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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6749970" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:I'd also like to apologize for my tone today - I've been having a really, really rough week, and upon a re-read, it seems I was being more than a little dickish, which you don't deserve.I'm not sure I have the time to dedicate to this that it would deserve, but I'd love to contribute. A standalone Masters of Artifice module could serve so many potential purposes, from Eberron artificers to Iron Kingdoms clockwork wonders, and could be implemented with or without a full artificer class. My concern is I will not be able to take on a freelance game designer gig until I'm finished my research; I do stuff like this in my spare time, what little I have. (The long posts written today were written while I was waiting for AI simulations to finish running.) Perhaps due to the immense limits on my time, when I get an idea, my first thought is always "Is this idea necessary?". If something is close enough that a bit of reflavoring handles it, then I don't need to redesign it, or can re-imagine my idea as a tweak to an existing rule. (It would have been buried in this extended thread, but I did respond positively to this idea from Rampant as well, though - with a potential interface sidebar (i.e. a way of allocating artificer craft reserve to a hypothetical invention module, or some similar adapter), but making sure that either works on its own without the other.) That said, two key points (point 2 is technically 1a, but I can't do nested lists) that need to be addressed:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Testing X and Y independently and being assured that they don't break is mum on whether XY, their interaction, is breakable. For instance, the function of the Scimitar of Speed was balanced against it being a scimitar and requiring attunement, and the function of Vorpal is balanced against it requiring attunement. A Vorpal Greataxe of Speed, especially in the hands of a barbarian, Vengeance paladin, or similar advantage-on-attack-rolls character gets so many opportunities to roll 20s and behead their targets that I'm positive such options were deliberately designed out of the game, and being a single item it still only takes one attunement "slot". This was an example I found with thirty seconds of looking at the book, not something I've paid much attention to in the past. (There are ways to adjust this, I know - an obvious one is saying such an item won't attune if there's another attuned item present - but identifying hurdles is separate from jumping them.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Introducing more than two items together makes things get even more complicated, since now instead of just X, Y, and Z, we have to check XY, YZ, XZ, and XYZ, which means more work than the entire magic item chapter itself (which was tested by WotC's team of professional developers and an Internet full of volunteers). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I think this works better as a completely standalone module rather than a subsystem in a single class. It certainly isn't "streamlined" when a huge block of text defining new mechanics and the options to work with them springs up out of nowhere (compare the Way of the Elements to the other two monk Ways, or the Battle Master fighter to the Eldritch Knight (which makes ample reference to an existing system), but a standalone block usable by multiple classes is held to a different standard and serves more people's purposes.</li> </ul>Don't get me wrong - by no means do I think this is unworthy. I just think that if the project can't solve problems like this early, it's going to have bigger problems later on. That, combined with the same philosophy behind Rip Me A New One, should explain why I sound pessimistic. For what it's worth, I have done stuff like this before - I managed to engineer about 70% of an entirely new system together for handling divine magic / divine intervention in 3e without using the "spellcasting" framework, falling into the CoDzilla trap, or even being pinned to a single class. I thought it was better in many ways too - for instance, why should a priest of a war god be a tin-can-wearing band-aid box*, instead of a more typical barbarian shouting "IN KORD'S NAME!" while gloriously charging into the fray? The 3e approach was to use domains to turn the cleric into a more appropriate form; my idea was to use an analogous system to domains to attach appropriate divine influence to thematic characters, skipping the cleric entirely - but the sheer amount of testing this required to make sure it wasn't inadvertedly worse than before proved far too much, and in the end I abandoned the project. The alternative would be putting out material without proper testing, and, as I said, I'm a perfectionist. All my design work since has been smaller-scale, and much better-received. *Hyperbole Still, that doesn't mean a smaller start wouldn't be appropriate, to be expanded in time. Also, yes, my design goals with my artificer are fixed, unless they can be shown to be poor choices. How that's implemented? Still open to suggestion. You seem to think it's fine, possibly "too good"; I'm curious where, specifically - especially in the context of single characters. (For instance, there are 16 battle master maneuvers, but any individual battle master only knows nine; similarly, although there are hundreds of spells, you can never combine more than one spell requiring Concentration on the same character at once.)</blockquote>

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