D&D 5E (2014) Proficiencies don't make the class. Do they?

[Mephista]

Why? Rangers already have Beast Mastery, so a Golem Master should be just as prime. Granted, Beast Masters are a bit chunky right now, but there is no time like the present to get a working set of pet rules.

Golemancers are more akin to necromancer hoards or a land druid pixie swarm. Multiple creatures, not single unbeatable champions. Even then, its highly clunky to do a half-caster with leveling pet - half casters want to use their actions for attacks, bonus actions for spells (or vice versa), and pets try to leech off your action economy.

Half-caster also implies that the buffing-potion master as well as the explosive specialist will be making mundane attacks. That's simply poor design, favoring a bow caster or rune hammer, and trying to shoehorn the others into that kind. Look at the cleric - some are pure casters, some are spell-maces, some use cantrips to make sticks to hit you with.

You could theoretically add full casting to an existing half-caster,

And yet, they didn't. The bard started off as half-, but it was decided to be too clunky for future development, and too confusing and complicated for the Lore bard to work well. The same reasoning applies here.

but buffs don't need to scale nearly as much as damage does. In fact, things like advantage or resistance don't need to scale at all (because they are just as effective at level 1 as they are at level 20) and things like +AC or +Hit shouldn't scale much (because that would break things). Hit points are weird kind of binary thing. Temporary hit points would need some scaling, and an Alchemist would need some way to scale their personal damage, but that could potentially be handled with abilities, or just giving them some cantrips instead of level 9 spells.

So... yeah. Granting advantage or resistance is just one or two abilities/spells. Hit point recovery, temporary hit points need scaling. SOME artificers need weapon damage scaling, some need "spell" damage scaling.

Outside of the warlock (whom we should not mimic), cantrips are substandard damage, not meant to be the main source of your attack. If you're expecting cantrips to make up a notable part of your attacks, then we should have full casting and be consistent with everyone else.

And I still submit that assuming everyone is doing the whole magic-weapon-attack thing is detrimental to the class design.

You'll have to pardon me for not being particularly enthused by "arcane leader powers with tech-paint."

Not targeting you specifically, Ezekiel, but I think its kinda relevant. No matter how people feel about the issue, any 5e Artificer class is going to need to take both the 3e and 4e incarnations into account. You can't ignore either. Or, perhaps, you have to ignore both, depending on your point of view.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Classes are far more than just a collection of mechanics.

It would seem that the overall direction of this thread disagrees with your position: that is, the rather vehemently stated consensus thus far is, unless a concept can achieve a critical mass of unique mechanics, it doesn't deserve to exist as its own class, regardless of how people feel about it.

I also disagree with that consensus, but for different reasons than you do. I do think that there's *something* to be said for both sides: classes ONLY exist, in a game sense, as mechanics, so it is somewhat silly to say that narrative is ultimately primary. Yet at the same time, there's clearly something different about, say, Dungeon World vs. Dungeon Planet, even though they are the same engine and often the exact same mechanics with a different label. The experience, or narrative if you prefer, is different, so mechanics alone cannot be telling the whole story.

The very existence of the words...the very labels themselves...such as Ranger, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlord...and Yes...Artificer, proves the existence and validity of these narrative conceits.

Yet the narrative for each of those conceits is still bound to some kind of mechanical construct, is it not? If it weren't, there would be nothing stopping people from just scratching out "Fighter" and writing "Ranger"--because the narrative in their minds is all that matters. You seem to be saying that the ONLY thing that matters is the fact that someone has a particular narrative in mind. If that were the case, why does the execution matter at all? Because the thing on the page, and in the book, itself has a grounded meaning and significance--but the thing on the page is always a mechanical "object" (of a sort), with a label. The inter-relationship between mechanics and labels cannot be characterized solely by examining one or the other.

I mean, you even mention "Warlord," yet the designers didn't see fit to include a class for it, and even the supposedly sufficient subclass (Battlemaster) is woefully inadequate. And how does one even begin to describe classless games, like Savage Worlds, where "Paladin" is (at very, very best) a label for a point-buy guide?

And yet, they didn't. The bard started off as half-, but it was decided to be too clunky for future development, and too confusing and complicated for the Lore bard to work well. The same reasoning applies here. <snip> Outside of the warlock (whom we should not mimic), cantrips are substandard damage, not meant to be the main source of your attack. If you're expecting cantrips to make up a notable part of your attacks, then we should have full casting and be consistent with everyone else.

Emphasis mine: Why shouldn't we? Not specifically in terms of the "awesome unique cantrip" thing necessarily, but in other terms?

In a very real sense, the Warlock is a half-caster that can't choose not to become a "full caster." If there were a feature that traded in its Mystic Arcana, the Warlock would be, in a certain sense, a half-caster. They gain new spell levels at the rate of a full caster, until 5th, at which point they stop. What if we applied something similar to the regular casting track? That is, having spell slots--or whatever usage mechanic, I don't care which specifically--which grow up until you hit 5th level or whatever, and then at that point your casting prowess grows in some other way, with just one path being 6th-9th level spells a la Mystic Arcana?

Riffing off @Minigiant's WoW Shaman suggestion, what if the "Augmentor" Artificer gains powerful, encounter-long, totem-like abilities instead of a new level of Mystic Arcanum? A different build, that focuses purely on the magic of magitek (whatever that means, since I still don't have an answer there), could get Arcane Schemata at those levels instead. Boom: A half-caster, which develops in a radically different way from every other class, and which provides the opportunity to either gain "full-caster-like" benefits, OR get some other big boost instead.

And I still submit that assuming everyone is doing the whole magic-weapon-attack thing is detrimental to the class design.

I'm afraid my last post was...rather delayed, so I missed a lot of the middle of the thread. What in specific do you mean by this, and why is it such bad design?

Not targeting you specifically, Ezekiel, but I think its kinda relevant. No matter how people feel about the issue, any 5e Artificer class is going to need to take both the 3e and 4e incarnations into account. You can't ignore either. Or, perhaps, you have to ignore both, depending on your point of view.

Yeah, when a new 5e class actually takes into account 4e class design, I'll celebrate. Until then, I don't expect much of anything. (And before the derail starts: no, I'm not particularly interested in discussing why I don't think 5e classes actually take into account 4e class design.)

 

[Mephista]

Emphasis mine: Why shouldn't we? Not specifically in terms of the "awesome unique cantrip" thing necessarily, but in other terms?

In a very real sense, the Warlock is a half-caster that can't choose not to become a "full caster." If there were a feature that traded in its Mystic Arcana, the Warlock would be, in a certain sense, a half-caster. They gain new spell levels at the rate of a full caster, until 5th, at which point they stop. What if we applied something similar to the regular casting track? That is, having spell slots--or whatever usage mechanic, I don't care which specifically--which grow up until you hit 5th level or whatever, and then at that point your casting prowess grows in some other way, with just one path being 6th-9th level spells a la Mystic Arcana?

First, let me address the half- / full- caster comment. I don't want to get into a semantics argument, so I'm going to clarify what I mean from here on:

If you reach level 9 spells in some way, if your class design has almost every other level granting you a new spell level, then I consider it a full caster. So, the warlock as a whole is a full caster. The tome pact, specifically, I call a "dedicated caster." Same thing with Bard - Valor Bard is a full caster, Lore Bard is a dedicated caster for the latter's emphasis on spells over the former's weapon training.

So, when I say the Artificer needs to be a full caster, I just mean that it needs the full casting progression, be it a Spellcasting feature, a Pact Magic feature, or its own customized one.

Anyways, moving on. Why don't we want to copy off the Warlocks' design? I was speaking in the context of cantrip casting. The cantrip / at-will Invocation magic is a specialization of the warlock, one of its defining features that separates it from all other classes. And I still maintain that all classes need unique styles and mechanics to emphasize its own individuality. If it doesn't, then we may as well make it a subclass.

Making Artificer into a second Pact Magic class would be pretty interesting. Actually, it'd be pretty thematic, fluffed as giving time for your magic items to "cool down" or "recharge their batteries" so to speak.

Riffing off @Minigiant's WoW Shaman suggestion, what if the "Augmentor" Artificer gains powerful, encounter-long, totem-like abilities instead of a new level of Mystic Arcanum? A different build, that focuses purely on the magic of magitek (whatever that means, since I still don't have an answer there), could get Arcane Schemata at those levels instead. Boom: A half-caster, which develops in a radically different way from every other class, and which provides the opportunity to either gain "full-caster-like" benefits, OR get some other big boost instead.

Magitek is just modern/advanced technology that runs off magic energy instead of electricity, or whatever scientific principles run our technology in real life. Like, instead of an infrastructure of wires connecting phones across the country, you'd have a magical system of scrying mirrors or magic balls that magically synergize, letting you "call" someone up through the magic of these scry spells embedded in the mirror. Golems are basically robots powered by trapped elementals instead of batteries or reactors. Magitek is just technology powered by magic.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Magitek

In context of the Artificer, it likely also means magic that can only manifest as some kind of technology.

I'm afraid my last post was...rather delayed, so I missed a lot of the middle of the thread. What in specific do you mean by this, and why is it such bad design?

Because its just one of the styles of artificer, not every style. At the most generous, its like the divine strike for cleric. Some, maybe many, subclasses could end up using it, not every last one. Generally speaking, there are four main focuses of an artificer across various games, both TT and video game - alchemy / potions, explosives, golems / homoculi pet masters, and magic "gunner" (also could be known as rune magic). Keeping with the cleric comparison, the alchemy, golem, and gunner would be the equivalent of the Life, Nature, and War Domains, lets say. Explosives would be equivalent to the Light Domain, which focuses on more powerful magic spells, not Divine Strike.

The point is that forcing everyone to consider themselves a user of the crossbow or runic hammer is detrimental to class design in the long run.

Yeah, when a new 5e class actually takes into account 4e class design, I'll celebrate. Until then, I don't expect much of anything. (And before the derail starts: no, I'm not particularly interested in discussing why I don't think 5e classes actually take into account 4e class design.)

As an aside, I would like to point out that I consider the two Ranger subclasses to be divided into 3e style and 4e style. The Beastmaster is a nod to the core book 3e ranger, and the Hunter (with their Marks) a nod to the 4e style of play. The class, as a whole, has issues, but I can feel the two difference.

So, while we might not get a core class that's definitively styled off 4e, I do think that, in the case of the Artificer, we should have one subclass that does the Healing Infusions and recharging stuff that the 4e class did, while the 3e didn't.

 

[Leatherhead]

Golemancers are more akin to necromancer hoards or a land druid pixie swarm. Multiple creatures, not single unbeatable champions.

That's not inherently true, it's simply a style choice.

Even then, its highly clunky to do a half-caster with leveling pet - half casters want to use their actions for attacks, bonus actions for spells (or vice versa), and pets try to leech off your action economy.

Why is having a bonus action pet attack worse than having a bonus action spell?
They don't have to be exactly the same as the other classes, just similar enough. And lets face it, pet rules need an overhaul even if the Artificer never sees the light of day again.

Half-caster also implies that the buffing-potion master as well as the explosive specialist will be making mundane attacks. That's simply poor design, favoring a bow caster or rune hammer, and trying to shoehorn the others into that kind.

Or they could throw bombs and poisons, which is thematic and appropriate given that we are dealing with Eberron Artificers, who made war machines.

So... yeah. Granting advantage or resistance is just one or two abilities/spells.

So is healing or temporary hp.

Artificers simply don't have enough inherent spell variation to warrant being a full caster without extreme amounts of padding or inventing spells whole cloth. And it's a lot more work to make a full 9 level spell list than it is to make a full suite of class abilities.

 

[Staffan]

The 3e artificer was considered to be a top tier class, one of the most powerful, leaving the old wizard (one of the dominant forces in the game) in the dust, and the create-any-spell-on-the-fly was a large part of that. 5e has gone to great length to prevent caster domination. People are saying that Favored Soul is overpowered for simply getting 10 extra known spells in the sorcerer. Tome warlock has access to every ritual in the game, and that's insanely potent. How much more should we consider access to every spell in the game at once?

I think it's less powerful than you think.

For one, rituals don't consume any daily resources beyond time - and that's the main reason characters use them. Most classes need to have the spell ready to cast in order to cast it as a ritual, though wizards only need to have it in their spell book. So a cleric doesn't use rituals to be able to fix unexpected problems, they use them to save on spell slots. My Spell-storing item would use up a spell slot - and one of a higher level than a dedicated caster, at that. If you need to sneak the party in somewhere, you could either have the druid cast pass without trace using a 2nd-level slot, or the artificer muck up the equivalent with a 3rd-level slot.

Though perhaps the time taken should be knocked up to 10 minutes in order to match rituals.

IMO, the major power of the 3e artificer lay in getting magic items and being able to use them far better than others. They essentially supercharged the item system that was layered on top of the core class-based system of 3e. They got a bunch of free XP to spend on making items, and could take bonus feats that reduced the gold piece cost of making them - so instead of buying an item worth, say, 10,000 gp they could make it themselves for 3,750 gp. That didn't just make themselves better, it also made the whole party more powerful. They also had the ability to use meta-magic feats with wands and such, letting them do some serious blasting when needed. My version tones this down by a lot, essentially reducing it to saying they don't need to know the right spells to make items, but they still need formulas and spend as much time/money doing it.

 

[Mephista]

*Snip*

Why not show how it could work then? Prove me wrong with more than just questions. I've argued those points elsewhere, or they've been proven through playtesting. Show me an grenadier or alchemist that would work with half-casterhood and scale damage/healing effects well. Give a golem master that inexplicably can only build one golem at a time.

 

[Mephista]

*snip*

The rituals from the Tome pact are powerful for simultaneous access to every ritual in the game irregardless of class, not for the lack of consumption of daily resources. Same with Magic Secrets - bards with access to smite spells and the Ranger Bow spells is huge for the Valor, and access to anyone's buffing or controlling spells are very potent for the Lore. Its the synergy and access that's powerful.

The more spells you have potential access to, the more powerful you are. Its a fact of game design. Linear warriors and quadratic casters was only one part of the caster domination of 3e the designers took pains to break away from. Twice now, in fact. There's a lot invested into making it so that spells cannot replace mundane action.

And, yes, artificers they were able to use wands and magic items in a way that was on par with a regular caster using their daily spell slots thanks to that metamagic effect on the items. That was part of the problem - access to any spell in the game virtually on par with everyone else combined. In 5e, when metamagic is the sole domain of the sorcerer, magic doesn't scale with class level, and DCs are often based off your attributes? We have the same issue.

In 5e, this is also bad, because we should take pains to avoid overlap as well. People still complain that the sorcerer is just a variant wizard and should be a subclass. That is something we need to avoid - otherwise, the artificer is nothing more than class bloat. Or, worse, a sign of power creep. Flexibility with magic is a hallmark of the wizard class - the artificer should not outdo the wizard at his own game by default.

 

[Staffan]

The rituals from the Tome pact are powerful for simultaneous access to every ritual in the game irregardless of class, not for the lack of consumption of daily resources. Same with Magic Secrets - bards with access to smite spells and the Ranger Bow spells is huge for the Valor, and access to anyone's buffing or controlling spells are very potent for the Lore. Its the synergy and access that's powerful.

But these are non-combat spells. You won't be using Spell-storing item to cast dominate person - you'll be using it to cast disguise self or control water. It's an exploration-pillar ability, not a combat-pillar one.

 

[Minigiant]

Here's the question?

How does it kill orcs? What class feature does the class use to kill orcs?

How does an artificer kill orcs?
Is there a class feature all artificers have? Does it use spells? Does it get sneak attack? Extra attack?

How does a warlord kill orcs?
Does it use maneuvers or extra attacks like a fighter? Or does it gain a tactics system to deal damage?

How does a psion kill orcs?
It's a full caster but what's tthe angle? Psychic combat like pre3e? Boosted cantrips like 4e?

 

[El Mahdi]

It would seem that the overall direction of this thread disagrees with your position: that is, the rather vehemently stated consensus thus far is, unless a concept can achieve a critical mass of unique mechanics, it doesn't deserve to exist as its own class, regardless of how people feel about it.

Actually, this is incorrect. What I was responding to is those that believe a class must ONLY achieve a critical mass of unique mechanics.

My contention throughout has been that a class must have BOTH. Nowhere have I said that Narrative is all that's important, or even primarily important. My point has been directed at those that believe it's not important at all.

...classes ONLY exist, in a game sense, as mechanics....

Not true. If this were so, there'd never be an inclusion of a narrative description for a class. Why waste print space on narrative descriptions unless it's needed? It may not be needed by all players, but it's certainly needed by enough to warrant its inclusion.

The Game is more than just mechanics.

Yet the narrative for each of those conceits is still bound to some kind of mechanical construct, is it not? If it weren't, there would be nothing stopping people from just scratching out "Fighter" and writing "Ranger"--because the narrative in their minds is all that matters. You seem to be saying that the ONLY thing that matters is the fact that someone has a particular narrative in mind.

I don't restate everything I've posted throughout a thread in every post of that thread. It would be a waste of space, confuse the point of individual posts, and likely mean nobody would take the time to read them.

But, for clarification purposes:

Do Artificers have a distinctive narrative and a distinctive purpose?

If so, then it should be its own class.

If it should be its own class, does its mechanics effectively support its distinctive purpose?

If not, then the mechanics need to be changed or developed to do so.

Also, this:

I think Kamikaze has a big part of it when he said...

...and this:

P.S.: I think Kamikaze's Narrative Distinction is why...