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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6749960" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Xanchairothoss:My issues with the Artificer in previous editions were that it pitted the DM against the party. Artificers were great for the party, but a head-ache for the DM. Treasure leveling is a pretty important aspect to maintaining party effectiveness and ensuring you don't end up in a game where every encounter is a cake-walk. Artificers threw CR out the window by making it exceedingly difficult to determine party effectiveness against a challenge.From a DM’s perspective it wasn’t the Artificer, specifically, that one needed to be worried about. It was the creation of super optimized Magic Items that limited the DM’s ability to challenge the party effectively -- potentially causing a DM to fumble in either over-estimating, or under-estimating. Most multi-use magic items often trumped spells and offered unprecedented combos. Spellcasters had limitations in spell selection, however rapid magic-item creation restrained by only amount of gold eliminated those limitations by placing control in the hands of a PC. When ability selection for said magic items was open to creative fiddling by anyone but the DM, nearly anyone in a party could eventually acquire the abilities of a high level caster due to the Artificer constructing any item without a real leash. Secondly, with specific classes I knew what level to scale a challenge at. Magic items gaining a reduction in cost to produce really called all of that into question. I could limit the amount of treasure a party gained, but doing so nerfed the Artificer. Not doing that made it totally unbalanced. It was a scaling issue. I could plan for 'X' magic item, but what happens at high levels when I've effectively got a party of 5 Gestalt characters who can individually hold their own against a Tarrasque, due to full optimization via magic items through the Artificer?Artificers as PCs were either game breaking or super-lagging. They weren’t limited by spells the same way spellcasters were. If a player told me they wanted 'X' item, I could make said item, tweak as necessary and surprise them a bit too. That kind of discovery was no longer present with the Artificer. There was no DM to player relationship.The model, conceptually, for an Artificer PC very much suited a DM vs. the PC style game. I felt that there either needed to be a lot of communication and trust, or a pre-established antagonism couched in a mutual agreement of fair-play and RAW between an Artificer and DM. In 5E, the Artificer, conceptually, is anathema to the themes and focus of the game, ergo you're working against the fundamental backdrop of the game's design when building this class. For the Artificer to play like it did in previous editions requires extensive mechanics for magic item construction that aren't present in 5E. Where does that leave us? DM fiat -- which actually resolves the main problems with the class in previous editions, but creates new ones. This is very true, yet the following points are relevant to constructing this class and I feel that you keep skirting past their relevance by mistaking thorough justification mechanically for what is inherently a series of psychological problems that need to be resolved. So we’re faced with this class, much like some issues with particular Ranger abilities, only being relevant by virtue of the DM ensuring they are. Why is this an issue? Because it places the onus for relevance as wholly the responsibility of the DM. It’s not that that is entirely a bad thing, after all the DM is responsible for that in regards to the other players. It’s the degree though, that’s the issue. The DM is forced to do extra work in order to ensure that particular members of a party are getting a chance to shine. It eliminates the ability for the player to determine that for themselves and make that happen on their own. All other classes can be placed in any adventure and shine, but Rangers and Artificers need special attention to make sure they do. Should I, as a DM, be doing this for everyone regardless? Absolutely, but doing so with other classes doesn’t pigeonhole me to specific niche situations to the degree necessary for a Ranger. Most importantly, doing so doesn’t necessitate that a fundamental aspect of the game be considered constantly. Namely, the repercussions for every conceivable combination the introduction of a spell or magic item will have upon my game due to a player (the Artificer) having the ability to modularly re-purpose it. This forces me to constantly babysit the Artificer and their unlimited spell selection capability. It makes it entirely my fault if the player does something game-breaking, because I allowed it. It kills my fun, by making every random treasure roll a situation I need to consider from all possible angles of abuse. It forces me to know every spell and intuit the repercussions of it being used in an unorthodox manner by a player who can munchkin it, and is indeed encouraged to, by the very nature of its class. Finally, it forces me to play the game against the game, rather than run the game. I think THIS is the direction to go in. What I’m thinking is we eliminate spells from the equation entirely by transforming the class into a pure magic-item builder whose selection of abilities allow for the imbuing of items that duplicate spell properties. Schema would be more like Warlock Invocations, and secondly, their scaling advancement would work similar to how Warlocks cast spells. Warlock should be the template for this class. Multiclassing into Artificer should be akin to multiclassing into Warlock, i.e. it doesn’t, in any way, improve spell-slot selection. This is a problem. You can’t obligate people to read thousands upon thousands of word walls of text in every single reply you make. You justify doing this as “being thorough”, and yes that is the case, however when the end result potentially serves to inevitably exhaust or bore those who disagree with you, or prevent anyone from wanting to post due to the the strong likelihood of a wall of text reply, often people give up and might not respond. It’s something to consider. Long-windedness and filibustering by stating an argument in so much detail and rigour that it is almost impossible to understand is not the way to go. It shows a lack of consideration for social etiquette. You don’t need to cram every one of your cogent points into a single comprehensive response that is roughly the length of a short novel. It doesn’t matter how nuanced and thoughtful your walls of text are, the fact that near every reply you make is a wall of text is in itself disruptive to the process. Just remember: the longer it is, the less of it people will read. Defending or fostering arguments with a giant chunk of text that contains so many diffs, assertions, examples, and allegations as to be virtually unanswerable due to overwhelming your audience, or obligating them to read every detail you write in order to respond is self-defeating if your goal is collaboration. Bombarding people with so much information is a form of hostility, rendering it impossible to keep up without the other person replying with a wall of text of their own.If you want people to contribute, use brevity and answer directly, not thoroughly.</blockquote>

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