What does the Artificer, Seeker and Runepriest need?

[webrunner]

Courage, a heart, and a brain.

 

[Mengu]

Courage, a heart, and a brain.

You're getting it confused with shifter, warforged, and wilden.

 

[Skism]

Runepriests need to be taken out and shot. And the remains grafted on to strength clerics - they are far too fiddly for what they do.

I'd go the other way. Now that Warpriests have provided some wisdom based melee cleric options I'd turn some of the strength cleric powers into Wisdom based powers and add destruction/protection states onto the rest and turn them into Runepriest powers. Provides more focus for the cleric, removes the woefully under designed Strength Cleric from the game, gives some much needed support to the Runepriest and really differentiates the two classes. Win-win-win-win, IMO.

Rune feats are very poor at the moment. There aren't enough of them and they are rather unimpressive. I'd like a feat that than increases your rune feat bonus by the number of languages you know(not counting any granted by items or other temporary bonuses). It would need another effect to make it worth taking by itself, perhaps +1/2/3 feat bonus to Runic attacks? Wouldn't stack with Expertise feats, and wouldn't apply to basic attacks, but would make all the Rune feats supply significant bonuses(+1 for "Runic Expertise" +2 for known Languages so the next runic feat would have bring a +4 bonus). Might prove abusive given how easy it is to learn new languages so a runic cap might be needed. I don't think it would be though because 1. Runic feats still aren't that impressive and 2. Int is often a dump stat for Runepriests so using Linguist to bump Rune feats would be expensive in feat and stat cost.

Runepriests are in need of another build. Due to the nature of their powers it is somewhat difficult to expand their options because each one is two "different" powers and the two current builds are so closely tied to the two Rune states. I'd make the new Runepriest build be somewhat similar to the shaper psion. Each attack "summons" an rune or creation that has some lingering effect. Make your runestate effects be measurable from either the creation or yourself. At-wills would last until the end of your next turn, many encounters would be sustain minor and some dailies would be summons. Fluff wise this build has taken the words of the gods is trying to create like the gods. Might be better served as a paragon path, but I think there is enough room in it to become a build or subclass.

 

[interwyrm]

You're getting it confused with shifter, warforged, and wilden.

Coincidentally, you could make decent characters using a shifter runepriest, warforged artificer, and a wilden seeker

 

[webrunner]

Courage, a heart, and a brain.

You're getting it confused with shifter, warforged, and wilden.

We're off to see the Wizards, the wonderful Wizards of the Coast

 

[IanB]

I was always bothered by the fact that runepriests were a divine class with no access to Channel Divinity stuff, but I'm not sure having it would actually help them.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Well, I do not know the artificer well, but they seem to me to be a very cautious class, like a lot of the PHBI classes, and not like a PHBII class, which are more ambitious.

This is definitely part of the problem with Artificers as a concept. I liked the direction the class was originally going in, with a mix of extended duration powers and gadget-like powers and summons. It was a much more ambitious design. The final class retains a little bit of the gadgetry, but mostly they became "buff-wizards," and that made them (IMO) boring.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Runepriest and the Seeker need to become a Cleric build and a Ranger build.

The new design paradigm seems to be biased towards creating new, radically different, builds of existing classes rather than new classe. If the Seeker or Runepriest were being released next year instead of having been released last year, they probably /would/ be a Cleric build, and, well, the Hunter. (Or, maybe a bit better, the Hunter could be moved to be a build of the Seeker...)

Post-E design also seems to really love wizard builds (schools) there are 6 of them, including HotFL, Dragon (pyromancer) and HoS. The Artificer could probably be re-done as a Wizard build (Mage school).

 

[mneme]

I don't think Artificers as Mages would work -- Leaders are defined through their class features, but controllers are defined through their powers. So an Artificer Mage would -- unless they were unable to use wizard powers (in which case, what's the point?) be able to hit like a controller by heal like a Leader. I don't think any Mage build has -not- been a controller; the closest is the Blaster Wizard (mostly the Genasi Blaster), but she has to give up controller powers to blast better, and multi-target blast is in-role for a controller anyway.

Artificers might actually work well as a Swordmage build, actually (or really, just make them both subclasses of Gish). Both classes are focused around using both weapons and Arcane magic, and the meat of both defenders and leaders is in their class features. So making an artificer a Swordmage build would mostly let them poach powers back and forth--which given the limitations in question seems totally fine. Even having different implements would be fine; it's not really a problem if an Artificer "swordbursts" with a wand instead of a sword, or a swordmage enchants her armor as Flameburst using her sword.

Of course, one would want to make Magic Weapon a class feature power, not a Gish 1 -- it's a defining (and OTT) power for the Artificer.

 

[IanB]

I think artificers are already so similar to bards that they probably work 'cleanest' mechanically just being rolled into that class. The flavor is a bit of a problem, though.