D&D 5E Does the Artificer Suck?

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

No, not really.

If it isn't your experience, that is fine, but it is mine (and others...), so.... shrug

One other, from what I've seen in this thread. Two people saying "this thing is OP and broke my campaign" with no elaboration whatsoever isn't a very compelling or believable argument.

My position is that Warforged Artificers couldn't break any campaign except for very niche and uncommon ones (like no Magic Items Ever! campaigns, or Plague campaigns, or Survival campaigns). No one has ever rebutted that, and anecdotal evidence is pretty weak when there's not any experiences provided for how the thing broke your game, or how it's mechanically unbalanced. If you're going to make a claim that you want to be taken seriously, you might want to consider backing it up at least a little.

 

[DND_Reborn]

One other, from what I've seen in this thread. Two people saying "this thing is OP and broke my campaign" with no elaboration whatsoever isn't a very compelling or believable argument.

What makes you think we are trying to convince you? Frankly, I think the Warforged itself is broken and top if off the Artificer is a horrible class IMO and very unbalanced. But, that's just it... it is my opinion. You don't play in my game, so why on Earth do you care!?

So, that's that. Feel free to "get in the last word" if you absolutely must... Or just drop it. Your choice. Either way, I'm done with you. Cheers.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

What makes you think we are trying to convince you? Frankly, I think the Warforged itself is broken and top if off the Artificer is a horrible class IMO and very unbalanced. But, that's just it... it is my opinion. You don't play in my game, so why on Earth do you care!?

Why am I not allowed to care and ask questions? You're posting on an public platform. If you're going to say "I think X class/race is broken", is it really so unreasonable to at least ask why you feel that way? Why are you so defensive about this? I literally just asked why you thought they were broken, and you defaulted to "I don't have to explain my reasoning, and I'm allowed to say what I want with no evidence because it's my opinion". Okay, dude. You're entitled to your opinion, but you aren't entitled to not have it questioned, and you're doubly not entitled to act like a jerk about it. And, just because something is you're opinion, it doesn't mean that it's correct or that you're immune to questioning about it because "it's your opinion".

I care because I like the artificer, and think it's quite well balanced. No, I'm not at your campaign, but you still came into a thread discussing whether or not the Artificer is balanced on TTRPG social-media website posting that you think it's OP. And now you're acting like it's totally unreasonable to ask for any backup to why you think it's OP or how it broke your game.

Don't allow artificers or warforged if you want (obviously, as I don't have the capability or right to demand that anyone uses anything they don't like in their own campaigns, but that wasn't the point of this in the first place), but it isn't unreasonable to ask for answers on a public messaging board.

So, that's that. Feel free to "get in the last word" if you absolutely must... Or just drop it. Your choice. Either way, I'm done with you. Cheers.

Why bring it up in the first place if you're not even going to support it?

 

[tetrasodium]

What makes you think we are trying to convince you? Frankly, I think the Warforged itself is broken and top if off the Artificer is a horrible class IMO and very unbalanced. But, that's just it... it is my opinion. You don't play in my game, so why on Earth do you care!?

So, that's that. Feel free to "get in the last word" if you absolutely must... Or just drop it. Your choice. Either way, I'm done with you. Cheers.

You are wrong about both the warforged & artificer. The warforged is not broken, reasons why have already been provided & compared to some of the core races it might actually be underdone.

 

[ECMO3]

Saving Throws against damage (especially ones that still damage on a successful save, like Breath Weapons or Fireballs) are a great way to go around AC

They are a way to cause damage, but not usually effective at winning a fight. Those type of strikes are usually either limited use or recharge and they are often mitigated with absorb elements. It is hard to design a CR-appropriate combat around AOEs alone.

This is particularly true when the high AC makes you nearly immune to AOOs and you can often just run past all the blockers to attack the casters,.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You are wrong about both the warforged & artificer. The warforged is not broken, reasons why have already been provided & compared to some of the core races it might actually be underdone.

Yeah. I mean, look at elves (any elf, none are underpowered) and Mountain Dwarves, and the Mountain Dwarf and Elf will come on-top over the Warforged almost every time. Yes, Warforged are significantly better than a lot of the D&D 5e races. However, that's not because it's OP, it's because WotC made sucky races after the PHB (except for a few outliers that were OP; like Yuan-Ti Purebloods) and Eberron actually gave races that were about on-par with the PHB races (granted, with the right combos, the Dragonmarked races could be an issue, but not that big of one, and they're situationally OP). (And, they lost a significant amount of power from the UA version to the officially published version in Rising from the Last War.)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

They are a way to cause damage, but not usually effective at winning a fight.

The DM's job isn't to win fights. It's to challenge the players. If the DM wants to win a fight, they can just snap their fingers and summon 20 Tarrasques. If they want to give their players a fun, but challenging, combat encounter, they can do a mixture of solutions for a character with a really good AC (AoEs, non-damaging spells that still harm the character, environmental hazards, etc).

Those type of strikes are usually either limited use or recharge and they are often mitigated with absorb elements.

Absorb Elements is a reaction, so it's competing with Shield and Flash of Genius. Additionally, there are plenty of AoEs/Save-Against-Half-Damage effects that don't use elemental damage (Green Dragon breath weapons, quite a few spells, etc). Yes, a lot of them are consumable, but if combat is lasting 5 rounds at most, the consumable/recharage abilities will still get their time to shine.

It is hard to design a CR-appropriate combat around AOEs alone.

Then don't. Mix in other things (monsters with high bonuses to hit, spells, other saving-throw-effects, environmental hazards, flying creatures that are out of reach of melee characters if the PC is melee, etc). I was just giving one of the main examples. My point was that high AC isn't a "I win" button by the players (DMs have a monopoly on those in D&D, after all), and my other point was that Warforged and Artificers aren't the only way to get really high AC (but you weren't addressing this point).

This is particularly true when the high AC makes you nearly immune to AOOs and you can often just run past all the blockers to attack the casters,.

So? That's a buff to having high AC. High AC should have buffs, otherwise the player will feel cheated out of their abilities and work as a character-creator. However, just like there are ways to damage and debuff PCs that have high AC, there are ways to protect enemy casters that aren't solely reliant upon Opportunity Attacks (abjuration spells, flight, surrounded by guards on all sides to make it so melee characters literally cannot get up to them, etc).

High AC is great, but it's not the end all, be all of character options and optimization in D&D. The DM has literally every tool in existence to make High AC not be a game-breaker in their campaign.

 

[ECMO3]

The DM's job isn't to win fights. It's to challenge the players. If the DM wants to win a fight, they can just snap their fingers and summon 20 Tarrasques. If they want to give their players a fun, but challenging, combat encounter, they can do a mixture of solutions for a character with a really good AC (AoEs, non-damaging spells that still harm the character, environmental hazards, etc).

You missed the part where I said "CR appropriate" 20 Tarrasques (or even 1) are not CR appropriate for any 5E party.

Your green dragon breath is a great example. Its beats AE, the character has a crappy constitution so he could miss his save, but even here it is a statistically usable less than twice in a 5-turn battle. If the CR8 young green Dragon does not down the 6th level artificer with its breath (or worse happens to use it on other party members) then he is going to have to roll a crit with disadvantage in one of the remaining 4 turns to damage the artificer at all.

If we assume said dragon almost kills him with poison, so he only has 1or 2 hp left or maybe he gets lucky and downs him with one shot of breath alone and then the party uses healing word. At this point the artificer with less than 10hp is nearly unstoppable by that dragon. In the 4 remaining turns of a 5-turn battle the dragon is going to get 12 attacks and needs to crit with disadvantage. If the dragon uses every single one of them to attack the artificer, the chance of hitting on any of those attacks is only 3%. That is hardly a challenge.

Now sure you can throw up a terrasque or a even an adult green dragon (CR15) and they would make short work of the artificer, but in that case you are putting the party against a far more powerful monster than they should be facing.

I am not saying you can't design something to challange him, you can but not without getting cheesy and purposely designing a combat around that specific character's narrow weaknesses.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You missed the part where I said "CR appropriate" 20 Tarrasques (or even 1) are not CR appropriate for any 5E party.

Your green dragon breath is a great example. Its beats AE, the character has a crappy constitution so he could miss his save, but even here it is a statistically usable less than twice in a 5-turn battle. If the CR8 young green Dragon does not down the 6th level artificer with its breath (or worse happens to use it on other party members) then he is going to have to roll a crit with disadvantage in one of the remaining 4 turns to damage the artificer at all.

If we assume said dragon almost kills him with poison, so he only has 1or 2 hp left or maybe he gets lucky and downs him with one shot of breath alone and then the party uses healing word. At this point the artificer with less than 10hp is nearly unstoppable by that dragon. In the 4 remaining turns of a 5-turn battle the dragon is going to get 12 attacks and needs to crit with disadvantage. If the dragon uses every single one of them to attack the artificer, the chance of hitting on any of those attacks is only 3%. That is hardly a challenge.

Now sure you can throw up a terrasque or a even an adult green dragon (CR15) and they would make short work of the artificer, but in that case you are putting the party against a far more powerful monster than they should be facing.

I am not saying you can't design something to challange him, you can but not without getting cheesy and purposely designing a combat around that specific character's narrow weaknesses.

Wait, your definition of "challenging the players" involves killing them, or knocking them to near enough HP that they could die? That's not at all what my definition of a challenging fight is.

The "summon 20 Tarrasques" thing was a joke. I was commenting on how the DM can add anything to fight the players if they want to "win the battle", because it's not the DM's job to try to win the battle. Also, who cares if they're fighting something a few CRs higher than a normal/average party would? CR is a very flawed guideline, after all, and there's no reason why a DM should feel beholden to the "proper counter difficulty" tables in the DMG.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yeah. I mean, look at elves (any elf, none are underpowered) and Mountain Dwarves, and the Mountain Dwarf and Elf will come on-top over the Artificer almost every time. Yes, Warforged are significantly better than a lot of the D&D 5e races. However, that's not because it's OP, it's because WotC made sucky races after the PHB (except for a few outliers that were OP; like Yuan-Ti Purebloods) and Eberron actually gave races that were about on-par with the PHB races (granted, with the right combos, the Dragonmarked races could be an issue, but not that big of one, and they're situationally OP). (And, they lost a significant amount of power from the UA version to the officially published version in Rising from the Last War.)

Yea I'm playing a mountain dwarf scribes wizard who didn't dump con in a frostmaiden game & it show just how jawdroppingly off the mark thatthe idea that warforge +1 ac might be "broken" is a when you combine the generally low tohit low damage output monsters with 5e's trivial ease of recovery. With AC16 from scalemail I can probably count on one hand the number of times I A: actually got hit by a monster & B: felt the risk was high enough to bother with shield even though the game has been going on for months & is nearly finished in the necropolis.
Yea there is a serious problem in 5e's race & monster design, but the soso warforge +1ac is far from the root cause