What Race Should My Artificer Be?

[Graymayre]

I've been looking for a nice race (that isn't human) for my artificer character. There can't be a Level adjustment, and I would prefer that the stats are posted here.

Your help is appreciated fellow playgrounders.

P.S. What do you think of me crafting tiny constructs with compartments, trapping the compartments, and having the construct open its compartment in front of enemies?

[wadledo]

Warforged.
Just, warforged.

[Graymayre]

I'd love to, but I forgot to mention that warforged is restricted for this campaign (we are not actually playing in Eberron).

[Advocate]

Is there some compelling reason why you should not be human? Because that's the winner right there.

What else are you going to be? Dwarves lose on an important stat and are slow, Elves lose on an important stat, halflings and gnomes are slow, half orcs lose way too much, half elves are just bad...

The slow part is important because it is less likely you will be flying at all times like other casters, and even when you are you're still slower and you depend on your standard action do something, move action move to not get mauled, otherwise known as caster style defense. Also, it is likely your attacks will have a very short range, and you need to be able to get into that range quickly. Low CL + Close range wands will do that.

By the way, Warforged Artificer = trap.

[JellyPooga]

Kobold...because if you're thinking about traps, you're thinking about playing a Kobold Seriously though, the Kobold mindset is perfect for an Artificer that likes to dabble in both magical and mechanical doodahs.

[Graymayre]

I can handle being a human, but I've played one... pretty much every time I've ever made a character.

I was looking at kobold for flavor reasons; but unless I made a toned down, more even ability bonused homebrew version, that's not looking like a good pick.

[Eldariel]

Strongheart Halfling. Those are awesome artificers, quite capable of beating Humans in that area (although they only move 20', but them's the breaks; they do get small size bonuses and all that).

Also, Warforged Artificer is just fine. Doesn't have Int-penalty, has that "enchant himself"-crap going on and two solid substitution levels. The Cha-penalty is really hardly relevant; you really don't need more than 12 anyways.

[Tempest Fennac]

The Cha penalty may be an issue, and your DM may not allow the race anyway, but my Fenneckin race, http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104140 , may be a good pick for the Int and Dex boosts (and you could take that feat which grants +2 to Spellcraft and UMD checks anyway if you were allowed to use this race).

[Nohwl]

By the way, Warforged Artificer = trap.

whats wrong with warforged artificer? cant you spend the night crafting items?

[Graymayre]

What are the Strongheart halflings stats?

any suggestions on homebrewing the kobold race to be a little more even statwise?

[Eldariel]

Strongheart Halfling is like a standard Halfling but loses the save bonuses and instead gains a bonus feat like Human. They're from...Player's Guide to Faerun.

[Tempest Fennac]

My Kobold variant has +2 Dx and Cha, -2 Str and Con, 30' speed, small size, +1 Natural Armour, Darkvision 60', and +2 to all Trapmaking, Mining and Search checks. Did you think my Fenneckin race would work well?

[Graymayre]

It's a good race, but I have to be honest and say it just isn't right for my character (flavor reasons).

for your kobold variant, I'm pretty sure he should have light-sensitivity if he has all of those alternate things.

[Tempest Fennac]

I don;t see any reason to include that in my version (while the Darkvision and +1 NA are useful, their stats balance out and the skill bonuses aren't that useful for the most part). What sort of character are you planning on making? (I'm just curious because of what you said about my race not fitting flavourwise).

[Graymayre]

I still have to make a story for the guy. (the campaign is a few sessions away)

I do know that I planned a little bit of making trap monstrosities (like that trap golem I mentioned in the first post). Other than that, he would focus on summoning, battlefield control, and "investamagation".

Mindset of character: a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Deekin (of Neverwinter Nights fame)

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for explaining. Kobold would fit much better then Fenneckins for that (I suppose it could be argued that they would set traps in their burrows, but I didn;t give their fluff that much thought).

[Eldariel]

Desert Kobold would be doable. Heck, make it Dragonwrought Venerable and it will not-suck at: -4 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Int, +1 Wis, +3 Cha - would also have the Trapmaking bonuses and all that.

That said, Strongheart Halfling would still prolly be better due to the effective two more feats (one bonus and one from not needing to pick up something like Dragonwrought).

[shadow_archmagi]

Thri-kreen! Because nothing beats have extra arms.

[ocato]

Dwarf is actually a fine choice. The speed is more or less unimportant because, at least in my experience, Artificers are ranged characters. Infuse that crossbow, it is now your boomstick. The Charisma drop is sort of not as big a hindrance as you might think. Don't let the ebcs trick you, the primary stat for an Artificer is Int. -1 to your potential UMD when skill checks are so easy to inflate is really not even a minor problem except maybe during the levels when you more or less can't/won't have UMD as a major character function anyway.

[Advocate]

whats wrong with warforged artificer? cant you spend the night crafting items?

Several things.

First, penalty to important stat. Doesn't matter later, when you can easily auto pass but does matter at first, when you need to hit fairly high skill checks to do your thing, make stuff, whatever.

Second, the primary reason why it is chosen is some perceived better ability to heal themselves. This does not actually exist. More on that below.

Third, apparently the second reason why it is chosen is crafting at night. This doesn't work, because you can only spend 8 hours a day crafting without houserules regardless, and you can only travel 8 hours in a day without forced march rules. That leaves 8 hours for making stuff. More on that below as well.

Now. At level 3 Artificers can several important things.

First, CWI. This can be used to craft Healing Belts for yourself and the whole party. You now can heal 4d8-6d8 a day, every day depending on efficiency.

Second, 2nd level infusions. This can be used to get Armor Enhancement: Greater Healing. For 50 gold, you get to Swift action heal 3d8+15. Twice. Also, if you drop into negatives and have a use left, it automatically activates.

At level 3, 2d8 healing is decent out of combat. 3d8+15 is amazing, even in combat, and especially for a Swift action. At higher levels, both of the above become less useful, but it actually takes a while for Greater Healing to be outdated, even in combat simply because it's a Swift action. By the time they do start wearing out you can start throwing around Heal spells.

Note however the names. Healing Belt. Greater Healing enchantment. Not Repairing, Healing. Which means if you are a Warforged, these have at best, half effect on you. If you're some sort of living being, they work normally. Also, the best reason to be a Warforged is to save a fair bit of cash and slots to get what is effectively Heavy Fortification for a single feat. It makes you immune to healing entirely. Not that many would bother with it if it only does half anyways, but if you are going the expected route you do not even get that much.

Without house rules, this makes a Warforged Artificer inferior to a non Warforged Artificer for even that purpose at levels 3-20.

Also, at all levels, including 1 and 2 you can use wands. Yes, you can get wands at level 1 by pooling gold. If you are not a Warforged, you can enjoy the same CLW wands as everyone else. Or better yet, Lesser Vigor. If you are, you need a special wand just for you, and it sucks to be you if you go down as you are likely the only one who can heal you. Since healing at these levels only happens out of combat and in emergencies, but does need to happen in those cases, anything that hinders your ability to do so is objectively bad.

As such, they are also inferior at level 1 and 2, and thus, every level.

It's also very important to remember that as a living creature, the Cleric can heal you, the guy with the Lesser Vigor wand can heal you, and so forth. As a Warforged, you're probably the only one that can heal you, unless the entire party goes that route.

I encounter this all the time with my Warforged. He's a beatstick, and not an Artificer, but he is the cohort of an Artificer. When he goes into melee, he gets smacked around. My main character is the only one in the entire group who can heal him, so when his health starts dropping she has to take time off from casting Greater Dispels, Spiked Tentacles, and so forth to fix him up, instead of having the party Cleric, or Favored Soul throw a Heal on him instead. This generally results in the now not locked down enemies pressing the attack, which means things could get ugly. If he ever got smashed up when my main character was low or out of infusions, or incapacitated or whatever he'd be screwed. Now for him, being a Warforged still works out to be generally advantageous because they protect each other, he gets his cheap crit immunity, and the DM allowed a house rule to get the Powerful Build ability to reflect bigger, stronger Warforged. Also, he doesn't really have alternative means of getting the immunities. If he were a stand alone character, even if he could repair himself he'd be screwed. It's ok to have cohorts dependent on a main character since that's the whole point. It's not ok to have main characters with no fallback options for such things. This is why Warforged Artificers don't work.

Now, there is a way to craft all night, but it's something any Artificer can do. At level 4 you get the ability to craft a Homunculus. Make yourself a Dedicated Wright, which is priced just right for this point in time. This is also the level where you really start getting into crafting. Now, spend one hour beginning the process of crafting any item. Go do your thing. It still takes the normal time to finish, but doesn't take your time. If you want to take your little buddy with you, just set up his workshop in an extradimensional space. You literally have an item factory in your pocket. Enjoy.

Lastly, 'enchanting himself' is actually a bad thing. See, normally Artificer infusions go on your items. So if you cast Bull's Strength on yourself, you have a Belt of Strength +4 for 5 minutes. If anyone else cast Bull's Strength on themselves, they'd have +4 Strength for 5 minutes.

Two (three) words as to why this is a critically important distinction: (Greater) Dispel Magic.

If you are hit by a targeted dispel, any and every spell on your person is subject to being removed. Your items are not touched, unless the item itself is the target instead of you. Therefore a spell cast upon an item is objectively superior, as an enemy would have to specifically target that item with a Dispel, which would require foreknowledge of which one to aim at in order to have any chance at all to remove it.

'Enchanting yourself' removes one of your own biggest advantages, in that it takes a Chained Dispel to actually remove your buffs with any reliability. Of course, that will also turn off all your items, so you have worse problems but there you go.

Kobolds... only work with Venerable, Dragonwrought, Loredrake shenanigans. Seeing as very few DMs will actually allow that, just forget about it. Loredrake does nothing for you anyways since you are not a Sorcerer. Also, Con penalties, unless you do the desert thing. To the light sensitivity guy: What's the point? You can negate light sensitivity for 1 silver piece. All it does is trick people that don't know you can negate it for 1 silver piece that it is a meaningful penalty.

The reason why speed is important is because you do need to stay at range - but not a long range, because the best spells are Close range. So you need to be able to move around enough to get away from enemies that bother you, and to get to enemies in general. Because, like a caster you can take a move action without making yourself irrelevant this round you should take advantage of that, which you can't do if you're slow. You're also less likely to be flying, see above post on that.

Remember, you can automatically negate most melee enemies simply by moving more than 5' in a round. If they come after you they can only hit once at most. Unless they're ToB, or have Pounce you can completely ignore them as a result. Because you are going the mobility defense route, you should take advantage of cheap stuff that helps in this regard.

Ring of Entropic Deflection + Quickness property on your armor + doing the above means that for 13,000 gold, half of all ranged attacks, including ranged touch attacks automatically miss you, and nothing short of an archer with a Seeking bow can negate this. Combine with simply moving to negate most of the melees, and you're one of the safer characters on the battlefield. Note that you will need to hit DC 15 Tumble checks to make it work, but this is easy to do, even at low levels and off of cross class ranks.

As for attacking, you are using wands. Maybe staves and scrolls and whatever later. Making your crossbow Bane: Whatever is a nice trick for the first two levels, but after that it becomes irrelevant. You have better things to do with your resources and actions, and using a crossbow in the first place interferes with that mobility based defense as you're just standing there, auto attacking for trivial damage.

Also, Artificers don't need Int that much. The infusions with a DC are lackluster at best, and will still have a low DC to make them unlikely to do even that much. 22 Int will give you a good amount of bonus infusions. But that's about it. That's just 16 and a +6 item.

[Eldariel]

Lesser Vigor should work just fine on Warforged (unless using Greater Construct Essence). There's no notation in Fast Healing-description that defines it as a Healing-school or supernatural effect, and Lesser Vigor just grants the ability so while the spell is...well, a spell, the effect is Ex. So as long as you don't pick Improved Resiliency, you'll be fine.

Warforged Artificers get effectively two free Substitutions on 1 and 4 (on 1, they lose nothing and on 4, they lose Craft Homunculus, which is included in Craft Construct anyways). The one on level 4 is awesome, making a ton of stuff twice cheaper to Craft. He also gets minor bonuses to boosting himself (extra CL is never amiss) and random healing (equal to his inexistent Charisma). Mostly, the awesome part about Warforged Artificers is the supercheap crafting of weapons, armor, constructs and all such.

[Advocate]

Lesser Vigor should work just fine on Warforged (unless using Greater Construct Essence). There's no notation in Fast Healing-description that defines it as a Healing-school or supernatural effect, and Lesser Vigor just grants the ability so while the spell is...well, a spell, the effect is Ex. So as long as you don't pick Improved Resiliency, you'll be fine.

Warforged Artificers get effectively two free Substitutions on 1 and 4 (on 1, they lose nothing and on 4, they lose Craft Homunculus, which is included in Craft Construct anyways). The one on level 4 is awesome, making a ton of stuff twice cheaper to Craft. He also gets minor bonuses to boosting himself (extra CL is never amiss) and random healing (equal to his inexistent Charisma). Mostly, the awesome part about Warforged Artificers is the supercheap crafting of weapons, armor, constructs and all such.

Ok, so Lesser Vigor still works, as long as you don't go with the main reason to be a Warforged. Craft Construct... take a look at what you can make with that sometime. If it's not 'randomly decides to kill anyone and everyone, including its maker after spending all that money on it' or 'as above, except it's permanently berserk' its 'spend a lot of money making something several levels lower than you, easily destroyed as a result'. Often, many or all of the above at once.

Minor CL boost when casting on self < immune to targeted dispels.

Also, being a Warforged costs you a feat, since you need to spend a feat in order to get your armor. What advantage does this actually have over a non Warforged, non human Artificer who spent a feat on Craft Construct instead? Both get the discounts after all. And if you don't take CC, you still get the discount on weapons and armor and such. A human Artificer can do it and still be a feat ahead. Even better.

[wadledo]

Or you could, you know.
Not spend the feat on a different armor and get decent free armor.

Edit: Wait, can't a Warforged artificer just cast Repair Light Damage on himself and never have to bother the cleric again?

[Nohwl]

so why cant you be a warforged and have that wight work on a different magic item than the one you are working on? it seems like you would get magic items twice as fast.

[Eldariel]

Also, being a Warforged costs you a feat, since you need to spend a feat in order to get your armor. What advantage does this actually have over a non Warforged, non human Artificer who spent a feat on Craft Construct instead? Both get the discounts after all. And if you don't take CC, you still get the discount on weapons and armor and such. A human Artificer can do it and still be a feat ahead. Even better.

You don't get the half XP price weapons, armor, constructs, etc. as a Human. As for Craft Construct, it allows crafting Effigies. As a char ops veteran, you should be aware of just what you can do with those. Also, you can easily craft a Greater Stone Golem on level 12; it's a reasonable meatshield on those levels and you can make it for 75k and it'll throw around DC31 Will save-or-sucks with 271 HP and magic immunity while acting as a perfectly fine controller with the 15' reach. Expensive, yes, but if you build it, it'll effectively be an extra character. You can make all those at half XP cost as a Warforged.

[Nohwl]

Also, being a Warforged costs you a feat, since you need to spend a feat in order to get your armor. What advantage does this actually have over a non Warforged, non human Artificer who spent a feat on Craft Construct instead? Both get the discounts after all. And if you don't take CC, you still get the discount on weapons and armor and such. A human Artificer can do it and still be a feat ahead. Even better.

go dragonborn. you lose the plating and can wear armor. no feat required.

[Myrmex]

Edit: Wait, can't a Warforged artificer just cast Repair Light Damage on himself and never have to bother the cleric again?

Yes.

Furthermore, the suite of immunities & resistances a warforged gets MORE than makes up for the cha penalty. -1 to UMD checks? That isn't going to matter past level 3, and as long as you're playing the deadly low levels, I'd rather have +2 con and all that sweet stuff living constructs get.

[Graymayre]

all of this is very relevent to my thread, especially since I stated.

I'd love to, but I forgot to mention that warforged is restricted for this campaign (we are not actually playing in Eberron).

post #3

[kpenguin]

What's the campaign setting like?

[Graymayre]

the DM's been somewhat vague about it, he's creating the world himself.

As of now, I know the basic logistics of the starting continent (those that live on this continent have no connection with other continents).

Relatively low magic setting (that's why I'm going to be an artificer )

Diverse geometry, Orc kingdom inhabits the desert, not sure about much else.