Ideas for my Melee Artificer

[grandpappy]

Hey guys. I've been DMing a game for about a year and a half, and I'm setting down my DM dice and picking up the sword as a PC.

I've been looking at the Artificer and really want to make a melee artificer.

I'm not interested in power building, but I don't want to suck either. I'm moving into a group that has no dedicated healer, nor a front line tank. So I kind of want to fill those roles to some degree.


Setting:
We're in our own world, fairly generic with heavy dragons. The Abyssal plane has just spilled over into our world.

My concept is this:
I'm a warforged, but have no clue how I came into being. I want to figure out how to create artificial life. For that reason I've taken up the pursuit of artifact creation in an attempt to figure this out. In an attempt to create artificial life, I've invested time and energy into learning to create effigies.

I'm more of a fan of melee combat than spellcasting, hence the melee artificer.

House Rules:
Any hardback book is allowed. 11th level.

I talked with the new DM and he's ok with me forgoing the Simulacrum prereq for Effigy Master.




The character as it stands in my head:

Character starts at level 11.

Race: Warforged
Levels: 7 Artificer / 1 Effigy Master / 2 Crusader / 1 Spellcarved Warrior

Lvl Feats
1: Adamantine Body
2:
3: Extend Spell (Metamagic feat)
4: Legendary Artisan (Artificer bonus feat - I might have the wrong one listed but I mean the one that reduces XP cost)
5:
6: Persist Spell (Metamagic feat)
7:
8: Create Effigy
9: Shield Proficiency (gives tower shield from Crusader), Weapon Group Proficiencies (sword + exotic + 2 more), Monkey Grip (so I can use a large bastard sword one handed - I just like the idea)
10:
11: Rune of Enhancement (Spellcarved warrior)

I'm not too worried about BAB, I plan on using a persisted wand of Wraithstrike for all melee touch attacks (one charge per day when using the Metamagic Item infusion).

My primary gear would be my tower shield + large bastard sword.

No clue how powerful this character actually is, but I like the concept.

Any ideas on how to make him better? Or just other ideas that I might not have thought of?

 

[szilard]

You need Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword to use a bastard sword one-handed.

Also, do infusions suffer from ASF at all? I don't recall... if so, a tower shield is problematic.

I plan on using a persisted wand of Wraithstrike for all melee touch attacks (one charge per day when using the Metamagic Item infusion).

Ouch.

-Stuart

 

[udalrich]

This should give decent healing capability. You'll have infusions to heal yourself. You'll be able to craft wands of Cure X Wounds fairly cheaply. A charisma of 10 and max ranks in UMD would give an artificer +16 to activate wand, so it'll work almost all the time in combat.

Actually, you could almost negate the need for out-of-combat healing with a Wand of Lessor Vigor, Metamagic Item infusion and Persistant. One infusion and one charge per party member gives everyone fast healing 1 for the next 24 hours. Once combat is over, wait 100 rounds (about 15 minutes) and everyone heals 100 hit points. It's even an in game excuse to take 20 while searching the bodies.

For a party of 4, that's 30 gp per day (and about 1 XP), which is trivial at your level. Only problem is that the first dispel magic is going to take it down, since it would only be caster level 1. If your DM uses dispels with any frequency, you might want to boost the caster level just for the resistance. 330 gold per day is still pretty cheap.

 

[szilard]

Actually, you could almost negate the need for out-of-combat healing with a Wand of Lessor Vigor, Metamagic Item infusion and Persistant. One infusion and one charge per party member gives everyone fast healing 1 for the next 24 hours. Once combat is over, wait 100 rounds (about 15 minutes) and everyone heals 100 hit points. It's even an in game excuse to take 20 while searching the bodies.

I've read somewhere that you can't make the Vigor spells persistant...

-Stuart

 

[grandpappy]

You need Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword to use a bastard sword one-handed.

Also, do infusions suffer from ASF at all? I don't recall... if so, a tower shield is problematic.

I've got the exotic weapon covered with the Weapon Group Feats. These are a set of feats in Unearthed Arcana that allows you to replace the standard "gain all martial weapons" with targeted groups of weapons. Say... Heavy Swords, Polearms, etc. One of the ones I plan on getting is the Exotic group, which when grouped with the Heavy Swords one, gives me the bastard sword exotic proficiency.

Also, Infusions do not suffer from ASF, since they aren't considered arcane spells. They just take a long time to activate.

I'd love to try and see what else I can use persistence on. I have never played under this DM before, so I don't know how much he'll use dispel. I had been planning on using the Vitality wands, they make for very cheap healing.

I've read somewhere that you can't make the Vigor spells persistant...

I'm not seeing how it couldn't be persisted, it has a constant range (touch) and a non-instant duration. Isn't that all that's required for the metamagic feat?