Artificer becomes a construct wrangler

This is using Eberron Forge of Artificer rules:

My artificer, and everyone in the party quickly filled all their attunement slots. This meant that my Magic Item Replication feature had to focue on items that dont require attunment.

At level 5 this meant using level 2 spell Summon Homunculus, which has a built in force attack weapon that works in melee and at range that does 1d6 force dmg.

At level 6 this meant a Flying Wonder (Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerûn) and arming it with a wand of magic missile, also from plans.

At level 11, build a spell storing item with Lightning Bolt in it and give it to Homunculus.  If you play an artillerist, then use Fireball instead.

At level 14, this meant adding plans for Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals and also the Horn of Valhalla (Brass) normally the horn can only be used once a week, but after a long rest, you can rebuild 2 magic items, and basically get a brand new horn.

You have your built in artificer attacks.

Homunculus attacks (1s6) and at level 11, wit spell storing item and 10 lightning beams

Flying wonder with wand of magic missiles ( 7 vharges)

At level 14,

one earth elemental that lasts for.1 hour

Three Berserkers that last for 1 hour.

What did you use attunement slots on?

Ring of protection, robe of protection, all purpose tool

is the all purpose tool realy nessasary? can't you just buy the things you need to clear up atunement?

The All Purpose Tool can be used as a spellcasting focus and gives a free extra cantrip from any character class!

Unfortunately, the meta kind of winds up here with almost any Artificer.

To maximize your damage dealing potential and extend your action economy need to use summoned constructs. If you are allowed to craft Flying Mechanical wonders then you can have a virtually unlimited supply of drones with Blindsight that you can equip with wands of magic missiles (craft), necklace of fireballs (RMI - since they go away after use), Gloves of Thievery + Rope (lets them tie up grappled enemies), Rod of Tentacles (RMI or craft), SSI (Fireball, Lightning, Conjure Barrage, Spirit Guardians - Maveric), etc... Sadly Wand of Fireballs, Wand of Web, etc... require attunment by Spellcaster so RAW constructs cannot use them (but some DMs allow it).

Homunculus Servant is a given (especially if you cannot get Flying Wonders) - it is also the smartest one of the bunch...

Battle Smith still have the potential to get one more controlled constructs than other subclasses - the Steel Defender. Can give them any of the above items or Gauntlets of Ogre power and have them Grapple enemies if you sacrifice one of your attacks (Grapple + Tie up is a powerful combo).

Also Find Familiar (Magic Initiate) gives you one more controlled creature (flavor it as a Clockwork Observer or Flying Mechanical Wonder) that you have telepathy with - creates unique scouting potential.

Maximum DPR for the Artificer can actually be achieved by RMI'ing 5 summoning items at Level 13+:
4x Elemental Gems (one of each color), and a Cube of Summoning (hope you summon a Dragon) or Brazier of Commanding Fire Elementals + Censer of xxx + Stone of xxx + Bowl of xxx (if multiple Gems are not allowed). However, the Homunculus Servant with a Fireball SSI does more damage than any of those summons if there are multiple clustered enemies that can last a few rounds.

Quote from FlameOutsideOfStaff >>

is the all purpose tool realy nessasary? can't you just buy the things you need to clear up atunement?

The all purpose tool turns into any artisan tool and also gives you proficiency in that tool.

To maximize my tool proficiencies, i choose proficiencies in the NON-artisan tools as an artificer (thieves tools, herbalism, forgery, navigators tools, poisoners kit). Those tools, the all purpose tool can NOT turn into and cant give me proficiency in.

So i have proficiency in most of the non artisan tools and have those tools in my inventory. I then use the all purpose tool to give me proficiency in everything else.

Together, i have every tool and proficiency in every tool.

Also, all purpose tool is the artificers spellcasting booster. It comes in +1,+2,+3 varieties and boosts your spell attack and spell save dc. Which is quite handy. O maxed my int, but every bit helps.

Lastly, all purpose tool lets you pick any cantrip from any spell list, and you know that cantrip for 8 hours and its an artificer spell. Artificers know, like, 2 cantrips, so this is a way to get mold earth, create bonfire, shape warer, and so on, theyre not super powerful,but its noce to have the option when needed.

Should be able to integrate an All Purpose Tool into the handle or body of a shield and/or the stock of a crossbow or musket. Shame that crafting is somewhat relegated to stuff in the DMG in most situations...

I play an armorer. My weapons are built into my armor so my hands are free. One hand has a shield, the other has the all purpose tool.

"SSI (Fireball, Lightning, Conjure Barrage, Spirit Guardians - Maveric), etc..."

The artificer spell storing item at level 11 can only store spells that are on the artificer spell list.

You can do fireball if you are an artillerist, since that subclass gets that spell. But i dont think there is any way to add spirit guardians to your artificer spell list?

Also, ssi can only take up to a level 3 spell, and most people rule that it casts the spell at whatever its original level is. I.e. you cant upcast a level 1 spell to level 3.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

You can do fireball if you are an artillerist, since that subclass gets that spell. But i dont think there is any way to add spirit guardians to your artificer spell list?

As they said, you can do it using the third-party Maverick subclass, which has a feature allowing you to prepare extra spells from the Cleric list (or the Wizard list, but Cleric's what is relevant here) and have them count as Artificer spells.

Never heard of maverick subclass

Ok, thats verging on OP.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Never heard of maverick subclass

It's from the third-party book Exploring Eberron. It leans in on the spellcasting part of the Artificer class, which is its worst and least useful feature, but the Arcane Prototype thing seems pretty powerful and might make up for it.

Actually, getting to craft ANY magic item in 1/2 the time and being able to load your SSI w/ Spirit Guardians or Conjure Animals is what makes up for anything else.

The Prototypes are not all that that great (i.e., not many of them) but do give an additional cast of key spells like Wall of Fire at various levels.

I don't necessarily think it is the option I would select among the Artificer subclasses to play in a party. However, in an all Artificer party I am working on, the Maverick plays a very critical roll.

Yeah, spell selection when combined with the SSI can be a bit OP.

Yeah, so third party content is nortorious for making over-powered subclasses to get people to buy their books, and not really caring about game balance.

My default rule for all campaigns I dm is players can use all official wotc content, no third party content, for this exact reason.

This maverick artificer looks pretty OP. The whole limiting factor that keeps the spell storing item from going gonzo is that the base artificer spell list is a very limited subset of the wizard spell list.  Artillerist gets fireball, which is pretty crazy, and i havent seen how that works out in game, but a bog aoe is hard to use when the enemies are mixed in with the party. Im currently playing an armorer so im looking at lightning bolt or whatever, which is basically a line attack, so usually i hit 2 targets. Im not even high enough level to make the ssi yet. 

Yeah, so, heres how this breaks any campaign: Spell Storing Item does NOT require atttunment, which means you can pass it around to everyone in the party, let everyone cast the ssi item on themselves and everyone concentrates on their own version of the spell. In a party of 5, you need 5 rounds of prep to do this, so short spells (1 minute or less) wont benefit much from this approach.

Maveric can access every spell, so now they have access to Spirit Guardians.

spirit guardians lasts for 10 minutes, and takes 1 action to cast, and you can designate allies to be excluded from the aoe. So unlike fireball, you can use it all the time.

10 minute duration means you have plenty of time to give everyone in the party whats consistently called the "Lawnmower" spell. The ssi limits it to level.3, but this is exactly why i end up banning third partt IP. Its almost always over powered to sell books and throw balance in the shredder.

Im trying to picture everyone in a party, familiars and other followers included, all getting Spirit Guardians. You could use the ssi to give everyone a familiar that last until it dies, everyone summons it and keeps it safe innthe pocket dimension. Then when combat with the bbeg is coming up and the players know it, we are looking at 10 different party memebers, and familiars, all running around with spirit guardians, inflicting an extra 30d6 damage every turn. 105 points of damage on the first turn, on average, PER ENEMY, with no worries about friendly fire, and everyone can still do their normal actions and bonus actions.

Worst case with standard rules, youre looking at 10 fireballs, 8d6 damage, 28 average damage per turn, and it can only be used where it avoids friendly fire.

The maveric artificer subclass is gonzo op. I couldnt allow it in my campaigns.

I agree about the potential to abuse the SSI - but can we fix the SSI instead of blocking the Maverick? For example, why not require 10 minute attunement to use the SSI (but make it a free slot). This would eliminate most abuse - although spamming Fireball or Conjure Barrage is still pretty broken.

A Cleric can cast Spirit Guardians 4x per day at 6th Level if they have a Spell-Refueling Ring. Maverick who loads it into SSI can cast it 10x per day at Level 11 but Spirit Guardians is less spammable than Fireball or Conjure Barrage since you cannot have multiple concentration spells running at once.

I don't think the potential for abuse is as high so long as you cannot pass around the SSI.

EDIT: Sorry crossed my wires on what spells I was writing about earlier but corrected things.

If ssi requires attunement, that makes ALL artificers weaker, its just that for maveric their power level becomes a bit more reasonable.

If ssi requires attunement only for the maveric subclass, that might work. But it would probably have to be regular attunement  rules (short rest, uses an actual attunement slot)

A cleric gets 1 attack per turn. Spirit Guardians, in my mind, compensates for that.

Artificers get ExtraAttack at level5 and a homunculus, which gives them a free attack. Plus flying wonder and a wand of magic missiles. Plus at higher levels, they can also make a stone of earth element summminig. So they might be making 6 attacks per turn, AND youbwanr spirit guardians to do 3d6 to multiple enemies every turn?

Meanwhile, even at that high a level, the cleric is making 1 attack and doesnt have a familiar or flying wonder or an earth elemental to summon.

It just seems a bit too much to me.

And yeah, fireball in the ssi for an artilerist seems a bit crazy. I havent seen it in an actual gamd yet. But i imagine the possibility of friendly fire limits its use. First round, all the melee characters want to run up and hit the big bad. And you cant use it after that.

The thing that makes artificer workable without being op is being a half caster with a very limited, mostly utility spells from the wizard spell list.

The defining characteristic of maveric is they take away that restriction and artificer becomes op. Even without the ssi, youre probably looking at half a dozen attacks per turn from all your constructs. And you want spirit guardians on top of that? But add in ssi and. Being able to spam certain spells from limited spell lists and giving it to wveryone pretty much breaks the game.

I know plenty of dms that wont let players exchange spells through the Ring of Spell Storing. Just because giving every party member their own familiar can break the game.

Maveric seems to be the stereotypical third party subclass designed to be overpowered to get players to buy it and convince their dm to allow it. This kind of stuff is why my default rule is no third party content.

I dont think this is fixable. If your dm allows.it, great. But i dont see it in my campaign.

The only other class i can think of that gives access to other spell lists on this scale are bards, and most bards are not great at combat, and most bard spells are more utility with the big flashy spells taken off thr list.

You have to get to level 10 to start accessing the other spell lists and they dont have an SSI to spam it to everyone 10 times.