Explain artificier cheese to me

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Supposedly, the class is broken past level 7 (or so?)

I understand the mechanic of spending all your free exp, taking a level drain, spending your points again, gaining a level, spending your points a third time, etc. What else is cheesy about artificiers?

[NineInchNall]

Um, how about blowing X charges of a wand to apply any number of metamagic feats to it? A simple wand of scorching ray becomes a terror.

Base: 12d6
Split: 16d6
Energy Admixture: 32d6
Twin: 64d6
Maximize: 384

Now add in Quicken so you can pull it off twice in a round. At level 9.

[Cielingcat]

They get spells 2 levels earlier than everyone else.

Infusions are crazy WTF broken

Some other crap.

[CalibronXXX]

1180366659[/unixtime]]384 damage at level 9.

But seriously, what makes it broken? If you're burning through a wand every one and a half turns pre-wish economy, and a couple hundred damage is your trick then you're behind the curve, aren't you?

Artificer is broked because it can cherry pick spells off of every single spell-list ever, and get them two levels earlier than the spell-level would indicate.

[Username17]

But seriously, what makes it broken? If you're burning through a wand every one and a half turns pre-wish economy, and a couple hundred damage is your trick then you're behind the curve, aren't you?

You're assuming for the moment that you aren't just using the Power Surge + Skill Enhancer + Item Alteration trick to get infinite charges on all of your magic items. You're a level 9 Artificr, you can just do that.

Artificer is a class that is about moving piles of gold around, looking for loopholes in the game, and then driving horse carts through them. If you aren't abusing the rules, Artificers aren't good.

Artificers expose the dark underbelly of the wealth-by-level system in all its stupid glory. And immediately the following problems come to light:

• The more gold you spend, the more gold you're supposed to make. Thus, using charges doesn't really even have a cost because you're supposed to get reimbursed for using charged items.
  
  
• You can't actually stop people from taking time off and getting gold. Seriously, people can just farm and get gold and not levels. If people are willing to hold up the game to play Logistics and Dragons, they get more gold than their level says they "should".
  
  
• Items aren't balanced at any price point. Magic swords are stupidly expensive while those Amber Charms are amazingly cheap.

Artificers don't do anything good. All they do is have the specific named ability to dumpster dive through the magic item listings and convert whatever the party has found into slightly larger piles of the best, most powerful shit he can come up with.

So an Artificer really will just convert everything he ever finds into Amber Amulets of Huge Scorpions. Every round he'll remove his current amulet and put on a new amulet and activate it for another Huge Scorpion fighting on his side. He'll do it from level 3 or so and be a Pokemaster X-Treme.

-Username17

[CalibronXXX]

They're called wealth-by-level guidelines for a reason. Now, I'm not saying the rules actually work as written, I wouldn't have stuck around this place if I was still under that delusion, but the only time a DM will actively reimburse an Artificer who abuses the rules so flagrantly is when he's encouraging his other players to make Shadowcraft Mage's with residual metamagic, Thought Bottle/Savage Species abusing cleric's, and such.

Your other points are, however, painfully accurate.

[RandomCasualty]

I just looked at the amber amulet of huge scorpions and all I can say is: Wtf? Seriously, why wouldn't every party just load up on those?

A CR 7 creature out of an item under 1000 gp. Not to mention it works 1/day and has an activation time of 1 standard action (not 1 round like real summons do).

Seriously, what the hell?

Why is it that item summons are crazy underpriced, yet if you want to actually use summon spells, you get completely hosed?

[erik]

They are under the delusion that 1/day use items taking up an item slot matters a single fvcking bit, as though you couldn't just swap it in and out as needed.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

"It's not a threat, people can only do it once per day, and it takes up a slot! If this breaks the game, there aren't enough encounters in it."

"I'll take 1, and a tower shield"

"Why?"

"For 2000gp, I can have an extra 1d6 damage (if I hit), OR I can get a creature with 3 attacks, poison, darkvision, tremorsense, higher "to-hit" roll, improved grab, reach, more hp, and likely better armor, will save, and spot check. The tower shield is to hide behind, because this monster is a better fighter than I am"

"But it is only once per day?"

"Perhaps, but can you assure me that I will win 1 encounter per day if I buy a flaming longsword?"


On topic: Artificers also get to have constructs.... which can craft things for them. Even if they don't get downtime, they STILL get to craft.

[shirak]

Let's not forget the build-in infinite power loop by level 12. Fvcking Eberron.

[Zherog]

1180390688[/unixtime]]I just looked at the amber amulet of huge scorpions and all I can say is: Wtf?

Source book, please?

[User3]

Magic Item Compendium.

[Zherog]

Thanks. Is that one of the new items in the book, or did they yoink it from somewhere else?

[josephbt]

yoink from the Magic of Faerun. and slightly altered.