Psionic Artificer's Versatility, and Ability to Create Magic Items

[ApologyFestival]

'Sup, Playground? It's commonly noted that the psionic variant of artificer (Magic of Eberron, p. 42) is even better than the standard artificer. Having read it through, I'm left wondering why.

Most often, I keep seeing that psionic artificers can create any item, magic or psionic, because of a rule in the Magic Item Compendium. Without copy/pasting the whole block, the key parts are:


Many of the items in this book can also be created by a character with the appropriate psionic item creation feat.


For the purpose of meeting item prerequisites, a character who has the Craft Psionic Arms and Armor feat is treated as having Craft Magic Arms and Armor. Likewise, a character who has Craft Universal Item meets the feat prerequisite for items that require Craft Wondrous Item.


The prerequisites of some items [...] cannot be created by a psionic character without the aid of a character who does meet the requirement.

Sounds like, from this block at least, a psionic artificer could create almost any magic item, provided it has Craft Magic Arms and Armor or Craft Wondrous Item as a prerequisite. Is the idea that they can create anything based on custom wondrous items? Or is it a tortured argument at every spell existing as a psionic power because at some point in the multiverse, a convert spell to power erudite learned it? I'm really hoping that there's a trick that I'm missing, that's more likely to fly at an actual game table.

Sorry if this would have been better dumped in the simple RAW thread.

[sreservoir]

The psionic artificer is much weaker than the standard kind. You lose a lot of versatility from no longer being able to create items that duplicate spell effects, and in particular from spell storing item → power storing item, which, by the way, is slightly dysfunctional because nothing tells you how to deal with augmentation and the obvious place to look, dorjes, have ML limits. And there's no psionic equivalent of Persistent Spell unless you frankenstein the 3.0 version in, so there goes your single most powerful trick.

Worse, infusions are still spells. This means that you can't create items that duplicate them (since your Item Creation ability emulates powers, not spells), and you can't apply your metapsionic tricks to them. It also means you don't have a manifester level and, in fact, the class doesn't make you psionic at all.

[thethird]

Or is it a tortured argument at every spell existing as a psionic power because at some point in the multiverse, a convert spell to power erudite learned it?

As far as I understand yes, the psionic artificer tier 0 argument is looking at spell to power erudites.


The psionic artificer is much weaker than the standard kind.

My experience in play is that they are both versatile, but there are some things that the psionic artificer does better, and some other things that the artificer does better.

Easy access to psionic tattoo mastery (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20031225a) allows for xp free psionic reformation, turning all your feats into floating feats. Which to an artificer is pretty useful to fine tune.

Action manipulation is way more easy with psionics. So as a psionic artificer you will have an easier time getting access to extra actions.

[Psyren]

They can't make any item, but they can make a decent chunk of them. Even without StP Erudite in play, the "similar flavor" examples are pretty broad, such as Energy Burst being allowed to make necklace of fireballs despite Energy Burst not resembling Fireball in most respects. For example, this should allow them to use Animal Affinity, Inertial Armor, Thicken Skin et al. to craft all of the mandatory "Big Six" items.