I am contemplating a House CannithForge Cleric, and thinking about taking Greater Mark of Making at 4th. The question is... what really are the comparative niches/strengths of Creation, Fabricate, and the Forge Cleric's Channel Divinity: Artisan's Blessing? It seems that with a proficiency in Smith's or Leatherworker's Tools, Artisan's Blessing would no longer be able to do much of anything that Fabricate couldn't, so it would be more a matter of making more things per day rather than different things. Creation, that would seem like it would mostly be for spoofing up fake gold and gems to trick merchants with, and probably couldn't make any [temporary] useful items that Fabricate couldn't.
Thoughts? Am I missing a real niche that each of those three does better than the other two, or is Fabricate just the undisputed champ of the three?
Creation is an illusion that allows you to create (out of nothing, essentially) a vegetable, mineral or metal for a specific duration before the illusion disappears. Like you've suggested, It's used for tricking people, such as creating a nugget of gold for profit, a heavy stone to trigger a trap, or a big stick to fight the prison guard when you're captured. Anything valuable doesn't tend to last long.
The pro? You don't need any raw materials to work with - you simply create it out of shadow. The con? It isn't permanent, so it's limited to tricks and triggers and edge case uses.
Fabricate allows you to fabricate items out of raw materials permanently. This is more for utility. If you need a rope, some parchment, thieves tools, equipment, etc for your journey. You can be very creative with it - I've seen it used to create copies of keys for example, so long as you remember that you're transmutating something into something else. I've seen people try and fabricate ore into weapons - and that just wouldn't work - you can't skip a smelting step for example.
The pro? It's great to be able to fashion items you need in a pinch, or not have to buy. You could fashion a lump of gold into something ornate as a gift, or for gold. You physically make the object, so it's permanent. The con? You need the raw materials to work with.
Artisan's Blessing is more similar to Fabricate, but has to include some metal, and be of a value no more than 100gp, which rules out most armour. It also takes an hour to complete and cannot be a magical item. It would be useful for copying a key, or creating tools and minor equipment. You get it at level 2 though.
Regarding proficiency in tools; yes, this is a non-magical way of creating items. But be aware, you need both the materials, gold and time to craft them. You also need the facilities to do it, such as a forge for smithing. Check Page 187 of the PHB for rules around it. Fabricate magically and instantly turns materials into something else, so long it's entirely of the same material.
All of these spells and rituals work for different cases. What are you wanting to be able to do consistently?
When I had first read Greater Mark, I took the "don't need a material component" part to mean that Fabricate could essentially just create goods without needing raw materials as normal. Reading it more closely, I see now that that isn't the case, the raw materials were never a material component, they were just a 'material' needed for the spell to target in the first place. So yes, now I'm starting to see a little bit of distance between Fabricate and Artisan's Blessing, which is nice, instead of Fabricate just literally doing everything the other two spells/abilities do but better.
The reason I mentioned tools, btw, is not because of the opportunity they grant of making things the "normal" way, but rather because Fabricate specifically lets you create more complicated goods with the spell if you also have proficiency in tools relevant to what you're making. So while normally you can't make armor, weapons, jewelry, etc... if you have smith's tools, or leatherworker's tools, or jeweler's tools that limitation is lifted when making an item relevant to that tool.
If I have a forge domain cleric and I lay out two gold pieces, can I use Artisan's Blessing to create an iron dagger?
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to create simple items.
You conduct an hour-long ritual that crafts a nonmagical item that must include some metal: a simple or martial weapon, a suit of armor, ten pieces of ammunition, a set of tools, or another metal object (see chapter 5, “Equipment,” in the Player’s Handbook for examples of these items). The creation is completed at the end of the hour, coalescing in an unoccupied space of your choice on a surface within 5 feet of you.
The thing you create can be something that is worth no more than 100 gp. As part of this ritual, you must lay out metal, which can include coins, with a value equal to the creation. The metal irretrievably coalesces and transforms into the creation at the ritual’s end, magically forming even nonmetal parts of the creation.
The ritual can create a duplicate of a nonmagical item that contains metal, such as a key, if you possess the original during the ritual.
Artisan's Blessing is great to transform all the bulky/heavy random loot (Chain shirts, portable rams, shields, hunting traps, iron pots, sledge hammers, 10' chains) into light portable trade goods like 1 lb bars of gold. You should be able to make up to two with each use (Since you can make multiple pieces of ammunition, multiple trade bars shouldn't be an issue). You can then use fabricate to transform it into an art object, with a much higher resale value since Forge domain also gives you smiths tools proficiency.
Our forge cleric uses AB to basically turn the various cheap weapons and armor the party scavenges off of slain enemies into gold. Since they have a bag of holding, they can just assume every day they are able to knock down 100 gold worth of junk metal into 100gp. I will say that it doesn't go as far as you might think when it comes to silvered weapons since the value of silvered weapons is something defined in the rules.
I still don't see anything in the text of the ability that indicates you can change one kind of metal into another kind of metal, but it's convenient and not too overpowered so I let them do it anyway.
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I am contemplating a House Cannith Forge Cleric, and thinking about taking Greater Mark of Making at 4th. The question is... what really are the comparative niches/strengths of Creation, Fabricate, and the Forge Cleric's Channel Divinity: Artisan's Blessing? It seems that with a proficiency in Smith's or Leatherworker's Tools, Artisan's Blessing would no longer be able to do much of anything that Fabricate couldn't, so it would be more a matter of making more things per day rather than different things. Creation, that would seem like it would mostly be for spoofing up fake gold and gems to trick merchants with, and probably couldn't make any [temporary] useful items that Fabricate couldn't.
Thoughts? Am I missing a real niche that each of those three does better than the other two, or is Fabricate just the undisputed champ of the three?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Creation is an illusion that allows you to create (out of nothing, essentially) a vegetable, mineral or metal for a specific duration before the illusion disappears. Like you've suggested, It's used for tricking people, such as creating a nugget of gold for profit, a heavy stone to trigger a trap, or a big stick to fight the prison guard when you're captured. Anything valuable doesn't tend to last long.
The pro? You don't need any raw materials to work with - you simply create it out of shadow. The con? It isn't permanent, so it's limited to tricks and triggers and edge case uses.
Fabricate allows you to fabricate items out of raw materials permanently. This is more for utility. If you need a rope, some parchment, thieves tools, equipment, etc for your journey. You can be very creative with it - I've seen it used to create copies of keys for example, so long as you remember that you're transmutating something into something else. I've seen people try and fabricate ore into weapons - and that just wouldn't work - you can't skip a smelting step for example.
The pro? It's great to be able to fashion items you need in a pinch, or not have to buy. You could fashion a lump of gold into something ornate as a gift, or for gold. You physically make the object, so it's permanent. The con? You need the raw materials to work with.
Artisan's Blessing is more similar to Fabricate, but has to include some metal, and be of a value no more than 100gp, which rules out most armour. It also takes an hour to complete and cannot be a magical item. It would be useful for copying a key, or creating tools and minor equipment. You get it at level 2 though.
Regarding proficiency in tools; yes, this is a non-magical way of creating items. But be aware, you need both the materials, gold and time to craft them. You also need the facilities to do it, such as a forge for smithing. Check Page 187 of the PHB for rules around it. Fabricate magically and instantly turns materials into something else, so long it's entirely of the same material.
All of these spells and rituals work for different cases. What are you wanting to be able to do consistently?
When I had first read Greater Mark, I took the "don't need a material component" part to mean that Fabricate could essentially just create goods without needing raw materials as normal. Reading it more closely, I see now that that isn't the case, the raw materials were never a material component, they were just a 'material' needed for the spell to target in the first place. So yes, now I'm starting to see a little bit of distance between Fabricate and Artisan's Blessing, which is nice, instead of Fabricate just literally doing everything the other two spells/abilities do but better.
The reason I mentioned tools, btw, is not because of the opportunity they grant of making things the "normal" way, but rather because Fabricate specifically lets you create more complicated goods with the spell if you also have proficiency in tools relevant to what you're making. So while normally you can't make armor, weapons, jewelry, etc... if you have smith's tools, or leatherworker's tools, or jeweler's tools that limitation is lifted when making an item relevant to that tool.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
If I have a forge domain cleric and I lay out two gold pieces, can I use Artisan's Blessing to create an iron dagger?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Yup!
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Artisan's Blessing is great to transform all the bulky/heavy random loot (Chain shirts, portable rams, shields, hunting traps, iron pots, sledge hammers, 10' chains) into light portable trade goods like 1 lb bars of gold. You should be able to make up to two with each use (Since you can make multiple pieces of ammunition, multiple trade bars shouldn't be an issue). You can then use fabricate to transform it into an art object, with a much higher resale value since Forge domain also gives you smiths tools proficiency.
Our forge cleric uses AB to basically turn the various cheap weapons and armor the party scavenges off of slain enemies into gold. Since they have a bag of holding, they can just assume every day they are able to knock down 100 gold worth of junk metal into 100gp. I will say that it doesn't go as far as you might think when it comes to silvered weapons since the value of silvered weapons is something defined in the rules.
I still don't see anything in the text of the ability that indicates you can change one kind of metal into another kind of metal, but it's convenient and not too overpowered so I let them do it anyway.
"Not all those who wander are lost"