I have a Rock Gnome Paladin (lvl5), with a full smith/workshop and an adult Copper Dragon as team patron. I want to lean into building stuff like an autognome and/or a clockwork dragon. He has the stats to multiclass, adding a level in Artificer but does he need to in his situation? Thoughts?
Ask your DM. If it were me, I’d probably let you do it. Rock gnomes have tinkers tools already and are already building things. I might want you to pick up some other tool proficiency, like smiths tools, if you’re building something big, but I’d try and make it work.
Excellent. Full disclosure, im the DM and Warix (rock gnome paladin) is my NPC who I get to play now and then because half of our group are 'forever DMs' and we take turns every 6 or 8 months.
Artificer levels aren't required to craft, since Artificer's don't even "craft" in the traditional sense: their class abilities allow the temporary replication of certain items, but ANY class can craft real permanent items with DM say-so. There are some crafting guidelines in Xanathar's Guide (not really hard-rules mind you since 5e doesn't really have a difinitive word on crafting), but it lays out the time and resources usually required to replicate magic items of any given rarity. Aside from that, I would just ask yourself, as the DM, "is this an item that it would make sense for a blacksmith to create?"
However, if we're talking as an NPC? NPC's don't follow the same rules as players most of the time, and if you want to have this NPC have a bunch of autognome helpers running around their workshop, sure, that sounds cool! As long as this ability doesn't cause the party to be overshadowed. Your clockwork dragon shouldn't just be the most powerful and coolest thing in the world that can solve the conflict instantly. If your NPC has a clockwork dragon, then that dragon needs to already have a very important job doing something else, that it must be doing or something very bad will happen, so that they're a cool bit of set-dressing but not a full deus ex machina.
Exactly. I'm looking to build a "pet/watchdog" for the base the party just acquired and the autognome as a shop assistant. Honestly, I'm looking for reasons to leave the Lawful Good paladin at home while those rascals go on "dark missions". 😀
Yeah then I would just say, while the players go off, "the paladin is crafting, you try to talk to them while they're in their forge, but you can't pull their forcus". After a mission or two like that, the paladin emerges from the forge followed by an autognome assistant and is like "oh hey all, this is Frank!"
Making them obviously very skilled but a little incompetent is good for an inventor. A gnome that wants to be a knight paladin so they built a mech suit and robotic Pegasus stead to be a powerful paladin but they always seem to be breaking.
I also recently learnt about Themberchaud which is a chonky red dragon that the dwarves have been fattening up power their forge. Sounds adorable so I highly recommend you make the copper dragon a big chonky boy. Having a big fat friendly copper dragon that teaching a wannabe paladin inventor magic, sounds like a fun combo.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I have a Rock Gnome Paladin (lvl5), with a full smith/workshop and an adult Copper Dragon as team patron. I want to lean into building stuff like an autognome and/or a clockwork dragon. He has the stats to multiclass, adding a level in Artificer but does he need to in his situation? Thoughts?
Ask your DM. If it were me, I’d probably let you do it. Rock gnomes have tinkers tools already and are already building things. I might want you to pick up some other tool proficiency, like smiths tools, if you’re building something big, but I’d try and make it work.
Excellent. Full disclosure, im the DM and Warix (rock gnome paladin) is my NPC who I get to play now and then because half of our group are 'forever DMs' and we take turns every 6 or 8 months.
Artificer levels aren't required to craft, since Artificer's don't even "craft" in the traditional sense: their class abilities allow the temporary replication of certain items, but ANY class can craft real permanent items with DM say-so. There are some crafting guidelines in Xanathar's Guide (not really hard-rules mind you since 5e doesn't really have a difinitive word on crafting), but it lays out the time and resources usually required to replicate magic items of any given rarity. Aside from that, I would just ask yourself, as the DM, "is this an item that it would make sense for a blacksmith to create?"
However, if we're talking as an NPC? NPC's don't follow the same rules as players most of the time, and if you want to have this NPC have a bunch of autognome helpers running around their workshop, sure, that sounds cool! As long as this ability doesn't cause the party to be overshadowed. Your clockwork dragon shouldn't just be the most powerful and coolest thing in the world that can solve the conflict instantly. If your NPC has a clockwork dragon, then that dragon needs to already have a very important job doing something else, that it must be doing or something very bad will happen, so that they're a cool bit of set-dressing but not a full deus ex machina.
Exactly. I'm looking to build a "pet/watchdog" for the base the party just acquired and the autognome as a shop assistant. Honestly, I'm looking for reasons to leave the Lawful Good paladin at home while those rascals go on "dark missions". 😀
Yeah then I would just say, while the players go off, "the paladin is crafting, you try to talk to them while they're in their forge, but you can't pull their forcus". After a mission or two like that, the paladin emerges from the forge followed by an autognome assistant and is like "oh hey all, this is Frank!"
Warix, Autorix and his "dog" Sprocket! Thanks, this is the feedback I was looking for.
Making them obviously very skilled but a little incompetent is good for an inventor. A gnome that wants to be a knight paladin so they built a mech suit and robotic Pegasus stead to be a powerful paladin but they always seem to be breaking.
I also recently learnt about Themberchaud which is a chonky red dragon that the dwarves have been fattening up power their forge. Sounds adorable so I highly recommend you make the copper dragon a big chonky boy. Having a big fat friendly copper dragon that teaching a wannabe paladin inventor magic, sounds like a fun combo.