Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6749964" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:The amount of energy needed to address a point is an order of magnitude higher than the amount of energy needed to make that point. Naturally, some replies will be longer.That's also true of 5e in general, though: the classes are designed remarkably well, but the complexity in their design is hidden by simplicity in how they're presented and how they play. The tl;dr of most of the parts of my post you didn't read is "There is a difference between design and DMing. This is design." How can I simplify the class (Design Goal 3) while still meeting the requirements set out in Design Goals 1 and 2?You showed why I didn't do this in your own thread on this topic: enabling players the fun of building tactics creatively in play is the intent. (See also Design Goal 2; this is how the original artificer felt, when it wasn't bulldozing entire games.) Basically, a teensy list of self-contained warlock-invocation-style abilities is necessarily going to be less creatively-supporting than tapping into the diversity of the existing spell system, unless you're willing to design something better than that spell system on your own. Also, Design Goal 3 - I don't want the class to take up an entire book on its own. The class itself takes up about 5 pages, including the class table and sidebar but not including art. A huge part of this is that I didn't invent a new system for it - just a way of managing the existing system.The tl;dr of another part of the post you didn't read is "The artificer, as written, no more enhances multiclass spell options than the warlock does." In fact, since you can cast Spellcasting spells from Pact Magic slots and vice versa, the warlock multiclass is nowhere near as independent as you play it up to be. A multiclass caster/artificer does pool spell slots together, just like any other caster/caster multiclass, but your schema and craft reserve are completely independent from your casting, unlike your pact magic spells (in which only the slots are independent). EDIT: I know you dislike additional information, but there is a corner case I need to address.[sblock] Namely, that's Prototype. Consider a Wizard 18 / Artificer 2. A multiclass spellcaster / artificer will have one list of spells known which he can use through his spell slots, and one list of schema he can build using his craft reserve. Our Wizard 18/Artificer 2 would be hypothetically able to learn the schema for a 9th level spell if he took the classes in that order (he's fixed to 1st level schema at level 1, but at level 2 he's open to any spell level for which he has slots), but he would only have at most 6 craft reserve, so he would never be able to build an arcane device to actually use that schema. Prototype, however, is a spell that lets you create an item based on a schema. So, hypothetically, our Wizard 18 / Artificer 2 could prepare Prototype as a spell known and cast it using his 9th level wizard spell slot, creating an item of, say, a cleric spell. However, Prototype is limited by your book of schema as well. You start with only 1st level schema, and cannot expand it without possessing scrolls or finding spells in the environment. You can't copy from your spellbook or anything, so chances are very good you'll only be able to replicate a very small number of 1st level effects upcast to 9th level. (A 9th level spell slot on a 10d8+5 Cure Wounds is much less impressive than a native 9th level spell like Miracle.) You may have a single 9th level schema if you took the classes in that order, but this would be completely unusable except through this method, which isn't as useful as a standard 9th level spell. And after all of that, the prototype is still unreliable (requires an Arcana check to function properly). For 9th level spells, that's an incredible 80% failure rate. If you're willing to spend the increased casting time (1 minute, i.e. not in combat and you can't be concentrating on anything else) for Prototype and risk only a 20% chance of success on one spell per day at the absolute highest character levels (and trade out the high-end wizard abilities on the way, including an ability score increase / feat), I think being able to pull off one out-of-class spell is an appropriate payoff. It's still in his best interests to pick more manageable schema, though. Suggested fix: If you think this is a problem, I can delete or adjust the text regarding multiclassing and schema levels, so the only schema our Wiz 18 / Arty 2 can learn are those a 2nd level artificer could learn. I'd prefer it to still allow scrolls, but I'm totally okay with blocking off innate learning like this.[/sblock] That's... actually very nearly already what it is. Craft Reserve is the equivalent of sorcery points, using the pre-developed spells instead of an independently-developed invocation-style schema system, and the costs are set by the spell level. How can I make it clearer in the actual text what's going on? I thought I did a good job, as did others, but either you didn't read the class itself (which I don't believe; it wouldn't be fair to judge the wizard having not read the wizard, for instance) or you've spotted something that we missed (in which case I'd love to hear how to improve). </blockquote>

Verification