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Potent Potables - The Artificer Manual (by Zathis)
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<blockquote data-quote="Nibelung" data-source="post: 6704863" data-attributes="member: 74499"><p><strong>Originally posted by Zathris:</strong></p><p></p><p>Power Source and Role: You can rebuild it; you have the Magic, You have the Technology.</p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong>Role</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #00ccff">Buffing </span>– Most of your best powers give bonuses to Attack, Damage, Defenses, or Resistances. Proper combinations of these can turn even a Swordmage into a fearsome striker. Battle Engineers excel at this.</p><p></p><p>Debuffing – Not really a strong point for Artificers. You have a few powers that give the enemy penalties to attack rolls, slow, or daze them. Mostly in this area are powers that punish the enemy for attacking your allies. Being Arcane makes it easy to get these things through MC Power swapping if you really want.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Enabling</span> – While Artificers have a couple really good repositioning powers, you typically don’t have the ability to let allies do things out of turn. Spell Commanders are a notable exception, and are quite a bit better at this.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #0000ff">Summoning</span> – An area that normally doesn’t get mentioned in a leader guide, Artificers have several very good summons, gaining access to Minor Action attacks, Marking, and other Punishment earlier than most other Summoning classes.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #00ccff">Healing</span> – As previously mentioned, Artificers grant THP like no other character. Their direct healing is fairly good as well, especially if your allies are melee types.</p><p></p><p>Saves – Your ability to grant saves is lacking however, with only 2 encounter powers, but generally your THP generation and Healing more than make up for it.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Survivability</span>– You start in Leather with no Shield, and you have 1 less surge than the other leaders. Your healing powers generally only target allies as well, so you’ll need to invest in improving your AC and ability to keep yourself up if you want to slog into melee. The good news is that you’re fairly comfortable at range with a good selection of implements (even though your weapon options suck), and your healing doesn’t cost you surges. Also, you prefer being next to (behind) an ally or 2 for most of your powers to be their best, and clumping can result in an increase in burst/blast damage.</p><p> </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong><strong>Class Profile</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p>Hit Points: 12+Con and 5 per level after that (Standard Leader)</p><p>Surges: 6+Con (1 Lower than Standard Leader, presumably because you start each day with changed infusions)</p><p>Armor: Cloth or Leather</p><p>Weapons: Simple Melee, Simple Ranged (Because you have so many Weapon Powers, you will likely spend a feat on proficiency with a better Weapon, for example, Superior Crossbow is +3 average damage and quadruple the range for 1 feat compared to your starting Dagger.)</p><p>Implements: Rods, Staffs, and Wands (To save hand-space, many people take feats to use their weapon as an implement, or a slotless implement)</p><p>Defense Bonus: +1 Fort, +1 Will</p><p>Skills: Arcana and 4 of: Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Perception, Thievery.</p><p></p><p><strong>Show</strong></p><p>[sblock]<span style="color: #00ccff"></span></p><p><span style="color: #00ccff">Arcana</span> (Int) – Used in Rituals, Monster (Construct, Elemental, Fey, Shadow) Knowledge, Detecting Magic, and anything relating to Magic. In a game of high fantasy, this gets used a LOT.</p><p><span style="color: #800080">Diplomacy</span> (Cha) – Based on a dump-stat, I’m guessing it’s only an option because you’re a Leader and Leaders are supposed to be able to lead.</p><p>Dungeon<span style="color: #ff0000">eering</span> (Wis) – Monster (Abberant) Knowledge, Hazards and general underground survival skill. Perception is generally more useful.</p><p>He<span style="color: #0000ff">al</span> (Wis) – This is a useful skill until you can automatically make the DC15 stabilize/grant a save check.</p><p>History (Int) – This skill lost a lot of mechanical function, but it's still a catch-all for knowing how to do things.</p><p><span style="color: #00ccff">Perc</span><span style="color: #0000ff">eption</span> (Wis) – Avoiding Ambushes and Traps, finding hidden things, and generally being able to see where you’re going (because knowing is only half the battle).</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000">Thievery</span> (Dex) – Arcane Trapsmith lets you use Int instead of Dex, and gives you a +4 feat bonus as well, so unless you actually want to be picking pockets, or are starved for feats, and want to be the “trap guy”, avoid this.</p><p>Unless you get the option to train in something else from a Background, your best option is to just take Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, and Perception.</p><p>Non-Class skills: Acrobatics is always useful so that you can participate in physical skill challenges, and fall more than 5 feet without landing on your face. Endurance is good for much the same reason (except “walk in cold/warm/underwater climates” as opposed to falling). Nature and Religion are the other ritual skills and useful for Monster Knowledge.</p><p>[/sblock] </p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong><strong>Features</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p>Arcane Empowerment – You begin with 1 use, and gain an additional use every milestone. Both uses get better as you gain levels because Item Powers become more powerful, and effects gained from hitting also become more powerful (usually). Overall it’s not an amazing feature, but it can be clutch.</p><p> <span style="color: #800080">Impart Energy</span> – Recharge the daily power of a magic item, an item can only be recharged this way once per day. Situational in use, some items have daily powers that give you Regen 5 for an encounter or give you an action point, but others only give you +1d8 damage.</p><p> Augment Energy – Imbue an item with energy that lasts until the end of your next extended rest, its wielder can expend the energy to gain a +2 bonus to one attack roll as a free action after making the roll, an item can be imbued only once per day. People will talk about situational use and the odds of being with 2 of the number you know you need to hit, but with the number of attack rolls PCs make in a day, it will come up.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #0000ff">Arcane Rejuvenation</span> – When an ally uses a daily item power, they gain THP equal to half your level + your Int Mod. This scales very well, you start at 59% of an average hit at 1st level, and end at 63% at 30thassuming you start with a 20 Int and don’t gain a +2 from your ED; but more importantly, your allies will get more items that have daily powers – Most players hoard their Daily Powers, so Remind them of this feature often!</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #00ccff">Healing Infusion</span> – You start with 2 (3 at 16th), and then can replenish your supply during a short rest by having you or an ally spend a healing surge for each Infusion. You even get to determine the type of Infusion <em>when you use the power</em>, not when it’s created. Because you get to use the surges of anyone in your party to do your healing, this is one of the most useful healing features in the game. There's a handful of feats to make each type of infusion better, depending on race they can be quite powerful.</p><p></p><p> <span style="color: #0000ff">Curative</span> Admixture – Surge + Your Wis healing, increases by +2 for every 5 levels (so +10 by 26th). Even Wis builds start out behind nearly every other leader and then slowly fall further behind. It can make the first few levels very difficult for you if you’re solo healing, still, it’s as good as surgeless.</p><p></p><p><strong>You get to choose between these two options, but it’s really not much of a choice:</strong></p><p></p><p> <span style="color: #0000ff">Resistive</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900">Formula</span> – +1 AC until the end of the encounter, this bonus can be expended to gain Surge + Your Con THP, increases by Your Con every 10 levels (3x Your Con by 21st). For Con builds, this starts out behind but gradually catches up. The real benefit of this power comes from the Shared Valor Armor (giving you THP equal to half of what you granted an ally) and Enhanced Resistive Formula in Paragon (giving a second Ally THP equal to what you granted the target).</p><p> <span style="color: #800080">Shielding Elixir</span> – Resist 5/10/15 to any one damage keyword except Acid or Psychic (which is just odd), and they can end it to become immune to that type of damage EonT. Resist value is fairly low, considering each use after the first 2(3) costs a surge, you need the target to be taking that type of damage more than twice a round for this to compare to Resistive without a very specific build.</p><p></p><p>Ritual Casting – You start with four rituals, but for the most part they aren’t all that useful in most settings. Try to convince your DM to let you create Uncommon items, since even WotC says their rarity system is bad.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Master Mixer</span>– You can take this instead of Ritual Casting, even with the new books adding items to make, they generally aren’t good unless you completely build for it, and that’s not particularly worth it either. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px"><strong><strong>Ability Scores</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Strength</span> – This can be a dump stat for Ranged characters, but close range builds will want to upgrade their armor, possibly pick up a shield, and possibly weapon feats. 8-12</p><p></p><p>Consti<span style="color: #0000ff">tution</span> – Con builds will want this second highest, Wis builds will probably still want it decently high for HP/Surges and Fort Def. 13-16</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Dext</span>erity – Dex is only good for skills and Initiative (Wis builds can take Battlewise to ignore that part), as a Tactical leader, going early is very important, and there’s a few MCs that are worthwhile. 10-13</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900">Intelligence</span> – While you do have some powers, like your Sigils, that don’t require attack rolls, the majority of your powers need to hit to do anything. 18-20</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #0000ff">Wis</span>dom – Wis builds will want this second highest, Con builds will probably still want it decently high for Skills and Will Def. 13-16</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800080">Charisma</span> – Your status as a leader notwithstanding, you don’t have much use for this. There are a couple MCs that are worthwhile, but that’s about it. 8-13</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><strong>Arrays</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p>As far as being a leader goes, there are really only 4 builds possible as a pure Artificer; Close (i.e. Melee and Ranged) or Ranged, and Wis or Con secondary. I wish I could make a nice long list of various options, but when dealing with a Leader class there’s a lot of things that you <em>need</em>to be able to do to be effective, and for an artificer your options to do those things are fairly limited. Few PPs are build defining, even as a Spell Commander (who get Bows and Xbows as implements) you’re perfectly capable of being a close range build.</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><strong>Suggested Arrays</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p>Close Con: 12 15 10 17 11 8 or 12 16 10 16 12 8</p><p>Close Wis: 12 11 8 17 15 10 or 12 12 8 16 16 10</p><p>Ranged Con: 8 14 10 18 11 10</p><p>Ranged Wis: 8 11 10 18 14 10 </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><strong>About Armor</strong></strong></span></p><p></p><p>Leather and being Int Primary isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you (poor Sorcerers). Assuming you start with a 20 Int, and bump it every chance, your AC Progression remains right around Level+16, which isn’t terrible for a Ranged leader. Melee types will probably want to upgrade to at least a shield in Paragon, and possibly Hide/Ring Mail as well. Because you are Int primary, Chain is a fair waste of time now that Ring Mail exists.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nibelung, post: 6704863, member: 74499"] [b]Originally posted by Zathris:[/b] Power Source and Role: You can rebuild it; you have the Magic, You have the Technology. [Size=4][b]Role[/b][/size] [COLOR=#00ccff]Buffing [/COLOR]– Most of your best powers give bonuses to Attack, Damage, Defenses, or Resistances. Proper combinations of these can turn even a Swordmage into a fearsome striker. Battle Engineers excel at this. Debuffing – Not really a strong point for Artificers. You have a few powers that give the enemy penalties to attack rolls, slow, or daze them. Mostly in this area are powers that punish the enemy for attacking your allies. Being Arcane makes it easy to get these things through MC Power swapping if you really want. [COLOR=#800080]Enabling[/COLOR] – While Artificers have a couple really good repositioning powers, you typically don’t have the ability to let allies do things out of turn. Spell Commanders are a notable exception, and are quite a bit better at this. [COLOR=#0000ff]Summoning[/COLOR] – An area that normally doesn’t get mentioned in a leader guide, Artificers have several very good summons, gaining access to Minor Action attacks, Marking, and other Punishment earlier than most other Summoning classes. [COLOR=#00ccff]Healing[/COLOR] – As previously mentioned, Artificers grant THP like no other character. Their direct healing is fairly good as well, especially if your allies are melee types. Saves – Your ability to grant saves is lacking however, with only 2 encounter powers, but generally your THP generation and Healing more than make up for it. [COLOR=#800080]Survivability[/COLOR]– You start in Leather with no Shield, and you have 1 less surge than the other leaders. Your healing powers generally only target allies as well, so you’ll need to invest in improving your AC and ability to keep yourself up if you want to slog into melee. The good news is that you’re fairly comfortable at range with a good selection of implements (even though your weapon options suck), and your healing doesn’t cost you surges. Also, you prefer being next to (behind) an ally or 2 for most of your powers to be their best, and clumping can result in an increase in burst/blast damage. [Size=4][b][b]Class Profile[/b][/b][/size] Hit Points: 12+Con and 5 per level after that (Standard Leader) Surges: 6+Con (1 Lower than Standard Leader, presumably because you start each day with changed infusions) Armor: Cloth or Leather Weapons: Simple Melee, Simple Ranged (Because you have so many Weapon Powers, you will likely spend a feat on proficiency with a better Weapon, for example, Superior Crossbow is +3 average damage and quadruple the range for 1 feat compared to your starting Dagger.) Implements: Rods, Staffs, and Wands (To save hand-space, many people take feats to use their weapon as an implement, or a slotless implement) Defense Bonus: +1 Fort, +1 Will Skills: Arcana and 4 of: Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Perception, Thievery. [b]Show[/b] [sblock][COLOR=#00ccff] Arcana[/COLOR] (Int) – Used in Rituals, Monster (Construct, Elemental, Fey, Shadow) Knowledge, Detecting Magic, and anything relating to Magic. In a game of high fantasy, this gets used a LOT. [COLOR=#800080]Diplomacy[/COLOR] (Cha) – Based on a dump-stat, I’m guessing it’s only an option because you’re a Leader and Leaders are supposed to be able to lead. Dungeon[COLOR=#ff0000]eering[/COLOR] (Wis) – Monster (Abberant) Knowledge, Hazards and general underground survival skill. Perception is generally more useful. He[COLOR=#0000ff]al[/COLOR] (Wis) – This is a useful skill until you can automatically make the DC15 stabilize/grant a save check. History (Int) – This skill lost a lot of mechanical function, but it's still a catch-all for knowing how to do things. [COLOR=#00ccff]Perc[/COLOR][COLOR=#0000ff]eption[/COLOR] (Wis) – Avoiding Ambushes and Traps, finding hidden things, and generally being able to see where you’re going (because knowing is only half the battle). [COLOR=#ff0000]Thievery[/COLOR] (Dex) – Arcane Trapsmith lets you use Int instead of Dex, and gives you a +4 feat bonus as well, so unless you actually want to be picking pockets, or are starved for feats, and want to be the “trap guy”, avoid this. Unless you get the option to train in something else from a Background, your best option is to just take Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, and Perception. Non-Class skills: Acrobatics is always useful so that you can participate in physical skill challenges, and fall more than 5 feet without landing on your face. Endurance is good for much the same reason (except “walk in cold/warm/underwater climates” as opposed to falling). Nature and Religion are the other ritual skills and useful for Monster Knowledge. [/sblock] [Size=4][b][b]Features[/b][/b][/size] Arcane Empowerment – You begin with 1 use, and gain an additional use every milestone. Both uses get better as you gain levels because Item Powers become more powerful, and effects gained from hitting also become more powerful (usually). Overall it’s not an amazing feature, but it can be clutch. [COLOR=#800080]Impart Energy[/COLOR] – Recharge the daily power of a magic item, an item can only be recharged this way once per day. Situational in use, some items have daily powers that give you Regen 5 for an encounter or give you an action point, but others only give you +1d8 damage. Augment Energy – Imbue an item with energy that lasts until the end of your next extended rest, its wielder can expend the energy to gain a +2 bonus to one attack roll as a free action after making the roll, an item can be imbued only once per day. People will talk about situational use and the odds of being with 2 of the number you know you need to hit, but with the number of attack rolls PCs make in a day, it will come up. [COLOR=#0000ff]Arcane Rejuvenation[/COLOR] – When an ally uses a daily item power, they gain THP equal to half your level + your Int Mod. This scales very well, you start at 59% of an average hit at 1st level, and end at 63% at 30thassuming you start with a 20 Int and don’t gain a +2 from your ED; but more importantly, your allies will get more items that have daily powers – Most players hoard their Daily Powers, so Remind them of this feature often! [COLOR=#00ccff]Healing Infusion[/COLOR] – You start with 2 (3 at 16th), and then can replenish your supply during a short rest by having you or an ally spend a healing surge for each Infusion. You even get to determine the type of Infusion [i]when you use the power[/i], not when it’s created. Because you get to use the surges of anyone in your party to do your healing, this is one of the most useful healing features in the game. There's a handful of feats to make each type of infusion better, depending on race they can be quite powerful. [COLOR=#0000ff]Curative[/COLOR] Admixture – Surge + Your Wis healing, increases by +2 for every 5 levels (so +10 by 26th). Even Wis builds start out behind nearly every other leader and then slowly fall further behind. It can make the first few levels very difficult for you if you’re solo healing, still, it’s as good as surgeless. [b]You get to choose between these two options, but it’s really not much of a choice:[/b] [COLOR=#0000ff]Resistive[/COLOR] [COLOR=#ff9900]Formula[/COLOR] – +1 AC until the end of the encounter, this bonus can be expended to gain Surge + Your Con THP, increases by Your Con every 10 levels (3x Your Con by 21st). For Con builds, this starts out behind but gradually catches up. The real benefit of this power comes from the Shared Valor Armor (giving you THP equal to half of what you granted an ally) and Enhanced Resistive Formula in Paragon (giving a second Ally THP equal to what you granted the target). [COLOR=#800080]Shielding Elixir[/COLOR] – Resist 5/10/15 to any one damage keyword except Acid or Psychic (which is just odd), and they can end it to become immune to that type of damage EonT. Resist value is fairly low, considering each use after the first 2(3) costs a surge, you need the target to be taking that type of damage more than twice a round for this to compare to Resistive without a very specific build. Ritual Casting – You start with four rituals, but for the most part they aren’t all that useful in most settings. Try to convince your DM to let you create Uncommon items, since even WotC says their rarity system is bad. [COLOR=#800080]Master Mixer[/COLOR]– You can take this instead of Ritual Casting, even with the new books adding items to make, they generally aren’t good unless you completely build for it, and that’s not particularly worth it either. [Size=4][b][b]Ability Scores[/b][/b][/size] [COLOR=#800080]Strength[/COLOR] – This can be a dump stat for Ranged characters, but close range builds will want to upgrade their armor, possibly pick up a shield, and possibly weapon feats. 8-12 Consti[COLOR=#0000ff]tution[/COLOR] – Con builds will want this second highest, Wis builds will probably still want it decently high for HP/Surges and Fort Def. 13-16 [COLOR=#800080]Dext[/COLOR]erity – Dex is only good for skills and Initiative (Wis builds can take Battlewise to ignore that part), as a Tactical leader, going early is very important, and there’s a few MCs that are worthwhile. 10-13 [COLOR=#ff9900]Intelligence[/COLOR] – While you do have some powers, like your Sigils, that don’t require attack rolls, the majority of your powers need to hit to do anything. 18-20 [COLOR=#0000ff]Wis[/COLOR]dom – Wis builds will want this second highest, Con builds will probably still want it decently high for Skills and Will Def. 13-16 [COLOR=#800080]Charisma[/COLOR] – Your status as a leader notwithstanding, you don’t have much use for this. There are a couple MCs that are worthwhile, but that’s about it. 8-13 [Size=3][b][b]Arrays[/b][/b][/size] As far as being a leader goes, there are really only 4 builds possible as a pure Artificer; Close (i.e. Melee and Ranged) or Ranged, and Wis or Con secondary. I wish I could make a nice long list of various options, but when dealing with a Leader class there’s a lot of things that you [i]need[/i]to be able to do to be effective, and for an artificer your options to do those things are fairly limited. Few PPs are build defining, even as a Spell Commander (who get Bows and Xbows as implements) you’re perfectly capable of being a close range build. [Size=3][b][b]Suggested Arrays[/b][/b][/size] Close Con: 12 15 10 17 11 8 or 12 16 10 16 12 8 Close Wis: 12 11 8 17 15 10 or 12 12 8 16 16 10 Ranged Con: 8 14 10 18 11 10 Ranged Wis: 8 11 10 18 14 10 [Size=3][b][b]About Armor[/b][/b][/size] Leather and being Int Primary isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you (poor Sorcerers). Assuming you start with a 20 Int, and bump it every chance, your AC Progression remains right around Level+16, which isn’t terrible for a Ranged leader. Melee types will probably want to upgrade to at least a shield in Paragon, and possibly Hide/Ring Mail as well. Because you are Int primary, Chain is a fair waste of time now that Ring Mail exists. [/QUOTE]
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