Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7571483" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Personally, I love it.  I think it suits what they're trying to accomplish perfectly.  I'm all for having multiple ways for magic to happen.Because, from a game design perspective, you're asking for new mechanical game systems for things that don't actually need new mechanical game systems. Balance-wise, spells are a known commodity including how they work with multiclassing. You'll either end up designing something that looks like bad spells that don't scale right because you had to oversimplify the system (e.g., Battlemaster dice) or you're essentially completely re-implementing the entire magic system with the same underlying balancing rules except it has to look like that's not exactly what you've done. It's much easier to just reuse the existing design. It not only saves you the considerable hassle of building two competing game systems that have to be balanced against each other, you also don't have to teach your players a new system from scratch and you don't have to worry that what you're doing is going to work great at one table and completely break down at another. That's why the answer the designers go to is almost always "give it spells and magic." Further, one of the 5e philosophies is to try to keep the rules as simple as practicable. That also pushes design towards re-use of spellcasting and magic and the mechanics.Second of all, people want a class that can build magic items. That's absolutely core to the class concept of an Artifacer. It's what people asked for in 3e, and it's what that Eberron's Artifacer did. It's like the Paladin's Smite Evil or the Bard's music or the Wizard's signature spells or the Rogue's sneak attack. Artifacers make magic items.So, not only is it extremely difficult to do what you're asking, what people are expecting the class to do pretty much requires magic. So, they tell you to use magic, and use spells, but to come up with thematic and narrative components to how your stuff works. Going to cast web? Well, you pull out a glue gun and fire it. The same gun also has a grease mode. Casting expeditious retreat? Rocket skates. Cure wounds? Hypospray. Wall of stone? Instant concrete grenade. Why do you have limited uses? Because the devices are roughly made, slipshod, one-off, hand-crafted, cobbled together prototypes. Just because you're a genius doesn't mean your tools have the precision required for them to work reliably -- in the field no less! They require a lot of maintenance to keep working, and it's exhausting to do it. And, yes, they may of the effects use magic combined with technology to create the result.Eh, I don't think preserving the uniqueness of one ability of one subclass is particularly valuable. Particularly when the Homunculus is going to have to expose itself to combat if it wants to help in combat.It is now.  It made me think of the engineer from Team Fortress 2.  I dig it.  Realistically, you could call it a golem or construct if the name "turret" bothers you.  It moves so slowly and lasts such a short amount of time, it's not going to be around very long.100% because it's a half-caster. Note that the class gets a pretty beefy selection of armors. This class, like Bard and (to some degree) Cleric, gets to choose whether they want to be spell-based or weapon-based for basic combat. Bladesinger, too, gets Extra Attack, so full casters with Extra Attack are already a thing.I kind of wish the class could craft a Crossbow of Loading or Repeating Crossbow, however. I suppose you could always take Crossbow Expert, however.I don't think we've ever not allowed players to swap out cantrips as long as it's within reason and you ask. I mean, they're described by the game as the most basic spells that you learn. They are, by it's own narrative, so simple that a beginner can memorize them. Even then, cantrips are relatively weak and not major game changers. Yeah, the game expects you to have one useful attack cantrip, but after that it's really all gravy. Granted, Artifacers get much better at swapping cantrips at level 10 than even we would allow, but it's still really not a particularly powerful ability.</blockquote>

Verification