Party Artificer Needs Help in Combat

[SteelDraco]

Wand Mastery is a great feat, from the Eberron Campaign Setting book. It increases the effective caster level of any wand you use by two. Take that, and suddenly that CL 1 wand is shooting off at CL 3 - for the same exact price. It's much nicer that way. A Wand of Scorching Ray is the ultimate artificer gear, though. It gets expensive to burn through charges, but with Wand Mastery, Dual Wand Wielding, and Metamagic Spell Trigger, you can pump out INSANE amounts of damage.

Any additional magic items are going to make the artificer more powerful. Does your group use the Magic Item Compendium? I know there's a +1 weapon property in there called Precise, that lets you use a ranged weapon as though you had the Precise Shot feat. The Spell Compendium has a spell called Master's Touch, which might translate all right to an infusion - it allows you to use a touched weapon as though you're proficient with it.

I built a useful fighter/psionic artificer, with a focus on archery. Put an appropriate Bane on the bow you're using, and have a handy spell or two hanging in your Spell Storing Item, and you can be in good shape in combat. I never got a chance to play the character, but I was going to stand in the back and Rapid Shot with all-bane arrows at whatever we were fighting. I had Dorje Mastery (the psionic equivalent of Wand Mastery), and had dorjes of Energy Stun, Body Adjustment, and Force Screen. If the arrows weren't working, I could do some blasting with my dorje, and heal myself quite effectively (3d12 per charge from the Body Adjustment dorje). You could do the same thing pretty effectively with a normal artificer, though Dorje Mastery is quite a bit better than Wand Mastery.

 

[robberbaron]

Not so much a combat boost per se but see if your DM will allow an item that grants an equipment bonus to UMD (much like the +5 to HIde from Elven Cloak).
Mine wouldn't but yours might and would seriously help you use items.

 

[Patlin]

Not so much a combat boost per se but see if your DM will allow an item that grants an equipment bonus to UMD (much like the +5 to HIde from Elven Cloak).
Mine wouldn't but yours might and would seriously help you use items.

Hard for a DM not to allow a Circlet of Persuasion. It's core, and while it's a small bonus, the incidental benefit to other Charisma based skills is nice too. Since it's a competence bonus, it stacks with any enhancement item you infuse, too.

 

[Wolfwood2]

The Artificer did in fact make himself an item of +5 to Use Magic Device and typically has no problem making Use Magic Device checks. Making checks isn't a problem for him.

The player owns his own copy of Magic Item Compendium as well as Magic of Eberron. he has been making items out of the MIC. I think he actually tried out the Blast Rod infusion during a session I missed, but didn't get to use it for some reason.

I'm beginning to think that the problem boils down to us not finding a lot of wands and not having anywhere that we could buy wands. Given that we are going to the Free City (of Greyhawk) next session, that problem should disappear.

Given that, I think I will try to talk him out of talking the DM into letting him have a warforged cohort. It seems unnecessary.

 

[irdeggman]

Wolfwood2,

Make sure you point the errata that gives an artificer craft wands at 6th level not 7th.

This should hae made things better before, but at least now it should help out.

 

[avr]

Just something you may not have noticed - Armor infusion, greater. It's a 3rd level infusion which allows an artificer to emulate essentially any one armor enchantment. The DMG includes Etherealness, Heavy Fortification, Undead Controlling or, if he carries a spare shield or buckler, Reflecting. Not a lot of direct damage, but then that's not an Artificers main shtick - if the psion is the artillery, the artificer's the engineer.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hard for a DM not to allow a Circlet of Persuasion. It's core, and while it's a small bonus, the incidental benefit to other Charisma based skills is nice too. Since it's a competence bonus, it stacks with any enhancement item you infuse, too.

Yeah, that always bugged me that an Enhancement Bonus spell could be used to create a Competence bonus item that stacks with the spell.

Hmmm.

 

[KarinsDad]

The Artificer in our game has been the big gun on a few occassions.

He is only 3rd level, but out of 12 major combats (and a bunch of little ones) since starting at 1st level (and by major, I mean that several of them have been insane), he has effectively saved the day (or at least saved a lot of party resources) on about half of them by using an Action Point to Use Weapon Augmentation, Personal to infuse his crossbow with an appropriate Bane ability (and using Point Blank Shot with a 14 Dex gives him a fair chance to hit at +7 at 3rd level). And the Action Point here is useful for many rounds of combat, not just a single attack.

+7 to hit D8+2D6+3 is nothing to sneeze at in low level combat. Much better than the combatant Monk/Sorcerer's +7 to hit D6+5 with a +1 to hit D6+5 (or two +5 to hit D6+5 with a -1 to hit D6+5 with Flurry of Blows) or the Warforged Soul Knife's +5 to hit D6+D8+2 with a +0 to hit D4+1.

At mid levels, I suspect he will be using Power Surge with wands.

I think his feat plan is:

4: Extraordinary Artisian (bonus)
6: Rapid Infusion
8: Wand Mastery (bonus)
9: Twin Spell

Which combined with Metamagic Spell Trigger and Power Surge allows for some pretty nasty Wand useage when needed by 10th level without using up all of the charges in the Wand (i.e. a Twin Wand for 3 charges at +2 CL and +2 save DC is not that bad).

 

[Wolfwood2]

Update:

We played again this weekend. (We play every other Friday.) Roleplay heavy, not a lot of combat this time.

Artificer tally:

Managed to "talk down" a rampaging escaped zoo Chimera through roleplaying effort, knowledge of draconic, good usage of circumstances modifiers, and good roll on his Diplomacy check.

Pinned down a trying-to-escape doppleganger with two scrolls of Web, and revealed its invisible self for one round (long enough to finish it off) by clever use of armor and weapon enhancements. (It helped that he knew he was going to level at end of session, so he burned through action points like water.)

Oh, and he also made something like six separate magic items (or enhancements to existing items) for the party, plus some scrolls for himself.

I guess he's pretty useful come to that, if not in a flashy, easily noticeable way. Looks like he's going ahead with a warforged cohort too, which should probably show up next time around.