Artificer Class 5e Homebrew

Also, I've got a question: You can create permanent magic items with this class. What happens to the craft points spent to do so? I know craft points don't just regenerate on their own, which is a good mechanic, but if you used a few weeks to create an actual +1 weapon, do you have a way of getting those craft points back or are they permanently gone?
 

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Wow, a lot of posts happened while I was gone! I'm excited at all the feedback. However, that means I this post will be quite long to address most of it, so prepare yourselves.

First off, I wanna thank hardvice for his responses while I was gone, he very accurately explained certain rules and my thought process behind the class.

Secondly, I will alter the cantrips, reboot and pending potion infusions as suggested because that will help add more flavor to the class and clarify some rules, thank you for pointing those out to me, Goemoe and Trascendantviewer. The purpose of Reboot was supposed to be a construct equivalent to spare the dying, affecting things like allied warforged, master-maker pets, animate object creations, and maybe an other allied constructs (golems or any other allied constructs the DM gave.) It should not be used to give life or repair an object like a sword that hasn't been living before. As hardvice said, unless you are a master maker and using your pet for combat or have a WF ally that dies a lot, you probably won't get a lot of use from this infusion and it will be very situational.

Sadly, as stated before Goemoe, as much as I agree and really want to include thieves' tools proficiency to the class, giving them that option would just take too much away from the rogue and annihilate it's class balance. But the flavor of this artificer is just an infuser of temporary magical items, and if DM allows it, much more efficient permanent magic item creator. It doesn't really make sense for a crafter to know how to disable traps. However, nothing is stopping you from taking/creating a background to give you proficiency with them! Heck, I plan on doing it with my artificer characters. If you really like the "Indiana Jones" flavor, you could easily create a "Treasure Hunter" background that gives proficiency with Perception, Investigation, one language, thieves' tools and a minor benefit like knowing the exact value of a rare item. The purpose of Thirst For Knowledge was to give some ideas as to why an Artificer would join an adventuring group.

I'm not entirely set on where UMD is as of right now, because this class still features some dead levels. I just really wanted the class to have the ability and I threw the ability on the first dead level I saw. I thought it was a rather good place for it though because that's around the level you can use Rare wands. Wands are very iconic to previous artificer builds and I feel like that should be an option. And to be perfectly honest, not many items in the DMG have requirements that UMD will bypass (besides being a spellcaster, which as stated before pretty much affects only wands which are nice, and staves or rods which don't give as much of a bonus to the artificer as much as the class such items were designed for). Nothing the Artificer can create will be overpowered for his level because he can't learn a formula for an item above the rarity:level guide in the DMG, unless the DM hands the formula or item to the party.

About the short rest creating of scrolls and potions; you can only create one scroll and one potion in the course of one short rest. This is because the class is very much based on warlock. It has a reasonable way to provide cantrip level damage with Personal Weapon Augmentation, (but not quite as strong as a warlock because a warlock's role is DPS and the Artificer is supposed to be versatile and fill utility roles) provide supplemental infusion (like invocations) to fill little gaps and flavor abilities that allow more character diversity and expertise, and the ability to provide occasional, situational powerful abilities to alter the course of an encounter (equivalent to the short rest regaining spell slots of a Warlock). I did not want the Artificer to be nearly as potent of a spellcaster as a Warlock, so limiting one spell and potion ability per short rest seemed like a very good limiting factor, as well as the craft reserve limit. While the Warlocks power comes from spells, the Artificer's comes from items instead. An artificer can create a bunch of items and use them all in one encounter, but then he will have a hard time getting those resources back when he needs them, unlike the Warlock, but to make up for that, the Artificers items and scrolls have much more versatility and options.

Finally, creating permanent magic items has no effect on craft reserve, unless you are creating an item that requires a casting of a specific spell during creation that must be fulfilled by a scroll casting instead (basically, the craft reserve and time needed to create the required scroll each day of creation). An artificer makes magic items the same way as any other character does, but the artificer is slightly better at it than most classes as long as the item's rarity corresponds to the rarity level Exquisite Crafter acquired at his/her level. This is because the gold and time required to create a magic item under those circumstances are halved.

I think that's everything. I would love some suggestions to fill/rearrange the class to fill in dead levels. (9th, 10th, 13th, 15th, 18th). I'm thinking of moving the 11th level Artificer Specialization perks to 10th and 17th level Artificer Specialization perks to 18th. These will get rid of 10th and 18th level dead levels. Any comments on that decision?
 
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Maybe there's a way to use craft reserve for enhance weapon and elemental infusion. After all, they're temporary magic items, albeit not scrolls or potions.

Something like "As an action, you can imbue a nonmagical weapon you touch with magical energy. Spend two points from your craft reserve; for 1 hour, the weapon is magical and gains a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. At 7th level, you can spend 3 points to grant a +2 bonus, and at 11th level, you can spend 4 points to grant a +3 bonus."

That removes the concentration limit, which means you *can* buff the whole party at once -- but you're going to burn through your craft reserve in no time if you do. It also gives a character who isn't all that interested in making scrolls or potions (like a selfish Warforged battle engineer) something to do with those points.

I actually didn't see this post because you posted it while I was making mine. While I can see doing this from a flavor standpoint, I'm scared of the power it may give to the class. Giving everyone in the party +X weapons without using concentration, despite using Craft Reserve, seems way too powerful. That's because it is replicating the effect of a concentration spell multiple times, and allows for concentration to be spent somewhere else too (through wand or scroll). And it would be incredibly strong in campaigns with very little magic items, so I'd be more hesitant to go this route, even compared to the at-will infusions already in the class.
 

I still believe that the features that are strong, mainly the Construct Repair, shouldn't be limited by the Intelligence Modifier of the caster. It allows them to get a lot of uses out of them, where another spellcaster couldn't get nearly as many.
As for what you said about the Reboot Infusion, the simple fact remains that it can't stop a construct from dying, since constructs don't become "Dying" requiring death saves, they merely cease being a construct.
 
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I still believe that the features that are strong, mainly the Construct Repair, shouldn't be limited by the Intelligence Modifier of the caster. It allows them to get a lot of uses out of them, where another spellcaster couldn't get nearly as many.
As for what you said about the Reboot Infusion, the simple fact remains that it can't stop a construct from dying, since constructs don't become "Dying" requiring death saves, they merely cease being a construct.

What would you recommend limiting it to then? Once per short rest? I know you recommended proficiency bonus before, but that would allow even more castings of it at higher levels than int mod and it would be a completely random limiting mechanic that doesn't fit along with other infusions.

Yep! Thanks for pointing it out. I changed it to make it work like spare the dying for living constructs and a pseudo-spare the dying for regular constructs so it should work for both WF and any other construct that was living before dying by being knocked down to 0 hit points.
 

Well, since they get so few infusions, letting them cast one a bunch of times per Long Rest isn't a huge problem, but letting them get a large number of castings right off the bat is. Which is why I recommended tying it into their Proficiency Bonus, it's a static number that starts out small and doesn't get ridiculously high. And I wouldn't say it's random, more like a way of representing their growing skill and prowess with the ability. There was once a time when they could only do it twice in a day because they couldn't muster up enough magical energies, but now, they can do it 3 times as often in a day, showing how much they've improved.
 
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Sadly, as stated before Goemoe, as much as I agree and really want to include thieves' tools proficiency to the class, giving them that option would just take too much away from the rogue and annihilate it's class balance. But the flavor of this artificer is just an infuser of temporary magical items, and if DM allows it, much more efficient permanent magic item creator. It doesn't really make sense for a crafter to know how to disable traps. However, nothing is stopping you from taking/creating a background to give you proficiency with them! Heck, I plan on doing it with my artificer characters. If you really like the "Indiana Jones" flavor, you could easily create a "Treasure Hunter" background that gives proficiency with Perception, Investigation, one language, thieves' tools and a minor benefit like knowing the exact value of a rare item. The purpose of Thirst For Knowledge was to give some ideas as to why an Artificer would join an adventuring group.
Well that is your take on the artificer. For me an artificer has to have the choice of thieve tools.

Keith wrote in his blog:
To begin with: For this session, I’m setting aside the creation of permanent magic items. Magic Items fill a different role in 5E than in 3.5, and the issue of how to approach this with the final artificer will take some thought. Given that, I’m looking for medium armor proficiency and shields; proficiency with Thieves’ Tools; and a character that generally fights with (magically enhanced) weapons as opposed to slinging spells.

For me the arctificer is exactly that. An engineer working with metal and magic. A tinkerer, combining mechanics and magic. She is interested in every part of working mechanisms, be it magic or mechanics. At least one subclass will get those thieves tools as they are an integral part of the class in every edition so far. You might not like it and create a different artificer for your campaign, but for me an artificer without thievery is lacking a key element of the class.
 

I still believe that the features that are strong, mainly the Construct Repair, shouldn't be limited by the Intelligence Modifier of the caster. It allows them to get a lot of uses out of them, where another spellcaster couldn't get nearly as many.

After thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure if the intelligence modifier amount of uses is really that strong. Starting at level 2, an Artificer must give up one of his two infusions (more than likely the other one being used on Augmentation), which severely limits some versatility because of the other perks the infusions can offer. If an Artificer starts with an int mod of 20, that's the only way he will have a remarkably bigger amount of uses than a level 2 spellcaster of an equal level. However, Repair Construct does not get + modifier to health regained like actual healing spells do. A cleric of 3rd level would get to heal 1d8+5 hit points 3 times, average of 28.5 hit points (more if life cleric). An Artificer would get 5 uses of 1d8 hit points, for an average of 22.5 hit points. And considering the Artificer's infusion would only work on any warforged in the party and any random constructs you come across at that level while the cleric's can affect almost anyone in the world, I feel the ability isn't really that strong with int mod uses.
 

Well that is your take on the artificer. For me an artificer has to have the choice of thieve tools.

Keith wrote in his blog:

For me the arctificer is exactly that. An engineer working with metal and magic. A tinkerer, combining mechanics and magic. She is interested in every part of working mechanisms, be it magic or mechanics. At least one subclass will get those thieves tools as they are an integral part of the class in every edition so far. You might not like it and create a different artificer for your campaign, but for me an artificer without thievery is lacking a key element of the class.

My issue with thieves' tools is not the flavor of it. I agree completely with your ideology, and I think all/most artificers would be very interested in the mechanics of traps and how to bypass them, which is why every Artificer I plan on making will get proficiency in them some how. It really isn't hard to come up with a background that gives thieves' tools because basic mechanism knowledge and tinkering probably came before the magical infusing parts. And if it didn't and the character is interested enough, the Skilled feat and downtime activities exist. The problem with it though, is class balance. When making a class, you have to consider the roles of all the other classes and make sure this one fits it mechanically and is distinct enough flavorfully. That was my goal, and I feel it accomplishes that very well. If you gave the Artificer thieves' tools in its base proficiencies, that would take away a major mechanic that made the Rogue unique, while the Artificer's take on gameplay is already very distinct. For the sake of that, I had to alter and sacrifice the flavor of the Artificer to compensate. Any class having proficiency in thieves' tools isn't broken, because they had to give something up instead for that benefit, like downtime, a language, another tool proficiency, etc.
 

After thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure if the intelligence modifier amount of uses is really that strong. Starting at level 2, an Artificer must give up one of his two infusions (more than likely the other one being used on Augmentation), which severely limits some versatility because of the other perks the infusions can offer. If an Artificer starts with an int mod of 20, that's the only way he will have a remarkably bigger amount of uses than a level 2 spellcaster of an equal level. However, Repair Construct does not get + modifier to health regained like actual healing spells do. A cleric of 3rd level would get to heal 1d8+5 hit points 3 times, average of 28.5 hit points (more if life cleric). An Artificer would get 5 uses of 1d8 hit points, for an average of 22.5 hit points. And considering the Artificer's infusion would only work on any warforged in the party and any random constructs you come across at that level while the cleric's can affect almost anyone in the world, I feel the ability isn't really that strong with int mod uses.

Alright, well, letting them cast Magic Weapon at will at 3rd level is definitely strong. Especially since it gets stronger as they level. You've convinced me that the Intelligence Modifier number of uses is alright, since it's such a limited resource.
 

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