Master crafter

Rystil Arden · Jun 2, 2007

Rae ArdGaoth said:
You missed an important part of the ability:

The flexibility is exactly its purpose, I think. Maybe the casting time should be longer, so it's more like a buff at the beginning of the day rather than at the beginning of combat.

I'll take a look at Soulknife and Artificer and get back to you on that.

Ah, for some reason I read that to say that you were allowed to put it on nonmagical if you wanted but could do both. It's still stackable with GMW, so the only difference is that you get 128k worth of stuff for no money rather than 200k worth of stuff for 18k.

Rae ArdGaoth · Jun 2, 2007

GMW gives enhancement bonuses too, so it wouldn't stack with the enhancement bonuses from Imbue. But abilities from Imbue would indeed stack. Perhaps the solution is to make the Imbue enhancement magic cost 1 imbue point but the Imbue magical ability cost 2 imbue points per +1 price modifier?

You don't want Imbue to be worthless at L15, though.

Rystil Arden · Jun 2, 2007

Rae ArdGaoth said:
GMW gives enhancement bonuses too, so it wouldn't stack with the enhancement bonuses from Imbue. But abilities from Imbue would indeed stack. Perhaps the solution is to make the Imbue enhancement magic cost 1 imbue point but the Imbue magical ability cost 2 imbue points per +1 price modifier?

You don't want Imbue to be worthless at L15, though.

That could help. Interestingly, a +1 that only works rarely that you can choose on the fly to work for you is generally better than a +2 that works most of the time (for instance, Holy is oft-considered an incredibly-good +2 equiv. It gives 2d6 damage if the enemy is Evil. Bane gives 2d6 and then a +2 additional enhancement to hit and damage if you fight what you're Bane against, and with Imbue, you will).

Rae ArdGaoth · Jun 2, 2007

I read about the Artificer. Infusions are very very similar to Imbue Item. I think we should work off of that as a balancing reference point.

Code:

Infusion Level
[U]
    Armor  Weapon[/u]
+1   L1      L2
+5   L3      L6

Code:

Minimum Character Level to Cast
[U]
    Armor  Weapon[/u]
+1   L1      L3
+3   L3      L8
+5   L5      L14

I think we were right on the money with doubling the cost of weapon abilities. Even just the enhancement bonuses should probably cost 2x Imbue Points. Also, we can eliminate those bulky charts by adopting the language of the Infusions, I'll include that in a moment. Up the casting time to 1 minute instead of a full-round action. I think the duration is okay, because the Artificer gets multiple Infusions/day, whereas the Master Crafter basically doesn't. It makes the MC less versatile than the A, but more versatile than Joe the fighter who just bought the sword or whatever. How does that sound?

I'll write up a new version real quick.

Rae ArdGaoth · Jun 2, 2007

Imbue Item.
The Master Crafter can imbue items with temporary magical properties by using Imbue Points. For each level of this class, a Master Crafter receives 1 Imbue Point per day, regained after a full night of rest. The Master Crafter can spend Imbue Points to add magical properties to a masterwork, non-magical weapon, armor, or shield. Unlike crafting magical items normally, an imbued item does not require a +1 magical enhancement bonus to add an ability. Imbuing an item requires one minute (10 rounds) of concentration, which does provoke an attack of opportunity. Once imbued, the item retains its new magical properties for 24 hours or until the Master Crafter regains his Imbue Points, whichever comes first.

When Imbuing armor or shields, the Master Crafter can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a bonus equal to the number of Imbue Points spent or up to 14,000 gp times the number of Imbue Points spent. For example, 3 Imbue Points spent on a masterwork breastplate could purchase a +3 armor enhancement bonus, or the Ghost Touch ability, or the Improved Acid Resistance ability (valued at 42,000gp).

When Imbuing weapons, the Master Crafter can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a bonus equal to half the number of Imbue Points spent. For example, 4 Imbue Points spent on a masterwork longsword could purchase a +2 weapon enhancement bonus, or a +1 weapon enhancement bonus and the Bane ability (for a total +2 bonus), or the Wounding ability (a +2 bonus).

The Master Crafter may freely distribute his unspent Imbue Points among any legal number of items. For example, a 4th level Master Crafter has 4 Imbue Points per day, and could imbue four shields with a +1 bonus, or one shield with a +2 bonus and one weapon with a +1 bonus, or 1 armor with a +4 bonus.

Imbued items are treated as magical items of equivalent power for purposes such as suppressing its abilities with dispel magic or sundering them.

Rystil Arden · Jun 2, 2007

Rae ArdGaoth said:
Imbue Item.
The Master Crafter can imbue items with temporary magical properties by using Imbue Points. For each level of this class, a Master Crafter receives 1 Imbue Point per day, regained after a full night of rest. The Master Crafter can spend Imbue Points to add magical properties to a masterwork, non-magical weapon, armor, or shield. Unlike crafting magical items normally, an imbued item does not require a +1 magical enhancement bonus to add an ability. Imbuing an item requires one minute (10 rounds) of concentration, which does provoke an attack of opportunity. Once imbued, the item retains its new magical properties for 24 hours or until the Master Crafter regains his Imbue Points, whichever comes first.

When Imbuing armor or shields, the Master Crafter can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a bonus equal to the number of Imbue Points spent or up to 14,000 gp times the number of Imbue Points spent. For example, 3 Imbue Points spent on a masterwork breastplate could purchase a +3 armor enhancement bonus, or the Ghost Touch ability, or the Improved Acid Resistance ability (valued at 42,000gp).

When Imbuing weapons, the Master Crafter can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a bonus equal to half the number of Imbue Points spent. For example, 4 Imbue Points spent on a masterwork longsword could purchase a +2 weapon enhancement bonus, or a +1 weapon enhancement bonus and the Bane ability (for a total +2 bonus), or the Wounding ability (a +2 bonus).

The Master Crafter may freely distribute his unspent Imbue Points among any legal number of items. For example, a 4th level Master Crafter has 4 Imbue Points per day, and could imbue four shields with a +1 bonus, or one shield with a +2 bonus and one weapon with a +1 bonus, or 1 armor with a +4 bonus.

Imbued items are treated as magical items of equivalent power for purposes such as suppressing its abilities with dispel magic or sundering them.

Hmm, it strikes me that 14k of non +X-associated specials is a heck of a lot for spending one Imbue point. The trouble is that the value of +X increases quadratically, and the value of a set GP per Imbue Point is linear, but even so--14k is way way too much for one Imbue Point (for comparison, even with the quadratic expansion of Armour abilities, you still only get a cost of 25k for +5 equivalent powers, which would cost 5 Imbue point. I would make each Imbue Point spent in non-+X powers give at most 5k).

Rae ArdGaoth · Jun 2, 2007

Yeah, it strikes me as odd too. But take this Artificer's Infusion, Greater Weapon Augmentation:

You can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a +5 bonus or up to 200,000 gp, such as vorpal

So what the heck does that mean? A 200,000gp weapon is a +10 bonus, but a +5 weapon is only 50,000gp.

And this one, Greater Armor Enhancement:

You can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a +5 bonus or up to 100,000 gp, such as etherealness or greater fire resistance.

Again, 100K = +10 armor, not +5. Armor makes slightly more sense, since there are a bunch of armor abilities that aren't bonuses, they're specific GP amounts. Those are the abilities I was trying to include with the gp limits, the resistance abilities and the silent moves abilities and glamered and all that. You think 5000gp is enough?

Rystil Arden · Jun 2, 2007

Rae ArdGaoth said:
Yeah, it strikes me as odd too. But take this Artificer's Infusion, Greater Weapon Augmentation:

So what the heck does that mean? A 200,000gp weapon is a +10 bonus, but a +5 weapon is only 50,000gp.

And this one, Greater Armor Enhancement:

Again, 100K = +10 armor, not +5. Armor makes slightly more sense, since there are a bunch of armor abilities that aren't bonuses, they're specific GP amounts. Those are the abilities I was trying to include with the gp limits, the resistance abilities and the silent moves abilities and glamered and all that. You think 5000gp is enough?

Yeah, Artificers are a bit wonky in general.

The reason for the wording in Artificer is partially tied into the fact that those infusions can be used on already-magical items to make them even better combined with the fact that you can't mix and match but can only put on exactly one ability. It's still fairly silly, although when an Artificer uses that highest-level infusion on a currently maxed-out armour/weapon to make an epic-equivalent item, it is possible to see the expenditure evening out (for instance, non including the epic x10, the difference in price between a +5 keen holy wounding sword and a +5 vorpal keen holy wounding sword is 250k)

Rae ArdGaoth · Jun 2, 2007

Aha, so Infusions stack! That clears things up, makes a lot of sense. I'm not entirely sure that Imbue Item shouldn't stack, because once you get up there in levels, it's completely useless. But when you're down here at normal levels, it's way too powerful if it stacks. What if we made it dependent on character level but capped by MC level, and MC L5 removed all caps?

Rystil Arden · Jun 2, 2007

Rae ArdGaoth said:
Aha, so Infusions stack! That clears things up, makes a lot of sense. I'm not entirely sure that Imbue Item shouldn't stack, because once you get up there in levels, it's completely useless. But when you're down here at normal levels, it's way too powerful if it stacks. What if we made it dependent on character level but capped by MC level, and MC L5 removed all caps?

How about something like this--total bonus of the ability + other magicks on the armour can't be greater than your level / 2. So when you hit Wiz5/MC5, you'll be exactly the same as before (you can imbue a nonmagic armour up to a +5), but once you get more levels, even though your imbue points are still 5, you get more and more slack on putting the imbues on stronger magic items.