Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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As I have been theory crafting an all Artificer party, I realized there is a tremendous difference in the amount of Magic Items I want to craft in various categories which creates significant disparities in the value of the 1/2 time crafting benefit across subclasses. This is just my experience / perspective and is likely colored by my biases, party strategy, etc...
Maverick is by far and the way the best, I never run out of Wonderous or other Magic Items for a Maverick to craft at 1/2 the time of others. Also, most of the interesting items that minions can use are Wonderous Magic Items (if each Artificer has a Familiar and Homunculus Servant that is a lot of minions to equip).
Next best seems to be Weapons in my experience. Most characters need a few weapons - both primary melee and/or ranged weapons (e.g., Vicious Weapons, +1 to +3 weapons, etc...) as well as utility / situational weapons (e.g., Forcebreaker Weapons, Weapon of Warning, Dagger of Venom). Given this, I can usually keep the Battle Smith and Forge Adept busy crafting weapons. EDIT: Almost forgot, a Staff is a weapon (also Eberron Quickstone incorporated the idea of a Heavy Rod that could be used as a club. Maybe Heavy Rod versions of Magic Rods can be weapons? Ask your DM).
Wands could be higher in your ranking if you are crafting tons of Wands of Magic Missiles (to max cast and rotate wands). However, I am finding that better wands like Wand of Web, Wand of Fireballs, Wand of Viscid Globs, etc... require attunement by spellcasters so only a few members of the party have space for them (and minions cannot use them - some people argue that Homunculus Servant is a spellcaster... not sure about that). Also my Artillerists often don't have high enough level spells to craft higher rarity wands when I would want to craft them. That being said, crafting Wands of Magic Missiles for all the minions can keep the Artillerist busy for a while.
Magic Armor is great but you get access to it via RMI relatively early so it is difficult to justify the long and expensive crafting process in comparison to just waiting till you get better armor available via RMI (the cost of the base non-magical armor also makes it much more expensive to craft). Some nice shields out there but not every character will use a shield and those that do usually only have 1. I have found lots of times that I am just planning for the Armorer to craft something else and ignore his crafting time discount for armor/shields. Couple of nice utility shields -- I like the Barricade Shield which can block off one exit from a persistent AoE or block a tunnel (but only 1 use per day so not bad to have a few in the party).
Scrolls and potions. I wound up not having a Cartographer or Alchemist in my party so take my experience with a grain of salt. If you are RMI'ing Robes of Useful Items at 10th level you rapidly get as many Level 1-3 scrolls and potions of healing as you need (assuming a decent amount of downtime when you are making/pillaging Robes). If you can use 3rd party magic items you can craft a Pegasus Quill to give someone the same crafting benefit of the Cartographer (and you can rotate it around depending on who has spells you need or who is not busy crafting something higher priority). I guess I would buy potions but I'd rather craft permanent magic items - loading Cure Wounds and Lesser Restoration into a Spelleater Tome and giving it to a Homunculus Servant is worth quite a few potions.
Couple of other things I found...
If you have a Pact of the Chain Warlock in the party, the Sphinx of Wonder should be able to craft if you give it a Manifold Tool (ask your DM). The Sphinx does not need to sleep so it should be able to craft at least twice as many hours as a PC which is basically like crafting everything in 1/2 the number of days (although they often don't have a helper till you get DHH, see below). Obviously Elves and Warforged species also need less sleep so get a boost to available crafting time each day.
Maverick gets access to Deryan's Helpful Homunculi (multiclassing Wizard obviously also gives you access). Once you get to Level 11 you can load DHH in an SSI on downtime days and let the whole party cast it. Prior to that you can use Rings of Spell Storing or Spelleater Tome (if allowed) to let more of the party have access to the spell. It is a huge productivity boost once you get it and spread it among party members.
Craft Manifold Tools at level 0 or 1 to save money on lots of different artisan toolsets. I make All Purpose Tools +1 for a couple of characters instead if they will have a free hand to hold it during combat.
Don't forget to note which items are consumable since they take 1/2 the time and cost 1/2 as much to craft.
I have found tons of non-attunement items (often in 3rd party material) as well as items that substantially upgrade your minions. Some of these can be crafted really fast. Lastly, some of the best items are almost impossible for an Artificer to craft since you need to have so many spells / higher level spells prepared.
Honestly I never really thought about it this way lol. Maverick sounds kinda broken for crafting compared to the other subclasses 😂
I also like the idea of having the whole party help with crafting during downtime, that’s actually pretty smart.
Now I kinda wanna try an all Artificer party just to see how crazy it gets.
It is definitely interesting. I don't know that they are more powerful than a full caster even if they have lots of magic items. Artificers will never get 9th level spells so they change (break?) the game in different ways than other classes if you allow them lots of crafting downtime.
FYI - if other party members do not have Arcana, there is a spell to solve that as well. Actually just realized this can be used to give the whole party DHH but can't do both Arcana and DHH (sadly Maverick would only get access to this a couple of levels before they get an SSI).
Maelfa's Quickened Class
Grim Hollow
Level 3 Enchantment
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: 24 hours
When you cast this spell, you give an abbreviated lecture on a topic of your choosing to 10 willing creatures of your choice within range. When you do so, choose one spell you know or have prepared, one skill you are proficient in, or one language you can speak, read, and write. Each chosen creature is temporarily imparted with a portion of your knowledge.
If you chose a spell, each creature prepares the spell, the spell is considered on the creature's spell list, and it doesn't count against the creature's number of prepared spells. If you chose a skill, each targeted creature gains proficiency in that skill. If you chose a language, each targeted creature can speak, read, and write that language.
The creature loses the knowledge of the spell, proficiency, or language when this spell ends. If a creature is targeted by this spell while under the effect of a previous casting of the spell, the previous casting immediately ends.
Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. The duration of the spell increases with a spell slot level of 3 or 4 (30 days), 5 or 6 (10 days), 7 or 8 (30 days), or 9 (1 year).
Its extremely DM dependent, since most don't know/understand what little crafting rules are in the DMG. You usually have to bring in a crafting and harvesting book so things follow a train of logic, rather than off the cuff, typically inconsistent, crafting rules. Like the DMG crafting assumes months of down time between campaigns to do activities, when the average table rolls from one encounter to the next encounter like they're in a hurry.
Agree this is DM depending but it does not require months of downtime till you want to craft Very Rare or higher items.
I am playing around with a heavy crafting campaign approach and at lower levels it involves about 5 days of crafting (can craft uncommon items) between levels and around 15 days after level 3 and 6 (can craft some rare and mostly uncommon). I ramp up a bit from there so that they can make more Rare items at Level 9 (25 days) and can each make a Very Rare items at level 12 (takes 65 days w/ help).
Party needs to figure out how to make enough money to cover this crafting time - maybe selling items and treasure they find or RMI'ing things that can make money, like Alchemy Jugs.
This produces about 2x the number of magic items that the DMG recommends giving to the party at different tiers but this is part of the power of Artificers. The class is not OP by any means so I think this balances their power against full casters (although it is different).
I guess what motivated me to create this post is that as I was working on this party and planning out / prioritizing the crafting of magic items across levels I realized how often I was planning to craft items outside of the expertise areas of each type of artificer.
It would be a bit different for a party with a single artificer that crafts magic items for the entire party but I still think that the 1/2 time for crafting Any Magic Items / Wonderous Items makes the Maverick much more impactful / powerful than the other artificer classes. Also the utility of Uncommon and Rare Magic Weapons, the fact that characters often need multiple weapons, and the fact that Staffs (and maybe Heavy Rods) are considered weapons make the weapon crafters (Battle Smith and Forge Adept) more impactful than the Armorer (due to the time and cost to craft armor and the limit tot he number of shields and armor needed by the party) and probably a bit more powerful than the Artillerist with it's half time to craft wands.
I agree with you that the lanes seem pretty narrow, and for the artillerist in particular, the connection to wands seems tenuous. Maybe they could have let you choose two and change on level-up.
Crafting as set up seems to be all-or-nothing. Either it's absurdly easy, because the campaign has a lot of downtime and ready gold, or it's impossibly hard (no downtime or facilities).