Hi, I would like to play a battlesmith arti but unfortunately running a very large group and having a pet is gonna make things a bit clustered. (I want int scaling on my pistol).
I was gonna propose I sacrifice my pet and implement some into my character by giving him mechano legs (think Wallace and Gromit wrong trousers).
Does this sound balanced? While mounted on the defender. Speed 35 and can use the defender bonus action features at 30ft range. But no seperate pet and no pet reaction
So, you want the ability to use Intelligence for your attacks, right? A Battle Smith without a pet could be someone, who is paralyzed and uses the Steel Defender as a wheel chair. Force-Empowered-Rend and Deflect attack could be integrated gadgets. If you are worried about the mobility of your character (climbing, swimming), it could be a pair of (or four) artificial legs, rather than a chair.
Well you are losing a lot more than you realize with this lost of the SD.
Can't be surprised - So always on guard duty, while the rest of the team sleeps or is an extra pair of eyes through the night, while others are also on guard duty.
Extra being - Another target to strike and does not count as an exp sink. Another attacker. Another blocker. Another Assistant.
Speed - As it moves 40ft, can catch retreating enemies
Creativity - Depending on how open your DM is, you could easily find a process to upgrade your SD, as it is so underutilized for the sub-class.
Arcane Jolt loses possibly to be used through another being and upgrading of Jolt and SD later in the subclass is cut a bit.
Overall, you lose a lot of creativity with the Artificer and Subclass as a whole. I would keep the SD, in the end, you can just remake another one after every long rest. So you get into an area where "someone has to be left behind", then the SD is just left behind. It sucks, as a class, you aren't supposed to treat it like some tool, but in the end, that is what it is.
If the idea is to retain the Battlesmith's Intelligence SADness whilst streamlining turn economy, then sure. Many, many players who dislike dealing with additional bodies have used the defender as a suit of armor or similar in the past. It used to be the standard Iron Man approach prior to the Armorer's release - tell the DM your defender is not a separate creature, but instead a battlesuit you wear. There's a lot of fiddling that goes on with such conversions and frankly I do not recommend them at all, but it can be done.
My advice would be to learn to be quick and economical with your turns, instead. Don't waffle, don't hem and haw, and keep narrative fluffery to a minimum. I know my own Battlesmith has the Defender, the Homunculus, and also a familiar occasionally, and I'm still one of the quickest players in my group when it comes to turn-taking because I pay close attention throughout the combat and know what I'm going to do when my turn comes up in most cases. If you get good at following combat and planning your moves ahead (or reacting quickly to changes in the field), you don't need to try and hack the Defender into a set of mechano-pants.
Like Yurei1453 I guess I question the premise here; the Steel Defender takes its turn immediately after yours, so you basically just have more actions in your own turn, so as long as you know what you need to do it shouldn't take you a whole lot longer. Most of the time the Defender is just an extra attack, and maybe a reaction, so you're not really any different to a Fighter or Monk player in terms of quantity of actions.
If anyone complains about your turn taking very slightly longer than theirs, you can always just let them know you're happy to never give them the benefit of the Defender's Deflect Attack ability to save time 😉
I dunno, it just seems like massively customising the defender is going to involve a lot of complex homebrew to "solve" what seems to be a minor problem.
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Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Like Yurei1453 I guess I question the premise here; the Steel Defender takes its turn immediately after yours, so you basically just have more actions in your own turn, so as long as you know what you need to do it shouldn't take you a whole lot longer. Most of the time the Defender is just an extra attack, and maybe a reaction, so you're not really any different to a Fighter or Monk player in terms of quantity of actions.
If anyone complains about your turn taking very slightly longer than theirs, you can always just let them know you're happy to never give them the benefit of the Defender's Deflect Attack ability to save time 😉
I dunno, it just seems like massively customising the defender is going to involve a lot of complex homebrew to "solve" what seems to be a minor problem.
I don't think it is someone not liking the Artificer having the SD, but more they have like 8 people already and adding an SD is just one more headache to think about, either as players or DM. This is how I am reading it at least.
But I do agree with Yurei. If you know what you are doing on your turn, then there should be no reason to not have it. Now, if it simply is just "so many people", the DM simply can't organize well enough to handle that many moving parts, well I feel for them, but that is also why they are DM, to handle that, lol. Because, also like what Yurei said, they had 3 "pets" and themselves and many people can do the familiar, which is added beings to the group. So, it is not unheard of to have a group double in occupancy over time, just by that alone.
What I would suggest and I am sure others here would probably agree is, simply talk with your DM and see what their major concerns are. If it is simply too many pawns to control, then state what was previously stated, "your turn will be quick", etc. If its literally cluster-cluster, meaning most adventures don't have 10+ people walking into a room to talk to someone, well, your defense is, I can rebuild my SD at anytime. So if we need to get rid of him then ok. Your hamstrung there is, it takes a long rest to rebuild the SD. So maybe work something out to balance that, because being forced to just get rid of your subclass due to "tight spaces", is a bit of a far reaching request from a DM. For a balance...maybe if it is a time where you have to "get rid of" the SD, you have the ability to throw it into a "pokeball" type container. That way, you don't have to spend a long rest to re-make it, possibly not having the SD for a fight and you can just basically insta-summon the SD through the container. Even if you have to break it to open it, you should have Mending.
This opens the door to actually several other things, now that I think about it, lol. Could get a surprise round, mid-fight, maybe? lol, BUT nonetheless, you would get your SD and it would then immediately operate right after you. You would simply sacrifice your turn to throw the container to insta-summon the SD. Which to me, is a good trade off in general.
Thanks people. Yeah it was more that in my last campaign rooms were way too small for the number of players and I was worried same thing was gonna happen. New DM is happy with pets and it's gonna be more outdoors so guess I was overthinking it.
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Hi, I would like to play a battlesmith arti but unfortunately running a very large group and having a pet is gonna make things a bit clustered. (I want int scaling on my pistol).
I was gonna propose I sacrifice my pet and implement some into my character by giving him mechano legs (think Wallace and Gromit wrong trousers).
Does this sound balanced? While mounted on the defender. Speed 35 and can use the defender bonus action features at 30ft range. But no seperate pet and no pet reaction
So, you want the ability to use Intelligence for your attacks, right? A Battle Smith without a pet could be someone, who is paralyzed and uses the Steel Defender as a wheel chair. Force-Empowered-Rend and Deflect attack could be integrated gadgets. If you are worried about the mobility of your character (climbing, swimming), it could be a pair of (or four) artificial legs, rather than a chair.
Well you are losing a lot more than you realize with this lost of the SD.
Overall, you lose a lot of creativity with the Artificer and Subclass as a whole. I would keep the SD, in the end, you can just remake another one after every long rest. So you get into an area where "someone has to be left behind", then the SD is just left behind. It sucks, as a class, you aren't supposed to treat it like some tool, but in the end, that is what it is.
I assume then, no SD, means no homunculus?
If the idea is to retain the Battlesmith's Intelligence SADness whilst streamlining turn economy, then sure. Many, many players who dislike dealing with additional bodies have used the defender as a suit of armor or similar in the past. It used to be the standard Iron Man approach prior to the Armorer's release - tell the DM your defender is not a separate creature, but instead a battlesuit you wear. There's a lot of fiddling that goes on with such conversions and frankly I do not recommend them at all, but it can be done.
My advice would be to learn to be quick and economical with your turns, instead. Don't waffle, don't hem and haw, and keep narrative fluffery to a minimum. I know my own Battlesmith has the Defender, the Homunculus, and also a familiar occasionally, and I'm still one of the quickest players in my group when it comes to turn-taking because I pay close attention throughout the combat and know what I'm going to do when my turn comes up in most cases. If you get good at following combat and planning your moves ahead (or reacting quickly to changes in the field), you don't need to try and hack the Defender into a set of mechano-pants.
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Like Yurei1453 I guess I question the premise here; the Steel Defender takes its turn immediately after yours, so you basically just have more actions in your own turn, so as long as you know what you need to do it shouldn't take you a whole lot longer. Most of the time the Defender is just an extra attack, and maybe a reaction, so you're not really any different to a Fighter or Monk player in terms of quantity of actions.
If anyone complains about your turn taking very slightly longer than theirs, you can always just let them know you're happy to never give them the benefit of the Defender's Deflect Attack ability to save time 😉
I dunno, it just seems like massively customising the defender is going to involve a lot of complex homebrew to "solve" what seems to be a minor problem.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I don't think it is someone not liking the Artificer having the SD, but more they have like 8 people already and adding an SD is just one more headache to think about, either as players or DM. This is how I am reading it at least.
But I do agree with Yurei. If you know what you are doing on your turn, then there should be no reason to not have it. Now, if it simply is just "so many people", the DM simply can't organize well enough to handle that many moving parts, well I feel for them, but that is also why they are DM, to handle that, lol. Because, also like what Yurei said, they had 3 "pets" and themselves and many people can do the familiar, which is added beings to the group. So, it is not unheard of to have a group double in occupancy over time, just by that alone.
What I would suggest and I am sure others here would probably agree is, simply talk with your DM and see what their major concerns are. If it is simply too many pawns to control, then state what was previously stated, "your turn will be quick", etc. If its literally cluster-cluster, meaning most adventures don't have 10+ people walking into a room to talk to someone, well, your defense is, I can rebuild my SD at anytime. So if we need to get rid of him then ok. Your hamstrung there is, it takes a long rest to rebuild the SD. So maybe work something out to balance that, because being forced to just get rid of your subclass due to "tight spaces", is a bit of a far reaching request from a DM. For a balance...maybe if it is a time where you have to "get rid of" the SD, you have the ability to throw it into a "pokeball" type container. That way, you don't have to spend a long rest to re-make it, possibly not having the SD for a fight and you can just basically insta-summon the SD through the container. Even if you have to break it to open it, you should have Mending.
This opens the door to actually several other things, now that I think about it, lol. Could get a surprise round, mid-fight, maybe? lol, BUT nonetheless, you would get your SD and it would then immediately operate right after you. You would simply sacrifice your turn to throw the container to insta-summon the SD. Which to me, is a good trade off in general.
Thanks people. Yeah it was more that in my last campaign rooms were way too small for the number of players and I was worried same thing was gonna happen. New DM is happy with pets and it's gonna be more outdoors so guess I was overthinking it.