D&D 5E Does the Artificer Suck?

[NaturalZero]

@Flamestrike your pretty much conceding and pointing at the significance of artificer's design problems. That's like saying beastmaster ranger is good if you max charisma and take a level or two of warlock for agonizing repelling eldritch blast.

I'm currently playing a hexblade 3/echo knight 8. I'm mostly fighter levels but warlock shenanigans are so strong, I can completely focus on Cha while dumping Str, stacking hex + curse + crit range on all melee and ranged attacks. You're right that adding a couple of levels of warlock can radically change most builds and doesn't tell us a lot about the power of other base classes.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm currently playing a hexblade 3/echo knight 8. I'm mostly fighter levels but warlock shenanigans are so strong, I can completely focus on Cha while dumping Str, stacking hex + curse + crit range on all melee and ranged attacks. You're right that adding a couple of levels of warlock can radically change most builds and doesn't tell us a lot about the power of other base classes.

I. Genuinely curious because it's not ringing any bells... is echo knight a thing somewhere or auto corrected eldritch?

 

[Zardnaar]

I. Genuinely curious because it's not ringing any bells... is echo knight a thing somewhere or auto corrected eldritch?

Wildemont book.

 

[NaturalZero]

I. Genuinely curious because it's not ringing any bells... is echo knight a thing somewhere or auto corrected eldritch?

Echo knight is a fighter sub from the Wildemount campaign setting. You can create and "echo" at-will that is basically a summon that can fly around and make melee attacks for you. They have alright melee nova ability since you can get a number of extra attacks per day equal to your Con but the main draw is at-will teleportation and amazing remote dungeon clearing without spending resources.

 

[Argyle King]

I've found that Artificer + something else tends to be pretty good. What that something else is depends on what you want to be good at.

Personally, I find that I tend to take more levels of whatever the something else is. The parts of the Artificer which I like come pretty early in the class.

 

[Flamestrike]

@Flamestrike your pretty much conceding and pointing at the significance of artificer's design problems. That's like saying beastmaster ranger is good if you max charisma and take a level or two of warlock for agonizing repelling eldritch blast.

The first one didnt take any levels of Warlock.

Heck (presuming a featless game with no MCing) a 10th level Artillerist is doing 2d10 fire (firebolt)+4d8 force (turret and arcane firearm) or around 30 damage at will, which is on par with a Warlock of the same level using Hex.

It can also fireball (with a target taking an extra 1d8 damage), and force cannon a survivor for an extra 2d8.

Its at will damage increases by another d10 at 11th, a further 3d8 at 15th, and another d10 at 17th level (when it maxes out at 4d10+7d8). That's 55 or so damage a round (at will) which is just fine.

In a game with feats or MCing, you can really get that at will damage to spike even higher.

 

[ccs]

Just talking about the mechanics.

The artificer player wanted to test it out, hasn't messed his build up or anything.

Are they happy with it?

 

[ccs]

Warlock 2 avoids the Feat tax, and lets you add Cha to damage AND lets you push things back with Repelling blast.

Warlock 2, Artillerist 15 has got some crazy at will damage at 4d10+7d8+6d6+20 (plus being able to push the target back a total of 50')

It's also Lv.17 & as such exists more in theory than in most games.....
All the crazy at-will damage in the world means nothing if it's not actually played.

 

[Zardnaar]

Are they happy with it?

I think so. Newish play happy with anything. Last played a Minotaur death cleric of Anubis.

 

[Mistwell]

It's also Lv.17 & as such exists more in theory than in most games.....
All the crazy at-will damage in the world means nothing if it's not actually played.

Weird. The detractors are speaking from a theoretical position, and then the supporters are as well because THE CLASS IS NEW and here you're deriding just one side of that debate for being theoretical?

Have you played the class? If not, does your opinion mean nothing because it's not actually played?