Looking for an home brewed artificer class...

[Bear]

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SCREWY! I cant eve search!

But anyway... can anyone point me to an artificer CORE class, not a prestige class.

It might not be known strictly as an artificer. I want a mage class that focuses on magic Item construction. More importantly, Golem and construct building. I'd like a class that starts tinkering with arcane machinery right away... small things eventually moveing on to big things. Mabye have a small clockwork golem as a familiar.

I have the Mongoose Publishing book Arcane Encyclopedia: Constructs but that only gives rules on how to make constructs by the book... you need to be at least 11th lvl before you can begin. I want something that starts you on that path at lvl 1.

Anyone seen or heard of such a thing?

 

[der_kluge]

I'm not aware of any artificer core class. There are several Artificer PrC, which seems appropriate to me. Artifice is an offshoot of magic, not a discipline in and of itself. You would have to create such a thing on your own.

And I would caution you that most construct/craft/tinker type classes suffer from what I call the "Decker effect". Deckers are a class in Shadowrun that hack into mainframes and find secret files, or crash the system, or whatever. It's a neat concept, but unfortunately, the class removes everyone else from gameplay. So, while the decker does his thing, everyone else at the table sits there twiddling their thumbs. Not fun. That's the decker effect. A lot of Tinker, Artificer, construct creation, mechanician, type classes and PrCs are interesting from a flavor perspective, but they are completely boring to play unless the GM is willing to give you the time necessary to hold yourself up in the middle of a city somewhere to build your robot army. Even if this is the case, the other players are probably going to have issue with it.

That, and the amount of time and money needed to create such things vastly outweighs any benefit they return. I mean, you could spend 100,000gp creating a golem, or for 75,000gp you could build a set of full plate +5, and a +5 sword. Which is going to add more value? In the hands of a proficient fighter wearing +5 full plate, a +5 sword is going to dole out weigh more damage than any golem ever could. So, the cost benefit just isn't there.


You have to be a community support to do a search. I can do one for you.

 

[der_kluge]

I did a search, in here and D&D rules, and didn't find anything that fit your request. I searched for artificer, tinker, mechanician, and construct.

 

[Bear]

I did a search, in here and D&D rules, and didn't find anything that fit your request. I searched for artificer, tinker, mechanician, and construct.

Thanks, bud. I appreciate your help and I dig your input and will take it into consideration.

I guess I was just hoping to make cheap little stuff in the beginning, much like with Scribe Scroll feat, where it was cheap and low powered in the beginning but rose in cost and power as you leveled.

Maybe make little spider constructs that can be only used/powered a low number of times per day untill the Artificer goes up in levels and was able to create a better construct to use perhaps more often.

This class would probably have a very small spell list and one that would pretty much be aimed at supporting his construct. Perhaps abjurations mostly.

 

[Beholder Bob]

Check out the (2nd edition) complete Shi'ars handbook - the clockwork mage may be your solution! Fairly balanced - and the mechanics can be pretty much directly translated over to 3.5 w/ little or no effort. Also, not much of a decker effect, one would think. Good stuff - and since it's 2nd edition, it should be low price or even downloadable free.

 

[the Jester]

I have a couple of homebrewed prcs (the artificer and the clockwork master) that sorta suit your needs, but no base class. Sorry.

 

[der_kluge]

Al-Qadim's Clockwork mage suffers from exactly the problem I was describing - Decker Syndrome. The little robots that he can make are far outbalanced by the cost and time it consumes to create them.

These things are best left for NPCs, IMHO.

Bear, if you were in my game, I would suggest maybe having some sort of clockwork familiar, I would encourage item creation feats, and we'd use all the core feats from the Artificer's Handbook (Mystic Eye Games). I would also encourage the Artificer Prestige Class from that book, and I would also encourage you to take the Tinker Skill, which can be found on the www.mysticeyegames.com website as a free download under the Bluffside web enhancements section (too lazy to look it up, but it should be easy enough to find).

That should get you really close to where you want to be, and it wouldn't be obnoxious to play.

 

[Beholder Bob]

Al-Qadim's Clockwork mage suffers from exactly the problem I was describing - Decker Syndrome....

Hmmm. That was not my experience, but milage may vary. The way it was run for us, the clockwork mage's work was figured out of game, submitted inbetween sessions. If the mage had a design that already worked and was accepted, it was x days and y cash to make if he & his allies wanted to wait for one. It didn't seem a problem for us, but it depends on the game and the exposure for clockworks I suppose.