New Player making Artificer, help requested.

[Xenken]

Dear GiTP forum posters:

So I'm making an artificer for a new game.

The book count is smallish (Eberron Campaign Setting, Core, Complete Adventurer/Arcane/Divine/Warrior, Fiend Folio, and Epic level handbook) and I'm starting from level 1. I'm not big into gishing or blasting.

I believe custom magic items are allowed within reason.

I'd like some advice, with particular focus on levels 1-5:

What feats might be worth looking at?
What items should I aim to craft first, or craft consistently?
How much CHA should I get for UMD?

and any other related advice would be appreciated.

Thank You in advance for your time,

Sincerely,

-Xenken

[Railak]

Well the artisan feats are always good, exceptional, legendary, and extraordinary. They each give a 25% reduction to part if crafting cost. They're all in the campaign setting book. Craft golem is always decent to take. The humunculus are all pretty useful, the iron defender is a pretty decent low level fighter companion. Dedicated wright is just awesome, crafts for you while you're away. Though the craft golem you can get through an artficer bonus feat.

As for how much charisma you "need" depends on how your stats are done, if you're rolling randomly then I'd put your second or third highest, depends on if there's other stuff you want to do.

As for stuff you should be crafting that low level, I'd avoid much that takes exp, til level 5, where you can "break" useless magic items to get the exp towards crafting other stuff. So alchemical items, and mundane items mostly, probably avoid trying to build any significant weapons or armor as well. Cause they can take a longtime to craft.

[Troacctid]

I really like having Nolzur's marvelous pigments on an artificer. Makes it easy to find crafting supplies, even if you're out in the wilderness.

Persistent Spell is great with the metamagic item infusion. Lets you do all sorts of broken nonsense.


As for stuff you should be crafting that low level, I'd avoid much that takes exp, til level 5, where you can "break" useless magic items to get the exp towards crafting other stuff. So alchemical items, and mundane items mostly, probably avoid trying to build any significant weapons or armor as well. Cause they can take a longtime to craft.
I disagree with this. You should spend xp liberally. It's cheaper than gold. Instead of deconstructing items for xp, sell them for gold and use your own xp.

[newguydude1]

theres a prc called divine crusader. its in your allowed book list. its spell list is all the domain spells in the game.

this class is noteworthy because the divine crusaders spells are lower caster level. a 9th level domain spell is cl9. an 8th level domain spell is cl8.

so for level 1-5 you need to be looking at every level 1-7 domain spell in the game and making scrolls of them. at 1st level animate dead is very noteworthy. lesser planar binding can be obtained as early as level 3.

[sreservoir]

For low levels, get very familiar with the +1 and fixed-cost weapon special ability list, because personal weapon augmentation is a staple; with your books, notables are bane (DMG 224) and magebane (CA 143), the 1d6 energy ones when those aren't appropriate (merciful is the best of them), seeking (DMG 225) and blood seeking (CW 134), occasionally ghost touch and spell storing (DMG 225), but there's a fairly long tail of enhancements that are situationally way more useful for an artificer because you have have them without spending at least 8k on something that's going to come up twice.

Spell storing item is powerful, but even hitting DC 23 is incredibly unreliable at low levels. It ranges from pretty good to rituals in a stick as a wand spell, though, depending on how tightly you read it—even getting to roll for 1st-level spells out of a CL 1 wand is solid no-brainer territory. Same goes for crafting scrolls at first level, really—it gets much better at 2nd with +4 from the Decipher Script and Spellcraft synergy bonuses on UMD checks "related to scrolls" (and +1 rank, +2→+3 from the skill enhancement infusion, and being able to afford a masterwork tool more easily, to push you up to easily +16 on the check without serious investment), but at 1st you're gonna have a pretty sizable failure rate unless you spend like all your available resources optimizing your UMD bonus.

For some more iffy maneuvers, you may want to get familiar with holding the charge (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#holdingtheCharge) and its implications (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#castingTime), because being able to hold the charge and then pick the right bane subtype when you meet the enemy can save some action points for uh, when you need to do that with even less prep, I guess. If you can apply multiple personal weapon augmentations simultaneously that's ... honestly, really expensive spell-slots-wise, but 1d8+3d6 has pretty good odds of just one-shotting things if that's what you need and you have 2-3 minutes to prep.

As is standard for a low-level light crossbow user, some kind of warhorse (from 2nd level) or a (magebred) donkey/mule/cow trained for combat riding (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/handleAnimal.htm#trainanAnimalforaPurpose) is huge.

If you make it to 5th level, metamagic item (persistent spell) is as incredible as every other way to cheaply apply persistent spell to arbitrary spells.


Well the artisan feats are always good, exceptional, legendary, and extraordinary. They each give a 25% reduction to part if crafting cost. They're all in the campaign setting book. Craft golem is always decent to take. The humunculus are all pretty useful, the iron defender is a pretty decent low level fighter companion. Dedicated wright is just awesome, crafts for you while you're away. Though the craft golem you can get through an artficer bonus feat.

The artificer bonus feat choices do not, unfortunately, include item creation feats. Not that you're realistically going to qualify before 6th anyway due to the CMAA req, and you get craft homunculus as a class feature at 4th.

Frankly, only Extraordinary is worth taking, and even then it's situational/contingent on how the campaign is going. Yes, it's quite nice to write into your backstory and craft your whole WBL. But it is ... incredibly hard to make relevant in low-level play. But of course it's miles ahead of Legendary (-25% off already a small enough number that the main problem is bookkeeping) and Exceptional (which ranges from literally useless up to 4th level to irrelevant because there is like no middle ground between crafting times being overnight and too long to be relevant). You would probably unironically get more utility out of the Ride bonus from Animal Affinity (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#animalAffinity).


As for stuff you should be crafting that low level, I'd avoid much that takes exp, til level 5, where you can "break" useless magic items to get the exp towards crafting other stuff. So alchemical items, and mundane items mostly, probably avoid trying to build any significant weapons or armor as well. Cause they can take a longtime to craft.

XP is the most affordable resource, much more so than wealth, and the exchange rate for retain essence (25:1) is absolutely awful. Doubly so in practice, since so many GMs have unique ideas on how to handle treasure, whereas most can recognize a problem when the PCs have more than about a 1-level gap, and the artificer tolerates being one level behind exceptionally well.

Seriously, don't sweat about the XP costs of crafting. You could craft away your entire WBL, and the first time the xp total would set you back more than one level is, and you'll never spend enough xp that you'd set yourself back a spell level. And the extra wealth would absolutely make you more powerful than the levels.

Honestly, biggest reason to try to avoid/handwave xp costs is just the bookkeeping hassle of things like spell storing item and power surge (single-digit xp costs!).

[Xenken]

Frankly, only Extraordinary is worth taking, and even then it's situational/contingent on how the campaign is going. Yes, it's quite nice to write into your backstory and craft your whole WBL. But it is ... incredibly hard to make relevant in low-level play. But of course it's miles ahead of Legendary (-25% off already a small enough number that the main problem is bookkeeping) and Exceptional (which ranges from literally useless up to 4th level to irrelevant because there is like no middle ground between crafting times being overnight and too long to be relevant). You would probably unironically get more utility out of the Ride bonus from Animal Affinity (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#animalAffinity).




Wait, so if you only need the one Artisan feat, what other feats would you actually want?

This is related to another indicison I was having, between being a human for a feat and being an elf for +2 int. It doesn't seem like the class has all that many good early game feat picks.

[Troacctid]

Wait, so if you only need the one Artisan feat, what other feats would you actually want?

This is related to another indicison I was having, between being a human for a feat and being an elf for +2 int. It doesn't seem like the class has all that many good early game feat picks.
Well, normally I would recommend Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making) to gain access to summon marked homunculus, but unfortunately your game doesn't include Magic of Eberron.

Skill Focus (Use Magic Device) and/or Magical Aptitude are surprisingly reasonable feats for book-limited artificers. Investigate is an underrated noncombat feat that works well on characters with high Search modifiers. Action Surge and Improved Initiative are always solid. Heroic Spirit could set you up for a Siberys dragonmark later on. If you picked warforged as your base race, you could grab Adamantine Body for some defense.

[Kesnit]

Before you put this character together, confirm with your DM that you will have downtime for crafting. All the feats and XP expenditure in the world will be useless if you cannot use them. It will be some time before you can make the crafting humunculus, which means it will be you that has to do everything.

[liquidformat]

It would definitely be worth your time to read through the Artificer Handbook (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2829.0) it has a lot of useful information on just about everything and build advice too.

[thethird]

Hey there fellow artificer :smallsmile:

I am not fond of starting any character at level 1, and artificer is no exception. Not only the rocket tag is exacerbated at level 1, but what is useful at level 1 will most likely not be useful down the line. Ask your DM if you can retrain. While you are at it, try to understand how you are going to level up, because you are going to be burning xp for crafting. Also one important thing to consider when building an artificer is, what do you want to do during the fights?

My personal advice at level 1 (regardless of class) is to be careful to the point of paranoia, a breeze can kill you. As an artificer there are two things I would recommend you focusing on at level 1.
First of all, grab a crossbow, ping at enemies from afar, if you have a clear idea of what you are facing that's where you slap the personal weapon augmentation (keyed to bane, whatever you are fighting) against those enemies.
Second of all you are going to be scribing scrolls. The scrolls you are going to be scribing are those that help you solve not combat related stuff. The kind of scrolls that if you don't make the UMD check you aren't screwed facing an enemy. You are looking for utility, in particular look at what rangers/paladins can do, if something looks like it might be useful, grab that. Another option if your DM will be cool with it, and it fits how you want to play it is grab some necromancy, you can get some zombies from animate dead (only do that if it fits your character, as useful as more bodies are at this level).
If while looking at spells you see a spell that you are like wow, this is incredibly niche, but incredibly useful in that niche wait a level. At 2nd lvl you will be able to get 1st lvl spells at your fingertips with spell storing item.


Wait, so if you only need the one Artisan feat, what other feats would you actually want?

This is related to another indicison I was having, between being a human for a feat and being an elf for +2 int. It doesn't seem like the class has all that many good early game feat picks.


Well, normally I would recommend Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making) to gain access to summon marked homunculus, but unfortunately your game doesn't include Magic of Eberron.

Skill Focus (Use Magic Device) and/or Magical Aptitude are surprisingly reasonable feats for book-limited artificers. Investigate is an underrated noncombat feat that works well on characters with high Search modifiers. Action Surge and Improved Initiative are always solid. Heroic Spirit could set you up for a Siberys dragonmark later on. If you picked warforged as your base race, you could grab Adamantine Body for some defense.

Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making) is one of the best low lvl feats you could grab with all sources as Troacctid mentioned. If races of eberron was on the table I would consider going warforged, for the warforged racial substitution levels, and that would push you into adamantine body.

With the available sources I would honestly grab skill focus UMD.

[Xenken]

Before you put this character together, confirm with your DM that you will have downtime for crafting. All the feats and XP expenditure in the world will be useless if you cannot use them. It will be some time before you can make the crafting humunculus, which means it will be you that has to do everything.

Downtime confirmed.

In fact, lots of downtime confirmed.

Also sufficient income confirmed.

[Xenken]

Hey there fellow artificer :smallsmile:

Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making) is one of the best low lvl feats you could grab with all sources as Troacctid mentioned. If races of eberron was on the table I would consider going warforged, for the warforged racial substitution levels, and that would push you into adamantine body.

With the available sources I would honestly grab skill focus UMD.

I just read over Least Dragonmark and I don't get what's so great about it.

[newguydude1]

I just read over Least Dragonmark and I don't get what's so great about it.

look up the spell summon marked homunculus.

[sreservoir]

I just read over Least Dragonmark and I don't get what's so great about it.

With the sources you have available, it's not very interesting.

If Dragonmarked were on the table, it would give you access to dragonmark-component spells, including summon marked homunculus (which requires specifically any Mark of Making), which is a 1st-level summon with just kind of okay options but hours/level duration. You'd also pick up ray of retaliation, which is amazing as an immediate-action nope to rays (with a minor damage rider) that you cast spontaneously out of one of your lower-priority spell levels.

Either SMH or swift ready (Forge of War 117) + heighten would also let you qualify for the summon elemental (CMage 47) reserve feat, which seems kind of neat although personally I never really find the feat slots for it in a game with all those books open.