RealAlHazred
Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Let me make up some numbers as a demonstration; they'll have a narrow range of "good" target values and the ability to expand, just like spellbook versatility. Let's say that something has a base value, and can be expected to grow by about 5 points, but hypothetically could grow by up to 25 (however, it might not grow at all, and all signs point to 5 being a good average for expected growth, maybe plus or minus 2 if you want a 95% confidence interval, but the possibility of +25 still exists.). Anything over 35 would be considered "overpowered". Anything under 25 is considered "underpowered". What's the value you'd pick for the starting point?
Your argument seems to be that you should pick 30 and remove the ability to expand it at all, which prevents the possibility of it ever growing to broken values. After all, if you kept the ability to expand, 30+25 = 55, which is ZOMGBRORKEN. (Note: I'd agree that in this example, 55 is broken.)
My argument is that it should start at 25. If the system expects a 5-growth range, then this will stll reach 30 (it's rare that you'll see anything higher than 32), which isn't yet broken - and it still has some leeway. The possibility exists of a 50, but all signs point to this being very rare, and the cirumstances that will bring this about cause other problems (because they imply a set of houserules that the system doesn't account for). And in the other corner case where it grows by 0, the result is 25, which is still acceptable.
THAT'S what I'm aiming for. If I reduce the number of schema available to the base class, low enough that it's still useful but it has room to grow between its base value and the point where it breaks, AND if the "wiggle room" corresponds to a more room than the game's default systems can expect to fill, I will have done my job. Adding in crazy Monty Haul circumstances where everyone can buy a bajillion scrolls every Tuesday is something a DM undertakes under caution, just like every other variant in the rules (including Honor, Sanity, wounds, and Epic Heroism resting), and that rule will impact far more than just the artificer.
My goal is to get the base artificer balanced against the base system using its baseline assumptions, first. I am attempting to make it robust to changes in those assumptions, but I can't be expected to think of every crazy houserule that DMs come up with. Neither could WotC, really, which is why there are so many cautionary notes about variant rules scattered throughout the DMG.
I see two ways to accomplish something like this. One of them is understandable but is bad design. The second is new design space, but only potentially bad design.
The first, understandable, one is looking at self-only caster buffs - like paladin smites and ranger Swift Quiver - and wanting them as a fighter or rogue without having to multiclass.
Surely you see this is entirely centered around stealing another class' unique thunder - I wouldn't give Action Surge to paladins nor Metamagic to wizards, and I went to great lengths to prevent Spell Storing Item use from stealing Pact Magic's unique uses. Unique spells (which include nearly all of the Personal spells) are under the same umbrella. (Honestly, if it weren't for the cumbersome steps an artificer has to go through, I would restrict schema to spells that appear on more than one spell list, just to prevent this (even though that's incredibly cumbersome to figure out, thanks to the way the PHB is laid out!). Single-classed artificers generally lack the resources to exploit the low-level uniques like Hunter's Mark, but multiclassed artificers - which I'm still working on testing - don't necessarily have this limitation.)
It's also completely accomplishable through multiclassing - especially since one level in Ranger is all you'd need to use an artificer's arcane device of any ranger spell, so the artificer already lets you pull this off with fewer actual Ranger levels than normal (assuming he's high enough level to get the schema, and he can find it or chooses it with one of his few free level-up schemas - in the specific case of ranger, this potentially lets you get Swift Quiver slightly earlier (14th instead of 17th), but bards were already doing this at 10th (or even 6th, for Lore bards), and I'll happly apply any patch WotC uses to fix that in the core rules.). It just won't let you pull it off without ranger levels. And what was that you were saying about opportunity costs?
(A minor addendum: You can't actually use a one-level artificer dip the same way. You'd need to copy the higher-level schema from another artificer's book of schema, and you can't do that if you don't have a high enough spell slot. You'd need at least two levels, unless you're already a spellcaster of some sort, which isn't in your example.)
The second, potentially usable, is that you would prefer it if the warriors could contribute a concentration slot, so casters won't see "buff the fighter" as a burden.
Because that's pretty easy to accomplish through a different infusion (I don't have a name for it yet, but it would affect an item that's currently under the influence of a spell whose caster is both willing and maintaining concentration; the item's wielder is now considered concentrating on it). It's also the reason why I originally had spellforgers bypass concentration on the Tools of War spells. However, using an infusion like this is not like that (now ex-) concentration bypass, because it allows any caster's buff to transfer the concentration load onto its subject. For an artificer, that means that you might stop concentrating on one Magic Weapon and start concentrating on another.... but for a wizard, it means you stop concentrating on one Magic Weapon and start concentrating on Evard's Black Tentacles. THAT would require all kinds of crazy balancing and testing to prevent an explosion.
I'm not saying it's impossible - just that it's very treacherous waters.
You're viewing it binary again, where unless something is exactly the right value, it's under- or over-powered.
Let me make up some numbers as a demonstration; they'll have a narrow range of "good" target values and the ability to expand, just like spellbook versatility. Let's say that something has a base value, and can be expected to grow by about 5 points, but hypothetically could grow by up to 25 (however, it might not grow at all, and all signs point to 5 being a good average for expected growth, maybe plus or minus 2 if you want a 95% confidence interval, but the possibility of +25 still exists.). Anything over 35 would be considered "overpowered". Anything under 25 is considered "underpowered". What's the value you'd pick for the starting point?
Your argument seems to be that you should pick 30 and remove the ability to expand it at all, which prevents the possibility of it ever growing to broken values. After all, if you kept the ability to expand, 30+25 = 55, which is ZOMGBRORKEN. (Note: I'd agree that in this example, 55 is broken.)
My argument is that it should start at 25. If the system expects a 5-growth range, then this will stll reach 30 (it's rare that you'll see anything higher than 32), which isn't yet broken - and it still has some leeway. The possibility exists of a 50, but all signs point to this being very rare, and the cirumstances that will bring this about cause other problems (because they imply a set of houserules that the system doesn't account for). And in the other corner case where it grows by 0, the result is 25, which is still acceptable.
THAT'S what I'm aiming for. If I reduce the number of schema available to the base class, low enough that it's still useful but it has room to grow between its base value and the point where it breaks, AND if the "wiggle room" corresponds to a more room than the game's default systems can expect to fill, I will have done my job. Adding in crazy Monty Haul circumstances where everyone can buy a bajillion scrolls every Tuesday is something a DM undertakes under caution, just like every other variant in the rules (including Honor, Sanity, wounds, and Epic Heroism resting), and that rule will impact far more than just the artificer.
My goal is to get the base artificer balanced against the base system using its baseline assumptions, first. I am attempting to make it robust to changes in those assumptions, but I can't be expected to think of every crazy houserule that DMs come up with. Neither could WotC, really, which is why there are so many cautionary notes about variant rules scattered throughout the DMG.
Setting aside that buffs in 5e are decidedly in the Boring But Practical category, instead of in the "Turn the caster into an impossible avatar of death" category that plagued CoDzillas everywhere....
I see two ways to accomplish something like this. One of them is understandable but is bad design. The second is new design space, but only potentially bad design.
The first, understandable, one is looking at self-only caster buffs - like paladin smites and ranger Swift Quiver - and wanting them as a fighter or rogue without having to multiclass.
Surely you see this is entirely centered around stealing another class' unique thunder - I wouldn't give Action Surge to paladins nor Metamagic to wizards, and I went to great lengths to prevent Spell Storing Item use from stealing Pact Magic's unique uses. Unique spells (which include nearly all of the Personal spells) are under the same umbrella. (Honestly, if it weren't for the cumbersome steps an artificer has to go through, I would restrict schema to spells that appear on more than one spell list, just to prevent this (even though that's incredibly cumbersome to figure out, thanks to the way the PHB is laid out!). Single-classed artificers generally lack the resources to exploit the low-level uniques like Hunter's Mark, but multiclassed artificers - which I'm still working on testing - don't necessarily have this limitation.)
It's also completely accomplishable through multiclassing - especially since one level in Ranger is all you'd need to use an artificer's arcane device of any ranger spell, so the artificer already lets you pull this off with fewer actual Ranger levels than normal (assuming he's high enough level to get the schema, and he can find it or chooses it with one of his few free level-up schemas - in the specific case of ranger, this potentially lets you get Swift Quiver slightly earlier (14th instead of 17th), but bards were already doing this at 10th (or even 6th, for Lore bards), and I'll happly apply any patch WotC uses to fix that in the core rules.). It just won't let you pull it off without ranger levels. And what was that you were saying about opportunity costs?
(A minor addendum: You can't actually use a one-level artificer dip the same way. You'd need to copy the higher-level schema from another artificer's book of schema, and you can't do that if you don't have a high enough spell slot. You'd need at least two levels, unless you're already a spellcaster of some sort, which isn't in your example.)
The second, potentially usable, is that you would prefer it if the warriors could contribute a concentration slot, so casters won't see "buff the fighter" as a burden.
Because that's pretty easy to accomplish through a different infusion (I don't have a name for it yet, but it would affect an item that's currently under the influence of a spell whose caster is both willing and maintaining concentration; the item's wielder is now considered concentrating on it). It's also the reason why I originally had spellforgers bypass concentration on the Tools of War spells. However, using an infusion like this is not like that (now ex-) concentration bypass, because it allows any caster's buff to transfer the concentration load onto its subject. For an artificer, that means that you might stop concentrating on one Magic Weapon and start concentrating on another.... but for a wizard, it means you stop concentrating on one Magic Weapon and start concentrating on Evard's Black Tentacles. THAT would require all kinds of crazy balancing and testing to prevent an explosion.
I'm not saying it's impossible - just that it's very treacherous waters.
