weird way they keep certain feats, you can base an effigy off some fighter, and get the best of all worlds here. For example, find a fighter with a good charging or tripping build, and you can copy most of those feats over. Best of all, they get the long laundry list of construct immunities found in the Monster Manual.
Now let's get tricky, and introduce the concept of building an effigy for different races. Some of them make great effigies: lots of natural armor, Strength, and/or HD. Throw a fighter class on there, and you've got yourself a neat little soldier.
How about you want yourself some transportation? Easy, build a couple of effigy horses to pull your carriage. Congratulations, you now have a vehicle that can travel all day and night, long as someone is there to give commands to the effigy horses. Need flight? Effigy hippogriffs are fairly cheap and fast; build bigger critters to get the party all on there with a howdah (A&EG). Do the same for aquatic critters if you have to go underwater. Even better, find a burrowing creature that leaves a tunnel, and make an effigy out of that; now you can travel underground.
Let's get trickier. Build yourself an effigy out of a really strong Medium creature to carry your stuff around; you can even technically build/buy a cart or wagon for it to carry along in the dungeon to hold all the loot. Make an effigy that looks just like you, now you have a decoy (maybe use Disguise on it to dress it up better, fool potential assassins). Or... make an effigy of someone else, and work with an illusionist or bard to juice it up with magic to imitate the person, while you kill or kidnap them for nefarious purposes. Make effigies of Small humanoids like kobolds to do various menial labor for you. They don't get tired or hungry, don't complain, can't be mind controlled, don't need payment. Have them turn a crank for a perpetual motion machine to power small things in your household (like moving water and fans). If you are feeling particularly giddy, make a little effigy gnome as your personal butler.
Want to make the party really think you're messed up in the head (maybe even in real life)? Create an effigy companion for your... private amusement. Feel free to just let your imagination run wild on this one; the squick factor should be worth hours of chuckles at the party's aversion to your little recreational pursuits.
So that covers effigies. You may still want an iron or stone golem out there anyway, because they can't go berserk and also have loads of good tricks. Shield guardian is a MUST, as is runic guardian if allowed. Seriously, those guardians have a shield other effect meaning you share damage with them, which can be a very tactically great spell at keeping both of you alive. Runics are better because they can get awesome spells, but they are also harder/expensive to make, so... probably not until close to end-game. Clockwork steeds and brass steeds are also good to have one or two of around. Just look around various books with constructs. Skip anything that can go berserk on you, and be aware that at 15th level you are facing spellcasters who may have up to 8th level magic, so don't bother with all the silly low-HD stuff that will die to a magic missile. If you go for a fight, go armed for archmage here.
Actual magic items are... well, whatever you need. Weapons obviously, for you and/or your constructs. One quick word about armor. Even if the effigies don't have armor prof, they could theoretically benefit from really lightweight armor with no check penalty, mostly mithral armor. The reason to take such armor at all is to stack up some enchantments the effigy doesn't have to activate to benefit from. There are saving throw bonuses, SR, movement bonuses/abilities, etc. You can also add an armor crystal for other effects.
For you personally, you mostly need three things: defense, mobility, and spell-casting. (If you opted for a melee build, you aren't reading this anyway, you're reading the melee artificer guide.) Defense isn't just AC and saving throws; arguably, if you are having attack rolls made against you, you're already doing it wrong. Look for miss chance items: ring of blinking, armor with greater blurring, etc. Invisibility is great for you, because commanding your constructs doesn't break your invisibility.
Mobility mostly means flight. If you have a flying effigy mount, that's not a bad choice; you can buff it like any other construct creature, just be sure to have some form of feather fall ready. Also look for short-range low-action teleportation effects; it doesn't have to be long-distance, just easy to use if you get grappled or otherwise retrained (dimension stride boots are nice for this). If you aren't willing to bet everything on a flying effigy, then consider the various cloaks that do the job.
Take as many wands for your infusions as you can; you need buffs and heals for your constructs mostly. If you took loads of Use Magic Device skill (and yes, you definitely better), you can do like rogues and trick an arcane or divine wand into working for you, meaning you also can toss scorching ray and cure spells, at least a little bit. The real joy here is that you can also use scrolls, meaning things like permanency is on the table for you, which opens up some useful perma-buffs for both you and your constructs.
Grafts should be construct grafts, if that's your theme; they're in Faiths of Eberron, and they actually aren't bad. They all give some rather good abilities that can't be taken from you, and do in fact render you more like a living construct than a flesh bag. Adamantine skin, heart of steel, and wakeful mind are pretty clutch; gives you loads of defense and immunities, though you do pay for it with penalties. The legs and arms are somewhat "meh" to me, but they aren't terrible, just not all that super.
That's it. Go renegade mastermaker, go construct grafts, build good effigies and other constructs. Starting at 15th level is a bad deal for you; you don't have any real time to learn anything about the artificer class. It is not going to work like a robot mad scientist the way you probably wanted it to, but... this is as close as we're gonna get with this thing. Good luck.
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