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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6749919" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:For someone bringing up the bell curve concept, you're remarkably averse to probability distributions or things that aren't of equal utility every single time you play. Do you also assume thief rogues' Use Magic Device is terrible design, because its use is contingent upon the amount of class-limited magic items that appear in a game? What about the assassin rogues' infiltration abilities, whose use varies wildly depending on the amount of long-term social interaction in the game? Or Wild Magic, which is inherently probabilistic (and even more expressly DM-based, since the wild magic surges occur only when you cast a spell and the DM says so - employing a tradeoff by having the DM decide to Surge you also giving you an extra use of Bend Luck)? Or, horror of horrors, any spell that involves damage dice, because what could happen if you roll a string of straight-1s all the time? Note: I don't think all of these are necessarily good design. But they're all examples of cleanly mechanical things whose utility explicitly depends on either the DM's personal fiat or the whim of the dice (or both), and none of them are examples you've brought up as bad design, since you keep latching onto the wizard's spellbook in the hypothetical (and virtually-impossible) "knows every spell" sense that I maintain will not exist in 5e practice. (Full disclosure: I'm working on my PhD in cognitive science, specifically based on the mathematical psychology of probability reasoning. I also do casual reading, in my off-time, of statistics methods. So yes, I do understand the idea of a bell curve.) Pages in the spellbook aren't a resource anymore. (I was surprised at this and actually started writing up rules for that here - schema used to take up twice as many pages as a comparable-level spell (since you had to understand everything about the spell's fundamentals instead of employing arcane shortcuts as a wizard would), and formula would take 2^(N+1) pages, where N was the rarity of the item (1 for Common, 5 for Legendary). I removed this when I confirmed there was no number of pages in a spellbook in the core rules, but I'd definitely suggest similar guidelines for anyone using spellbook space houserules!) You're also completely obsessed with this "no upper bound" bit. Do you also assume that melee characters always roll nothing but critical hits with maximum damage? Because that's what it sounds like to me, except I think the odds of doing that over the course of an entire combat session are actually higher than the odds of a campaign producing a maxed-out spellbook. While a valid perspective, maybe my words weren't the right ones. Most of the things I've used throttles for in the artificer are self-regulating, using things you're already doing in game (notably item creation, which is entirely regulated by what items you're already allowing in-game and how much downtime you're handing out already; there are knobs to twist in case something slips through the cracks (notably adding a quest requirement to a formula), but again, that's only to catch things that slip through the cracks. Those are items that you're okay allowing in the game, but not okay if the players can replace them - and even then, you have lead time to adapt, since they need to build two of the item before they've got spares.) I also discussed, at length, why arcane devices and prototype both had sufficient automatic checks on their power (in both their inherent mechanics and on the psychology of the player using them) to provide limits on how their schema are expressed, even if you have unlimited schema in the book, which you won't. (See the next point.) So you're assuming every wizard NPC you kill has their spellbook on them? And that the loot tables are as loaded with scrolls as they were in 3e? Neither's the case here. For one, the NPC wizards you fight don't follow the player rules. They don't have spellbooks unless you say, fiat-wise, that they do (just like adding magic items to something). Look at the Monster Manual Appendix B (or the entire chapter in the DMG on designing NPCs) and it's quite clear they're not using the PC's rules, although they're similar. None of the spellcasting monsters - including the generic archmage and mage stat blocks - who have wizard spells also have a spellbook (you customize the spells they've got prepared via the rules for customizing NPCs rather than having it be something inherent to their class). In fact, the entire monster manual mentions spellbooks exactly twice (as the fluff reason for a lich's lair dungeon (note: liches also don't have a spellbook!), and as something nagas sometimes search for), and the DMG lists them four times (when providing rules on copying spell scrolls, using the Tome of the Stilled Tongue (a legendary item) as a spellbook (note: It doesn't come with any spells in it, and there's an easy way to instantly erase it), as the potential location for a "charm" (which is a DM fiat gift, similar to but more optional and regulated than wondrous locations), and in a table of random books (i.e. a table of stuff you can use to explain what's on a library shelf if a player investigates; you don't have to use the result of the table (you can reroll or choose again), and if you do, it's entirely up to you what's in it (i.e. just like another option's "Tome of Forbidden Lore" doesn't say what's in it...). None of these are given out as loot (i.e. there's no equivalent to the "Possessions: Spellbook containing X, Y, Z spells" entry from 3e wizard stat blocks). In short, spellbooks as loot only exist when you decide (by fiat) that they exist. For two, the information I lost when my last post collapsed included the chance of getting a spell scroll on each table. I'm not typing them out again; you can look at pages 137-139 to see how likely it is you'll get a specific magic item table and how many times you roll on it, and on pages 144-145 for every table where spell scrolls appear. You can compare this to 3e's DMG if you want to see how likely the system "assumes" you are to get a scroll. For instance, let's look at the most frequent scroll, a 1st level scroll. These only appear on Table A 21% of the time. Table A shows up on the CR 0-4 treasure hoard table 24% of the time (1d6 rolls), on the CR 5-10 table 16% of the time (also 1d6 rolls), and on the CR 11-16 table 14% of the time (1d4 rolls); it doesn't show up as a reward for the CR 17+ table. Again, the system assumes a typical game gives 7 rolls on the first table, 18 rolls on the second, and 12 rolls on the third for your entire party across an entire campaign. This is where the 4.032 expected 1st level scrolls came from. (Remember that this also assumes no duplicates, as you don't need two scrolls of Alarm unless you have both an artificer and a wizard in the party.) Since you like dealing with absolute maximums, the absolute maximum number of 1st level scrolls that could show up in a typical game is 198. (There will be duplicates, since there are only 72 1st level spells in the game). The probability of this happening is 1.75*10-52. For the record, 10^-52 is about one-tenth of the fraction of energy you'd get when comparing a housefly doing a single pushup to a supernova. This is why I don't consider maximum possible results a discussion worth having. Now, you might consider that this is duplicitous - after all, there are only 72 1st level spells in the game, so I should concern myself with the probability of getting all 72 across those 7+18+12 drops that could contain 1st level scrolls. Let's assume, again, that every scroll you drop is unique, so there are no duplicates (the case with duplicates is needlessly complex, and I don't have a probability distribution for each specific spell, so I'd have to ad-hoc it. If you're actually reading this far, mention bananas at the start of your reply. In any case, the odds of getting all 72 spells allowing for duplicates is lower than the chance of getting 72 scrolls, so this is an absolute best-case scenario). I'm writing an R script to get this exact number for me - I believe it will be low enough to convince anyone reasonable that the odds of this happening are sufficiently low. Unless you're an absolutist who claims it must be zero, at which point I assume that no amount of discussion would ever change your mind, and further discussion would be pointless. Meanwhile, let's look at the 3.5 DMG. In 3e, simultaneously a bit easier and a bit harder to figure out how the treasure tables work, since the wealth by level guidelines are more firmly baked into the math. I COULD go through Table 3-5 to figure out how many minor, medium, and major items you're expected to find, then use Table 7-1 to figure out how many scrolls those would contain (as an aside, 35% of all minor items, 15% of all medium items, and 10% of all major items), then use Table 7-20 to figure out the level of these scrolls (note: if we're continuing 1st level spells, they only appear as 45% of minor magic items, each scroll holding 1d3 spells). Note: You'd need only 17 minor magic item drops to find more 1st level spells on scrolls than an entire 5e career! Note that 3.5 assumes 13.5 encounters per character level, and levels 1-4 have a 23%, 20%, 20%, and 20% chance of a single minor item drop each. This means that in 3e, you could expect to find 4 1st level scrolls by the start of level 5 (a reminder: you'd find 4 scrolls over 20 levels in 5e), assuming nothing but average rolls. (The maximum number you can have by this point is 54, if the dice entirely rolled in your favor, assuming every single encounter you fight is of equal CR to your party's level.) Alternatively, I can take the shortcut, and look at Wealth By Level guidelines - first level scrolls are freely purchaseable for 25 GP, meaning anyone who has just 800gp is able to buy more scrolls than the absolute maximum number an entire party would find over the course of an entire 5e career. (These would not be duplicates; using a local archive of the D&DTools database, there are 297 1st level wizard spells in 3.5, which would cost less than a +4 belt of giant strength to buy.) The game assumes you get that much treasure in a single 3rd level encounter (though you'd be splitting it with your teammates, so it would take 3.5 encounters of 3rd level for a single wizard in a party of four to amass 800 extra gp). It's not recommended that level 3 characters spend all their wealth this way, but since wizards aren't doing much with their loot until they can afford +Int items, nothing stopped a 3rd level wizard from fighting a third of the way to 4th level and using his fresh earnings to buy more 1st level scrolls than a party of 5e characters would see in their entire career. All of this sets aside that in 5e, you can't research new spells in your downtime. In 3e, you could, and it was rather simple to do so, although it was ill-defined. The only hard and fast rules was that it cost 20gp * spell level * caster level and took one day per spell level to research anything (DMG p.198, the same page that declaed "it's perfectly all right for two PC wizards to share spells", so I presume you've read it). In other words, independent research of four 1st level spells in 3e took 4 days and cost 80gp, which is downright trivial in 3e (and impossible in 5e). Independent research would take only ten months and under 6000gp to learn every single 1st level wizard spell ever written - note that 5e takes a comparable amount of time to learn how to speak a new language or proficiently use a new tool. In other words, a dedicated researcher in 3e could learn two hundred and fifty spells in the same amount of time it takes a dedicated 5e character to learn how to play the drums. Sure, the spells cost more in terms of GP, but again, that amount of wealth is about what a 4th level character could expect to have in 3e in terms of hard assets - and there's no asset more valuable to a 3e wizard than their spells (except, perhaps, their spell slots, but nothing that enhances those can be afforded so easily.). You'll see immediately that 3e, by 5e's standards, is bloated with magic items, both baked into the system's rolls and because it has a permissive magic item economy. By 5e's standards, you're starving for magic items, including scrolls. Actually, I did explain this - multiple times, including just now. It's not just the "bloody hard to get scrolls" thing (notice how the 5e system "expects" 4 1st level scrolls over 20 levels, while 3.5 hands out 4 of them in just 4 levels, without buying any?). It's also the lack of enemy spellbooks, since 5e villains follow different rules than 5e's PCs (unlike 3e, which used the same rules for both of them), and there's zero indication that enemy wizards use spellbooks. In fact, the only time I'd expect to find a spellbook in a game is exactly when the DM wished to give a specially-designed one out as loot, and in no other circumstance. Indeed, the only thing 5e does do is allow PC-to-PC trading (with a cost in money and time, though I admit these are small - but they needn't be. I could easily make the time a number of days per level (making it a downtime activity), which really does prevent much of this copying - downtime days are a resource the DM hands out, except they can't be banked, and they get more and more precious as character levels go up if the AL is any standard. This sentence is a reminder to mention bananas at the start of your next reply, like I said six paragraphs ago. Furthermore, spending downtime days on developing schema cuts into downtime days you could spend crafting items.). As I mentioned, sharing doesn't double the number you expect - it only increases the base number by, at most, your level +1, since all artificers start with the same two spells (detect magic and identify) and any scrolls you find add just one spell to your team's collective repertoire instead of adding two. And this also comes with the opportunity cost of having two of your limited players choosing the Artificer class, instead of one that's got better combat ability (say, Fighter) or faster spell access and better spell stamina (say, Wizard), or one that has more consistently-available class resources and social skills (say, Rogue), or one with all of the above (say, Valor bard). The artificer excels in versatility, especially when he's not under time pressure, but he suffers in sustained combat output - something that a party with two artificers will definitely be able to feel! Furthermore, see above regarding how the throttles work (without DM intervention) even in the case of knowing every spell. They'll work whether or not the artificer knows every spell or not (and I would be very willing to bet you that no artificer played under typical conditions will have every spell). Again with intolerance of probability. If, for instance, the 95% confidence interval on the number of spells known falls completely within the "balanced" region, then I'd be confident saying that the class is balanced, even if the utterly remote possiblity of knowing absolutely everything exists. I'll be sure to get back with you with the probability of an artificer actually knowing every 1st level spell. (I'll focus, for now, just on the 1sts, since it's a concrete problem and that's the level of spell that's cheapest to build devices and prototypes for.) I'll express it both as a percentage and as the number of artificers one would have to build before expecting you'd find one who did it. I will change my mind on this if, say, the number was just 5%, or higher, and I say that before I've run the analysis. You can hold me to it. What number would change yours? Revisions Made:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spells from Elemental Evil have been added. The artificer now has access to Catapult (a ballistic spell that violently launches an item a great distance; it's shared by sorcerers and wizards) and Magic Stone (a cantrip that causes a small number of stones to attack using your Int modifier and deal slightly improved damage; due to its duration and effect I think it's appropriate despite my usual ban on offensive cantrips for the artificer. It's shared by druids and warlocks).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">While I was at it, I added Cordon of Arrows to the artificer's spell list, removed the reflavoring on Deflection Field, and deleted Counterspell. The first is the only "trap" spell they couldn't cast, and it's not like rangers ever really learned the spell either. The second is now vanilla Shield of Faith, which saves some presentation space and leaves the fluff up to the player. The third reflects how only the "pure" arcanists - wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks - can counter a spell while it's being cast. The artificer is less of a "pure" caster than even the bard, and is less arcane than that. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I've been re-writing the new spells in proper spell format, but none of the changes this has introduced are worth including at this point until I finish them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There might be one more spell added if I can figure out if it breaks anything (Make Whole; it's curiously missing from this edition. If I include it, it'll also be on the cleric list, where it's always been).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Minor editing; nothing serious has changed. The biggest tweak was a clarification on how a golemists' homunculus works with arcane devices and prototypes (it's basically the same mechanic as Find Familiar's touch spell transfer, except you also need to spend a bonus action to command the homunculus, which prevents certain spell strategies from working).</li> </ul>If people are curious, I went through the list and noted which spells were previously "unique" (castable by only one non-artificer class) that wouldn't be unique if you use the artificer. These are the "unique class feature" spells that the artificer can "poach" using his own spells instead of arcane devices. If I make the proposed change (that spells that only appear on one non-artificer list can't be made into schema, which will prevent "class feature spells" like Hex and Hunter's Mark from being built), these will still be "poached". Shield of Faith (Paladin) - On the artificer list because it's a basic defensive buff and has been on the artificer in some form or another from the get-go. Nothing about it's inherently divine apart from the name, and Keith directly addressed Shield of Faith on his own hack.Arcane Lock (Wizard) - On the artificer list because they interact with objects more readily than wizards. Also slightly trap-themed, and they've both got Knock...Cordon of Arrows (Ranger) - On the artificer list because it's another magical trap, and directly imbues items with magic.Elemental Weapon (Paladin) - On the artificer list because it fits with their augmentation/magic weapon theme. In a sense, it's the paladin emulating the artificer's proficiency here instead of the other way around. (Elemental Evil does introduce a non-unique variant in Flame Arrows, which is also a 3rd level spell, but limited entirely to a quiver, is fixed to fire, and lacks the +X bonus.)Fabricate (Wizard) - On the artificer list because, again, it's direct manipulation of objects. This is a spell that both classes should have.Blade Barrier (Cleric) - On the artificer list as a rare combat spell, it directly controls the weapons forming its components. I also never saw why this was cleric-only, apart from historical reasons. View it as a level-up of Animate Objects. On the flipside, none of the 18 new spells here are on any other spell list as yet (that is, they're unique to the artificer), but I could be convinced to move a couple around. For comparison, here's how many uniques are on other lists (including those from Elemental Evil, but not counting the "poached" spells, and ignoring subclasses):Bard: 4Cleric: 27Druid: 20 (but the Elemental Evil Player's Companion implies not every druid may necessarily have access to all of the new elemental ones)Paladin: 18Ranger: 8Sorcerer: 0 (I can't be the only one who finds this sad.)Warlock: 6Wizard: 35</blockquote>

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