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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6749906" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:If and only if the class is maximally powerful with the "starting" number of schema. I lowered the starting number of schema far below what I think would be okay, entirely to allow room to grow before breaking. (The increased versatility and access to existing artificer spells, plus the emphasis on non-spell combat and buffs, gives you plenty to do even with a small number of schema.) First, that scaling refers to Salvage Essence (the "create permanent magic items" part of the class), not the schema (which relate to an entirely different ability, namely that of building the ideal tool for any magical task, be it through arcane devices or prototypes). The schema aren't referenced at all for Salvage Essence, though certain formulas (which are, by 5e standard, entirely up to the DM) may reference your specific ability to cast a particular spell. Second, by standard assumptions, spell scrolls might show up on loot tables, but which spells they contain are set by the DM, which ups the workload for the DM (note: this is by standard, well before the artificer enters the equation) but also creates a gateway where problem spells don't appear (i.e. if your game has a lot of wilderness travel, then no scroll of Teleport would be appropriate, similar to how no decanters of endless water would ever show up in Dark Sun). 5e, by default, leaves quite a lot up to the DM. That's not an assertion I can change, but it's one I can work with. I can test under some assumptions (i.e. that scrolls of level X show up with probability Y), but I have to follow the game's own assumptions in other areas (i.e. those scrolls contain spells Z, set by individual DMs). This isn't like other editions where absolutely everything is (allegedly) tested until it cracks, but I can at least reduce the probability of those cracks appearing if the game is run as the books suggest. How about this, then: I can adjust the amount of time it takes to devise a schema from a spell scroll, such that it's only possible during downtime. Wizards can do this over the course of a few hours, but they can already read the spell scrolls by default (while artificers cannot! I did gloss over this hitch earlier - their spell list is the artificer list and the spells already in their book of schema, so a new spell scroll is one they can't use unless they cast Synchronize on it). By turning it into a downtime activity, they're encouraged to hoard spell scrolls you find on an adventure, which I disliked earlier (so I didn't do this), but if that's enough of an opportunity cost for you to finally move on to criticizing some other aspect of the class besides the "spellbook", I'll do it. Note that downtime days are something the DM hands out like experience points, so they're controlled, and artificers have to spend those days on item creation if they want to employ that. Basic Rules pages 43-44. "Likewise, aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such." The only magic item with an explicitly listed shop entry is the Potion of Healing (which, interestingly, also includes the only reference in the game about how a magic item is made - you need an herbalism kit to make it. No other guidelines are given), and no other Common items are listed. There are two things in the artificer that directly interact with magic items that don't have a hard cap on them - Salvage Essence and the book of schema. In the case of zero items available for sale, these can't easily be exploited (since everything that could expand them is only earned through hard-won adventures). Let's consider the other extreme, where there are lots of items available for purchase and plenty of money to do so (something even more liberal than 3.5 Eberron). Under these upper-limit assumptions, for Salvage Essence, it consumes the item (not a factor, you can buy a replacement), and requires you to spend downtime days to build copies of your own (this is less useful, since you can buy replacements faster than you can build them). For items not for sale, it reduces to the zero-item case (i.e. if +1 weapons can be bought but Luck Blades cannot, +1 weapons follow the discussion in this paragraph while Luck Blades follow it from the previous one). For the book of schema, you are limited to scrolls (not a factor under these assumptions; they'd be plentiful - note that you can't learn from wizard spellbooks!) and the only limit is the time needed to copy them over (although there's still limits on actually using them(x) even if you have an infinite spellbook). This is why I offered to come up with a downtime mechanic for actually adding anything you learn to the book of schema - that's the only real "cost" paid under the upper limit of magic item availability. (It's also paid in the zero-item extreme and the very-few-item with no-purchasing baseline, but in those cases there are fewer available items to do this with at all, so even if you learn every scroll you find you might still have downtime days left to spend on other things). That's because 1) it's central to the class concept, 2) it's the only weapon/armor buff that can multitarget, and 3) adding in those options as features prevents it from being abused if cribbed by bards, since the vanilla spell is pretty meek but the progression of abilities that add on to it are more useful.Being higher-level than Weapon Augmentation, Magic Weapon and Elemental Weapon also add a bonus on attack and damage rolls, which is not insignificant in this edition (there are many threads that single out Bless as one of the most abusable spells in the edition, for instance). Meanwhile, Armor Augmentation and Magic Armor only work if you're wearing armor (everyone except monks, sorcerers, and wizards), and the best aspects of armor augmentation only work if you're using a shield (only some barbarians, Valor bards (with whom it competes for somatic components, unless they've got a variant feat for it), clerics and paladins (who can, through the shield-mounted holy symbol, still use somatic components), fighters (if they aren't great-weapon fighters or two-weapon fighters or archers), rangers (with whom it interferes with both of their signature combat styles) and artificers). The more martial you get, the more of this you can benefit from. Then there's other buff forms from existing PHB spells, like Enhance Ability (bigger benefits on the physical scores) and Disruption Aura (Crusader's Mantle; it only adds damage to weapon attacks). There are rare other boosts that would be appropriate, but I do not want the artificer's basic spell list to include all the appropriate buffs - this increases pressure on selecting the right spells for their book of schema. And none of these are on the same order as "able to use spell scrolls", which is actually one of the reasons why I considered making devices only usable by the artificer himself. But you (and I) seem to like the idea of passing spells to other characters, so I'm reluctant to do this. It's odd that your arguments support reducing access to arcane devices, yet you continue to argue for the exact opposite.Grammatically, I don't follow what you're saying. I think you're saying that "a caster who buffs others' weapons is less viable than a person who buffs their own weapons", which is still partly true with the artificer (but again, they have ways of overcoming concentration on a couple of those buffs later on, so they can buff their own weapon with Weapon Augmentation and still buff the team, or they can buff the team early on and rely on devices instead of an augmented weapon for a more magical playstyle). A party like that is, apart from the cleric, physically fragile, which is the opportunity cost they pay for using classes capable of doing that kind of alpha strike. If you take the kind of attack this enables, and staple it onto characters who can't already cast those spells (which is exactly what appeals to you about that proposition, after all), then you no longer pay that opportunity cost. You have fully functional warriors and non-blasty spellcasters, and now you have an artificer who gives up all of his versatility in order to allow them to perform like a party of full-casters for a brief while. Yes, that's a nova, and it's a problem. As AlHazred said, yes, you have the long and the short of it - they're items that hold other powers (typically dailies), and as a free action, you give up one of your own dailies and replace it with one of the ones in the tome, for the rest of the encounter. You have the same number of daily powers, but a dramatically increased selection in those powers, which was my entire point. As an implement, yes, but as I understood it, just like nothing stopped you from having a backup sword if you could afford them (or a different implement, in storage, that you'd switch between depending on your foes - maybe one enhanced fire, and another enhanced cold), nothing stopped you from owning more than one tome. You just needed to hold a different tome - you're still only using one implement at a time, but you're holding a different implement (one that hasn't expended its daily ability to give you a different daily power). 5e put the kibosh on this sort of item swapping (even in high item environments) by requiring attunement, but there wasn't a direct analogue in 4e (though there were similar ones in places). Please correct me if I'm wrong - my understanding of 4e is really limited (I really only played it early on, as part of a focus group just before it was published). From discussion elsewhere:Thanks!There isn't as much to track on a single character as it seems - just like a 12th level (to pick a point) wizard might know 30ish spells (from a list of 159 available at that point), but would have at most 17 (plus a small number of nearly-identical cantrips) to keep track of during any given adventuring day. In this case, a 12th level artificer would have 17 schema to track (which are only used when levelling up or building arcane devices (once per rest at most) or casting Prototype (a 5e adaptation of Spell Storing Item, which was orders of magnitude worse); none of these are in-combat options in general) and 10 spells to consider (from a list of 29 available at that point, it's also a tightly focused list), but next to nothing else. In terms of resource management, yes, there's craft reserve on top of spell slots, but in general craft reserve isn't used in combat, so you aren't really tracking it when the fighting is going on. Furthermore, due to time limits, it's rare you'll need to use reserve more than once per rest, so it's something that can safely be relegated to the back of a character sheet. Compare to the warlock, who has some at-will abilities through cantrips / pact boons and invocations, some "per-encounter" abilities through Pact Magic slots, and some "per-day" abilities through invocations and Mystic Arcanum, all of which need to be juggled every round in combat. Most of the complexity involved in this class happens outside of combat, when you're not under any specific time pressure and can think your way through problems. In combat, it nicely simplifies down to just what you've built beforehand (the single-shot devices and potions you have on hand), your small number of item-modifying infusions, and your (probably augmented) weapon. There's an exception on the magitechnician guild, but they're designed entirely around Prototype, so it's entirely clear what the player's getting into if they choose that guild. (On the flipside, the spellforgers' guild is expressly designed to make things simpler, since it focuses on armed combat and has a way of making augmentations more or less persistent, and the alchemist is similar by increasing demand on craft reserve (and thus decreasing the number of devices and potions available to you). The golemist guild is the one I'm least sure about regarding added complexity, though.) For a different discussion on complexity, see the Design Goal 3 discussion in the second post. That was how the class originally worked, but it made more sense (thanks, Rampant!) to switch over to more conventional spells. Playtesting shows that craft reserve is actually a defining class feature, though it doesn't quite look like it from the amount of space it takes up in the rules. Managing that reserve, especially at lower levels, is very significant, and at level 1 it's basically all the magic you can bring to the table. That's possible, but tricky, since there's no unified subschool for healing spells or the like. It's a great guideline and one I was following when designing things, but it's proving nearly impossible to work into the existing rules unless I add another tag to the game (currently, there's just the Ritual tag). Here's an edition changeover that took me a while to get used to - not only are items not available for sale and difficult to resell (the assumption is that you need to dedicate downtime to selling any magic item - it's not as simple as walking into a shop, erasing it from your sheet, and increasing your GP count), they're also much rarer on the loot table. Those tables suggest most characters can expect to see somewhere around 6 permanent magic items over the course of their entire career, and maybe around 20 consumable items (potions, scrolls, Feather Tokens, etc), and unlike 3.5 and certainly unlike 4e, the vast majority of these are useful and applicable at nearly every level. Furthermore, item creation is a downtime activity only, and it takes a very long time - you'll only consult that list of salvaged items during (tightly-regulated) downtime, and not during an adventure itself (i.e. between sessions, when you've got more time to plan and think). The bookkeeping during playtime is almost nonexistent. It's actually far more than 8, if you include spells in that. You're including spells when counting against the artificer, so why not count them against the wizard? (A reminder: there's ~40 spells on the artificer list, and not all of them are new. There are 200 wizard spells in the PHB.) I wager that, with all the proper headings/typesetting/table, I can still fit the entire class and all of its new spells within 8 pages.</blockquote>

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