Artificers Overpowered?

[Seravin]

On the flip side is that artificer's are easy to mis-manage too. Thief hit points and base attack with poor fortitude and reflex saves makes them easy to hurt; and the majority of their best infusions take a minute or longer to cast and generally burn experience points and/or expensive material components.

What they have going for them is their ability to customize their gear - but even then that customization isn't exactly efficient. Sure the artificer can retain essence the xp's out of ring of protection +1, but then they're out the gold they'd get for selling the item and they still have to pay for the new item they're making.

The broken examples I've seen generally require a person to take feats from three different sources or the artificer was created soley to to exploit wand usage.

caveat - I'm currently playing an artificer who's one of the more mis-managed one. He's a tailor and focused more on creating magical clothing than doing damage. I burn through the party wands like they're water, but my only meta-magic feat is extend spell. He's fun, but no one mistakes him as powerful.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

IME they're kind of overpowered. We had a warforged PC with 7 levels of artificer when the rest of the characters were 8th-level (we treat warforged as LA +1) and his infusions were over-the-top by themselves. We were getting amazingly powerful armor and weapon special abilities. Personally, I think the problem is some overpowered infusions rather than the whole class.

The PC of the artificer in question didn't try to abuse the class, however. He did quasi-abuse the system by making cheap items, but he didn't use Metamagic Wand or any such easily broken abilities. I think the artificer's ability to get any item creation feat in the campaign without spending feat slots is overpowered, though. They could get by with free item creation feat slots.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Artificer has enormous loopholes that can be wriggled through. First and foremost are the infusions Supress Requirement and Metamagic Item.

Suppress requirement is no problem at all. I can't imagine what you think can be done with it.

Metamagic item is pretty good, until you realise that the guy is giving up a round of combat to apply it to an item. Much of the time, that round could have been used to simply USE the item to greater effect.

Second are the Artisan feats, especially the XP and GP discount ones. Combine those with Retain Essence, and artificiers can blow the wealth by level curve out of the water.

Hardly any more than a wizard who dedicates himself to doing so can. The ability of an artificer to turn a worthless item into a useful one is only a problem if you, as a DM, are in the habit of handing out magic items that are useless and not worth any money. Otherwise it's a losing proposition. The artisan feats are not artificer only. They're for anyone who can craft.

The other problem is their ability to make items with ease, I believe that a moderately optimised Artificer can make a scroll of Shapechange by 14th level.

Try 15th. And this is probably more a fault of shapechange than with any class that gets access to it.

And under no circumstances should an Artificer be given access to a Thought Bottle. Heck, no-one should be able to get such an item, but what Artificers can do with it is truly sick.

As opposed to a mage with wish? Hardly. The thing is crazy broken no matter who gets it.


Now, onto my list of things about the artificer that might inconvenience a DM.

1. Bane weapons. If the artificer KNOWS what monsters are coming up, the artificer (and later on the entire party) will be ready with an additional +2 enchantment and +2d6 damage. Do note, however, that to enchant weapons for others, the artificer will be spending some cash.

2. Some of the higher plus armours: Armour of etherealness means that all-day etherealness is available to an artificer at level 3 for 50gp. Also he can get a variety of elemental or other resistances, but most of those are easily replicable by other classes for free.

3. Spell storing item. An artificer can basically pull any spell in any book in 1 round, plus the casting time of the spell.

That's basically it.

Note that if you're not using eberronian action points, then many of these abilities become non-issues. An artificer can use an action point to reduce the casting time of an infusion to 1 round regardless of it's normal casting time. Very few of the artificer infusions have a casting time of less than 10 minutes - none of the 3 I mentioned do. So basically if the artificer knows what is coming, he can prepare the entire party. If he's ambushed, he's probably in trouble.

Someone might bring up a WoTC character-optimisation build called the blastificer, and conveniently forget to note that the guy is using thousands upon thousands of GP every single round that he's active, and requires considerable time to prepare ahead of time. Not to mention making use of the broken feat, persistant spell.

 

[xen_xheng]

The only ability everyone in my group is against is the ability to make a scroll of any spell in the game. It's just nonsense, as many spells are hard to find, rare, unique or just secret research.

Thus, we used a house rule that states the artificer must have access to a given spell before being able to use it for making items. This can be through an object (wand, scroll, etc), spellbook, other spell-user casting, etc. To compensate, he must be able to use the spell just once to make an item (not once per day).

This restriction gave artificers a reason to ask for help to wizards, clercics and other spellcasters, as well as looking for rare spells or spellbooks. It gives them more reasons to go out adventuring, and makes them more challenging.

At low level they should be able to acquire a basic spellbook with simple spells to be able to make some simple scrolls/potions, maybe even as a starting item (as a wizard).
Note that in this fashion spells from some classes are very difficul to obtain (paladin, druid, etc) since not many of these invest in item creation feats...

 

[IcyCool]

How does an artificer do this? Form reading the text it looks as though it would take alot of charges of the wand to pull this off unless you spend several rounds buffing your wand with Metamagic Item.

I'm fairly certain that combo uses more than one charge from the wand. That, or it isn't possible to combine all of those at once. Someone posted the artificer twin wand-slinger of doom on here a while back, and it was riddled with mistakes. Once they were corrected, the build didn't look so bad anymore.

 

[Grogtar]

I think that takes quite a bit away from the Artificer CLass, Xen.

ALL then get is items. Their infusions (spells) are 100% based on items. Their feats, class abilities and other choices are centered around their flexibility with item creation.

Druids get access to every druid spell without having to learn it, despite having a veritable cornicopia of other abilities and few people object. Remember that an Artificer's entire concept is based around NOT needing a Wizard or a WuJen or anything of the sort.

I think Artificers are strong, yes. Are they as strong as the prototypical Cleric or Druid ? HELL NO!. A resounding HELL NO. Toning down their item making abilities is taking their SINGLE class feature and toning it down, I cant agree with that.

Artificers are the people that can make any spell from just having heard of what it does. They can manipulate magic to reproduce any spell you can describe to them, thats what they do. I would never neuter the entire class because some wizard is complaining about his scribe scroll feat.

 

[IcyCool]

Xellous, here are the relevant bits from the Eberron Campaign Setting:

Metamagic Spell Trigger(Su): At 6th level, an artificer gains the ability to apply a metamagic feat he knows to a spell trigger item (generally a wand). He must have the appropriate item creation feat for the spell trigger item he is using. Using this ability expends additional charges from the item equal to the number of effective spell levels the metamagic feat would add to a spell.

For example, an artificer can quicken a spell cast from a wand by spending 5 charges (4 additional charges), empower the spell by spending 3 charges, or trigger it silently by spending 2 charges. The Still Spell feat confers no benefit when applied to a spell trigger item.

An artificer cannot use this ability when using a spell trigger item that does not have charges, such as prayer beads.

Metamagic Item
Transmutation
Level: Artificer 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Touch
Target: Spell trigger magic item touched
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless, object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless, object)

You temporarily apply a metamagic feat you know to a single spell contained within a spell trigger item. For the duration of this infusion, anyone who casts that spell from the item gains the benefit of that metamagic feat. For example, you could imbue a wand of fireballs with the Empower Spell feat or apply the Maximize Spell feat to the cone of cold spell in a staff of frost.

So for Grogtar's proposed idea, barring any errata or something I might be missing (like no stacking spell effects), the hypothetical Artificer needs the following:

Twin Spell feat
Maximize Spell feat
Quicken Spell feat
Repeating Spell feat (where is this at, Complete Arcane?)
Wand of Scorching Ray
4 3rd level infusions per day
And 4 rounds of buff time before he can unleash his flamy doom.

If he decides 4 rounds is too long (and it is), then he can cut that down to 3 rounds of buff time, and burn some extra charges to to apply one of those feats on-the-fly.

Compare that to what a psion can do at tenth level over 4-5 rounds, or a sorcerer, or a wizard, or even a fighter.

 

[Crothian]

WEll, I think the meta magics are being applied wrong at leat in the above formula. If you twin a maximized scorching ray don't you get one maximized and one normal? I didn't think meta magic effects effected the meta magic part of the spell like a maximized empowered one still rolls damage to apply for the empowered part even though the damage is maximized.

 

[IcyCool]

WEll, I think the meta magics are being applied wrong at leat in the above formula. If you twin a maximized scorching ray don't you get one maximized and one normal? I didn't think meta magic effects effected the meta magic part of the spell like a maximized empowered one still rolls damage to apply for the empowered part even though the damage is maximized.

I think you are correct, but I'm honestly not all that familiar with it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

WEll, I think the meta magics are being applied wrong at leat in the above formula. If you twin a maximized scorching ray don't you get one maximized and one normal? I didn't think meta magic effects effected the meta magic part of the spell like a maximized empowered one still rolls damage to apply for the empowered part even though the damage is maximized.

The reason that you're confused is because you are taking a specific rule and trying to make it general.

The feats and metamagic rules specifically state that when mixing Maximize and Empower on the same spell they don't affect each other.

That's the only place any such rule is stated. There's nothing else that says, "When applying Widen spell and Enlarge spell, both apply to the base spell separately."

Therefore, they don't. If they did, you'd end up with really, really odd occurences.

For instance, consider a Widened, Maximized Fireball:

WIDEN SPELL [METAMAGIC]
Benefit: You can alter a burst, emanation, line, or spread shaped spell to increase its area. Any numeric measurements of the spell’s area increase by 100%.A widened spell uses up a spell slot three levels higher than the spell’s actual level.

Spells that do not have an area of one of these four sorts are not affected by this feat.

Would you say that it does maximum damage in a 20' radius and normal damage in a 20'-40' radius, or does it do maximum damage in a 40' radius?