The Gaming Den

Looks like I'm getting to play D&D in meat space again and I'm thinking of playing an artificer.

I'm looking over the handbook, but figured I'd ask the Den if they know/could think of any neat Artificer tricks or general advice that isn't necessarily obvious.

Also, if you can think of how I would go about creating a book of endless scrolls of all spells with Craft Wondrous Item, that's definitely a thing I want to do.

Prak wrote:Looks like I'm getting to play D&D in meat space again and I'm thinking of playing an artificer.

I'm looking over the handbook, but figured I'd ask the Den if they know/could think of any neat Artificer tricks or general advice that isn't necessarily obvious.

Also, if you can think of how I would go about creating a book of endless scrolls of all spells with Craft Wondrous Item, that's definitely a thing I want to do.

What level are you playing at? Cost reduction is a big deal but feat intensive, so it doesn't work well with blasting. Also, I recommend looking at the chameleon handbook to find discounted level spells.

We're starting at 3rd, and the DM wants to go into high level (17ish).

FYI, you will never make it past level 7, so you might as well build your character for low levels.

Oh, most likely, sure. Though the game they were doing just before this reached 17th, so I do want to be ready.

My hazy memory of the Artificer is that the Artificer's main super-trick (that "no sane DM will allow") is to dumpster-dive for hypothetical builds that cast spells with very low caster level, and then use the possibility of those characters' existence to be able to craft items using those spells.

( { &#8707;x ( { CL(x) <= (CL(A) + 2)} &#8743; { Can_cast_this_spell(x)})} -> Can_craft_using_this_spell(A) ), Where A is the artificer and x is an arbitrary character who is allowed to exist by the rules.

Given the existence of the "Mage Slayer" feat tree, this allows you, at first level, access to any spell that could normally be cast with a CL of 15 or less, which is basically everything except 9th level spells. And you can make the items using a caster level of your own character level, which makes them even cheaper.

And then, of course, you use the usual cost reduction to allow you to make a bunch more stuff.

You really, really need to talk to your DM about what he's going to allow you to do with crafting. It's pretty easy to stack cost-reducing feats and abilities to pump out insane amounts of gear for your level, including stuff that you just shouldn't have. For some reason this kind of stuff leaves DMs frothing at the mouth in ways that other casting doesn't, even if you're getting the same effects as the party wizard.

What kind of cost reducing feats? The only ones I'm aware of are the Artisan fats which were errata'd to not be things you can take multiple times and only affect the specific thing they say they reduce (so reduced gold cost doesn't reduce time on it's own)

I just know all the usual tricks.

If your DM is not familiar with the Artificer you can surprise the crap out of them with retain essence. Just accumulate a crapload of magic items as players usually do and once you have a lot then you retain essence on all of that and beef the shit out of the parties gear. It also means no magic item is unusable for you. Cursed? UMD Restricted? Drow disintegrating bs? Straight into the crafting reserve which has no cap and with time and money you can convert into whatever you like.

Don't play an artificer. Everything they do normally is bad, and everything they do well is dubious and math heavy. They even use magic by writing pieces of paper and reading off them, they don't even have the kind of Girl Genius theme that people attracted to the class name would want them to have.

It's difficult to imagine a worse designed class. They transition neatly from being extremely incompetent to getting power loops that involve them dropping CL 120 holy words like they were the fucking Wish and the Word.

For fuck's sake, at level 3, your UMD won't be high enough to consistently succeed at using your own spell scrolls. Fuck that class.

-Username17

And yet in the actual game I'll be playing, I will probably have to hand out items to the party like candy and still sandbag.

Prak wrote:What kind of cost reducing feats? The only ones I'm aware of are the Artisan fats which were errata'd to not be things you can take multiple times and only affect the specific thing they say they reduce (so reduced gold cost doesn't reduce time on it's own)

The Magical Artisan feat has you select an item creation feat and reduces gold cost by 25% for items crafted using that feat. The Eberron cost reduction feats are item creation feats. Go wild.

To deal with XP costs, buy scrolls of Beget Bogun. For 150 gp, you get 26 XP. At higher levels, go with Mantle of the Icy Soul instead. 11,125 gp for 2045 XP.

You can hold the charge on an infusion of you're expecting trouble.

The DMG2 weapon abilities which summon elementals work well for Artificers.

Warforged can have crystals embedded in themselves to get access to psionic powers (MoE). Then once you get the ability to add metamagic to scrolls you can persist mental pinnacle from a schema (MoE once a day scroll) to become a psion-light. Not a terribly impressive trick in a mid level game which allows persistent in the first place, but I thought it was funny.

MfA wrote:Warforged can have crystals embedded in themselves to get access to psionic powers (MoE). Then once you get the ability to add metamagic to scrolls you can persist mental pinnacle from a schema (MoE once a day scroll) to become a psion-light. Not a terribly impressive trick in a mid level game which allows persistent in the first place, but I thought it was funny.

Well, you can have the schema of mental pinnacle made at higher caster level. Then combine it with Dweomer Of Transference for immunity to magic and you're golden.

Is there any precedent for unlimited use spell completion items? Like unlimited use scrolls?

It's not unlimited use, exactly, but the Unbound Scroll in Dragonmarked is a 4/5 casting PrC for gnomes whose capstone, Ghost Writing, lets you expend daily dragonmark uses to activate a scroll of a given level (up to 6th level with a Greater mark) wiithout expending the scroll. That's probably the closest you're going to get.

So, I found an interesting trick I can pull off at level 6 for effectively infinite crafting XP.

First of all, as far as cost is concerned, I'm assuming Magical Artisan (PGtFaerun) taken twice on Extraordinary Artisan and Legendary Artisan, plus Skill Requirement and Alignment Requirement. Oh, and exploiting Ur Priest and similar caster level rules.

The Mirror of Opposition creates perfect clones of creatures who see their reflection in it with all their equipment and special abilities, and can be activated 4x per day. The only "downside" is that the clones try to kill the creature. This is a pretty lame downside. Especially when you can make a Trap of Dominate Person that triggers on any necromancy effect and targets the product of it.

You can get a caster level down to 1 by mimicking a creator with Mage Slayer and Pierce Magical Protection. With other cost reducers, that means a Mirror of Opposition can be made for 850 and change and an xp cost of 68 xp. The same tricks bring a Trap of Dominate Person to 318g and 41 xp.

Pay for the items with either real XP or Dark Craft XP gained from the BoVD sacrifice rules. You want to keep your Craft Reserve because once the items are made, you trigger the mirror, and the trap goes off and now you have an exact clone of yourself with all class abilities, including your craft reserve. And then you tell them to craft for you. The dominate will only last a day, so you're somewhat limited in what you can get out of this, but given that you can make a Mirror of Opposition for less than 1000 gold.... I don't think that's a huge issue, and you can make dedicated wrights if it is.

So, there you go, unlimited crafting xp on a sixth level artificer, so long as you don't need more than 600 in a given day. Which you probably don't. Granted, you're limited to CL 8 items, but that's also a negligible limitation if you're smart about things. I mean, you can make a wand of extended Summon Monster VII with a CL of 7 for 510 xp, though that would take 12 days to craft.