My concerns were mostly around the player spotlight hogging. I was basicly trying to figure out what the intended rules as written were for what it could and couldn't do so I had a base to build from. There is a history of arguing with DM rulings unless hard text can be provided to back it up.
The rules are just guidelines. As the DM you can interpret, modify, ignore and/or follow to the letter any rule that is in any D&D published material (the current Artificer build is not official). As the DM you have the final say so and your players need to know that. If a player has a complaint and they can logically explain their complaint then as the DM you can take things into account and make any changes that you see fit. Also you can sit down with the player and hammer out any disagreements and make a list of things you both can agree upon. You can ask your other players (outside of the game) what they think about the rule. But understand that in the end YOU ARE THE DM and you have final say. Don't let your players push you around.
If your Battle Smith wants to give his Iron Defender more complex commands, you can say that in exchange of gaining a feat themselves, they improve the intelligence of the Iron Defender by +2 and then sit down and hash out what exactly that +2 to their Iron Defenders Intelligence gets them. You can even put a minimum level requirement for the player to be able to do this. Like at level 12.
I plan on my Artillerist being more of a wand-slinger and casting damaging cantrips, spells etc. rather than crossbow so I have a couple questions about some of the wording.
Wand Prototype, and Empowered Wand both specify a non-magical wand. So I'm going to assume I'm not able to Empower a wand, then Prototype it. However, is there anything preventing me from holding a Prototype in one hand for casting, and the Empowered in the other for the bonus?
I plan on my Artillerist being more of a wand-slinger and casting damaging cantrips, spells etc. rather than crossbow so I have a couple questions about some of the wording.
Wand Prototype, and Empowered Wand both specify a non-magical wand. So I'm going to assume I'm not able to Empower a wand, then Prototype it. However, is there anything preventing me from holding a Prototype in one hand for casting, and the Empowered in the other for the bonus?
I am guessing when you say Empower a wand you are talking about the Enhanced Wand Infusion. If you are talking about Enhanced Wand then you are correct. You cannot "prototype a wand that has been empowered" or vice versa. In the case of having a Enhanced Wand in 1 hand and a Wand Prototype in another, you will not benefit from the Enhanced Wand's bonus when casting the cantrips that are stored in the Wand Prototype. The bonus only occurs when you cast spells the you know from your spell list through the Enhanced Wand.
in my game I would allow them to be the same wand as it is not going to break anything, if they do not work together then the only Artificer that can use a wand basically gets a useless infusion. Where other Artificers will take it as they can then use a wand as an arcane focus, which with the Artillerist being the designated Wand Slinger messes with my mind.
I plan on my Artillerist being more of a wand-slinger and casting damaging cantrips, spells etc. rather than crossbow so I have a couple questions about some of the wording.
Wand Prototype, and Empowered Wand both specify a non-magical wand. So I'm going to assume I'm not able to Empower a wand, then Prototype it. However, is there anything preventing me from holding a Prototype in one hand for casting, and the Empowered in the other for the bonus?
I am guessing when you say Empower a wand you are talking about the Enhanced Wand Infusion. If you are talking about Enhanced Wand then you are correct. You cannot "prototype a wand that has been empowered" or vice versa. In the case of having a Enhanced Wand in 1 hand and a Wand Prototype in another, you will not benefit from the Enhanced Wand's bonus when casting the cantrips that are stored in the Wand Prototype. The bonus only occurs when you cast spells the you know from your spell list through the Enhanced Wand.
I'm not understanding why this wouldn't work. Enhanced Wand says "a creature gains a +1 bonus to spell attack rolls," and casting, say, Firebolt from the Prototype would still produce a spell attack roll, wouldnt it?
Per the "Infusing an Item" section: Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch a nonmagical object and imbue it with one of your artificer infusions, turning it into a magic item.
Wand Prototype: Whenever you finish a long rest and your woodcarver’s tools are with you, you can touch a nonmagical, wooden wand and turn it into a magic item.
The issue here is timing. If you infuse your nonmagical, wooden wand with the enhanced wand infusion, it becomes a magic item and therefore is no eligible to become a Wand Protoype; if you turn your nonmagical, wooden wand into your Wand Prototype, it becomes a magic item and therefore cannot be infused with any item infusion, such as enhanced wand.
The effect of enhanced wand could and would still be applied to an attack cantrip from the Wand Prototype.
in my game I would allow them to be the same wand as it is not going to break anything, if they do not work together then the only Artificer that can use a wand basically gets a useless infusion. Where other Artificers will take it as they can then use a wand as an arcane focus, which with the Artillerist being the designated Wand Slinger messes with my mind.
Technically, all artificers can use a wand; artillerists are the only ones that "gain the ability to use rods, staffs, and wands as spellcasting focuses for...artificer spells."
There was discussion earlier in this thread about this topic that concluded with the Wand Prototype and the enhanced wand not able to be the same wand but no rule against having a Wand Prototype in one hand and an enhanced wand in the other. Perhaps that doesn't seem game-breaking to you, but your concept of using both in one wand means the other hand is still free to use a shield or even another wand.
in my game I would allow them to be the same wand as it is not going to break anything, if they do not work together then the only Artificer that can use a wand basically gets a useless infusion. Where other Artificers will take it as they can then use a wand as an arcane focus, which with the Artillerist being the designated Wand Slinger messes with my mind.
Technically, all artificers can use a wand; artillerists are the only ones that "gain the ability to use rods, staffs, and wands as spellcasting focuses for...artificer spells."
There was discussion earlier in this thread about this topic that concluded with the Wand Prototype and the enhanced wand not able to be the same wand but no rule against having a Wand Prototype in one hand and an enhanced wand in the other. Perhaps that doesn't seem game-breaking to you, but your concept of using both in one wand means the other hand is still free to use a shield or even another wand.
And?
Artificers can still only cast one spell per turn, unless somebody multiclasses deeper into Sorcerer than they should go. Martial attackers can benefit from +1, +2, or more weapons without needing to say "I can swing the weapon in my right hand, but I only get a bonus to attacks from the weapon in my left hand". Saying "you can get the bonus from an Enhanced Wand, but only by casting from another, entirely different wand" is just unintuitive and weird. The Artillerist is supposed to be the Wandslinger class (to the point where they need to dump the awkward, shoehorned turret and just focus on Wandslinging, really); what's more Wandslinger than packing a wand in each hand and picking which spell to cast when you need it?
The character is already not the most combat-focused class in the game. While I can see the wording and completely understand RAW, there's no reason to force awkwardness on your players. Either they can Enhance their Artillerist wand or they can't - don't do the dumb Cleric focus-juggle thing. If you run your table with strict adherence to foci rules and watching handedness like a hawk, just say "pick - Enhanced Wand or Artillerizer."
Well, as I've said before, this isn't a finished product; that's the whole reason why us nerds are going over this whole thing to begin with, to figure out what works, what doesn't work, and what might work if we smooth out the clunkyness from it. As it stands, the wandslinging aspects of the Artillerist are rather clunky (in my opinion) and if that's really the route they want to go, then they need to work on it to smooth it out. Personally, I feel the other way from you, that the turret is the main focus of the class and the wandslinging feels shoehorned in, but that's just my opinion.
The survey came out a while ago, so they probably aren't taking any more feedback right now, but from the sound of things on the Dragon+ talks it sounds like there'll be another revision based on the feedback that was given, so we'll see how things pan out.
I get that. I've been Dumpster-diving through this thread and other sources trying to get a general idea on public opinion for this Artificer (or rather, why public opinion seems so lukewarm on it), and I'll admit - what I see is mostly a split between "holy CRAP this is SO COOL look at all the stuff I can do!" from the RP-minded players and "...how the hell am I supposed to drop a pit fiend in two rounds by myself with this?" from the wargamers. There's validity to either argument - still kinda trying to figure out why Arcane Armament exists myself since it kinda forces you to pay attention to martial combat when nothing else in the entire class really helps you fight with bonksticks instead of burnyboomers - but overall this is such a more interesting way to go than the Gunsmith everyone's pining over losing. Mostly because the Thunder Cannon was obnoxiously overpowered and everybody knew it.
On Artillerist, I'd say that "spawn video game combat turret" seems an odd choice in general. I get that the current design of the artificer seems to require that every class have a pet-thing it can command with its bonus action; while that works for Alchemist and Battlesmith (and any homebrew sorts who want to take notice for Beastmasters), it seems super odd for the Artillerist and Archivist. I want my badass wandslinging magical desperado, not an awkward send-up of the Team Fortress Engineer.
Heh, not that it matters. Like you said, survey's been done for forever, they're already well into their next dev cycle. A little sad, really - I liked this version. Hoping the wargamers didn't ruin it for the rest of us in Artificer v3.0
Well, with the Artillerist I felt that they were trying to fit two concepts into one subclass, when what they should have done was integrated the turret into the artillerist a bit better and have a separate subclass that's properly devoted to wandslinging. And yeah, having the artificer be a pet class was something that had me scratching my head, but whatever, I think it can work (so long as they change the humonculus; god, I hate the humonculus...)
I don't think they're going to deviate too much from this current iteration. From what I can understand, Arcane Armament was one of the biggest complaints people had so it sounds like that will be made into a subclass feature and it'll be replaced with something else for the main class, but beyond that it seems like this version gave them a better baseline to work with. Again, it doesn't sound like they'll deviate too much like they did with the first and second iterations, so we'll see
EDIT: And yeah, the thunder cannon was...I liked the idea behind it, but the implementation left *much* to be desired. I was thinking after the fact that maybe some version of it would make for a good infusion, but yeah, too late now lol. We'll see where the next version takes us.
Well, with the Artillerist I felt that they were trying to fit two concepts into one subclass, when what they should have done was integrated the turret into the artillerist a bit better and have a separate subclass that's properly devoted to wandslinging.
The concept of the artillerist is flashy projectile damage. I think wands fit that concept fine, especially if you put any amount of creativity into it (my artillerist's "wand" is metal with a grip handle on the side).
However, is there anything preventing me from holding a Prototype in one hand for casting, and the Empowered in the other for the bonus?
The infusion's text only requires that you attune the wand and be holding it to get the bonus. It says nothing about needing to use the wand as a focus. Therefore you do get the +1 to attack rolls with the wand prototype while also holding the enhanced wand, but the downside is you can't also be holding a shield or something else.
The concept of the artillerist is flashy projectile damage. I think wands fit that concept fine, especially if you put any amount of creativity into it (my artillerist's "wand" is metal with a grip handle on the side).
I can see what you mean. Personally, I feel that a better way to have accomplished that was to lean into the smithing aspect of the Artillerist and provide a bonus to weapon damage similar to what they did with the Battle Smith (again, just my personal opinion)
The concept of the artillerist is flashy projectile damage. I think wands fit that concept fine, especially if you put any amount of creativity into it (my artillerist's "wand" is metal with a grip handle on the side).
I can see what you mean. Personally, I feel that a better way to have accomplished that was to lean into the smithing aspect of the Artillerist and provide a bonus to weapon damage similar to what they did with the Battle Smith (again, just my personal opinion)
I get that, but weapon damage (even ranged) is the battle Smith's theme and spell damage is the artillerist's theme.
Well, early on they had this idea of being able to do anything with the Artificer with regards to combat, which was very much a detriment to the class. They really didn't really move towards specializing until they put out the second set of subclasses, and even then they couldn't fully flesh that out because they were hampered by that first draft of the new Artificer.
We'll see where they go. Battle Smith does seem to be the martial option; I myself would like to see Artillerist as a second martial option and have the Alchemist and Archivist as the two caster options, but if they can work spellcasting into the Artillerist better in the next version than they did with this one, I would be interested to see how it pans out.
EDIT: If they do decide to make the Artillerist a stronger caster, one thing that I think would go a long way towards helping that is if they add one or two more damaging cantrips that are exclusively made for Artificers, similarly to how Eldritch Blast is exclusively for Warlocks.
Well, early on they had this idea of being able to do anything with the Artificer with regards to combat, which was very much a detriment to the class. They really didn't really move towards specializing until they put out the second set of subclasses, and even then they couldn't fully flesh that out because they were hampered by that first draft of the new Artificer.
We'll see where they go. Battle Smith does seem to be the martial option; I myself would like to see Artillerist as a second martial option and have the Alchemist and Archivist as the two caster options, but if they can work spellcasting into the Artillerist better in the next version than they did with this one, I would be interested to see how it pans out.
I love the Battle Smithas a Melee option, The Artillerist as a ranged option, Alchemist as a healer, the Archivist as the out of combat skill junky/manipulator, but what I really what to see is a team buffer subclass. That's why I liked the prior version of the artificer where "Spell-Storing Item" at level 18 was "Infuse Magic" at level 4 and you could case range self spells like disguise self, expeditious retreat, blur, false life, and alter self on other people while not using your concentration. In critical role they showed how awesome that can be passing out disguise self coins and hiding the whole group in plan sight. If they don't want it open to all Artificer at lower levels, instead of pushing it to level 18 where it will very rarely get used, perhaps make it the primary feature for a subclass. That way you can still play with that class option but you have to sacrifice other subclass abilities that you might wants. I personally think a Rune Master or Glyph Merchant would be cool focusing on class spells with range of self and/or concentration then spells like Glyph of warding, Symbol, warding bond, and Illusory Script.
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The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
Y'know, as a 5e Jane-come-lately who'd never gotten any chances to play 3.5 or any earlier edition, it has taken me quite some time to figure out why everyone is so keenly up the ass of Spell-Storing Item/Infuse Item. Going through this thread and as many other sources as I can spot, what I've come to understand is that SSI was basically the only reason artificers existed in 3.5, and people have the idea in their head that because of that, SSI is the only thing an artificer should be doing.
I'd like to raise a counterpoint: the new Artificer is a master of tools, creation, and artifice. Spell-Storing Item basically makes them into worse Wizards. Yes, you can use SSI to spread concentration around, and everybody remembers that one time Tary hijinks'd a Revivify into a coin (which he absolutely would NOT have done if Mercer had remembered he needed to expend the material component first, wasting the 300-gold cast if nothing had happened) and saved his friend. What I remember is everything else Taryon doing basically coming from him having Dragon Heist Hoard's worth of magic items and the rest of his oversized party being powerful enough to cover for Taryon's numerous weaknesses.
The new Artificer is not a combat expert, and frankly shouldn't be. That said, I enjoy the idea of the class being more focused on building items and tools and useful things, being a Gadgetmancer and magical MacGyver, than on being nothing more than the SSI mule handing out lucky rabbit's feet of invisibility whenever the party needs it and doing screw-all in the interim because everybody's humping the 3.5e Artificer instead of seeing what this new one might do.
Um, I'm not sure I see anyone being "up the ass" of Spell-Storing/Infuse Item (I think it might be a really great feature if it's reworked, but that's mostly because it does something I haven't seen any other class do, correct me if I'm wrong) and I haven't seen anyone saying it's the *only* thing an artificer should be doing either. For that matter, I don't see anyone "humping" the 3.5 artificer. I think everyone here just wants a class that's cool and unique that can hold its own without having to run and scream when initiative starts.
Forgive me if I'm coming off as adversarial here, but...I'm not sure I see where you're coming from?
I’ve got to agree with Mezzurah here, as a player who’s never done any DND pre 5e, I have no pre investment and just like SSI for its uses from the first UA.
Most importantly Yuriel, you described Taryon as bad with tons of weaknesses, but all those weaknesses remain And SSI was not replaced with Anything mechanically unique to Artificer...
Level 1 spells are pathetic benefits, and new Infuse is alright but if printed in an item section of a source book would be meh.
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The rules are just guidelines. As the DM you can interpret, modify, ignore and/or follow to the letter any rule that is in any D&D published material (the current Artificer build is not official). As the DM you have the final say so and your players need to know that. If a player has a complaint and they can logically explain their complaint then as the DM you can take things into account and make any changes that you see fit. Also you can sit down with the player and hammer out any disagreements and make a list of things you both can agree upon. You can ask your other players (outside of the game) what they think about the rule. But understand that in the end YOU ARE THE DM and you have final say. Don't let your players push you around.
If your Battle Smith wants to give his Iron Defender more complex commands, you can say that in exchange of gaining a feat themselves, they improve the intelligence of the Iron Defender by +2 and then sit down and hash out what exactly that +2 to their Iron Defenders Intelligence gets them. You can even put a minimum level requirement for the player to be able to do this. Like at level 12.
I plan on my Artillerist being more of a wand-slinger and casting damaging cantrips, spells etc. rather than crossbow so I have a couple questions about some of the wording.
Wand Prototype, and Empowered Wand both specify a non-magical wand. So I'm going to assume I'm not able to Empower a wand, then Prototype it. However, is there anything preventing me from holding a Prototype in one hand for casting, and the Empowered in the other for the bonus?
I am guessing when you say Empower a wand you are talking about the Enhanced Wand Infusion. If you are talking about Enhanced Wand then you are correct. You cannot "prototype a wand that has been empowered" or vice versa. In the case of having a Enhanced Wand in 1 hand and a Wand Prototype in another, you will not benefit from the Enhanced Wand's bonus when casting the cantrips that are stored in the Wand Prototype. The bonus only occurs when you cast spells the you know from your spell list through the Enhanced Wand.
in my game I would allow them to be the same wand as it is not going to break anything, if they do not work together then the only Artificer that can use a wand basically gets a useless infusion. Where other Artificers will take it as they can then use a wand as an arcane focus, which with the Artillerist being the designated Wand Slinger messes with my mind.
I'm not understanding why this wouldn't work. Enhanced Wand says "a creature gains a +1 bonus to spell attack rolls," and casting, say, Firebolt from the Prototype would still produce a spell attack roll, wouldnt it?
Per the "Infusing an Item" section: Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch a nonmagical object and imbue it with one of your artificer infusions, turning it into a magic item.
Wand Prototype: Whenever you finish a long rest and your woodcarver’s tools are with you, you can touch a nonmagical, wooden wand and turn it into a magic item.
The issue here is timing. If you infuse your nonmagical, wooden wand with the enhanced wand infusion, it becomes a magic item and therefore is no eligible to become a Wand Protoype; if you turn your nonmagical, wooden wand into your Wand Prototype, it becomes a magic item and therefore cannot be infused with any item infusion, such as enhanced wand.
The effect of enhanced wand could and would still be applied to an attack cantrip from the Wand Prototype.
Technically, all artificers can use a wand; artillerists are the only ones that "gain the ability to use rods, staffs, and wands as spellcasting focuses for...artificer spells."
There was discussion earlier in this thread about this topic that concluded with the Wand Prototype and the enhanced wand not able to be the same wand but no rule against having a Wand Prototype in one hand and an enhanced wand in the other. Perhaps that doesn't seem game-breaking to you, but your concept of using both in one wand means the other hand is still free to use a shield or even another wand.
And?
Artificers can still only cast one spell per turn, unless somebody multiclasses deeper into Sorcerer than they should go. Martial attackers can benefit from +1, +2, or more weapons without needing to say "I can swing the weapon in my right hand, but I only get a bonus to attacks from the weapon in my left hand". Saying "you can get the bonus from an Enhanced Wand, but only by casting from another, entirely different wand" is just unintuitive and weird. The Artillerist is supposed to be the Wandslinger class (to the point where they need to dump the awkward, shoehorned turret and just focus on Wandslinging, really); what's more Wandslinger than packing a wand in each hand and picking which spell to cast when you need it?
The character is already not the most combat-focused class in the game. While I can see the wording and completely understand RAW, there's no reason to force awkwardness on your players. Either they can Enhance their Artillerist wand or they can't - don't do the dumb Cleric focus-juggle thing. If you run your table with strict adherence to foci rules and watching handedness like a hawk, just say "pick - Enhanced Wand or Artillerizer."
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Well, as I've said before, this isn't a finished product; that's the whole reason why us nerds are going over this whole thing to begin with, to figure out what works, what doesn't work, and what might work if we smooth out the clunkyness from it. As it stands, the wandslinging aspects of the Artillerist are rather clunky (in my opinion) and if that's really the route they want to go, then they need to work on it to smooth it out. Personally, I feel the other way from you, that the turret is the main focus of the class and the wandslinging feels shoehorned in, but that's just my opinion.
The survey came out a while ago, so they probably aren't taking any more feedback right now, but from the sound of things on the Dragon+ talks it sounds like there'll be another revision based on the feedback that was given, so we'll see how things pan out.
I get that. I've been Dumpster-diving through this thread and other sources trying to get a general idea on public opinion for this Artificer (or rather, why public opinion seems so lukewarm on it), and I'll admit - what I see is mostly a split between "holy CRAP this is SO COOL look at all the stuff I can do!" from the RP-minded players and "...how the hell am I supposed to drop a pit fiend in two rounds by myself with this?" from the wargamers. There's validity to either argument - still kinda trying to figure out why Arcane Armament exists myself since it kinda forces you to pay attention to martial combat when nothing else in the entire class really helps you fight with bonksticks instead of burnyboomers - but overall this is such a more interesting way to go than the Gunsmith everyone's pining over losing. Mostly because the Thunder Cannon was obnoxiously overpowered and everybody knew it.
On Artillerist, I'd say that "spawn video game combat turret" seems an odd choice in general. I get that the current design of the artificer seems to require that every class have a pet-thing it can command with its bonus action; while that works for Alchemist and Battlesmith (and any homebrew sorts who want to take notice for Beastmasters), it seems super odd for the Artillerist and Archivist. I want my badass wandslinging magical desperado, not an awkward send-up of the Team Fortress Engineer.
Heh, not that it matters. Like you said, survey's been done for forever, they're already well into their next dev cycle. A little sad, really - I liked this version. Hoping the wargamers didn't ruin it for the rest of us in Artificer v3.0
Why you shouldn't start ANOTHER thread about DDB not giving away free redeems on your hardcopy book purchases.
Thinking of starting ANOTHER thread asking why Epic Boons haven't been implemented? Read this first to learn why you shouldn't!
Well, with the Artillerist I felt that they were trying to fit two concepts into one subclass, when what they should have done was integrated the turret into the artillerist a bit better and have a separate subclass that's properly devoted to wandslinging. And yeah, having the artificer be a pet class was something that had me scratching my head, but whatever, I think it can work (so long as they change the humonculus; god, I hate the humonculus...)
I don't think they're going to deviate too much from this current iteration. From what I can understand, Arcane Armament was one of the biggest complaints people had so it sounds like that will be made into a subclass feature and it'll be replaced with something else for the main class, but beyond that it seems like this version gave them a better baseline to work with. Again, it doesn't sound like they'll deviate too much like they did with the first and second iterations, so we'll see
EDIT: And yeah, the thunder cannon was...I liked the idea behind it, but the implementation left *much* to be desired. I was thinking after the fact that maybe some version of it would make for a good infusion, but yeah, too late now lol. We'll see where the next version takes us.
The concept of the artillerist is flashy projectile damage. I think wands fit that concept fine, especially if you put any amount of creativity into it (my artillerist's "wand" is metal with a grip handle on the side).
The infusion's text only requires that you attune the wand and be holding it to get the bonus. It says nothing about needing to use the wand as a focus. Therefore you do get the +1 to attack rolls with the wand prototype while also holding the enhanced wand, but the downside is you can't also be holding a shield or something else.
I can see what you mean. Personally, I feel that a better way to have accomplished that was to lean into the smithing aspect of the Artillerist and provide a bonus to weapon damage similar to what they did with the Battle Smith (again, just my personal opinion)
I get that, but weapon damage (even ranged) is the battle Smith's theme and spell damage is the artillerist's theme.
Well, early on they had this idea of being able to do anything with the Artificer with regards to combat, which was very much a detriment to the class. They really didn't really move towards specializing until they put out the second set of subclasses, and even then they couldn't fully flesh that out because they were hampered by that first draft of the new Artificer.
We'll see where they go. Battle Smith does seem to be the martial option; I myself would like to see Artillerist as a second martial option and have the Alchemist and Archivist as the two caster options, but if they can work spellcasting into the Artillerist better in the next version than they did with this one, I would be interested to see how it pans out.
EDIT: If they do decide to make the Artillerist a stronger caster, one thing that I think would go a long way towards helping that is if they add one or two more damaging cantrips that are exclusively made for Artificers, similarly to how Eldritch Blast is exclusively for Warlocks.
I love the Battle Smith as a Melee option, The Artillerist as a ranged option, Alchemist as a healer, the Archivist as the out of combat skill junky/manipulator, but what I really what to see is a team buffer subclass. That's why I liked the prior version of the artificer where "Spell-Storing Item" at level 18 was "Infuse Magic" at level 4 and you could case range self spells like disguise self, expeditious retreat, blur, false life, and alter self on other people while not using your concentration. In critical role they showed how awesome that can be passing out disguise self coins and hiding the whole group in plan sight. If they don't want it open to all Artificer at lower levels, instead of pushing it to level 18 where it will very rarely get used, perhaps make it the primary feature for a subclass. That way you can still play with that class option but you have to sacrifice other subclass abilities that you might wants. I personally think a Rune Master or Glyph Merchant would be cool focusing on class spells with range of self and/or concentration then spells like Glyph of warding, Symbol, warding bond, and Illusory Script.
The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
Y'know, as a 5e Jane-come-lately who'd never gotten any chances to play 3.5 or any earlier edition, it has taken me quite some time to figure out why everyone is so keenly up the ass of Spell-Storing Item/Infuse Item. Going through this thread and as many other sources as I can spot, what I've come to understand is that SSI was basically the only reason artificers existed in 3.5, and people have the idea in their head that because of that, SSI is the only thing an artificer should be doing.
I'd like to raise a counterpoint: the new Artificer is a master of tools, creation, and artifice. Spell-Storing Item basically makes them into worse Wizards. Yes, you can use SSI to spread concentration around, and everybody remembers that one time Tary hijinks'd a Revivify into a coin (which he absolutely would NOT have done if Mercer had remembered he needed to expend the material component first, wasting the 300-gold cast if nothing had happened) and saved his friend. What I remember is everything else Taryon doing basically coming from him having Dragon Heist Hoard's worth of magic items and the rest of his oversized party being powerful enough to cover for Taryon's numerous weaknesses.
The new Artificer is not a combat expert, and frankly shouldn't be. That said, I enjoy the idea of the class being more focused on building items and tools and useful things, being a Gadgetmancer and magical MacGyver, than on being nothing more than the SSI mule handing out lucky rabbit's feet of invisibility whenever the party needs it and doing screw-all in the interim because everybody's humping the 3.5e Artificer instead of seeing what this new one might do.
Why you shouldn't start ANOTHER thread about DDB not giving away free redeems on your hardcopy book purchases.
Thinking of starting ANOTHER thread asking why Epic Boons haven't been implemented? Read this first to learn why you shouldn't!
Um, I'm not sure I see anyone being "up the ass" of Spell-Storing/Infuse Item (I think it might be a really great feature if it's reworked, but that's mostly because it does something I haven't seen any other class do, correct me if I'm wrong) and I haven't seen anyone saying it's the *only* thing an artificer should be doing either. For that matter, I don't see anyone "humping" the 3.5 artificer. I think everyone here just wants a class that's cool and unique that can hold its own without having to run and scream when initiative starts.
Forgive me if I'm coming off as adversarial here, but...I'm not sure I see where you're coming from?
I’ve got to agree with Mezzurah here, as a player who’s never done any DND pre 5e, I have no pre investment and just like SSI for its uses from the first UA.
Most importantly Yuriel, you described Taryon as bad with tons of weaknesses, but all those weaknesses remain And SSI was not replaced with Anything mechanically unique to Artificer...
Level 1 spells are pathetic benefits, and new Infuse is alright but if printed in an item section of a source book would be meh.