I just played an Artillerest in a Rime of the Frostmaiden session last night. The ability to bring out a Protector cannon that lasts for an hour and can give Temp HP's that refresh every round is really good. I turned an encounter that should have been a TPK (would have if I was playing as BattleSmith) into a slightly challenging win. Now this was a T1 encounter. So, now I'm wondering, how fast does this ability drop off as we level? We levelled last session and will be level 5 next. This means I can no longer respec after next session. So, should my gnome stay Artillerest or go back to BattleSmith?
I do sort of wish the THP got an extra d8 with the other turrets at level 9. But it would probably be OP.
If your campaign involves constant combat, milking 2-3 combats out of a single cannon is pretty amazing. Let’s say 4-5 rounds each combat, that’s 8-15 rounds of ~9 THP to 2-3 people so something like 144-405 THP for a single cannon. I mean that is absurdly good.
Even if you only get 1 combat per cannon because your adventure is more social, that’s 1 x 4-5 x 9 x 2-3 = 72-135 THP. But you’ll probably be burning at least one spell slot per day to make a new cannon.
Meanwhile the poor Armorer isn’t even close to competitive with level x PB THP per day for itself only. At very high levels you can soak up a decent sized hit, but you’re relying on causing disadvantage to protect your party.
We have a barb going beastmaster, we have a runeknight fighter archer, a valor bard who likes to melee and an abjurer wizard who doesn't really do anything but blast.
We have a barb going beastmaster, we have a runeknight fighter archer, a valor bard who likes to melee and an abjurer wizard who doesn't really do anything but blast.
It honestly sounds like you need a support character of some kind. So I would stick with the artillerist and the protector Cannon. I would probably also pick up something like the chef feat. That way you have more temporary hit points to hand out and gives you the option to use a different turret.
I just played an Artillerest in a Rime of the Frostmaiden session last night. The ability to bring out a Protector cannon that lasts for an hour and can give Temp HP's that refresh every round is really good. I turned an encounter that should have been a TPK (would have if I was playing as BattleSmith) into a slightly challenging win. Now this was a T1 encounter. So, now I'm wondering, how fast does this ability drop off as we level? We levelled last session and will be level 5 next. This means I can no longer respec after next session. So, should my gnome stay Artillerest or go back to BattleSmith?
I do sort of wish the THP got an extra d8 with the other turrets at level 9. But it would probably be OP.
If your campaign involves constant combat, milking 2-3 combats out of a single cannon is pretty amazing. Let’s say 4-5 rounds each combat, that’s 8-15 rounds of ~9 THP to 2-3 people so something like 144-405 THP for a single cannon. I mean that is absurdly good.
Even if you only get 1 combat per cannon because your adventure is more social, that’s 1 x 4-5 x 9 x 2-3 = 72-135 THP. But you’ll probably be burning at least one spell slot per day to make a new cannon.
Meanwhile the poor Armorer isn’t even close to competitive with level x PB THP per day for itself only. At very high levels you can soak up a decent sized hit, but you’re relying on causing disadvantage to protect your party.
We have a barb going beastmaster, we have a runeknight fighter archer, a valor bard who likes to melee and an abjurer wizard who doesn't really do anything but blast.
It honestly sounds like you need a support character of some kind. So I would stick with the artillerist and the protector Cannon. I would probably also pick up something like the chef feat. That way you have more temporary hit points to hand out and gives you the option to use a different turret.
You also might want to look at The alchemist.