In the character creator it just let's you choose "Spellwrought Tattoo, Cantrip" or "Spellwrought Tattoo, 1st Level".
Variable items like scrolls are specifically excluded from Replicate Magic Items, however, I suspect that the "correct" way to implement this would be to lock in a single spell, since "Scroll of Protection", "Potion of Vitality", etc are single function items, even though they are often categorized under a the broad label of "Scroll/Potion, x level".
That is, until it gets removed in the next errata.
In the character creator it just let's you choose "Spellwrought Tattoo, Cantrip" or "Spellwrought Tattoo, 1st Level".
Variable items like scrolls are specifically excluded from Replicate Magic Items, however, I suspect that the "correct" way to implement this would be to lock in a single spell, since "Scroll of Protection", "Potion of Vitality", etc are single function items, even though they are often categorized under a the broad label of "Scroll/Potion, x level".
That is, until it gets removed in the next errata.
That's a rather bold statement. They specifically changed the replicate magic item verbiage on Tasha's and added 4 common magic items. If that was a mistake, that's pretty embarrassing. I think instead this was intentional, and provides some nice flavor and flexibility, and the cost of an infusion is significant. A once-per-day cast of Shield can be great (and not OP) on an Armorer.
There are obvious mistakes in Tasha's (Amulet of the Devout applying to all spells not just cleric spells), but this isn't one of them.
Still, thanks for the clarification on what dndb shows.
It can be used productively, but free Find Familiar for the whole party is obviously not by design.
Flexibility is good, but this particular combination needs some adjustment to avoid being abused. There are a lot of writers involved in each book, and a lot of mechanics that interact in unexpected ways. Stuff gets through, and this is in direct opposition with previous deliberate design choices regarding scrolls, which would be less abuseable as scrolls have user restrictions.
It can be used productively, but free Find Familiar for the whole party is obviously not by design.
Flexibility is good, but this particular combination needs some adjustment to avoid being abused. There are a lot of writers involved in each book, and a lot of mechanics that interact in unexpected ways. Stuff gets through, and this is in direct opposition with previous deliberate design choices regarding scrolls, which would be less abuseable as scrolls have user restrictions.
It would take 1 day per person, and if the DM is smart and kills a familiar a day, I don't see the problem.
If the DM is smart, they shouldn't need to deliberately attack a player's creativity.
If the player is smart, they won't put their familiar in a position to be killed so easily.
If the player is clever, they might give every NPC they encounter their own familiar, or give a familiar its own familiar.
Balance isn't an issue when everyone involved self-manages. Rules are built for those who push the boundaries. Most games allow for plenty of downtime to stack familiars without issue.
It would take 1 day per person, and if the DM is smart and kills a familiar a day, I don't see the problem.
A DM that addresses a balance issue this way is an adversarial DM and not one I would want to play with.
Agree to disagree there. The DM is crafting the encounters, and if a owl gets pegged by a scorching ray so be it. If the circus of familiars is taking the help action each turn, a DM can have the smarter of his/her enemies target them or use AoE attacks.
If the party really wants to have a flock of familiars on their quest, work out a story, but if they get in harms way so be it. I think a sea/air/land set of familiars for scouting could be fun and less likely to be picked off.
If the DM is smart, they shouldn't need to deliberately attack a player's creativity.
If the player is smart, they won't put their familiar in a position to be killed so easily.
If the player is clever, they might give every NPC they encounter their own familiar, or give a familiar its own familiar.
Balance isn't an issue when everyone involved self-manages. Rules are built for those who push the boundaries. Most games allow for plenty of downtime to stack familiars without issue.
From a DM perspective it's easy to squash familiar chains. A PC can tell the bird to drop a stone on a bad guy. A bird isn't going to tell another bird to do anything. A familiar doesn't have the intelligence to command another familiar. And if the rebuttal is that the PC can tell the familiar to tell it's familiar to do something, there can be a game of telephone, and that second familiar should drop the stone on the PC instead.
As for the other points, see my other post. If the familiars are creating havoc, the DM should have enemies smart enough to clear them out. It's no different than adapting encounters for strengths and weaknesses of the party. I'm not saying a stray bullet from nowhere kills the bird...
I'm still not seeing how the Familiar thing breaks the game.
If the party is using those Familiars in combat, they can easily be dispatched. If an owl is flapping in an orc's face to hinder its defense, it's absolutely in character for it (or its allies) to swat that thing down. If they're not using them in combat... well I'm not sure there's an issue because the benefit isn't that greater than what one familiar brings. Six scouts can cover more ground, but it's also six separate chances to be detected. Ultimately familiars should face a risk for doing anything helpful, and if you have a bunch of them they should be dying fairly regularly unless they are only being used as RP devices.
And a whole village with familiars? That's awesome. It would make the Artificer feel awesome too. Just picture the scene - it would be epic. The mistake here would be to run a normal combat with 50 familiars in it. This should not be a combat encounter, it should be a narrative scene. Maybe the familiars hold off some enemies while the party takes the ones who break through. Or maybe you just have every single enemy grant advantage, assuming that they have a couple familiars crawling on them. You can have them do all kinds of stuff, just keep it in the narrative space. Extreme circumstances can warrant alternative methods of handling things.
As I believe I stated already in different words, nothing is broken, so long as the DM and players are comfortable working together respectfully. However, the reality is that most tables aren't so clean. The rules should be written to improve the experience for the average table, with the understanding that more experienced groups are free to augment the rules in ways that suit them.
Find Familiar is a Wizard exclusive* spell, so in addition to introducing mechanical complexity, allowing it to become a party resource so easily trivializes a distinctive class feature. Restricting this particular infusion by default does nothing other than set expectations for new groups, which an experienced DM is free to alter according to their comfort level. Whether or not this new feature is "fun", it's poor game design. Sharing one-off spells, like Shield, is a neat trick. Sharing permanent effects, like a familiar, fundamentally changes the game, and shouldn't be treated as normal.
Separately, I'm perpetually frustrated by how DMs and Players so regularly underestimate the cleverness of their players. Focusing on a solution to a very, very narrow subset of possible encounters is extremely short-sighted. Give a player too much freedom, and you'll either need to trust them to demonstrate self-discipline, or be prepared to deal with the consequences. Further, as new content is produced, it's going to become exponentially more difficult to check how it interacts with every previously published feature, which can turn safe mechanics into nightmares of munchkinism.
Rulebooks need to establish reasonable boundaries to keep the game accessible. This is one of the most significant differences between 3.5e and 5e.
Good in isolation is not the same as good in the grand scheme.
If I were writing the errata, I’d limit spellwrought tattoo to spells with a casting time of 1 minute or less or even 1 action/bonus action/reaction. Find Familiar takes 1 hour, so either way it would be off limits. Otherwise I think being able to choose a different first level spell to cast 1/day each day, at the cost of an infusion slot, provides flexibility that is very much in line with the themes of the class. Compare that to at will 15’ teleport from boots of the winding path or a permanent +1 or +2 to a weapon or armor.
The thing is that with the Artificer nothing is truly permanent. It's semi permanent in the vein that you can consider it ongoing as long as x, y, or z does not happen. X and Z being matters of how they use their Infusions or change their known infusions and Y being primarily a matter of dying making the obvious omission of only saying they cease functioning after a certain point of time. It doesn't actually say that connection is re-established if you come back to life. But then if an Artificer comes back to life and they are smart then they redo their infusions. Doesn't mean that all of them will be or that having them turn non-magical before they can get brought back to life won't be a problem. I don't know about other players but there's been at least a few times where my character has been dead a week or more from a mistake and requiring time for the group to get out of said remote location and back to where they can find a priest capable of reviving said character. One of those times simply being because a trap killed me and it took more time to get to my body safely than the time that I could be dead for the spell they had available to bring me back. It was a hiccup in play that the group worked around I just wish I'd at least have gotten to spring that trap to kill me in that particular instance instead of just obliviously not being able to get out of the way.
If it is treated as a scroll, then someone without access to the find familiar spell couldn't use it to give themselves a familiar. They could only use it for a spell they know. Similarly, the artificer couldn't inscribe a tattoo on someone else, since the item specifically states that you inscribe it on your skin.
If it is treated as a scroll, then someone without access to the find familiar spell couldn't use it to give themselves a familiar. They could only use it for a spell they know. Similarly, the artificer couldn't inscribe a tattoo on someone else, since the item specifically states that you inscribe it on your skin.
It seems the designers intentionally made it a magic item and not a scroll, so it would not be subject to the same limitations. However it also costs the full price of a magic item instead of a scroll (if you’re crafting it instead of using an infusion). Also I wouldn’t read too much into “your skin” — lots of items are phrased in the 2nd person, like a potion of healing, but you can still administer a potion to another character as an action.
If it is treated as a scroll, then someone without access to the find familiar spell couldn't use it to give themselves a familiar. They could only use it for a spell they know. Similarly, the artificer couldn't inscribe a tattoo on someone else, since the item specifically states that you inscribe it on your skin.
It's not treated as a scroll. It is a one time magical item that holds a spell and allows anyone who is attuned to the item to cast the spell.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
It's effectively a scroll you inscribe on your skin. An artificer taking this infusion for a first level spell effectively gets an extra spell slot each day. That's a pretty decent infusion, and on par with other 2nd level abilities from other classes.
It's effectively a scroll you inscribe on your skin. An artificer taking this infusion for a first level spell effectively gets an extra spell slot each day. That's a pretty decent infusion, and on par with other 2nd level abilities from other classes.
With one important difference. Anyone can cast it, not just people with the spell on their class spell list.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I notice that no one really talks about spellwrought tattoo (cantrip) — it’s not quite as good, obviously, but having a swappable 1/day utility cantrip for something like mold earth or minor illusion could come in quite handy. Or have your homunculus or another character cast resistance, which has a pretty good combat effect although you probably have better uses for your own concentration.
The thing about the swappable cantrip is that it is totally overshadowed by the all-purpose tool. Which any artificer will work very hard to get if they can.
So there is a window of opportunity for it but is it really that worthwhile?
As for all the exploits with "A whole village of people with familiars" I don't seem much difference adding the familiars to a combat if you are already adding all those villagers. You either swamp the combat with low-value fragile bodies or you swamp it with twice as many low-value fragile bodies. No sensible DM is going to allow either to work in a way that breaks the game so why worry about it?
Why not both? The APT is an attuned item, the tattoo does not require attunement. I agree the APT is far better because you can cast the cantrip at will for 8 hours, but having an extra one-off cantrip could be useful if you have the infusion slot available or would like to craft the tattoo for 50 gold or 25 at level 10.
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In the character creator it just let's you choose "Spellwrought Tattoo, Cantrip" or "Spellwrought Tattoo, 1st Level".
Variable items like scrolls are specifically excluded from Replicate Magic Items, however, I suspect that the "correct" way to implement this would be to lock in a single spell, since "Scroll of Protection", "Potion of Vitality", etc are single function items, even though they are often categorized under a the broad label of "Scroll/Potion, x level".
That is, until it gets removed in the next errata.
That's a rather bold statement. They specifically changed the replicate magic item verbiage on Tasha's and added 4 common magic items. If that was a mistake, that's pretty embarrassing. I think instead this was intentional, and provides some nice flavor and flexibility, and the cost of an infusion is significant. A once-per-day cast of Shield can be great (and not OP) on an Armorer.
There are obvious mistakes in Tasha's (Amulet of the Devout applying to all spells not just cleric spells), but this isn't one of them.
Still, thanks for the clarification on what dndb shows.
It can be used productively, but free Find Familiar for the whole party is obviously not by design.
Flexibility is good, but this particular combination needs some adjustment to avoid being abused. There are a lot of writers involved in each book, and a lot of mechanics that interact in unexpected ways. Stuff gets through, and this is in direct opposition with previous deliberate design choices regarding scrolls, which would be less abuseable as scrolls have user restrictions.
It would take 1 day per person, and if the DM is smart and kills a familiar a day, I don't see the problem.
Balance isn't an issue when everyone involved self-manages. Rules are built for those who push the boundaries. Most games allow for plenty of downtime to stack familiars without issue.
A DM that addresses a balance issue this way is an adversarial DM and not one I would want to play with.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Agree to disagree there. The DM is crafting the encounters, and if a owl gets pegged by a scorching ray so be it. If the circus of familiars is taking the help action each turn, a DM can have the smarter of his/her enemies target them or use AoE attacks.
If the party really wants to have a flock of familiars on their quest, work out a story, but if they get in harms way so be it. I think a sea/air/land set of familiars for scouting could be fun and less likely to be picked off.
From a DM perspective it's easy to squash familiar chains. A PC can tell the bird to drop a stone on a bad guy. A bird isn't going to tell another bird to do anything. A familiar doesn't have the intelligence to command another familiar. And if the rebuttal is that the PC can tell the familiar to tell it's familiar to do something, there can be a game of telephone, and that second familiar should drop the stone on the PC instead.
As for the other points, see my other post. If the familiars are creating havoc, the DM should have enemies smart enough to clear them out. It's no different than adapting encounters for strengths and weaknesses of the party. I'm not saying a stray bullet from nowhere kills the bird...
I'm still not seeing how the Familiar thing breaks the game.
If the party is using those Familiars in combat, they can easily be dispatched. If an owl is flapping in an orc's face to hinder its defense, it's absolutely in character for it (or its allies) to swat that thing down. If they're not using them in combat... well I'm not sure there's an issue because the benefit isn't that greater than what one familiar brings. Six scouts can cover more ground, but it's also six separate chances to be detected. Ultimately familiars should face a risk for doing anything helpful, and if you have a bunch of them they should be dying fairly regularly unless they are only being used as RP devices.
And a whole village with familiars? That's awesome. It would make the Artificer feel awesome too. Just picture the scene - it would be epic. The mistake here would be to run a normal combat with 50 familiars in it. This should not be a combat encounter, it should be a narrative scene. Maybe the familiars hold off some enemies while the party takes the ones who break through. Or maybe you just have every single enemy grant advantage, assuming that they have a couple familiars crawling on them. You can have them do all kinds of stuff, just keep it in the narrative space. Extreme circumstances can warrant alternative methods of handling things.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
As I believe I stated already in different words, nothing is broken, so long as the DM and players are comfortable working together respectfully. However, the reality is that most tables aren't so clean. The rules should be written to improve the experience for the average table, with the understanding that more experienced groups are free to augment the rules in ways that suit them.
Find Familiar is a Wizard exclusive* spell, so in addition to introducing mechanical complexity, allowing it to become a party resource so easily trivializes a distinctive class feature. Restricting this particular infusion by default does nothing other than set expectations for new groups, which an experienced DM is free to alter according to their comfort level. Whether or not this new feature is "fun", it's poor game design. Sharing one-off spells, like Shield, is a neat trick. Sharing permanent effects, like a familiar, fundamentally changes the game, and shouldn't be treated as normal.
Separately, I'm perpetually frustrated by how DMs and Players so regularly underestimate the cleverness of their players. Focusing on a solution to a very, very narrow subset of possible encounters is extremely short-sighted. Give a player too much freedom, and you'll either need to trust them to demonstrate self-discipline, or be prepared to deal with the consequences. Further, as new content is produced, it's going to become exponentially more difficult to check how it interacts with every previously published feature, which can turn safe mechanics into nightmares of munchkinism.
Rulebooks need to establish reasonable boundaries to keep the game accessible. This is one of the most significant differences between 3.5e and 5e.
Good in isolation is not the same as good in the grand scheme.
If I were writing the errata, I’d limit spellwrought tattoo to spells with a casting time of 1 minute or less or even 1 action/bonus action/reaction. Find Familiar takes 1 hour, so either way it would be off limits. Otherwise I think being able to choose a different first level spell to cast 1/day each day, at the cost of an infusion slot, provides flexibility that is very much in line with the themes of the class. Compare that to at will 15’ teleport from boots of the winding path or a permanent +1 or +2 to a weapon or armor.
The thing is that with the Artificer nothing is truly permanent. It's semi permanent in the vein that you can consider it ongoing as long as x, y, or z does not happen. X and Z being matters of how they use their Infusions or change their known infusions and Y being primarily a matter of dying making the obvious omission of only saying they cease functioning after a certain point of time. It doesn't actually say that connection is re-established if you come back to life. But then if an Artificer comes back to life and they are smart then they redo their infusions. Doesn't mean that all of them will be or that having them turn non-magical before they can get brought back to life won't be a problem. I don't know about other players but there's been at least a few times where my character has been dead a week or more from a mistake and requiring time for the group to get out of said remote location and back to where they can find a priest capable of reviving said character. One of those times simply being because a trap killed me and it took more time to get to my body safely than the time that I could be dead for the spell they had available to bring me back. It was a hiccup in play that the group worked around I just wish I'd at least have gotten to spring that trap to kill me in that particular instance instead of just obliviously not being able to get out of the way.
If it is treated as a scroll, then someone without access to the find familiar spell couldn't use it to give themselves a familiar. They could only use it for a spell they know. Similarly, the artificer couldn't inscribe a tattoo on someone else, since the item specifically states that you inscribe it on your skin.
It seems the designers intentionally made it a magic item and not a scroll, so it would not be subject to the same limitations. However it also costs the full price of a magic item instead of a scroll (if you’re crafting it instead of using an infusion). Also I wouldn’t read too much into “your skin” — lots of items are phrased in the 2nd person, like a potion of healing, but you can still administer a potion to another character as an action.
It's not treated as a scroll. It is a one time magical item that holds a spell and allows anyone who is attuned to the item to cast the spell.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
It's effectively a scroll you inscribe on your skin. An artificer taking this infusion for a first level spell effectively gets an extra spell slot each day. That's a pretty decent infusion, and on par with other 2nd level abilities from other classes.
With one important difference. Anyone can cast it, not just people with the spell on their class spell list.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I notice that no one really talks about spellwrought tattoo (cantrip) — it’s not quite as good, obviously, but having a swappable 1/day utility cantrip for something like mold earth or minor illusion could come in quite handy. Or have your homunculus or another character cast resistance, which has a pretty good combat effect although you probably have better uses for your own concentration.
The thing about the swappable cantrip is that it is totally overshadowed by the all-purpose tool. Which any artificer will work very hard to get if they can.
So there is a window of opportunity for it but is it really that worthwhile?
As for all the exploits with "A whole village of people with familiars" I don't seem much difference adding the familiars to a combat if you are already adding all those villagers. You either swamp the combat with low-value fragile bodies or you swamp it with twice as many low-value fragile bodies. No sensible DM is going to allow either to work in a way that breaks the game so why worry about it?
Why not both? The APT is an attuned item, the tattoo does not require attunement. I agree the APT is far better because you can cast the cantrip at will for 8 hours, but having an extra one-off cantrip could be useful if you have the infusion slot available or would like to craft the tattoo for 50 gold or 25 at level 10.