I could use a higher level slot to summon the turret to have it do more, I would gladly do so. By 17th level, asking for a turret that can do 6d8 per hit or 5d8 in a small aoe as a bonus action, is nothing.
I could use a higher level slot to summon the turret to have it do more, I would gladly do so. By 17th level, asking for a turret that can do 6d8 per hit or 5d8 in a small aoe as a bonus action, is nothing.
It is as a bonus action in a class that a majority of it's spells are support based and not damage based.
But I really think this conversation is going no where. You are convinced it is crap and I'm convinced it is well balanced and don't we will change each other's minds.
And that is the fundamental basis for our disagreement. I believe its current iteration is relatively balanced and fulfills the thematics of a subclass named Artillerist and you don't.
So we should just agree to disagree and express our concerns in the survey.
It would be interesting if they added infusions that were specifically for the homonculus and turret. Now there would have to be some wording to say "When your turret is summoned, you may choose to apply this infusion to it at summoning time." Or something similar.
I actually misread the text and thought it didn’t have a timer.
in this case I agree it is a set up class what we should compare is:
Damage lOST level 4: 1d10+3+N*(1d10+3-2d8)=8.5-N/2
Damage lost level 8: 2*(1d10+4)+N*(1d10+4-2d8)=19+N/2
Damage lost level 14: 4*(1d10+5)+N*(1d10+5-4d8)=42-N*7.5
I would call this subclass feature as good as crossbow expert BA for free as part of the subclass but you have to give up a MA to do it going forward. If you are caught out of place you would never drop the turret in combat, if comparing against the crossbow expert feat. Although after level 14 it may be doable if combat lasts 7 turns or more.
That does suck, guess you have to play more of a tactician as an artillerist, always ready for combat.
Yeah, getting rid of the timer would also be a viable way to improve it. And I would happily use it then as well. Or even just having it disappear on a long rest.
I guess im weird, and I am not a min-maxer, but if I am having fun then that is all that matters. Granted I understand everyone has fun differently. To me this is thematically awesome, comparably balanced and enjoyable and that is enough for me. I just don't think it is as useless as you are adament it is.
you guys are reading way too far into this new class...
to be honest when you try different classes already, you realise, that sorcerer is already a reskin of the wizards mixed with monk ki points. so basically, the sorcerer is not a fully original class, its what we call an hybrid. same with barbarian which is literally just a rehash fighter. same with bard who is literally a hybrid wizard. paladin, hybrid between clerics and fighters.
sure they all have their own set of abilities. but in reality they are all hybrid of already existing classes. the artificer and the mystic cannot have their own system without brekaing the original system, because doing that might break other classes. you guys have to remember that 3E with all of its new classes, what hapenned was that older classes were rendered useless by the newer classes. i understand you guys want a new class with whole new mechanics, but i think you are asking way too much there. if you put the artificer with its own spell list, its one thing, but you are asking a whole new set of spells and thats a lot considering that out of 350 spells in the current edition, only really about 50 are actually played. do you really think they will make new spells for a class when they know only about 1% of what they created will be used ? as for whole new mechanics... reguardless of what you may think, its gonna be a reskin of the older class.
exemple... monks ki points, sorcerer sorcerery points... same thing ! warlock celestial with d6... same as fighter and bard !
again there is no new class, just hybrid versions of whats already there. and again, by running new mechanics, you risk breaking older classes. exemple of the mystic... in my game two players ran them, heck they were completely overclassing rogue assassins ! because hey i can kill your mind and nobody will ever know because strickly no way of telling im using powers. even worse, aside from detect thought, nothing helped to know if someone was using any psionic powers. so it begged the question, why isn't all assassins psionics f the class is literally design to be the stealthiest of assassins. and it led my rogue player to wonder about his choice of class at that point since the mystic could literally do everything it did, but with an easier time. the class literally broke my group in half. at that point even if i tryed to correct it, i had to ask the two psionic players to create new characters or change class. as i was banning mystic from my game.
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While I agree thematically this is a good spec but by action economy it is still interesting to see if for pure damage you should stop to summon your turret or not. And the correct conclusion for pure damage is No. (if I didn’t mess up math)
To summon the turret you need 1 MA where you do no damage instead of attacking, followed by N BAs where you replace your most damaging BA attack with the turret’s 2d8.
In the below example: 2*(1d10+4) represents 2 attacks with heavy crossbow with 1 ASI in Dec and the other in crossbow expert. Then (1d10+4-2d8) represents your lost crossbow BA Attack versus your 2d8 turret Attack. I changed the label from damage felt to damage lost, so when that number turns negative you are net positive damage, but it never does. At that level, hence some of the power quota went on the defensive aspects (while Silva was hoping for a pure DPS build akin to Hunter > beast master)
Damage lost level 8: 2*(1d10+4)+N*(1d10+4-2d8)=19+N/2
I could use a higher level slot to summon the turret to have it do more, I would gladly do so. By 17th level, asking for a turret that can do 6d8 per hit or 5d8 in a small aoe as a bonus action, is nothing.
think before you speak... cantrips at 17th level do only 4d8 or 4d10 depending, thats literally the same as 6d8. that turret is much more abusive then you think and to boot, its using only bonus action. where cantrips are action and can only be done once per round. and you just hope you still have a bonus action to do anything of value. while here, you can literally punch more then a cleric with spiritual weapon out. i would definitely not call that weak ! plus it doesn't require concentration, nor a spell slot. while that spiritual weapon to do the same needs a higher level spell slot.
dude, you are not comparing this to the right thing and then you call the ability a weak one... hard to take you seriously at that point.
- the turret is better then a cantrip at 17th level. - Its better then a spiritual weapon at higher level. - its a bonus action each round and you still have your action to do anything you want. - it can move where a cantrip cannot. - it has a good range.
i seriously doubt your ability to balance something if you think this is weak. this is clearly stronger then anything other classes can have. including the at will fireball of a mage at 20th. imagine the fact a mage capstone is just using a full action to cast fireball repeatedly. this is literally on par with it.
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Not everyone does everything for "pure damage", nor should they. You should do what your character would do, not what is completely optimized, But I doubt I'll "win" this discussion seeing as we are talking about pure damage and not what a character would do.
I feel so often when discussing the mechanics of a class we forget these class features are merely the tools we use to bring a character to life. Some tools are more powerful than others, but if a character prefers to command from behind a turret because there is a degree of separation behind pulling a trigger than that is what he would do. There is no optimization involved.
Now granted theory crafting is great and all, but just because one choice makes for more damage output does not mean the other choice is "wrong".
If there were a cantrip I'd want to compare it to, it would be Eldritch Blast. With Agonizing Blast, Eldritch Blast does an average of 42 points of damage. And it's unlimited. You can do it all day long. With Hex, it does an average of another 14 and that bonus can last all day long.
The turret takes an action to create, and only sticks around for an hour before it has to be recreated. It gets no bonuses at any stage of the leveling other than you can use another action to summon a second one. At which point you've used both of your free summons for the day.
At 6d8 (for which I'd give up the ability to summon two at the same time), you're doing an average of 27. On top of a cantrip of 22 average and you're doing a comparable amount of damage.
Perhaps that's too much? Maybe Eldritch Blast should be stronger? But at the very least, if it's going to have a limited duration AND require an action to summon AND be the primary feature of your subclass, it should be worth the investment. At the very minimum it should cap out at 4d8 per turret per turn OR require a bonus action to create OR have no time limit.
However the key issue here is you are comparing damage of the turret to eldritch blast or other spells which isn't really fair..
Here is why:
You lose one action to set up the turret yes but theoretically could still do an attack spell of debuf spell (like hunters mark or hex) for your bonus action that round and from then onwards you are doing:
1 Major Action (Spell or Weapon (which could be magical)) with all feat benefits or similar applied + Turret damage per turn.
If we use your examples of eldritch blast you are doing
1 eldritch blast damage.
Considering that major action could be an eldritch blast immediatly the turret is a small damage buff to your major action attack.
Well, first of all we can all agree that the Artificer as it stands is not a finished product. It is a work in progress with the expectation that people will provide their feedback, so it could either be released completely as is, or it could go through yet another iteration that changes it completely.
Second, yes, every existing class is analogous to at least one or two (or more) other classes with which they share roles and mechanics, but I think it's a little unfair to say they're all the same, especially when those mechanics aren't always used or implimented the exact same way. That's partly why I like the idea behind infusions, yes it's analogous to Eldritch Invocations, but it's just different enough to give it a different flavor/different use, and I'm pretty confident we could do the same with other features as well. For instance, we could take the example of the sorcery/ki points and retool them to give them a half-progression (1 point for every 2 levels in the class) and have them be used to augment/alter cantrips, add status effects to attacks, etc. Built on the same foundation used by sorcerers/monks, but just different enough to make it unique.
(For that matter, Mystic has always struck me as an unbalanced and incredibly complicated cross between casters and monks, but that's an entirely different conversation from the one I really want to be having right now.)
As for new spells, I don't think unfair to ask/make suggestions for a handful of new spells to go with the addition of a new caster/half-caster class; I certainly think there's potential for at least a small expansion, just for the Artificer. Maybe they'll see a lot of use, maybe they won't; honestly, I don't see why that would be a problem.
See @Grizzlebub I am not trying to convince you that this makes the feature bad, underpowered or broken. (Although I would probably buff it to always out until death or free action at start of combat or BA to cast delaying 1 iteration of 2d8)
I am more trying to convince people like @ak318 because the DPR is quite fantastic, no other class I can think of has BA=2d8 and BA=4d8 after level 14, for minimal resources.
But DPR doesn’t much matter, they should have checked damage over a combat at which point the initial loss of a MA is quite a big hurdle to jump over. Granted if you just MA Cantrip every turn with no BA it is probably better to set the turret but then your first turn or two feel very underwhelming. (And most enemies die in 2-5 turns max)
So this goes out only to those people that do think that artillerist is amazing DPR and a Power spec. Again super like the theming but it is more defensive then first thought from DPR calculations.
Arutha I don't undertsand what you mean I my arguement above was stating how the DPR for the artillerist is good.
No problem it is because to start this DPR you first have to sacrifice some MAs which deal much more than you gain from the BA, so it will take many turns for the total damage to catch up.
For example simplest example let’s take 3 rounds of combat with default using 6th level Firebolt =(MA)2d10+4(Int).
DPR calculation might be 2d10+4+2d8=24 which is comparable to Hex agonising blast 2d10+2d6+8=26 but in reality:
I can either do 3 rounds of firebolt = 6d10+12=45
or 1 MA setup 3 BA turret 2 MA firebolt = 6d8+4d10+8= 47
After that the turret starts to take over, but also as a half caster I could do some blast spells instead to make my lost 1 MA even moderately painful.
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I could use a higher level slot to summon the turret to have it do more, I would gladly do so. By 17th level, asking for a turret that can do 6d8 per hit or 5d8 in a small aoe as a bonus action, is nothing.
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It is as a bonus action in a class that a majority of it's spells are support based and not damage based.
But I really think this conversation is going no where. You are convinced it is crap and I'm convinced it is well balanced and don't we will change each other's minds.
Agree to disagree.
And in a subclass where artillery is in its name?
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And that is the fundamental basis for our disagreement. I believe its current iteration is relatively balanced and fulfills the thematics of a subclass named Artillerist and you don't.
So we should just agree to disagree and express our concerns in the survey.
It would be interesting if they added infusions that were specifically for the homonculus and turret. Now there would have to be some wording to say "When your turret is summoned, you may choose to apply this infusion to it at summoning time." Or something similar.
I actually misread the text and thought it didn’t have a timer.
in this case I agree it is a set up class what we should compare is:
Damage lOST level 4: 1d10+3+N*(1d10+3-2d8)=8.5-N/2
Damage lost level 8: 2*(1d10+4)+N*(1d10+4-2d8)=19+N/2
Damage lost level 14: 4*(1d10+5)+N*(1d10+5-4d8)=42-N*7.5
I would call this subclass feature as good as crossbow expert BA for free as part of the subclass but you have to give up a MA to do it going forward. If you are caught out of place you would never drop the turret in combat, if comparing against the crossbow expert feat. Although after level 14 it may be doable if combat lasts 7 turns or more.
That does suck, guess you have to play more of a tactician as an artillerist, always ready for combat.
I have to be honest, I don't get your formulas one bit.
Yeah, getting rid of the timer would also be a viable way to improve it. And I would happily use it then as well. Or even just having it disappear on a long rest.
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I guess im weird, and I am not a min-maxer, but if I am having fun then that is all that matters. Granted I understand everyone has fun differently. To me this is thematically awesome, comparably balanced and enjoyable and that is enough for me. I just don't think it is as useless as you are adament it is.
Whenever the timer is going to run out, its time for the Turret to go Kaboom. :)
Watch your back, conserve your ammo,
and NEVER cut a deal with a dragon!
you guys are reading way too far into this new class...
to be honest when you try different classes already, you realise, that sorcerer is already a reskin of the wizards mixed with monk ki points.
so basically, the sorcerer is not a fully original class, its what we call an hybrid. same with barbarian which is literally just a rehash fighter.
same with bard who is literally a hybrid wizard. paladin, hybrid between clerics and fighters.
sure they all have their own set of abilities. but in reality they are all hybrid of already existing classes. the artificer and the mystic cannot have their own system without brekaing the original system, because doing that might break other classes. you guys have to remember that 3E with all of its new classes, what hapenned was that older classes were rendered useless by the newer classes. i understand you guys want a new class with whole new mechanics, but i think you are asking way too much there. if you put the artificer with its own spell list, its one thing, but you are asking a whole new set of spells and thats a lot considering that out of 350 spells in the current edition, only really about 50 are actually played. do you really think they will make new spells for a class when they know only about 1% of what they created will be used ? as for whole new mechanics... reguardless of what you may think, its gonna be a reskin of the older class.
exemple... monks ki points, sorcerer sorcerery points... same thing !
warlock celestial with d6... same as fighter and bard !
again there is no new class, just hybrid versions of whats already there.
and again, by running new mechanics, you risk breaking older classes.
exemple of the mystic... in my game two players ran them, heck they were completely overclassing rogue assassins ! because hey i can kill your mind and nobody will ever know because strickly no way of telling im using powers. even worse, aside from detect thought, nothing helped to know if someone was using any psionic powers. so it begged the question, why isn't all assassins psionics f the class is literally design to be the stealthiest of assassins. and it led my rogue player to wonder about his choice of class at that point since the mystic could literally do everything it did, but with an easier time. the class literally broke my group in half. at that point even if i tryed to correct it, i had to ask the two psionic players to create new characters or change class. as i was banning mystic from my game.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
@grizzlebub
While I agree thematically this is a good spec but by action economy it is still interesting to see if for pure damage you should stop to summon your turret or not. And the correct conclusion for pure damage is No. (if I didn’t mess up math)
To summon the turret you need 1 MA where you do no damage instead of attacking, followed by N BAs where you replace your most damaging BA attack with the turret’s 2d8.
In the below example: 2*(1d10+4) represents 2 attacks with heavy crossbow with 1 ASI in Dec and the other in crossbow expert. Then (1d10+4-2d8) represents your lost crossbow BA Attack versus your 2d8 turret Attack. I changed the label from damage felt to damage lost, so when that number turns negative you are net positive damage, but it never does. At that level, hence some of the power quota went on the defensive aspects (while Silva was hoping for a pure DPS build akin to Hunter > beast master)
Damage lost level 8: 2*(1d10+4)+N*(1d10+4-2d8)=19+N/2
think before you speak... cantrips at 17th level do only 4d8 or 4d10 depending, thats literally the same as 6d8. that turret is much more abusive then you think and to boot, its using only bonus action. where cantrips are action and can only be done once per round. and you just hope you still have a bonus action to do anything of value. while here, you can literally punch more then a cleric with spiritual weapon out. i would definitely not call that weak ! plus it doesn't require concentration, nor a spell slot. while that spiritual weapon to do the same needs a higher level spell slot.
dude, you are not comparing this to the right thing and then you call the ability a weak one... hard to take you seriously at that point.
- the turret is better then a cantrip at 17th level.
- Its better then a spiritual weapon at higher level.
- its a bonus action each round and you still have your action to do anything you want.
- it can move where a cantrip cannot.
- it has a good range.
i seriously doubt your ability to balance something if you think this is weak.
this is clearly stronger then anything other classes can have. including the at will fireball of a mage at 20th.
imagine the fact a mage capstone is just using a full action to cast fireball repeatedly. this is literally on par with it.
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Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
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Not everyone does everything for "pure damage", nor should they. You should do what your character would do, not what is completely optimized, But I doubt I'll "win" this discussion seeing as we are talking about pure damage and not what a character would do.
I feel so often when discussing the mechanics of a class we forget these class features are merely the tools we use to bring a character to life. Some tools are more powerful than others, but if a character prefers to command from behind a turret because there is a degree of separation behind pulling a trigger than that is what he would do. There is no optimization involved.
Now granted theory crafting is great and all, but just because one choice makes for more damage output does not mean the other choice is "wrong".
If there were a cantrip I'd want to compare it to, it would be Eldritch Blast. With Agonizing Blast, Eldritch Blast does an average of 42 points of damage. And it's unlimited. You can do it all day long. With Hex, it does an average of another 14 and that bonus can last all day long.
The turret takes an action to create, and only sticks around for an hour before it has to be recreated. It gets no bonuses at any stage of the leveling other than you can use another action to summon a second one. At which point you've used both of your free summons for the day.
At 6d8 (for which I'd give up the ability to summon two at the same time), you're doing an average of 27. On top of a cantrip of 22 average and you're doing a comparable amount of damage.
Perhaps that's too much? Maybe Eldritch Blast should be stronger? But at the very least, if it's going to have a limited duration AND require an action to summon AND be the primary feature of your subclass, it should be worth the investment. At the very minimum it should cap out at 4d8 per turret per turn OR require a bonus action to create OR have no time limit.
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However the key issue here is you are comparing damage of the turret to eldritch blast or other spells which isn't really fair..
Here is why:
You lose one action to set up the turret yes but theoretically could still do an attack spell of debuf spell (like hunters mark or hex) for your bonus action that round and from then onwards you are doing:
1 Major Action (Spell or Weapon (which could be magical)) with all feat benefits or similar applied + Turret damage per turn.
If we use your examples of eldritch blast you are doing
1 eldritch blast damage.
Considering that major action could be an eldritch blast immediatly the turret is a small damage buff to your major action attack.
Loex - A Lizardfolk Lvl 4/6/4 Hexblade Profane Blood Hunter/ Battlesmith Artificer/ Cleric of the Forge
Arborea - A Warforged Lvl 1 Hexblade Warlock
DM - "Malign Intelligence"
Well, first of all we can all agree that the Artificer as it stands is not a finished product. It is a work in progress with the expectation that people will provide their feedback, so it could either be released completely as is, or it could go through yet another iteration that changes it completely.
Second, yes, every existing class is analogous to at least one or two (or more) other classes with which they share roles and mechanics, but I think it's a little unfair to say they're all the same, especially when those mechanics aren't always used or implimented the exact same way. That's partly why I like the idea behind infusions, yes it's analogous to Eldritch Invocations, but it's just different enough to give it a different flavor/different use, and I'm pretty confident we could do the same with other features as well. For instance, we could take the example of the sorcery/ki points and retool them to give them a half-progression (1 point for every 2 levels in the class) and have them be used to augment/alter cantrips, add status effects to attacks, etc. Built on the same foundation used by sorcerers/monks, but just different enough to make it unique.
(For that matter, Mystic has always struck me as an unbalanced and incredibly complicated cross between casters and monks, but that's an entirely different conversation from the one I really want to be having right now.)
As for new spells, I don't think unfair to ask/make suggestions for a handful of new spells to go with the addition of a new caster/half-caster class; I certainly think there's potential for at least a small expansion, just for the Artificer. Maybe they'll see a lot of use, maybe they won't; honestly, I don't see why that would be a problem.
See @Grizzlebub I am not trying to convince you that this makes the feature bad, underpowered or broken. (Although I would probably buff it to always out until death or free action at start of combat or BA to cast delaying 1 iteration of 2d8)
I am more trying to convince people like @ak318 because the DPR is quite fantastic, no other class I can think of has BA=2d8 and BA=4d8 after level 14, for minimal resources.
But DPR doesn’t much matter, they should have checked damage over a combat at which point the initial loss of a MA is quite a big hurdle to jump over. Granted if you just MA Cantrip every turn with no BA it is probably better to set the turret but then your first turn or two feel very underwhelming. (And most enemies die in 2-5 turns max)
So this goes out only to those people that do think that artillerist is amazing DPR and a Power spec. Again super like the theming but it is more defensive then first thought from DPR calculations.
Arutha I don't undertsand what you mean I my arguement above was stating how the DPR for the artillerist is good.
Loex - A Lizardfolk Lvl 4/6/4 Hexblade Profane Blood Hunter/ Battlesmith Artificer/ Cleric of the Forge
Arborea - A Warforged Lvl 1 Hexblade Warlock
DM - "Malign Intelligence"
No problem it is because to start this DPR you first have to sacrifice some MAs which deal much more than you gain from the BA, so it will take many turns for the total damage to catch up.
For example simplest example let’s take 3 rounds of combat with default using 6th level Firebolt =(MA)2d10+4(Int).
DPR calculation might be 2d10+4+2d8=24 which is comparable to Hex agonising blast 2d10+2d6+8=26 but in reality:
I can either do 3 rounds of firebolt = 6d10+12=45
or 1 MA setup 3 BA turret 2 MA firebolt = 6d8+4d10+8= 47
After that the turret starts to take over, but also as a half caster I could do some blast spells instead to make my lost 1 MA even moderately painful.