I'm starting with rogue instead of fighter for skills and I was thinking sneak attack would be good for early damage, proceedings to level 4 to get cross bow expert (first ASI-> feat) because I picked shadar kai rather than custom lineage to be able to get elven accuracy (I generally like Eladrin for my race but i thought the griitier shadar Kai was more appropriate for this character).
Point buy with 15 int, 14 dex, 13 con, the rest 10's racial bonus bumping int to 17 and con to 14. Elven accuracy (second ASI -> feat) will bump int to 18, then third ASI bumps INT to 20. At artificer 2 I'd be using head band of intellect (so int 19 from level 6 to 8 which may be delayed if i put fighter 1 in there for archery fighting style) and auto reload as the 2 infusions, dropping the crossbow and auto reload infusion at artificer 3 when I go armorer, with infiltrator for the simple weapon lightning gun. Concentration on Faerie fire for advantage. All well and good. And I'd be skipping bless. Otherwise largely following the video.
My questions are:
1) WHERE (what order, relative to the artificer levels) should I put fighter levels 1 and 2 (level 1 for archery fighting style) because campaigns can end whenever
2) if the campaign proceeds past level 18, how should I finish off the build?
By the way the character portrait will be my current avatar which I generated using the "neural love" ai art page... after much experimentation I found that "ghost-white skin" the description that gets you something vaguely resembling a shadar kai (I also had to include the words "handsome early middle age male elf" to get a character that didn't look like a teenager or have super in your face wrinkles, but had enough "edge" to it to kind of look like a shadar kai and I used "punk hair" to get a haircut to have enough edge to be a shadar kai
I was planning 4 levels of rogue and going for a breastplate (medium) to avoid disadvantage on stealth, but I was mistakenly thinking Rogue go med armor proficiency., so good advice there. I also didn't realize that headband of intellect was restricted to artificer 10.
So your recommendation would be Rogue 1/artificer 11/rogue2-4/fighter 1-3
I largely incorporated your first round of feedback, tweeked a few things. Rogue 1/artificer 12/Fighter 4 in that order and then finished the last 3 as rogue (arcane trickster, just to finish it off by getting something use for each of the last 3 levels) I went detailed so I could get detailed/nuanced feedback
And I do want detailed feedback
So here's a level by level build plan, since magic items are such a big part of the artificer I had to assume some about how many items characters would get so the assumption I made is
3 items at level 1, (a +1 weapon, a bag of holding/handy haversack, and one other uncommon item) and a healing portion.
Thereafter you get an item at every even level, at 2 and 4 it's uncommon (or lower), at 6 and 8 it's rare (or lower), at 10 and 12 it's very rare (or lower), at 14 and up it's legendary (or lower). Also when you get a new item you can also swap.1 lower rarity item for another of the same rarity.
I can almost guarantee that you will not be getting 3 magic items at level 1, least of all a +1 weapon (again, your DM may be doing this, but that is not typical). It's pretty hard to balance a build around atypical DMing.
You have given yourself WAY too many magic items. And I don't know what the Rogue dip is really getting you outside of expertise.
Rogue (+race + background) provides proficiency in a certain set of skills: all the observation skills (insight investigation perception), all the social skills (deception, intimidation, Persuasion) plus stealth. Expertise and 1d6 sneak attack damage is nice (going to get advantage from Faerie fire at level 2 so he doesn't really need cunning action to hide as a bonus action)
I will drop the +1 rapier and efficient quiver and it doesn't affect the build in any meaningful way. The rapier is just a back up weapon, and the efficient quiver really only matters at character levels 1 and 2 because at level 3 he gets the repeating shot infusion which provides it's own ammo.
I.e. he'd only get a handy haversack at level 1 and then another item at every even level., so 11 items by level 20 and 6 items by level 10. At level 10 he'd a haversack, 2 uncommon, 2 rare (one of which is armor which is the shtick of an armorer) and 1 very rare (all purpose tool which is the shtick of an artificer in general). Is that really unreasonable?
He might *look* like he has a lot more magic items (another 5 active infusions) at level 10 but that's only because of his infusions but those are really class features rather than "items"
Are you joining a campaign or is this strictly theory-crafting? Because a magic item every even level is still EXTREMELY high. Not counting your Infusions, you are likely to get 1 magic item (excluding potions) by level 5-7.
A bit of both, i wanted a solid build plan before looking for an online game. Obviously magic items are up to the gm, and the items on the build plan are suggestions (as if if you could work this in it'd be great), but every time I've played dnd over the past 32 years it's been in a "high magic" game. And yes I tend to go years between campaigns (I've got 3 kids ages between 3 and 7, full time job, wife works part time, life is chaos). But presenting a build plan to a DM can be helpful to see if the character will fit in the GM's game and makes planning easier.
Find out which style of campaign you are going to be entering before flushing out your character too much. I am currently in a mystery campaign without much battle, so I went Arcane Trickster/Armorer because it seemed like it was ripe for a ton of versatile shenanigans. If you are focusing on damage, then go fighter w/ Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy. I tend to build without focusing on damage because both, homebrew and modules, tend to construct around defeating opposition through various other means besides murderhoboing, and it is just more fun to figure out how to avoid a fight. If you are looking for highest damage potential because your game is going to be fight after fight then build toward combat only because you will become frustrated with having a versatile character you can never be versatile with.
My personal philosophy is build to subclasses, which means level 3 at least for each class. I would probably go: 1 Rogue, 2-4 Artificer (subclass), 5-6 Rogue (subclass), 7+ should drive itself as you really learn what your role in the group is. A few things to remember is an Artificer is a half caster, so if your rogue/fighter subclass is also a half caster, you keep your spell slot progression. You will have lower level spells available based on class, but access to higher level slots which you can use for up-casting.
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IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
Find out which style of campaign you are going to be entering before flushing out your character too much. I am currently in a mystery campaign without much battle, so I went Arcane Trickster/Armorer because it seemed like it was ripe for a ton of versatile shenanigans. If you are focusing on damage, then go fighter w/ Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy. I tend to build without focusing on damage because both, homebrew and modules, tend to construct around defeating opposition through various other means besides murderhoboing, and it is just more fun to figure out how to avoid a fight. If you are looking for highest damage potential because your game is going to be fight after fight then build toward combat only because you will become frustrated with having a versatile character you can never be versatile with.
My personal philosophy is build to subclasses, which means level 3 at least for each class. I would probably go: 1 Rogue, 2-4 Artificer (subclass), 5-6 Rogue (subclass), 7+ should drive itself as you really learn what your role in the group is. A few things to remember is an Artificer is a half caster, so if your rogue/fighter subclass is also a half caster, you keep your spell slot progression. You will have lower level spells available based on class, but access to higher level slots which you can use for up-casting.
I was trying to build a well rounded character. Starting rogue, shadar kai, and background nets all the observation, personal interaction, and stealth skills, and thieves tools and thieves cant, infiltrator armor provides advantage on stealth... so covers all those roguey/intrigue situations "adequately." Artificer infusions helps there too. And playing a high int character means the character can know a lot of what I as a player know/figure out... which is good for intrigue campaigns. The build also does decent damage, and is somewhat tanky. Magic is only half caster but there's no non druid build I know of that covers every area "well" and ritual caster wizard adds a lot of utility. For some reason I just live the tiny hut spell (favorite ritual spell).
Shadar Kai grants you an upgraded Misty Step and all the boons of being an elf. I like the Arcane Trickster mix with any of the Artificer because you do not ****** your spell slot progression and you expand your spell selection slightly with a couple more cantrips, Find Familiar, Silvery Barbs, Hideous Laughter. They do not overpower you, just give a few more options which could outperform any of the other subclass features and an invisible hand that can perform VERY complex actions that a normal Mage Hand cannot.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
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So this is a variation on the d4 optimized (dnd deep dive) "infiltrator" build https://youtu.be/7L_nbyrgr1A?si=0rhf9qdBmEqo1ES-
I'm starting with rogue instead of fighter for skills and I was thinking sneak attack would be good for early damage, proceedings to level 4 to get cross bow expert (first ASI-> feat) because I picked shadar kai rather than custom lineage to be able to get elven accuracy (I generally like Eladrin for my race but i thought the griitier shadar Kai was more appropriate for this character).
Point buy with 15 int, 14 dex, 13 con, the rest 10's racial bonus bumping int to 17 and con to 14. Elven accuracy (second ASI -> feat) will bump int to 18, then third ASI bumps INT to 20. At artificer 2 I'd be using head band of intellect (so int 19 from level 6 to 8 which may be delayed if i put fighter 1 in there for archery fighting style) and auto reload as the 2 infusions, dropping the crossbow and auto reload infusion at artificer 3 when I go armorer, with infiltrator for the simple weapon lightning gun. Concentration on Faerie fire for advantage. All well and good. And I'd be skipping bless. Otherwise largely following the video.
My questions are:
1) WHERE (what order, relative to the artificer levels) should I put fighter levels 1 and 2 (level 1 for archery fighting style) because campaigns can end whenever
2) if the campaign proceeds past level 18, how should I finish off the build?
By the way the character portrait will be my current avatar which I generated using the "neural love" ai art page... after much experimentation I found that "ghost-white skin" the description that gets you something vaguely resembling a shadar kai (I also had to include the words "handsome early middle age male elf" to get a character that didn't look like a teenager or have super in your face wrinkles, but had enough "edge" to it to kind of look like a shadar kai and I used "punk hair" to get a haircut to have enough edge to be a shadar kai
I was planning 4 levels of rogue and going for a breastplate (medium) to avoid disadvantage on stealth, but I was mistakenly thinking Rogue go med armor proficiency., so good advice there. I also didn't realize that headband of intellect was restricted to artificer 10.
So your recommendation would be Rogue 1/artificer 11/rogue2-4/fighter 1-3
Would you recommend
Rogue 1/artificer 12/Rogue 2-3/fighter 3
The idea would be get the 3rd feat earlier?
I largely incorporated your first round of feedback, tweeked a few things. Rogue 1/artificer 12/Fighter 4 in that order and then finished the last 3 as rogue (arcane trickster, just to finish it off by getting something use for each of the last 3 levels) I went detailed so I could get detailed/nuanced feedback
And I do want detailed feedback
So here's a level by level build plan, since magic items are such a big part of the artificer I had to assume some about how many items characters would get so the assumption I made is
3 items at level 1, (a +1 weapon, a bag of holding/handy haversack, and one other uncommon item) and a healing portion.
Thereafter you get an item at every even level, at 2 and 4 it's uncommon (or lower), at 6 and 8 it's rare (or lower), at 10 and 12 it's very rare (or lower), at 14 and up it's legendary (or lower). Also when you get a new item you can also swap.1 lower rarity item for another of the same rarity.
Given that here is the build plan
Level 1: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128692749.pdf
Level 2: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128697695.pdf
Level 3: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128702241.pdf
Level 4: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128703263.pdf
Level 5: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128703837.pdf
Level 6: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128704682.pdf
Level 7: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128705404.pdf
Level 8: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128710798.pdf
Level 9: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128714173.pdf
Level 10: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128714840.pdf
Level 11: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128715711.pdf
Level.12: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128724143.pdf
Level 13: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128725592.pdf
Level 14: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128726321.pdf
Level 15: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128727746.pdf
Level 16: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128790542.pdf
Level 17: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128790699.pdf
Level 18: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128791772.pdf
Level 19: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128888021.pdf
Level 20: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/EliasWindrider_128891674.pdf
I can almost guarantee that you will not be getting 3 magic items at level 1, least of all a +1 weapon (again, your DM may be doing this, but that is not typical). It's pretty hard to balance a build around atypical DMing.
You have given yourself WAY too many magic items. And I don't know what the Rogue dip is really getting you outside of expertise.
Rogue (+race + background) provides proficiency in a certain set of skills: all the observation skills (insight investigation perception), all the social skills (deception, intimidation, Persuasion) plus stealth. Expertise and 1d6 sneak attack damage is nice (going to get advantage from Faerie fire at level 2 so he doesn't really need cunning action to hide as a bonus action)
I will drop the +1 rapier and efficient quiver and it doesn't affect the build in any meaningful way. The rapier is just a back up weapon, and the efficient quiver really only matters at character levels 1 and 2 because at level 3 he gets the repeating shot infusion which provides it's own ammo.
I.e. he'd only get a handy haversack at level 1 and then another item at every even level., so 11 items by level 20 and 6 items by level 10. At level 10 he'd a haversack, 2 uncommon, 2 rare (one of which is armor which is the shtick of an armorer) and 1 very rare (all purpose tool which is the shtick of an artificer in general). Is that really unreasonable?
He might *look* like he has a lot more magic items (another 5 active infusions) at level 10 but that's only because of his infusions but those are really class features rather than "items"
Are you joining a campaign or is this strictly theory-crafting? Because a magic item every even level is still EXTREMELY high. Not counting your Infusions, you are likely to get 1 magic item (excluding potions) by level 5-7.
Now if you are playing with a DM in a very high magic campaign, this might go up, but the DMG recommends 1 uncommon magic item for starting a campaign at 5th-10th and not getting a rare item until level 11 (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2014/creating-a-campaign#StartingEquipment).
A bit of both, i wanted a solid build plan before looking for an online game. Obviously magic items are up to the gm, and the items on the build plan are suggestions (as if if you could work this in it'd be great), but every time I've played dnd over the past 32 years it's been in a "high magic" game. And yes I tend to go years between campaigns (I've got 3 kids ages between 3 and 7, full time job, wife works part time, life is chaos). But presenting a build plan to a DM can be helpful to see if the character will fit in the GM's game and makes planning easier.
Find out which style of campaign you are going to be entering before flushing out your character too much. I am currently in a mystery campaign without much battle, so I went Arcane Trickster/Armorer because it seemed like it was ripe for a ton of versatile shenanigans. If you are focusing on damage, then go fighter w/ Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy. I tend to build without focusing on damage because both, homebrew and modules, tend to construct around defeating opposition through various other means besides murderhoboing, and it is just more fun to figure out how to avoid a fight. If you are looking for highest damage potential because your game is going to be fight after fight then build toward combat only because you will become frustrated with having a versatile character you can never be versatile with.
My personal philosophy is build to subclasses, which means level 3 at least for each class. I would probably go: 1 Rogue, 2-4 Artificer (subclass), 5-6 Rogue (subclass), 7+ should drive itself as you really learn what your role in the group is. A few things to remember is an Artificer is a half caster, so if your rogue/fighter subclass is also a half caster, you keep your spell slot progression. You will have lower level spells available based on class, but access to higher level slots which you can use for up-casting.
IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
I was trying to build a well rounded character. Starting rogue, shadar kai, and background nets all the observation, personal interaction, and stealth skills, and thieves tools and thieves cant, infiltrator armor provides advantage on stealth... so covers all those roguey/intrigue situations "adequately." Artificer infusions helps there too. And playing a high int character means the character can know a lot of what I as a player know/figure out... which is good for intrigue campaigns. The build also does decent damage, and is somewhat tanky. Magic is only half caster but there's no non druid build I know of that covers every area "well" and ritual caster wizard adds a lot of utility. For some reason I just live the tiny hut spell (favorite ritual spell).
Shadar Kai grants you an upgraded Misty Step and all the boons of being an elf. I like the Arcane Trickster mix with any of the Artificer because you do not ****** your spell slot progression and you expand your spell selection slightly with a couple more cantrips, Find Familiar, Silvery Barbs, Hideous Laughter. They do not overpower you, just give a few more options which could outperform any of the other subclass features and an invisible hand that can perform VERY complex actions that a normal Mage Hand cannot.
IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.