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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I'm looking for some insight into the RAW interpretation of the Maverick Artificer's Level 3 feature, Arcane Prototype, from Eberron: Forge of the Artificer.
The feature states:
It also states:
The table lists a Max Number of Prototypes for each Artificer level, alongside the maximum spell level and number of Arcane Charges. For example, a level 9 Artificer can create up to 3 prototypes at the end of a Long Rest.
The feature also says that when a prototype's spell is cast, the prototype crumbles to dust unless the Artificer chooses to preserve it by expending a spell slot equal to the spell's level.
My question is: What, if anything, prevents an Artificer from stockpiling unused prototypes over multiple days?
As far as I can tell, the feature limits how many prototypes you can create at the end of a Long Rest, but it doesn't explicitly state that existing prototypes disappear when you finish another Long Rest. Nor does it explicitly say that the maximum number in the table is a limit on the total number of prototypes you can possess.
For example, could a level 9 Maverick create three prototypes on Monday, leave them unused, then create three more on Tuesday, and continue accumulating prototypes as long as they aren't used?
There is nothing in the feature that prevents it. It looks like the intention of the feature is that they would last until your next Long Rest, but there is no language in feature to reflect that.
Just for the record, Maverick is actually a third-party subclass from Exploring Eberron, not part of Eberron: Forge of the Artificer or any other official content.
I mention this because this specific issue is fairly typical of third-party content that gets published on D&D Beyond; third-party sources often aren't edited as well as official WotC stuff and frequently have issues like this where it seems like the authors were making an assumption that didn't actually get written down anywhere.
pronouns: he/she/they
Often true, but in this case, as far as I can tell (don't have the book, so working from the posts), you have a "max number of prototypes". It seems to me that this should be interpreted as the maximum number of prototypes you can have, and OP's interpretation that it's how many you can make at a time does not appear to be based on any of the text they provided.
In the book there is a table that lists a "Max Number of Prototypes" by Artificer level. The text of the feature doesn't explicitly reference this column anywhere, but it does at one point say
which makes it seem like it's meant to be interpreted as the number of prototypes you can create at a time. There's nothing there to indicate that it's also intended as a maximum number of prototypes you can have at a time, and there's nothing that indicates that the prototypes you already have go away when you create new ones. This is why it seems (to me) like an editing mistake.
Content like this needs to not only be playtested, but also "explaintested", where you give it to a bunch of people who weren't involved in writing it, and after they've studied it, ask them to explain it to someone. Third-party publishers often appear to have not done this, or not done it sufficiently.
pronouns: he/she/they
In fairness, official content often suffers from the same issues. Otherwise we wouldn't need Sage Advice (and more of it than we actually have).
Yeah, we would. You can't write things so clearly that misinterpretation is impossible.
You can, it would just read like math proofs. Disagreements at that point would be failures of reading, not of rules explanations. (ie, there would be one correct reading).
I'm not saying anyone wants a rule manual like that, but it could be done.
(I mean, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem kicks in, but you could largely determine those points ahead of time and address them explicitly, or they'd be obscure interactions which simply are irresolvable in the logical system of the rules, which is in itself a clean answer - the system simply doesn't answer those questions).