I am curious how many of you have played the Artificer at tables where encumbrance is enforced, either regular or variant, and how that has impacted your play or your character choices.
(Variant Encumbrance rules:)
Variant: Encumbrance
The rules for lifting and carrying are intentionally simple. Here is a variant if you are looking for more detailed rules for determining how a character is hindered by the weight of equipment. When you use this variant, ignore the Strength column of the Armor table in chapter 5.
If you carry weight in excess of 5 times your Strength score, you are encumbered, which means your speed drops by 10 feet.
If you carry weight in excess of 10 times your Strength score, up to your maximum carrying capacity, you are instead heavily encumbered, which means your speed drops by 20 feet and you have disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.
When I first started playing Artificer, I followed all the suggestions to dump strength, and even saw that 'oh, you can make strength items as infusions.' Except, none of the items you can make help with carrying capacity - the Armor of Magical Strength infusion has charges for checks or saving throws - but neither apply to carrying your tools or supplies. After my initial dismay, I learned to play this for laughs and it's kind of become a running joke for my character.
And just taking the speed penalty is also an option.
Of course, the Bag of Holding helps amazingly; my character was grateful for that and they ended up being ironically the pack mule for the party.
And a Battle Smith can make their own Pack Mule. Give your Steel Defender friend a backpack or secret compartment and now there's a lot more cargo room.
I know a lot of people flavor a gadget for each spell, and I wonder if you assign a weight to them or if you are playing at tables where it doesn't matter particularly? Did you find this to be a limitation?
A ring of strength or the like is one obvious solution, but Boots of Striding and Springing are also an interesting option - they take away the speed penalty.
I haven't had the chance to play my artificer yet, but I'm definitely one of the ones to flavor different gadgets for each spell. I prefer to keep an eye on how much I'm carrying, regardless of if the DM ignores it, so my gnome would definitely be aiming for the bag of holding as their first infusion. As for the gadgets, I haven't gone super specific with weights, and opted for treating them like a component pouch for an easy estimate. But I may tweak that to a more accurate estimate when the class officially comes out, in case that changes anything on how I want to play him.
With the current UA changes, I plan on taking the starting gold and not buying all the various extras that the pack gives, since I can make them as needed with their new feature. This will free up some weight and gold for buying extra tools that I'll have proficiency in from Crafter and the class itself. Though that's all the more reason to get the bag of holding, since a bunch of tool kits would realistically be cumbersome to fit in a regular pack, even if the total weight is still fine.
Based on an article I saw about the future Eberron book, they had 5 characters in an image, with 4 being the current artificer subclasses. So I'm thinking we might get a new subclass now, and I'll have to see if I'd rather go that route instead, and how that may change what I carry or my gadgets.
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Flavor is free, but carrying capacity is not! :-)
I am curious how many of you have played the Artificer at tables where encumbrance is enforced, either regular or variant, and how that has impacted your play or your character choices.
(Variant Encumbrance rules:)
When I first started playing Artificer, I followed all the suggestions to dump strength, and even saw that 'oh, you can make strength items as infusions.' Except, none of the items you can make help with carrying capacity - the Armor of Magical Strength infusion has charges for checks or saving throws - but neither apply to carrying your tools or supplies. After my initial dismay, I learned to play this for laughs and it's kind of become a running joke for my character.
And just taking the speed penalty is also an option.
Of course, the Bag of Holding helps amazingly; my character was grateful for that and they ended up being ironically the pack mule for the party.
And a Battle Smith can make their own Pack Mule. Give your Steel Defender friend a backpack or secret compartment and now there's a lot more cargo room.
I know a lot of people flavor a gadget for each spell, and I wonder if you assign a weight to them or if you are playing at tables where it doesn't matter particularly? Did you find this to be a limitation?
A ring of strength or the like is one obvious solution, but Boots of Striding and Springing are also an interesting option - they take away the speed penalty.
I haven't had the chance to play my artificer yet, but I'm definitely one of the ones to flavor different gadgets for each spell. I prefer to keep an eye on how much I'm carrying, regardless of if the DM ignores it, so my gnome would definitely be aiming for the bag of holding as their first infusion. As for the gadgets, I haven't gone super specific with weights, and opted for treating them like a component pouch for an easy estimate. But I may tweak that to a more accurate estimate when the class officially comes out, in case that changes anything on how I want to play him.
With the current UA changes, I plan on taking the starting gold and not buying all the various extras that the pack gives, since I can make them as needed with their new feature. This will free up some weight and gold for buying extra tools that I'll have proficiency in from Crafter and the class itself. Though that's all the more reason to get the bag of holding, since a bunch of tool kits would realistically be cumbersome to fit in a regular pack, even if the total weight is still fine.
Based on an article I saw about the future Eberron book, they had 5 characters in an image, with 4 being the current artificer subclasses. So I'm thinking we might get a new subclass now, and I'll have to see if I'd rather go that route instead, and how that may change what I carry or my gadgets.