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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2011035" data-attributes="member: 24255">Power Classes VI: ArtificerEdited by Daniel Bishop and Paul Tucker (no author given)Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 110616 half-sized pages, $2.95Power Classes VI: Artificer is the 6th in Mongoose's booklet series of new 20-level character classes.  This one, the artificer, is a blend between a wizard or sorcerer and a scientist: in effect, an inventor of sorts who infuses his devices with arcane energy.  It's a great idea, but one that was perhaps constrained unduly by the page count.  I think Power Classes VI: Artificer would have been a much better book at twice the size, even if it meant raising the (already considerably low) price a bit.The cover art, once again by Nathan Webb and Scott Clark, depicts a male human artificer.  It's a subtle work; you have to look closely to pick out the "artificer" details: the piston on his armored right arm (presumably adding a Strength bonus), the artificial left foot (which, oddly enough, seems to be wearing a sandal!).  Proportion looks okay, except the artificer's facial features seem constrained to a smaller portion of his face than normal.Nathan also contributes the three pieces of black-and-white interior art: a close-up of a face peering at some gears on page 5 (nothing fancy, rather bland); a goateed male gnome artificer "wearing" the bottom half of a suit of armor scaled for a human (very imaginative piece, one of my all-time favorites of Nathan's) on page 10; and a male human artificer wielding a sword on page 13.  This latter piece suffers a bit in that I don't think Nathan had a very good idea of what an artificer's sword should look like (not that I blame him; I'm not quite sure myself), so he stuck some switches and levers on it and called it a day.As for the class itself, where to begin?  It's very flavorful, I'll give it that: playing an artificer would be a very different experience than playing a wizard or a sorcerer.  It would fit right in a "steampunk" campaign, which I believe was the intention.  However, I'm not too sure of some of the mechanics of the class.As far as hit dice and Base Attack Bonuses go, the artificer looks very much like a wizard -  okay, to be expected.  He can wear light and medium armor without penalty (there's no "arcane spell failure" to worry about) - nice touch, and it makes sense.  He gains bonus "spells" (let's just call them that for now to make the analogy) based on his Intelligence (like a wizard) but casts spells like a sorcerer.  However, to cast any of his "spells" (they're really called "designs") at all, he must first create a mechanomagical focus.  This isn't as bad as it sounds, because they're indefinitely reusable - in a way, they're comparable to a wizard's spellbook: without them, no spellcasting.  However, each one costs money and experience points to make, not to mention a chunk of time not spent adventuring.  Imagine a wizard being penalized (in gold and xp) every time he learned a new spell.  It doesn't seem fair, does it?It gets worse.  At every even level from 2nd through 18th, the artificer gets a class ability called "Invention."  An invention is a 50-charge magic item (well, mechanomagical item), basically the equivalent to a wand or staff.  Creating it isn't automatic; you still have to pay the gold, xp, and time to get your invention made, with no guarantee of success.  That's not bad when you compare it to crafting a wand or rod, but why is this a level-dependent class ability?  If a wizard takes the Craft Wand feat, he can craft wands all day if he wants.  Why can an artificer only create a non-reusable source (after 50 uses, it's done) only after having attained another two levels from the last time he was "permitted" to do so?  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.As he gains in level, an artificer learns (or discovers) how to create all sorts of things, from mechanomagical weapons , armor, constructs, replacement limbs, and so on.  Eventually, he can even infuse life into a mechanical being.  This is a good way to go about it: as he gains in level his "mechanomancy" abilities improve, allowing him to do more and more with his knowledge.  (Fortunately, there are no limitations to how often he can use these abilities; if he wants to lock himself in a lab and crank out construct after construct, more power to him.)The exact prices (gold, xp, time) are broken down for each of these mechanomagical abilities, although there seems to be a typo that throws everything off in the section on spell foci.  The examples indicate that a spell focus should cost 100 gp times the square of the spell's level (a 3rd level fireball spell focus would thus cost 3 times 3 times 100 gp, or 900 gp, as listed), not 10 gp times the square of the spell level, as described.  This makes more sense, as the verbiage specifically states that "building a mechanomagical spell focus is an expensive affair."  Also, unless the "how many ounces in a pound" rule is different in England than it is here in the United States, I think the rule should be that a mechanomagical spell focus weighs half a pound per spell level rather than the stated 5 ounces per spell level.  (Again, all of the examples provided use the half-pound/level formula; the fireball example used above weighs a pound and a half.)  England doesn't have 10 ounces to the pound or anything, does it?There are three examples of mechanomagical equipment and one magic item at the end of the book, as well as a new skill - Craft (mechanomancy), which is needed to create mechanomagical items, so the artificer had better put a good chunk of his 4 skill points per level into it to keep him from wasting good time, money, and experience points - and two new feats.  The new magic item seems weird, though: runic tools grant a +5, +10, or +15 circumstance bonus to Craft skill checks dealing with metal or stone - okay, perfectly reasonable so far - but must "rest" for 24 hours after being used before they can be used again.  Huh?  Where's the rationale for that?  It seems pretty arbitrary and off-the-cuff.Proofreading (by William James) was okay this time, although three "possessive" apostrophe errors slipped by him.This isn't the greatest in the "Power Class" line of booklets, but it takes an interesting approach to the "arcane inventor" character.  (If memory serves, wasn't there a very similar character concept in the "Pulp Heroes" mini-game in the first issue of Polyhedron to be grafted onto the back of Dungeon magazine?)  I don't think I'd use it exactly as written, but at $2.95 you're still getting a bargain even if you have to do a little tweaking to the concept yourself.</blockquote>

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