Reviewing the Artificer

[Roxlimn]

There is a way for the Artificer to "grant healing" in the manner of Healing Word or Inspiring Word without it devolving into blowing tea into the air. I say give the Artificer a Short Rest power and remove the 2x Encounter healing crap:

Armor of Resistance

Use your ally's vital force to enhance his armor.

Encounter, Arcane, Artifice
Short Rest
One Armor

Effect: Your ally uses up one of his healing surges. You add a power to his armor. As an immediate interrupt triggered by getting hit by an attack, he can gain resistance to all damage equal to his healing surge value until the start of his next turn. You cannot enchant an armor with more than one instance of this power.


Yes, this is extremely powerful. Essentially, what it does is "heal" your ally of his healing surge value by protecting him from one attack. It doesn't "heal" as much as an Inspiring Word or a Healing Word and it can't be used on short rests to boost your party's native Healing Surges, but it DOES heavily discourage enemy focus firing, and it's extremely good at that.

Its main advantage is that you can layer it on everyone so it essentially can be used 5 times per encounter. I don't know if that's super-broken powerful.

Its main disadvantage is that you can't really ameliorate round to round damage as much. Once your ally expends his enchantment, he's a sitting duck. You can't help him recover retroactively.

The power doesn't need to scale because healing surges automatically scale to level.


Personally, I think Artificer powers should focus on these items:

1. Ally buffing and healing. Dailies on Short Rests for this, definitely. More Good Luck Charms and Hero's Elixirs, please.

2. Striking. Yes, Striking. 3e Artificers were known for striking and I think the class would lose its flavor if we killed this aspect of it. Encounter Powers for this. Blastificers concentrate on using powers from Wands. Crossbow blasters concentrate on enchanting their crossbows with deadly powers. No cross-healing on this please.

3. "Summoning." No walls, please. We want our Homonculi and Artifices. Barbed Automaton would be great if it lasted for more than a turn. Sustain: move action would limit the number of actions and Artifices you could use, cutting down on attack rolls and action economy - I imagine it would work a lot like the Mount rules.

In any case, the number of powers usable in an encounter could cap that number by itself, and if the attacks were sufficiently weak and uniform, it would not be any more complicated than a Wizard leveling a multitarget AoE power.

 

[fuindordm]

I said: But to preserve the distinctive flavor of the power sources, Martial characters should not be able to restore HP (=morale) to the unconscious, and Arcane characters should not be tossing around pure healing at range.

I don't see why not. These seem like arbitrary declarations.

Because I would like to preserve a significant difference in the flavor of the three power sources. If anyone can heal just as well and easily as the divine classes, then what's the point of dividing the two kinds of magic?

Now, I like systems such as Arcana Unearthed (Monte Cook) where all classes use the same spell list very much. If there is only one kind of magic in the world, then obviously no distinctions are needed. But one of the D&D conceits is that there is a strong distinction between Arcane and Divine, and I would like to preserve that feeling rather than breaking down the walls at every opportunity.

One of the things I didn't like about 3E design was its insouciant tendency to toss all the best arcane spells into divine domains, for this very reason.

 

[darkdragoon]

Hmm... so how does Inspiring Word work on an unconscious character?

Unconsciousness is not being able to respond to stimuli. Which is different from not receiving stimuli.

 

[Roxlimn]

Less Warlord, more Artificer.

 

[Danzauker]

This conversation just made me notice something: the cleric and warlord powers don't require their target to be conscious!

From PH p.293: "When a power heals you, you don't have to take an action to spend a healing surge. Even if you're unconscious, the power uses your healing surge and restores hit points."

This is funny.

I haven't yet received the books, but could I heal an unwilling creature?

If this is the case I could use a healing power to actually hinder an enemy, let's say it is close to 100% hit points so that I actually have him waste an action surge, or maybe it has an action surge powered ability, or is more powerful when bloodied...

 

[vladbat]

Is flavor really that big of a problem? I see my artificer throwing syringes at allies for his healing infusions, throwing combinations of dusts in the air and then zapping them with electricity from a gauntlet mounted generator to create things like Lightning Motes. Dancing weapon screams "Clockwork" to me. Thundering armor is a tympanic membrane on my armor that sends out sonic waves when struck.

He can enchant items if he takes the ritual but I think he needs some feats that allows him to do it better or cheaper or with less residuum. Implements seems to be too busy with the hands required which almost forces one to take quickdraw.

I built a WF to 20 to get a paragon path and it looks pretty solid. I think it would fill the role of leader as well as the Warlord I d built previously. Would I like more options? Absolutely! But I'm glad to have an Artificer at all.

 

[Novem5er]

I'm just not comfortable with all the at-range, instant enchantments. It just doesn't match anything that I've read about the Artificer in other sources.

There are a few early level powers that enchant an ally's armor. However, you don't actually have to do anything to that armor, other than point a wand and say Boom... from a range of 50'.

Now, let's keep in mind that this is only one build. Maybe the other build has more artifices or more short rest powers. I'm not confident that this is the case, yet, because that would seem like what most players were expecting... so why put out a different build that doesn't meet the expectations of the players?

Mechanically, I don't think the artificer is bad. I just find that it stretches the imagination WAY more than the other classes.

Why can't the artificer have more artifices that are "encounter" powers or "daily" powers. Make it a short rest to create such an object, and then give it a power that can be activated once per encounter. Daily powers infused to an object could take an extended rest to create.

At will powers can just be artifices that are carried all the time, that can be used At-Will. The thundering armor ability could actually be an artifice that hurls magical globes of thunder energy at an ally. The globe hits the ally, surrounds him/her in protective energy, and then blasts an enemy.


They kind of hinted at this in the fluff w/ components, but then they ignored it in the power descriptions by putting in all sorts of wand-waving.

 

[Badkarmaboy]

Lots of good feedback in here.

I hope folks email their thoughts to wotc...

 

[bganon]

At which he is no better and than wizards, and like wizards he is likely to find that this gives him weaker wands than the ones he finds. The motivation for an artificer to actually Create Magic Items is as weak as it is for everyone else. I therefore strongly believe that their powers should have an "artificer-y" feel, rather than having them assumed to be artificing because it's magic through a wand.

Honestly, the only reason artificers were better than everybody else in 3.5e at making items was because everyone else, even wizards, sucked too much at making items. It required too much investment (feats, xp) for little gain.

In 4e, making magic items doesn't seem to suck quite so much anymore, so the need for artificers to be better at it is less pressing. But they do still gain from making items because they can get twice the daily usage out of them, and that's a pretty big deal.

Creating a wand of chill strike at 4th level is probably not a big deal for a wizard since they could already take it as an encounter power, and not a big deal for a warlock since they probably don't have the Int to make best use of it. But when the artificer probably has an Int as good as a wizard, and can use that wand twice per day, it starts looking a whole lot better. And that's without making it any easier to make.

Keep in mind we also haven't seen any class feats yet.

 

[DracoSuave]

This is funny.

I haven't yet received the books, but could I heal an unwilling creature?

If this is the case I could use a healing power to actually hinder an enemy, let's say it is close to 100% hit points so that I actually have him waste an action surge, or maybe it has an action surge powered ability, or is more powerful when bloodied...

So long as he's you or an ally. Sure. Why not?

Of course, monsters don't have the ability to use healing surges with a couple notable exceptions....