The Invasion of Mori OOC [3.5][planar][PAUSED]
- Thread starter moritheil
- Start date
Question said:
IMO there are 2 really nasty things about the artificer. 1st they can simulate the crafting prereqs for any type of magic item they know how to make. So if they've had time to craft pre-game all their stuff is half price. 2nd they can stack a bunch of metamagic feats on wands by burning extra charges. So they can generate enough damage to wipe most things out, but it does get expensive. Hard to beat in an arena game though.
reel_big_gish
First Post
NOTE: I hope this is coherent. I just made an endurance run of KOTOR2. I'm tired.
Why, I thought you'd never ask.
I'm going to use a human Artificer 11 / Cannith Wand Adept 3 as my example. Ability scores are irrelevant. The relevant feats are Wand Mastery, Craft Wand, Extraordinary Artisan, Twin Spell, Empower Spell, Extend Spell, Persistent Spell, Energy Substitution (Electricity), and Energy Admixture (Electricity).
I'm also going to assume that the artificer has roughly one minute to prepare for battle.
Now, the artificer has crafted 2 wands of scorching ray at caster level 6. They cost 37.5% of the market price, since he has Extraordinary Artisan.
Due to Wand Mastery and Cannith Wand Adept, when he uses those wands, he uses them at caster level 11, for 12d6 base damage per wand. Given 6 rounds of prep time, he adds Twin Spell, Energy Admixture (Electricity), and Empower Spell to each wand via the infusion Metamagic Item. Now the wands do 12d6 base +6d6 Energy Admixture =18d6 * 1.5 empower *2 Twin. This is equivalent to 54d6 for 1 charge (a 67.5gp value). With Cannit Wand Adept, he can spend 1d4 charges per wand (337.5gp average) to use them both as a full-round action. That's 108d6, or an average of 378 points of damage. His BAB is +14 due to the wand of divine power that he conveniently persists every morning at no additional cost in charges, so he probably hits with all 6 rays. This Orb spells are also great for this, since they bypass SR and do some pretty decent damage to boot.
Then there's the Stafficer, who uses more or less the same tick with staves, but adds in an insane UMD check for sky-high caster levels. The Stafficer can also do "fun" things such as creating a few items of use magic device +10, and then changing the bonus types so they stack, for an even higher UMD check. At level 14, a UMD check of 60 is easily achievable. When that 60is used for a Staff of Holy Word, the caster level is 40, which is enough to instantly kill anything with fewer than 30hd. Or how about a Staff of Wish, Twinned and Repeated. A +5 inherent bonus for 2 charges. Yes please.
And then there's Hanaav, who restricts his use of cheese to a Persistent Divine Power every morning, lest he piss off the almighty DM
What it really boils down to is this: Think of anything crazy or potentially game-breaking that you can do with a spell. Then triple it. That's generally what an artificer can do with it.
Question said:
Why, I thought you'd never ask.
I'm going to use a human Artificer 11 / Cannith Wand Adept 3 as my example. Ability scores are irrelevant. The relevant feats are Wand Mastery, Craft Wand, Extraordinary Artisan, Twin Spell, Empower Spell, Extend Spell, Persistent Spell, Energy Substitution (Electricity), and Energy Admixture (Electricity).
I'm also going to assume that the artificer has roughly one minute to prepare for battle.
Now, the artificer has crafted 2 wands of scorching ray at caster level 6. They cost 37.5% of the market price, since he has Extraordinary Artisan.
Due to Wand Mastery and Cannith Wand Adept, when he uses those wands, he uses them at caster level 11, for 12d6 base damage per wand. Given 6 rounds of prep time, he adds Twin Spell, Energy Admixture (Electricity), and Empower Spell to each wand via the infusion Metamagic Item. Now the wands do 12d6 base +6d6 Energy Admixture =18d6 * 1.5 empower *2 Twin. This is equivalent to 54d6 for 1 charge (a 67.5gp value). With Cannit Wand Adept, he can spend 1d4 charges per wand (337.5gp average) to use them both as a full-round action. That's 108d6, or an average of 378 points of damage. His BAB is +14 due to the wand of divine power that he conveniently persists every morning at no additional cost in charges, so he probably hits with all 6 rays. This Orb spells are also great for this, since they bypass SR and do some pretty decent damage to boot.
Then there's the Stafficer, who uses more or less the same tick with staves, but adds in an insane UMD check for sky-high caster levels. The Stafficer can also do "fun" things such as creating a few items of use magic device +10, and then changing the bonus types so they stack, for an even higher UMD check. At level 14, a UMD check of 60 is easily achievable. When that 60is used for a Staff of Holy Word, the caster level is 40, which is enough to instantly kill anything with fewer than 30hd. Or how about a Staff of Wish, Twinned and Repeated. A +5 inherent bonus for 2 charges. Yes please.
And then there's Hanaav, who restricts his use of cheese to a Persistent Divine Power every morning, lest he piss off the almighty DM
What it really boils down to is this: Think of anything crazy or potentially game-breaking that you can do with a spell. Then triple it. That's generally what an artificer can do with it.
moritheil
First Post
Question said:
What, in contrast to all the other things they put out that are sterling examples of balance (Hulking Hurler, Iaijutsu Master, Greenbound Summoning, etc.)?
In all fairness, they're very busy (making trips to the bank).
FWIW . . . very simply put, think of the Artificer as the one who always gets more stuff than everyone else, guaranteed. You know how cranky groups of players get when below recommended wealth index? The artificer is effectively always above that index (unless the DM is really out to get him.)
For the record . . . there have been serious arguments in the past over whether or not the ability to modulate CL was an intended use of UMD (as it isn't specified explicitly, but rather inferred from the "emulate a class feature" text.) We will hopefully avoid rehashing that argument here.
Personally, I also build artificers very tamely, and tend to do weird things like make meleers with them. Artificer is the only class with which I can break the Moritheil AC Limit (5 times character level; I posted a thread on it a while back.)
Also for the record, I do not generally try to bring my min-max fu to the table. You're safe in assuming that most monsters and NPCs will not be radically made over into combat badasses.
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