Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Introduces The Artifcer

I don't think anyone saw this coming!

 

[Azurewraith]

Really not a fan at all iI think they are pretty op.

The base chassis is fine I guess but I think handing out free Magic items is a no no as well those extra attunement slots. Thunder stick? Boom stick? That gun seems way Op 2d6 on a ranged weapon that is a bonus reload and its available at level 3 oh my just wait until the ranger gets his hands on one.

 

[Gradine]

The problem with the whole "Eberron is incompatible with 5e's core design" issue is that it completely misunderstands the idea behind Eberron's magic economy. Eberron's magic economy is not 4e's; it's not a bunch of magic weapon/armor emporiums designed to outfit hundreds and thousands of adventurers. The basic concept behind Eberron is that adventurers; and especially characters with PC classes and levels, are exceptionally rare. Eberron's magic economy is all about consumer goods and services, most of them constructed by Magewrights who are not all that magically powerful. All told, Eberron is actually a fairly low-magic setting; that magic is just broad-based. It would be more accurate to call it a wide-magic setting. And there's nothing in 5e's core design, especially not anything to do with attunement, that makes Eberron not work perfectly fine in 5e without a little bit of tweaking. Certain magic items (Siberys items, including some already in the DMG, like sending stones) require a true dragonmark to attune to and/or use. Done.

I'm not even utterly convinced you'd need rules for magic item creation in an Eberron Campaign book. Maybe if you felt it was necessary to have rules for PCs to be able to do anything that NPCs can do; but I myself am content with leaving magic item creation to the House Cannith NPCs.

Then again, one of my Eberron 5e campaign ideas revolve around a massive dragonshard shortage to explain the lull in the magic economy. I just don't think that's the only way to run Eberron in 5e.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

In order to get magic item creation in Eberron anything close to how it was envisioned, we're going to have to do away with attunement. That means the mechanics of this artificer class will have to be reworked.

That's why it won't work for Eberron. The setting is too high-magic.

I'm not sure about that. Eberron is probably better described as wide-magic: a greater than normal proportion of non-adventurers are capable of low-power magic. Compared to FR, which has much more high-level magic, but almost exclusively the purview of the small proportion of adventurers. Eberron has more "plot-level" magic in terms of vehicles and devices created through cooperation etc, but FR still has more adventurer-level magic (magic weapons, wizards, clerics and the like).

Remember that there aren't any magic-item factories in Eberron: each magic item was still crafted individually. There are just more people around who can do the crafting. Each warforged is a unique result of interaction between the dragonmark of a member of House Cannith, the poorly-understood workings of a creation forge, and mysterious schematics dating back to an ancient planar war.

The lightning rail is unlikely to require attunement just to ride on it, and neither would airships and similar. I can see attunement as a mechanic for piloting an elemental vehicle, but that is unlikely to be a problematic limitation to an adventuring party.

 

[Belltent]

Really not a fan at all iI think they are pretty op.

The base chassis is fine I guess but I think handing out free Magic items is a no no as well those extra attunement slots. Thunder stick? Boom stick? That gun seems way Op 2d6 on a ranged weapon that is a bonus reload and its available at level 3 oh my just wait until the ranger gets his hands on one.

Ranger would need to take a pretty hard dip into a dump stat class to pull that off. And the magic items aren't all that great. First two tiers are all variations of "you see/swim better."

 

[Azurewraith]

Ranger would need to take a pretty hard dip into a dump stat class to pull that off. And the magic items aren't all that great. First two tiers are all variations of "you see/swim better."

I wouldn't say hard dip the last 3levels of ranger are pretty meh to say they would gain the strongest ranged weapon in game. The Int could be an issue but shouldn't be to hard if you don't mind a 8in charisma.

 

[Belltent]

I wouldn't say hard dip the last 3levels of ranger are pretty meh to say they would gain the strongest ranged weapon in game. The Int could be an issue but shouldn't be to hard if you don't mind a 8in charisma.

Explain your action economy to me....
Lvl 5 ranger: Round one- attack, bonus action reload, extra attack. Round 2- bonus action reload, attack, cry deeply as everyone else gets a second attack and the pure gunsmith does more base damage.

And if you're just going ranger for the fighting style why not instead dip 1 fighter like almost every MC does?

 

[Kobold Avenger]

That gun seems way Op 2d6 on a ranged weapon that is a bonus reload and its available at level 3 oh my just wait until the ranger gets his hands on one.

It isn't, a Heavy Crossbow already does 1d10 damage. 1.5 more damage on average isn't overpowered. The thunder monger ability is roughly equivalent to a Rogue's sneak attack. It's actually falls behind the rogue's sneak attack by 2 levels. And in most cases a multiclass Ranger/Rogue is going to be more optimized than a Ranger/Artificer based on the fact there's more synergies between Ranger and Rogue than there is with Ranger and Artificer.

 

[Garresh]

Given that Sneak Attack damage falls behind pure martial or ranged damage in a big way past level 9(don't have dpr handy. look it up), and this class is balanced around sneak attack scaling minus weapon damage, it seems to a degree that the Construct is part of the base class to keep it viable. However, the Construct really steps on the Beastmaster's toes. Especially for those key levels 6-9 where its actually superior to the beastmaster's pet.

I don't have a proposal ready just yet, but I'm going to have a mock up ready by later tonight. What I think would tie this all together would be to lower the CR of the construct to 1, and give it scaling like the Ranger's pet, with a few big changes.

1. Much lower damage scaling. No specifics yet, but let ranger retain the badass damage pet.
2. No skill bonuses/scaling. Constructs don't get skills so they can't be as good for utility as a ranger pet.
3. Significantly increased durability and "tanking" potential. Essentially let their pet shoot up to Fighter-range AC and HP, and get some limited "tanking" tools like Protection style or a significantly weakened Sentinel feature.

Since it lacks damage output and has much weakened features relative to a true tank, it won't step on Ranger pets or frontline fighters. But it will still provide some combat utility and can act as a decent mount as well due to size. It is my hope that such a proposal will smooth out the power curve, give this class a bit more of a reliable role as a sort of utility controller, and avoid conflicts of role wherein the Artificer steals the limelight from specialists.

Barring any specifics yet, what do you guys think of this concept change for the construct?

 

[Azurewraith]

Explain your action economy to me....
Lvl 5 ranger: Round one- attack, bonus action reload, extra attack. Round 2- bonus action reload, attack, cry deeply as everyone else gets a second attack and the pure gunsmith does more base damage.

And if you're just going ranger for the fighting style why not instead dip 1 fighter like almost every MC does?

I forgot about that second shot needing a reload. Ill take this cone shaped hat and sit in the corner.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Really not a fan at all iI think they are pretty op.

Thunder stick? Boom stick? That gun seems way Op 2d6 on a ranged weapon that is a bonus reload and its available at level 3 oh my just wait until the ranger gets his hands on one.

and lose out on making multipe attacks no thank you.