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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Novem5er" data-source="post: 4354247" data-attributes="member: 57859">Okay, I'll be honest. The Artificer: I don't get it.I really want to like this class. I've read several of the Eberron novels with artificer characters and I always like them. I'm understand that game mechanics cannot always reflect literature, and that balance and fun are primary concerns when designing any system. So far I love 4e, so no complaints there.But this preview article? I just don't get that artificer feel. I was really curious how WotC was going to design it and, with this build at least, I'm just not feeling it. I've come here for help b/c I really want to like this class.My big problem is that it doesn't feel like the artificer is actually "making" anything. It seems like you're pointing a wand and making stuff happen... sort of like a wizard, except that often an ally has to be a target, as opposed to an enemy.Take the Thundering Armor At-Will ability. It has a range of 10, and can be done every round. The description says that you point your wand and make your ally's armor pulse. Just point and enchant?Many of the other spells involve firing an infused projectile. I guess that the act of using the power is what actually creates the infusion. This makes sense, except that obviously the infusion has to be used right away and can't be passed to someone else.Just taking a look at Healing Infusion, Restorative Infusion, and Altered Luck, it again appears that the artificer is throwing enchantments around. Altered Luck specifically states that you channel a pattern of energy into an ally's equipment... from a range of 10, but you don't actually have to have an ally to cast it.So I guess I dig the crossbow bolts of infused-doom, but I'm really not getting the bippity-boppity-boo of enchanting things from a distance and levitating curative compounds through the air.It just feels like they only put in infusions as flavor... and no real mechanic. Take "Slick Concoction" for example. "You direct magic-infused liquid under an ally's boots, causing her to slip forward".a) the liquid isn't infused until you use the power (aka, you can't give it to someone else.b) you don't have to apply the liquid to anything, it just magically appears under someone's boots. To me, this power could have easily been written for any number of classes with the same effect. The Warlord gives a shout that inspires a sudden burst of speed. The Warlock levitates an ally into position. The Wizard conjures a magic boot that kicks the ally in her rear.Again, I understand game balance. It probably isn't fun for an artificer to waste an action infusing something, then another action to run over and apply it to a character's boots. It probably is unbalanced for the artificer to create something ahead of time and pass it around to the whole party to use. Still, I'm getting nervous now about 4e b/c of this article. It seems they are blatantly changing the flavor of a class to suit the needs of the game mechanics, instead of creating balanced mechanics that match the flavor of the class.I haven't had a complaint until now <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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