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Zarion
2017-04-11, 02:35 PM
I'm looking to get some opinions on a PrC I've been working on. I'd like to know people opinions on its balance.

Master Spellcrafter
The Master Spellcrafter is the pinnacle of magical item creation. His understanding of magic and how items can be created using magic is so complete that he can create items faster, cheaper, and at less personal expense than any other spellcaster. He is also very adept at identifying magical items, and can even increase the power of the things that he creates. The drawback for this prestige class is that the Master Spellcrafter must spend many skill points in Spellcraft, Knowledge, and Craft. As well the Master Spellcrafter dedicates himself wholly to the act of item creation, losing out on gaining spells. This prestige class fits very well with wizards, but can also work well with clerics.

Requirements:
To qualify to become a Master Spellcrafter, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Alignment: Any
Skills: Craft (any) 8 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 8 ranks, OR Knowledge (religion) 8 ranks, and Spellcraft 8 ranks.
Feats: Scribe Scroll, Any three Craft Magical Item feats.
Spells: Caster level 9th
Special: Must have completed a magic item worth at least 20,000 gp in base price.

Table: The Master Spellcrafter
Hit Die: d4
Skills: (2 + Int per level)


Level
BAB
Fort
Ref
Will
Special


1st
+0
+0
+0
+2
Bonus Feat, Spell Crafting Insight, Spell Crafting Power


2nd
+1
+0
+0
+3
Materials Knowledge (25%)


3rd
+1
+1
+1
+3
Bonus Feat


4th
+2
+1
+1
+4
Crafting Efficiency (25%)


5th
+2
+1
+1
+4
Bonus Feat, Item Knowledge


6th
+3
+2
+2
+5
Practiced Crafter


7th
+3
+2
+2
+5
Bonus Feat


8th
+4
+2
+2
+6
Materials Knowledge (50%)


9th
+4
+3
+3
+6
Bonus Feat


10th
+5
+3
+3
+7
Crafting Efficiency (50%)


Class Features:
All the following are class features of the Master Spellcrafter prestige class.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The Master Spellcrafter gains no proficiencies in weapons or armor.
Bonus Feat: At levels 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 the Master Spellcrafter may select one of the following feats. Any Item Creation, any Metamagic.
Spell Crafting Insight: At level 1 the Master Spellcrafter gains a better understanding of how magical items function and the energies used to create them, he gains the ability to increase the energy efficiency of the items. For every 15 skill modifier points he has in both Spellcraft and, Knowledge (arcana) or Knowledge (religion), the character can increases the set numeric effects of magical items by 50% rounded down. For example a new wand of Magic Missile normally has 50 charges; and Boots of Teleportation normally have 3 uses per day. With the Spell Crafting Insight ability a Master Spellcrafter with at least 15 skill points can increase the amount of charges to 75 for the wand and 4 uses for the boots.
The Master Spellcrafter must devote skill points in various crafting skills in order to create magical items that are more powerful than normal types. For example to create Boots of Teleportation that are useable 4 times per day the Master Spellcrafter must succeed a Craft: Leatherwork against a DC of 20. For every 50% increase to the number of uses, increase the DC by 10, and increase the base cost of the item by 10%.
Example 1: “Spellcrafted” Boots of Teleportation. Any Character wearing this footwear may teleport four time per day, exactly as if he had cast the spell of the same name. Moderate Conjuration; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item; teleport; Craft: Leatherwork DC 20; Price: 53,900 gp; Weight 3 lb.
Example 2: “Spellcrafted” Boots of Teleportation. Any Character wearing this footwear may teleport six time per day, exactly as if he had cast the spell of the same name. Moderate Conjuration; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item; teleport; Craft: Leatherwork DC 30; Price: 59,290 gp; Weight 3 lb.
Spell Crafting Power: Levels in Master Spellcrafter count toward the caster level requirements of item creation, as if he had gained a level in the spellcasting class to which he belonged before adding this prestige class i.e. if a character had Wizard 5/Master Spellcrafter 3 he would have a caster level of 8 for the purpose of meeting the caster level requirement for crafting magic items, and the item would function at caster level 8.
Materials Knowledge: Through experience and insight at 2nd level the Master Spellcrafter has gained an understanding of what materials work best for crafting magical items. He has also learned how to use the materials more efficiently thus granting him a 25% reduction to the cost of the raw materials needed for crafting. This increases to 50% at level 8. He also gains a +2 to any Craft check made, this increases to +4 at level 8.
Crafting Efficiency: At level 4 the Master Spellcrafter reduces the XP cost for crafting items by 25%, this increases to 50% at level 8.
Item Knowledge: At level 5 the Master Spellcrafter gains the ability to cast the spell Identify as a spell-like ability 5 times per day. They also receive a +2 to their Appraise check.
Practiced Crafter: At level 6 the Master Spellcrafter has produced such a quantity of magical items that he gains a 50% reduction to the amount of time it takes to create a magical item.

Continual Requirements: The Master Spellcrafter MUST have the maximum number of ranks per character level in both Spellcraft and, Knowledge (arcana) or Knowledge (religion). If the Master Spellcrafter does not meet this criteria, then they do not receive the special ability for that level. If the ranks are eventually restored to maximum, then the caster retroactively gains the abilities that they “missed” previously.

noob
2017-04-11, 04:17 PM
With that prc you get a good amount of bonus item crafting abilities but you stop progressing spellcasting.
So that means that someone taking the entire 10 levels in that prc is not going to have access to high level spells thus preventing him from crafting items using those and also means that you give up on your casting role.
Now the thing is that you are going to be specialized on item crafting and also be more restrained for the spells used in crafting than a regular full caster.
The problem is that if you wanted to roll a character for item crafting you would be doing an straight artificer and be better than regular fullcaster/your prc and if while artificer you wanted to take this prc you would suffer from limited access for spells in the items you craft again due to the level of the spells in the items of an artificer depends on his artificer level and not on his caster level furthermore your new class features are not that brilliant: yes you got a lot of stuff equivalent to feats and a +50% to some numbers but the artificer got feats too and you lose up on infusions.

So I suggest that you do something about the fact losing spell access is horrible for a crafter.
(You might still prevent it from casting high level spells if you want but a whole bunch of the class features of this prc amounts to stuff that you get from feats and so class feature that can be copied just by spending a lot of wbl which is easy to cheat if you are an artificer so if you was an artificer you would already have gotten all the stuff that class gives except the power to increase some numeric variables on items)

Zarion
2017-04-11, 05:58 PM
I'm considering whether or not the levels it gives should count towards an Artificer, and if so how I would write it to make that so.

Zarion
2017-04-11, 06:03 PM
My reason for making this class initially was that there were no good Artificer or Item Crafting PrC's. I wanted to make one that would be good at focusing on that. My original idea behind the stacking class levels was to treat it like an Artificer, where they can still learn higher level spells for crafting but don't gain the ability to cast them or a higher real casting level.

noob
2017-04-12, 04:14 AM
My reason for making this class initially was that there were no good Artificer or Item Crafting PrC's. I wanted to make one that would be good at focusing on that. My original idea behind the stacking class levels was to treat it like an Artificer, where they can still learn higher level spells for crafting but don't gain the ability to cast them or a higher real casting level.
If you want it to be able to craft items with high level spells in them just change a bit the description:

Spell Crafting Power: Levels in Master Spellcrafter count toward the caster level requirements of item creation, as if he had gained a level in the spellcasting class to which he belonged before adding this prestige class and also allows to know spells their spellcasting class would give the right to know if his master spellcrafter levels did count toward spell advancement but only for the purposes of item crafting i.e. if a character had Wizard 5/Master Spellcrafter 3 he would have a caster level of 8 for the purpose of meeting the caster level requirement for crafting magic items, and the item would function at caster level 8 and he would be able to know spells of level 4 but only for item crafting.

Zarion
2017-04-12, 01:43 PM
If you want it to be able to craft items with high level spells in them just change a bit the description:

Spell Crafting Power: Levels in Master Spellcrafter count toward the caster level requirements of item creation, as if he had gained a level in the spellcasting class to which he belonged before adding this prestige class and also allows to know spells their spellcasting class would give the right to know if his master spellcrafter levels did count toward spell advancement but only for the purposes of item crafting i.e. if a character had Wizard 5/Master Spellcrafter 3 he would have a caster level of 8 for the purpose of meeting the caster level requirement for crafting magic items, and the item would function at caster level 8 and he would be able to know spells of level 4 but only for item crafting.

If I did this, would it stack with Artificer levels, I don't think so and I'm not sure whether I want it to.

noob
2017-04-12, 02:12 PM
If you did this it would not stack with artificier levels but it would stack with wizard levels for purposes of accessing spells to craft(and only for crafting).

Zarion
2017-04-14, 03:44 PM
I've made a change to the class that I think fits what I want out of it.

Spell Crafting Power: Levels in Master Spellcrafter stack with other class levels for the purpose of item creation. The other class to which he belonged before adding this prestige class, counts as being of the sum of it and Master Spellcrafter for the purposes of class abilities relating to item creation. For example, if a character had Wizard 5/Master Spellcrafter 3 he would have an effective level of 8 for the purposes of meeting caster level requirements for crafting magic items which would function at caster level 8, and would be able to know and use 4th level spells for the purpose of item creation, but would only be able to cast 3rd level spells.

How does this look, I think this should allow the class to work with both regular spellcasters and artificers.