One of my favorite things about playing an artificer was the magical tinkering feature. Being able to imbue a tiny mundane object with a limited number of magical properties was a fun and imaginative ability. I used it to help us out of several jams by leaving messages for people, creating distractions, enhancing a silent image with sound, practical jokes, and another thousand and one household uses. Besides it added a bit of whimsy that fit the artificer class. I even equipped my artificer with a sling just so they could imbue the bullets with the property and have a chance of placing it up to 30 ft away from them.
Now, they turned it into craft a mundane object that last for an hour. While the list is long and full of practical things that you probably wouldn't need for more than an hour--a candle, caltrops, crowbar, block and tackle, and other boring everyday items--it just isn't as much fun or as useful. You get to make a single use item, making your tinker's tools more like knitting needles. Seriously, tinker tooling your way to ball bearings and caltrops?
I know it is just me having my pet little ability tweaked and that I can always homebrew, bribe or beg my DM, or just not use the updated rules. I get all of that. I just need to feel understood and seen. That ends today's use of the forums for bellyaching and kvetching.
You can heave some caltrops into a 5' square area next to you and run the other way. Any creature that fails a DC15 dex save has speed 0, takes 10 mins to clear them. Then create them further down the 5' wide corridor, and again. Slows pusuit a helluva lot. Can be very useful not have to carry all that equipment and just make it on the fly I thought.
I agree completely. I know people who haven't played the Artificer often dismiss Magical Tinkering as useless, but as someone who spent an extended period playing a Level 1 Artificer, I learned to really push on what each of those abilities could do. They aren't powerful but they do enable a lot of creative play and create options for problem solving in lieu of violence, as well as several conveniences. Like hey, you need to copy a document quickly - or you need to send a crude signal over a long distance? You can do that. Crowd control? Send some ball bearings that stink up the place into a crowd. And there's just funny things you can do with it too, like making things say "ouch" when they're touched.
Being able to create a mundane item with an action is not nearly the same level of fun, especially once you have a Bag of Holding and can also pull basically any of those items out of it for an action.
There is a newer UA where they have (a) renamed the much less interesting version of the feature to Tinker's Magic, (b) granted a free Mending cantrip, and (c) let the items persist until you finish a long rest. RAW, they don't even let you dispel the item at will, not even by trying to make extra items, in this version, which makes it even less amusing. IE, you can almost see some value of making a rope that you can dispel at a particularly interesting time. I'm grateful that they have eased the confusion with the renaming, I agree with adding Mending as a core Artificer feature, and I guess even they were stung by the one-hour bedroll, but it's still just not in any way a worthy substitute.
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Howdy y'all!
One of my favorite things about playing an artificer was the magical tinkering feature. Being able to imbue a tiny mundane object with a limited number of magical properties was a fun and imaginative ability. I used it to help us out of several jams by leaving messages for people, creating distractions, enhancing a silent image with sound, practical jokes, and another thousand and one household uses. Besides it added a bit of whimsy that fit the artificer class. I even equipped my artificer with a sling just so they could imbue the bullets with the property and have a chance of placing it up to 30 ft away from them.
Now, they turned it into craft a mundane object that last for an hour. While the list is long and full of practical things that you probably wouldn't need for more than an hour--a candle, caltrops, crowbar, block and tackle, and other boring everyday items--it just isn't as much fun or as useful. You get to make a single use item, making your tinker's tools more like knitting needles. Seriously, tinker tooling your way to ball bearings and caltrops?
I know it is just me having my pet little ability tweaked and that I can always homebrew, bribe or beg my DM, or just not use the updated rules. I get all of that. I just need to feel understood and seen. That ends today's use of the forums for bellyaching and kvetching.
Game On, Siblings!
Jack
You can heave some caltrops into a 5' square area next to you and run the other way. Any creature that fails a DC15 dex save has speed 0, takes 10 mins to clear them. Then create them further down the 5' wide corridor, and again. Slows pusuit a helluva lot. Can be very useful not have to carry all that equipment and just make it on the fly I thought.
Life's hard - get a helmet!
I agree completely. I know people who haven't played the Artificer often dismiss Magical Tinkering as useless, but as someone who spent an extended period playing a Level 1 Artificer, I learned to really push on what each of those abilities could do. They aren't powerful but they do enable a lot of creative play and create options for problem solving in lieu of violence, as well as several conveniences. Like hey, you need to copy a document quickly - or you need to send a crude signal over a long distance? You can do that. Crowd control? Send some ball bearings that stink up the place into a crowd. And there's just funny things you can do with it too, like making things say "ouch" when they're touched.
Being able to create a mundane item with an action is not nearly the same level of fun, especially once you have a Bag of Holding and can also pull basically any of those items out of it for an action.
There is a newer UA where they have (a) renamed the much less interesting version of the feature to Tinker's Magic, (b) granted a free Mending cantrip, and (c) let the items persist until you finish a long rest. RAW, they don't even let you dispel the item at will, not even by trying to make extra items, in this version, which makes it even less amusing. IE, you can almost see some value of making a rope that you can dispel at a particularly interesting time. I'm grateful that they have eased the confusion with the renaming, I agree with adding Mending as a core Artificer feature, and I guess even they were stung by the one-hour bedroll, but it's still just not in any way a worthy substitute.