To build an Artificer

[Heliomance]

Help with my build? Doesn't need to be hugely combat capable, as it's a cohort. Level 8, mainly focusing on crafting, though if it can do decent damage it wouldn't be unappreciated. I'm already playing a really quite competant buffmonkey (War Weaver is awesome) so it doesn't need to fill that niche so much. Thoughts? Stats are Elite array, and there's 125000 (!) to spend on items and such.

[Deth Muncher]

I'm AFB right now, what bonus creation feats does it have?

[Heliomance]

Scroll, potion, wondrous item, homunculus, magic arms and armour, wand.

Generic setting rather than Eberron, so Action points and such aren't in play.

[Keld Denar]

I'd drop Craft Potion and Craft Homuculus for Empower Spell and Metamagic Spell Trigger. Possibly drop Scribe Scroll for another feat, like Twin Spell.

Craft Potion is kind of crappy, because of the 3rd level personal spell restriction. You can only craft mediocre buffs, which you are better off casting through Warweaver. A Homuculus also, while cool, isn't that useful. Better to get something that you'll get more mileage out of.

Now, craft some wands. Look for damaging spells without saves, or spells in general without saves. There are tons of good resources online that describe all of the best wands you can craft for the price. I'd recommend a wand of Scorching Ray at minium CL as your main gun.

Now, craft a Metamagic Wand Grip or 4. They are from Complete Mage. They allow you to apply MM to a wand put in them 3/day. You want to put your more expensive MM on these grips. They'll be a bit more expensive initially, but save you money over time as I'll describe below. They also give you that pistol toting badboy feel! :)

Now, take your Wand of Scorching Ray (which does 4d6 fire at 3rd level costing (750*2*3)/50 = 90g per charge) /2 cause you craft it, or 45g and 2 xp per charge. Load it into the MM Wand Grip and twin it, for 8d6. Now, use your MM Spell Trigger feat to Empower it. This nets you 12d6 damage for 3 charges, or 135g.

This is what an Artifcier does, he converts gold into damage. There are many ways to do this, and the above was only an example.

Oh, and make sure he crafts all of your teams gear to get the benefit of all of the 1/2 price benefits. Remember, the crafter doesn't have to spend the xp to craft an item, it can be donated by the person desiring the crafted item. This keeps most of the Artificers craft reserve available to do stuff he needs to do to contribute to the party, like craft damage/debuff wands.

Oh, and Enervation Wand (750*4*7/50 = 420 gold per charge, or 210 crafted) with the above trick results in about 3d4 negative levels at the cost of about 630 gold a shot. Expensive, but very useful when needed.

[Heliomance]

I'd drop Craft Potion and Craft Homuculus for Empower Spell and Metamagic Spell Trigger. Possibly drop Scribe Scroll for another feat, like Twin Spell.

Craft Potion is kind of crappy, because of the 3rd level personal spell restriction. You can only craft mediocre buffs, which you are better off casting through Warweaver. A Homuculus also, while cool, isn't that useful. Better to get something that you'll get more mileage out of.


Can't drop them, those aren't given by "Choose from this list", they're given by "Gain this feat at this level for free".

Also, one of the homunculi you can create does your crafting for you. You spend an hour telling it what to do, and it crafts the rest itself.

[Bayar]

Dude, he gets them for free...you cant replace them.

[Keld Denar]

My bad. I thought those were the feats you planned to take. You really get all of those as bonus feats? Its been a while since I looked at artificer.

Regardless, my advice still stands. Get wands, get wand grips, get blasty.

Oh, and craft stuff for your party. Especially Wonderous Items and Arms and Armor.

[Heliomance]

You also get two "Pick from a list" ones, which I'm taking as "25% off GP cost of gcrafting" and "25% off XP cost of crafting". I was planning to take Craft Construct, which leaves me with 4 open feats, including flaws.

[Keld Denar]

Metamagic Spell Trigger
Empower Spell
Extend Spell
Persist Spell?

Alternately, swap out Extend and Persist for Split Ray and Twin Spell for a more Blastificer feel.

[Bayar]

Extra rings is nice. Be more epic than epic characters. Wear more BLING !

[Heliomance]

The War Weaver has extend/persist, and will be going into Incantatrix next level for metamagicy goodness.