Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leuku1" data-source="post: 7475492" data-attributes="member: 6960101">Why are you comparing the Tinkerer to primary spell casters? This is a weapon-focused half-caster, like the Ranger or Paladin, so when looking at average damage output, it should be compared to them.The Ranger and Paladin deal damage that on average only slightly exceed the Tinkerer, which is appropriate because the Tinkerer is not a primary damage dealer. The Tinkerer is good enough at fighting, because it has other things to do as well. Making it deal slightly less average damage than the Ranger and Paladin was a conscious decision I made to balance it against the power it receives from accelerated construction and the ability to make pseudo-magic devices like a rocket-propelled vehicle.The Tinkerer is better at skills than both the Ranger and Paladin, having the same number of skill proficiencies granted as the Ranger with 3, and having access to the Expertise feature.Clerics don’t get smites. Tinkerer exchanges Extra Attack and fullcasting for elemental smites, 3rd level subclass damage boosts, and Cleric-style 8th/14th level weapon damage boosts. Please do the actual math like how I did for the Rogue, Ranger, and Paladin.Clerics, being fullcasters, rely on their slotted spells for their apex damage output. The Tinkerer, not being a fullcaster, does not rely as much on their slotted spells for their apex damage output. Instead, the Tinkerer relies on combining scaling weapon damage with spell slots for its damage output, like the other halfcasters do.All 5e classes are good at combats and must meet minimum combat capability standards to be playable in 5e. Wizards have options, Sorcerers quicken, Warlocks w/ EB+AB are basically ranged Fighters, Bards crowd and single control but can also steal spells, and Clerics protect, hit slow but heavy, and typically have better AC than all the other fullcasters. What they gain in spellcasting power they lose in long-term survivability, i.e. Hit Dice. How are you defining combat? The ability to sustain attacks at melee range? Then fullcasters are typically not good at that (except Clerics and to a lesser extent Bladesingers). But if we define combat as "Encounter w/ hostile forces that ends when one side is gone or unable to continue", then fullcasters are very good at combat. A single sleep or fireball spell could end an encounter several rounds before a blow-trading martial could. However, in exchange for such singular potencies fullcasters tend to trade away long term survivability.Which is to say, every class shines in combat depending on the circumstances. A Fighter is probably not very good in an encounter riddled illusions and charm effects. A Barbarian is probably not very good in a long-range encounter. Each class has its strengths and weaknesses, No Class Is "Not Very Good" In Combat. What wizard casts the light cantrip when casting a damaging cantrip would be better? A Steam Knight will use its Power Tools when the situation calls for it, not to replace a weapon attack.A Tinkerer's Smites do less damage than a Paladin's because A) you have the ability to change the elemental damage type whereas a Paladin is stuck with radiant (which is not a bad thing, but having options is a value in and of itself), and B) you can do ranged smites.3rd, 8th, and 14th level are all significant damage boosts. Do you ever actually do the math to determine just how much damage is actually dealt on average by these features?Clerics don't get smites or the ability to craft airplanes in the span of a few hours. That's a spurious claim. Halfcasters get by just fine with the spell slots that they have. Knowing "a heap of spells" gives you options, and having access to options is inherently powerful. Point being made: A Tinkerer is a halfcaster like the Ranger and Paladin, but a Tinkerer's halfcasting is stronger than the Ranger's and the Paladin's.Why are you comparing a subclass (steam knight) to a class (ranger)? Let us compare class to class.Did you forget Construction and Power Appliance? The range and applicability of the Tinkerer's utility far exceeds that of a Ranger's. Which is part of why the hit die is a d8 instead of a d10. The Tinkerer is just so much stronger in terms of the Interaction Pillar than the Ranger. The Ranger has long been chastised for how limiting the campaign-dependent Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer features are.Utility like accelerated crafting and pseudo-magic item creation. Something other classes cannot do. The Mechanic and Bombardier subclasses from the Tinkerer Advanced Article get AoE damage options at 3rd level. The Steam Knight gets auto-return damage to melee attackers.You seem to often claim things, such as "you would have more utility, more damage more out of combat stuff and the Ranger spells", but never actually demonstrate your claims. Are you capable of demonstrating your claims? Do you have that capacity within you? Is demonstrating your claims within your wheelhouse? Because a Ranger's utility is restricted to A) Whether you happen to be in the terrain you chose for Natural Explorer, B) whether you happen to be tracking a creature of a type you chose for your Favored Enemy, and if you're a beastmaster C) if you happen to chose an animal with keen senses or some other circumstantially beneficial utility ability. And I'm sorry, but did you even actually understand the words on the Tinkerer document? How can you assert that a Ranger has more out-of-combat stuff than a Tinkerer? Half of the Tinkerer is Construction and Power Appliances and they have arguably far more frequent, broad, active, and immediate applicability than campaign-dependent Natural Explorer and creature-dependent Favored Enemy. Can you point out the background that grants an ability that is on par with building a castle within the span of days or the ability to construct a wagon instantaneously and then immediately turn it into a getaway vehicle? The standard PHB crafting rate is 5 gp/8 hours, and you can only work 8 hours in one day. The level 1 crafting rate of a Tinkerer is 5 gp/1 hour. By 5th level, you're crafting at 30 gp/ 1 hour. You do in 1 hour what normally takes 6 days. You do in 8 hours what normally takes 48 days. By 11th level, 100 gp/1 hour. In 8 hours, you do the work of 160 artisans. By 20th, you do the work of 800.It does not end there. You're in bed, and a bunch of assassins crash into the room on all sides. What do you do? Slap a couple flame engines on to the bed, rocket-propelled bed, team-rocket blast your way out of there.Trapped in a room filling up with water? Quick-craft a helmet, slap a lightning engine onto it, and create oxygen via electrolysis. Don't bother with the water breathing spell; rare is the circumstance that someone has it prepared when they actually need it, and come on it's a 3rd level spell slot. Need to get across a poison swamp? Stick a bunch of cold engines onto a sled and glide your way across. Save yourself a fly.Monster hunts via heat vision? Slap a cold engine to your chest and reduce your heat signature. Need to create a distraction? Program a lightning-engine-powered lever to activate 15 minutes after setting it, unleashing a bag of 100,000 ball bearings you crafted an hour earlier. Need to conceal your party but don't have fog cloud prepared? Slap a flame engine onto a cold engine and spend a 1st level spell slot to create a cloud of steam.The Tinkerer is limited only by the player's imagination, the DM's capability, and the suggested limitations outlined in my guide to designing power appliances. Perhaps it may not be the class for you.But, in how I have demonstrated my claims, there is no denying the power a Tinkerer has to impact the flow of an adventure. There is also no denying that the Tinkerer is sufficiently competent in combat, at least compared to the Ranger and Paladin.</blockquote>

Verification