I'll cut to the chase; Magical Tinkering feels bad. I get it's supposed to be a utility ability but all its features are accomplished by cantrips, and none of them scale by levels. Artificers do also get spellcasting at this level, but for whatever reason they can only prepare spells equal to half their level. So whilst the monk is over here getting Unarmoured Defense and Martial Arts, the Barbarian is Raging, and the Wizard is picking 6 spells from the largest 1st level pool in the game, your Artificer is making a spoon glow with less light than the Light cantrip. Any ideas on how to make this ability seem cooler, whilst still keeping the utility feel of it? Or do you think it is fine as it is?
This quote should show that magical tinkering is not useless. Quoted from Yurei1453.
Cool Things You Can Do with Magical Tinkering:
-The Pen Light: enchant a wooden dowel with minor light Tinkering effect. Use tinker’s tools to create a small metal casing for the dowel with a thumb-actuated pivoting cap, allowing you to carry a negligible-weight point light source you can tuck behind an ear (or a horn) while doing things like picking locks in the dark or trying to read secret missives while on an infiltration job. So much more effective than candles – flick-on, flick-off, one-directional light absolutely perfect for burglary. Half my party were desperately jealous of my pen light.
-The Perfume: Enchant the broach on your cloak (or the decorative cap on your horn) to emit a pleasing scent like jasmine, cinnamon, or brimstone. Enjoy being surrounded by your favorite scent whenever you happen to be. Obvious, but still worth stating.
-The Anti-Perfume: offer to enchant the armor of the stupid fighter who charged into that hobgoblin troop dick-first and nearly got you killed yesterday with your Enhanced Defense infusion “just in case we get into hot water like that again today.” Succeed on a Deception check because your party is starting to grow wise to your shit. Instead, tinker the smell of month-old curdled milk into their armor and inform them that the next time they decide to think with their halberd instead of their brain, you’ll find a way to make it permanent. Spend the day 15 or more feet away from said fighter.
-The Decoy: enchant a throwaway object like a ball bearing (if you don’t carry a bag of ball bearings on every character you’re insane and I don’t wanna play with you) with your scent. Drop near your trail somewhere difficult to access, such as between the bricks of a nearby tavern, and buy time to get more of a lead on those damned guard hounds.
-The “Legendary Avenger”: Enchant a greatsword’s blade with minor light. Enchant the guard - which is a different part of the sword and thus qualifies as its own object, as any proper artificer knows – with the sound of a magical Power Thrum. Sell this clearly potent and magnificent weapon (it even registers as a magic item to Detect Magic spells/items!) to the smith at Podunk Road Trip Village #14 at a ‘disastrous discount’ because “its power burns my impure blood, I can’t bear to hold it any longer” and everybody’s giving you the stink-eye for being a tiefling anyways. One Deception check later, walk away with a hundred gold. And then maybe don’t go back to that village later unless you have a disguise spell… Note: it was rightly pointed out in the original thread that some DMs would take offense to this, as a sword blade is long enough that it may not qualify as 'Tiny' in their minds. Legendary Avenger with caution, then.
-The Giggity: Wake up before the Lawful Prude paladin who keeps complaining about your unbecoming conduct does, put your stealth skills to work. Enchant his underoos with the scent of fresh sex, wait for the party to get up. Act all blissed-out and silly, do not stop smiling and making eyes at said paladin while he desperately tries to explain that he didn’t so much as look at you last night and he’d never sully himself with a common slattern like you. Get Insight’d by the entire party because they are definitely wise to your shit by now, consider dipping a Rogue level because Expertise in Deception is starting to look very attractive.
-The Mindscrew: Magically tinker faint, murky fiendish murmuring (no discernible words or distinct voices? Close enough to nonverbal, at least according to the DM I pulled this on) into the favorite earring of a snooty noblewoman. Enjoy watching her squirm as ‘demons’ murmur into her ear all day, offer to investigate when she grows distraught enough to be willing to hire people to find out why the noises won’t stop. Kick that damned paladin when he blabs and not only ruins your score but puts your Deception to the test trying to get out of explaining how you got close enough to the earring to enchant it in the first place.
-The Mindscrew, Pt. II: Magically tinker the phrase “Ohhhh yeah, HARDER! YES!” with a thick put-on accent into a bureaucrat’s pen. Convince the DM that writing necessarily involves tapping the pen repeatedly. Laugh as that ******* who stiffed you on payment for that owlbear bounty because ‘you didn’t fill out a bounty acceptance form first’ gets his office searched top to bottom because they keep hearing that crazy tiefling girl Having A Good Time in there.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
The benefit of Magical Tinkering is that you don't have to ever bother with those kinds of utility cantrips. Seeing as Artificers only have 2 cantrips at level 1 and don't get a third cantrip until level 10 having less need for utility cantrips like light, dancing lights, or prestidigitation is very helpful. The fact that Artificers can switch out their cantrips compensates somewhat but RAW they can only do so on level up. So really I wouldn't bother with most utility cantrips on an artificer.
Magical Tinkering has the secondary benefit of being magical effects that aren't generated by spells. RAW this makes them immune to spells that target spell effects such as Dispel Magic. An undispellable magical light source can be especially handy when encountering an enemy that likes to cast Darkness.
With those points in mind I think Magical Tinkering is fine how it is but if you feel the need to boost Artificers at level one with lasting effects down the road, then give them Mending for free or let them effectively cast mending with a Tinker's Tools check or have a temporary mending cost one of the uses of Magical Tinkering.
It frankly makes a lot of sense for an Artificer to have mending and two of the three official subclasses and one infusion more or less assume you've already taken it as one of your cantrip choices anyway.
Ohaiyo. As the original writer of the list in question, allow me to point out that no cantrip allows the user to create a permanent, or at least indefinite, effect.
Take the Pen Light, as an easy example. yeah, Magical Tinker'd light is not as strong as the Lightcantrip. Can you cast Light mid-burglary? If you need Light whilst wedged in a hole somewhere hoping patrolling guards don't spot you in order to figure out a tricky lock or try and speed-read a secret missive, are you willing to commit to verbal spell components? And if you do, how are you going to constrain the light source down to the little spot lamp you need?
Magical Tinkering means you can set that up well in advance of the heist and have light available - silently - when and as you need it.
The whole "tap an item to play a six-word recording" thing? It can be used to leave messages for party members that persist for as long as they need to. Have an otherwise innocuous item that your party members know is your Speaking Stone - if they see it somewhere, especially if you've been gone a while, they know to tap the stone and get a brief note from you. To say nothing of the hijinks potential of stuff like Mindscrew Pt. II.
And the final property, allowing you to leave arcane marks that last until dispelled? Well heck - you can leave a sigil or a warning in a dungeon you're exploring that dungeon critters can't mess with/wipe away, up to however many Tinkerings you've got. On top of being exceptionally useful for skullduggery. Find an incriminating piece of document you can't carry away without alerting the people you're skuldugging? Use Magical Tinkering to recreate the most critical portion of that document on a blank piece of parchment carried with you for the purpose and carry that document out of the manor whilst also leaving it there, nice and "undisturbed".
Now admittedly, a lot of these things are niche. So are most cantrips. Light - one of the most popular, well-regarded, and common pieces of arcana in the game - does nothing that a torch or a lantern can't do save for being much more convenient. Prestidigitation is widely, if divisively, held to be one of the most splendid spells in the game despite basically working like a janky, temporary-only version of Magical Tinkering. Abilities like this are basically only limited by your imagination and the patience of your DM. Obviously I tend to lean pretty heavily into roguelike territory for my artificers, but there's plenty of other cool things you can do with Tinkering if you sit down and really think about it for a little bit.
Heh, as one example? An artificer I DM for, rather than play, used Magical Tinkering to enchant the sound of a ticking, fuse-like clock onto an empty grenade hull he hadn't finished creating yet. Threw the hull, it hit the ground - which qualified as "tapping" - and started playing the sound. The critters holed up in heavy cover at the end of the long hallway my party couldn't get through screeched, dove away and out of their 'compromised' cover, and into the sights of the Shatter-happy bard. It was beautiful. Almost caved in the tunnel on top of them, but still beautiful.
Whilst these are good points, they're all quite niche and can again be accomplished by cantrips (save The Mindscrews I will give you that).
Like everyone has already mentioned, the whole point is that you don't *need* cantrips to accomplish those. Which means that you can use your cantrips for other stuff. But basically what you're saying is "the Artificer gets all of these cantrips, for free". Which to me seems like a fairly good deal, to be honest. :)
Also, the Artificer is basically a half-caster class that gets casting from level 1, which is HUGE. So it's completely wrong to compare only Magical Tinkering with Rage or Unarmoured Defence since that is not all the Artificer gains. Sure, the Wizards have bigger spell lists but that's because they are WIZARDS (some even named Harry), that's their whole schtick. :) Artficier might not get as many spells but they can wear breastplates and use two-handed swords using the Intelligence. That's also pretty good. :)
Instead of just only having [int mod] you can make that number a day. If you exceed that number within the 24 hours you lose the earliest one but if you long rest after using it you can make an additional [int mod.]
A character idea that was tried out in my group was a Jewelry Maker that made Quality of Life items for people they met.
A city guard near a farm getting a necklace that smelled like fresh cookies.
A minor with a earring that light up.
An orphan child hearing his mother's last words telling him she loved him (NPC died during escort side mission from kobolds and the kenku Paladium had replicated her voice. Kobold Bard [ironic I know] had deception Expertise and the Divination wizard had a 19 portent saved. ******* loved Roll playing the child's happiness at that.)
A picture of a narsasitic vampire noble the Rogue Goliath had bet he could capture the image of. (They had the bard used minor illusion to distract the vampire and the Artificer had pretended to trip and landed on the Goliath. [Rolled a 2 for the skill check.] Gave the Rogue advantage due to the plan working and Goliath rolled a 1 and a 20.] Vampire had loved the picture. Doubled the prize to 4 platinum instead of 2.
I usually charge material if they are selling the items. [They follow my rule of these are basically the dollar store toys so a bronze coin on an old string with the cookie smell will be at most 1 silver. If he makes a fancy piece like a new tiara for a princess that does a trumpet noise when she walks into a room it's worth more but items that aren't specific for personal use have costs.]
Great ideas! Haven't had too much success using the tinkering. Partly because we're are in Barovia and all our magical creations are warped by the dark powers per the dm.
I spent first level off-tanking and throwing frostbite from a relatively safe distance. 2nd and 3rd level(battlesmith) made me alot braver. :)
My Artificer is a Cartographer and is usually using his Homonculus Servant to help make maps. My DM has allowed me to use my trinkets to make 'snapshots' of images. Essentially, I take a still Illusion of something that I can show others. It's like a D&D Kodak camera.
Arrows are tiny items so you can send short messages or light or smells with them. There are lots of nifty things you can do with it, and my artificer always has a few ball bearings in a pocket. You can send a signal by turning an item off (by magicking up more items) as well.
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I'll cut to the chase; Magical Tinkering feels bad. I get it's supposed to be a utility ability but all its features are accomplished by cantrips, and none of them scale by levels. Artificers do also get spellcasting at this level, but for whatever reason they can only prepare spells equal to half their level. So whilst the monk is over here getting Unarmoured Defense and Martial Arts, the Barbarian is Raging, and the Wizard is picking 6 spells from the largest 1st level pool in the game, your Artificer is making a spoon glow with less light than the Light cantrip. Any ideas on how to make this ability seem cooler, whilst still keeping the utility feel of it? Or do you think it is fine as it is?
This quote should show that magical tinkering is not useless. Quoted from Yurei1453.
Cool Things You Can Do with Magical Tinkering:
-The Pen Light: enchant a wooden dowel with minor light Tinkering effect. Use tinker’s tools to create a small metal casing for the dowel with a thumb-actuated pivoting cap, allowing you to carry a negligible-weight point light source you can tuck behind an ear (or a horn) while doing things like picking locks in the dark or trying to read secret missives while on an infiltration job. So much more effective than candles – flick-on, flick-off, one-directional light absolutely perfect for burglary. Half my party were desperately jealous of my pen light.
-The Perfume: Enchant the broach on your cloak (or the decorative cap on your horn) to emit a pleasing scent like jasmine, cinnamon, or brimstone. Enjoy being surrounded by your favorite scent whenever you happen to be. Obvious, but still worth stating.
-The Anti-Perfume: offer to enchant the armor of the stupid fighter who charged into that hobgoblin troop dick-first and nearly got you killed yesterday with your Enhanced Defense infusion “just in case we get into hot water like that again today.” Succeed on a Deception check because your party is starting to grow wise to your shit. Instead, tinker the smell of month-old curdled milk into their armor and inform them that the next time they decide to think with their halberd instead of their brain, you’ll find a way to make it permanent. Spend the day 15 or more feet away from said fighter.
-The Decoy: enchant a throwaway object like a ball bearing (if you don’t carry a bag of ball bearings on every character you’re insane and I don’t wanna play with you) with your scent. Drop near your trail somewhere difficult to access, such as between the bricks of a nearby tavern, and buy time to get more of a lead on those damned guard hounds.
-The “Legendary Avenger”: Enchant a greatsword’s blade with minor light. Enchant the guard - which is a different part of the sword and thus qualifies as its own object, as any proper artificer knows – with the sound of a magical Power Thrum. Sell this clearly potent and magnificent weapon (it even registers as a magic item to Detect Magic spells/items!) to the smith at Podunk Road Trip Village #14 at a ‘disastrous discount’ because “its power burns my impure blood, I can’t bear to hold it any longer” and everybody’s giving you the stink-eye for being a tiefling anyways. One Deception check later, walk away with a hundred gold. And then maybe don’t go back to that village later unless you have a disguise spell…
Note: it was rightly pointed out in the original thread that some DMs would take offense to this, as a sword blade is long enough that it may not qualify as 'Tiny' in their minds. Legendary Avenger with caution, then.
-The Giggity: Wake up before the Lawful Prude paladin who keeps complaining about your unbecoming conduct does, put your stealth skills to work. Enchant his underoos with the scent of fresh sex, wait for the party to get up. Act all blissed-out and silly, do not stop smiling and making eyes at said paladin while he desperately tries to explain that he didn’t so much as look at you last night and he’d never sully himself with a common slattern like you. Get Insight’d by the entire party because they are definitely wise to your shit by now, consider dipping a Rogue level because Expertise in Deception is starting to look very attractive.
-The Mindscrew: Magically tinker faint, murky fiendish murmuring (no discernible words or distinct voices? Close enough to nonverbal, at least according to the DM I pulled this on) into the favorite earring of a snooty noblewoman. Enjoy watching her squirm as ‘demons’ murmur into her ear all day, offer to investigate when she grows distraught enough to be willing to hire people to find out why the noises won’t stop. Kick that damned paladin when he blabs and not only ruins your score but puts your Deception to the test trying to get out of explaining how you got close enough to the earring to enchant it in the first place.
-The Mindscrew, Pt. II: Magically tinker the phrase “Ohhhh yeah, HARDER! YES!” with a thick put-on accent into a bureaucrat’s pen. Convince the DM that writing necessarily involves tapping the pen repeatedly. Laugh as that ******* who stiffed you on payment for that owlbear bounty because ‘you didn’t fill out a bounty acceptance form first’ gets his office searched top to bottom because they keep hearing that crazy tiefling girl Having A Good Time in there.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Whilst these are good points, they're all quite niche and can again be accomplished by cantrips (save The Mindscrews I will give you that).
The benefit of Magical Tinkering is that you don't have to ever bother with those kinds of utility cantrips. Seeing as Artificers only have 2 cantrips at level 1 and don't get a third cantrip until level 10 having less need for utility cantrips like light, dancing lights, or prestidigitation is very helpful. The fact that Artificers can switch out their cantrips compensates somewhat but RAW they can only do so on level up. So really I wouldn't bother with most utility cantrips on an artificer.
Magical Tinkering has the secondary benefit of being magical effects that aren't generated by spells. RAW this makes them immune to spells that target spell effects such as Dispel Magic. An undispellable magical light source can be especially handy when encountering an enemy that likes to cast Darkness.
With those points in mind I think Magical Tinkering is fine how it is but if you feel the need to boost Artificers at level one with lasting effects down the road, then give them Mending for free or let them effectively cast mending with a Tinker's Tools check or have a temporary mending cost one of the uses of Magical Tinkering.
It frankly makes a lot of sense for an Artificer to have mending and two of the three official subclasses and one infusion more or less assume you've already taken it as one of your cantrip choices anyway.
Ohaiyo. As the original writer of the list in question, allow me to point out that no cantrip allows the user to create a permanent, or at least indefinite, effect.
Take the Pen Light, as an easy example. yeah, Magical Tinker'd light is not as strong as the Light cantrip. Can you cast Light mid-burglary? If you need Light whilst wedged in a hole somewhere hoping patrolling guards don't spot you in order to figure out a tricky lock or try and speed-read a secret missive, are you willing to commit to verbal spell components? And if you do, how are you going to constrain the light source down to the little spot lamp you need?
Magical Tinkering means you can set that up well in advance of the heist and have light available - silently - when and as you need it.
The whole "tap an item to play a six-word recording" thing? It can be used to leave messages for party members that persist for as long as they need to. Have an otherwise innocuous item that your party members know is your Speaking Stone - if they see it somewhere, especially if you've been gone a while, they know to tap the stone and get a brief note from you. To say nothing of the hijinks potential of stuff like Mindscrew Pt. II.
And the final property, allowing you to leave arcane marks that last until dispelled? Well heck - you can leave a sigil or a warning in a dungeon you're exploring that dungeon critters can't mess with/wipe away, up to however many Tinkerings you've got. On top of being exceptionally useful for skullduggery. Find an incriminating piece of document you can't carry away without alerting the people you're skuldugging? Use Magical Tinkering to recreate the most critical portion of that document on a blank piece of parchment carried with you for the purpose and carry that document out of the manor whilst also leaving it there, nice and "undisturbed".
Now admittedly, a lot of these things are niche. So are most cantrips. Light - one of the most popular, well-regarded, and common pieces of arcana in the game - does nothing that a torch or a lantern can't do save for being much more convenient. Prestidigitation is widely, if divisively, held to be one of the most splendid spells in the game despite basically working like a janky, temporary-only version of Magical Tinkering. Abilities like this are basically only limited by your imagination and the patience of your DM. Obviously I tend to lean pretty heavily into roguelike territory for my artificers, but there's plenty of other cool things you can do with Tinkering if you sit down and really think about it for a little bit.
Heh, as one example? An artificer I DM for, rather than play, used Magical Tinkering to enchant the sound of a ticking, fuse-like clock onto an empty grenade hull he hadn't finished creating yet. Threw the hull, it hit the ground - which qualified as "tapping" - and started playing the sound. The critters holed up in heavy cover at the end of the long hallway my party couldn't get through screeched, dove away and out of their 'compromised' cover, and into the sights of the Shatter-happy bard. It was beautiful. Almost caved in the tunnel on top of them, but still beautiful.
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Like everyone has already mentioned, the whole point is that you don't *need* cantrips to accomplish those. Which means that you can use your cantrips for other stuff. But basically what you're saying is "the Artificer gets all of these cantrips, for free". Which to me seems like a fairly good deal, to be honest. :)
Also, the Artificer is basically a half-caster class that gets casting from level 1, which is HUGE. So it's completely wrong to compare only Magical Tinkering with Rage or Unarmoured Defence since that is not all the Artificer gains. Sure, the Wizards have bigger spell lists but that's because they are WIZARDS (some even named Harry), that's their whole schtick. :) Artficier might not get as many spells but they can wear breastplates and use two-handed swords using the Intelligence. That's also pretty good. :)
Thanks for opening my eyes everyone! I realize now that I need to be more creative with my uses of Magical Tinkering.
Happy to quote someone who could help.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I like to homebrew the rules for it like this:
Instead of just only having [int mod] you can make that number a day. If you exceed that number within the 24 hours you lose the earliest one but if you long rest after using it you can make an additional [int mod.]
A character idea that was tried out in my group was a Jewelry Maker that made Quality of Life items for people they met.
A city guard near a farm getting a necklace that smelled like fresh cookies.
A minor with a earring that light up.
An orphan child hearing his mother's last words telling him she loved him (NPC died during escort side mission from kobolds and the kenku Paladium had replicated her voice. Kobold Bard [ironic I know] had deception Expertise and the Divination wizard had a 19 portent saved. ******* loved Roll playing the child's happiness at that.)
A picture of a narsasitic vampire noble the Rogue Goliath had bet he could capture the image of. (They had the bard used minor illusion to distract the vampire and the Artificer had pretended to trip and landed on the Goliath. [Rolled a 2 for the skill check.] Gave the Rogue advantage due to the plan working and Goliath rolled a 1 and a 20.] Vampire had loved the picture. Doubled the prize to 4 platinum instead of 2.
I usually charge material if they are selling the items. [They follow my rule of these are basically the dollar store toys so a bronze coin on an old string with the cookie smell will be at most 1 silver. If he makes a fancy piece like a new tiara for a princess that does a trumpet noise when she walks into a room it's worth more but items that aren't specific for personal use have costs.]
Loved this one tweak to the rule.
Great ideas! Haven't had too much success using the tinkering. Partly because we're are in Barovia and all our magical creations are warped by the dark powers per the dm.
I spent first level off-tanking and throwing frostbite from a relatively safe distance. 2nd and 3rd level(battlesmith) made me alot braver. :)
My Artificer is a Cartographer and is usually using his Homonculus Servant to help make maps. My DM has allowed me to use my trinkets to make 'snapshots' of images. Essentially, I take a still Illusion of something that I can show others. It's like a D&D Kodak camera.
Never change how a class work. Just start at higher levels.
Arrows are tiny items so you can send short messages or light or smells with them. There are lots of nifty things you can do with it, and my artificer always has a few ball bearings in a pocket. You can send a signal by turning an item off (by magicking up more items) as well.