Tool proficiency: Alchemist supplies and “Fletcher’s kit”, you also gain proficiency with all bows and crossbows.
Custom Ammo: Beginning at 3 Level, whenever you finish a long rest, you can use one of your uses of Artificer’s infusion to make a few arrows, bolts, or other ammunition (5 pieces) into more potent ammunition. They now count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance or immunity and retain this property for 24 hours or until used. This does not consume one of your active infusions, just one of your daily abilities to infuse (A previously infused item stays infused). When you infuse the bundle, you may choose from one of the following types of Custom Ammo
Burning Ammo: A creature struck with one of these has disadvantage on attack rolls until they use a bonus action to remove the ammo. The damage dealt by this piece of ammunition is fire damage
Gravity ammo: A creature struck by this arrow has it’s movement speed halved. Flying creatures must make a strength saving throw against your artificer spell save DC, or be forced to land. The ammunition can be pulled out, and when they get more than 10ft from it, their speed returns to normal. Damage dealt by this is Bludgeoning Damage
Toxic ammo: A creature struck by this arrow must make a constitution saving throw versus your artificer spell save DC. On a fail, they loose poison damage resistance, and poison damage immunity they have becomes resistance. If they did not have resistance or immunity to poison damage, they gain vulnerability to poison damage. They can make a constitution save at the end of each turn to shrug off the condition. If they have taken poison damage since the last time they made the save, they make the save with disadvantage. Damage dealt by this ammunition (After the save is performed) is poison.
Corrosive ammo: A target struck by this arrow must make a Dexterity saving throw against your artificer spell save DC. If they fail, their AC is reduced by 2 until the end of the attacker's next turn. Damage dealt by this ammo is Acid
Grapple ammo: if A target struck with this ammo, the attacker can make a grapple check from a distance. if the grapple check is successful, part of that grapple check can be to move the target up to 10ft closer to the attacker. This lasts until the target defeats the grapple check, or the target uses a bonus action to pull out the ammo. Damage from this ammo is Force Damage
Sick Ammo: When creature is struck with this Ammo, it must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save the target feels slightly dizzy and distracted. It has disadvantage on the next saving throw it is forced to make. Damage from this ammo is necrotic
Woozy Ammo: When a creature is struck with this ammo, it must make an intelligence saving throw. If failed, the creature has disadvantage on all ability checks until the end of the attacker's next turn. This also results in a -5 to it’s passive abilities. Damage from this ammo is Psychic
Barbed Ammo starting at 5 level, you have crafted your ammo to be a bit more vicious. Any of your Custom Ammo resists being removed. It now takes an action to remove the ammunition, and when it is pulled out, it deals 1d4 of the same damage. Further, you can perform a ten minute ritual to enchant normal ammunition so that it’s damage counts as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances and immunities.
Creative uses
Also at level 5 you come up with creative ways to use your custom Ammo
Burning ammo can now be ignited independently and used like a torch. It can also be used to ignite flammable objects that are not being worn or carried. Gravity Ammo can be shot into sheer surfaces. While there, a 10ft sphere around the ammo will treat the surface it is in as “Down”.
Grapple Ammo can be climbed like a rope.
Other creative uses will be down to the DM to decide.
Fast Fletching
Starting at 9 level you have mastered crafting this ammunition so that you can infuse it on the fly. As a bonus action, you may expend a spell slot, and enhance 5 pieces of ammunition per spell slot level. If you are using a spell slot of 2 level or higher, you can do more than one type of Custom Ammo, BUT, only in groups of 5.
A Little KICK:
Starting at level 15, as an action, you can place a spell into a piece of ammunition, expending the spell slot, and material components necessary. If used before the end of your next turn, the ammunition delivers the spell upon impact, if the spell has an area of effect, the area is centered on the ammunition. If it would normally require a save, the creature hit automatically fails the save (if multiple saves are involved, the creature hit only fails the first save)
This is pile be awesome, but it is WAY overpowered. Look at the Arcane Archer, they only get two whole “magic shots” per Long Rest. Maybe instead base it on the Alchemist more closely, and instead of “Experimental Elixir” just change it to “Experimental Ammunition.” It would be more balanced that way, and a lot less work for you too.
1: I dislike the randomness of Experimental elixer. It's the only factor of the class that uses randomness. I don't want it to be rando.
2: Originally, the d6 of extra damage was reserved for the capstone ability along with the spell thing. I kind of think moving that up might have been a mistake.
3: I strongly dislike the arcane archer because it feels like the only time you are an arcane archer is when you have those 2 magic shots per day. That's why i originally didn't increase the damage, just added effects. Do those effects without any extra damage still make it OP?
My major concern is that this ability “uses one of your uses of artificers infusion” but doesn’t count as an infusion itself, so it bypasses the rule that says you can only have 1 active version of each infusion at a time. Also the special ammunition doesn’t disappear whenever you create a new batch. There is nothing preventing a party from stockpiling these arrows like hoarders.
If this was an infusion instead of a subclass and followed the normal infusion rules I would be all about it.
Well, yes you can stock pile them. Also, it takes the opportunity to infuse something else away for that day, that was the cost I was looking for. I wanted to tie it in to an existing class feature, other than spell casting, looking to use new mechanics. So, yes, in down time stock piling can be done. Perhaps I could give it a number of days until it looses it's magical nature?
So I added the 24 hour limit, and defined the ability to make mundane ammunition magical was dependent on a 10 minute ritual. and removed the extra damage at level 5. Does this seem a bit more balanced?
Notes: Not sure if this is subclass-worthy. The initial pitch is interesting as it relies more on debuffs/battlefield control, but imo, the arrrow tips could use some streamlining so, notes as follows:
combine woozy, sick, and toxic ammo - they all do the same thing, more or less and could be streamlined by combining them into a catch-all 'poison arrow' which sould be re-phrased to say: Creatures stuck by this arrow become dizzy, nauseous, and become more vulnerable to poison effects until the arrow is removed. A creature effected by this arrow has it's passive perception reduced by -5 and if further effected by poison has disadvantage on attack rolls.
combine Fire and Acid arrow effects as they overlap too much. reword to: " Creatures struck by these arrows become effected by the potent chemicals present within the arrows until the arrow is removed. Creatures affected by these arrows must make a roll agaisnt your spell save DC - creatures that fail have their AC reduced by -2 and take an additional 1d4 burning damage at the end of their turn until the arrow is removed as a bonus action.
Remove Grapple ammo - too strong and makes physical grappling redundant.
Make the Arrows count as an Infusion: The arrows are already considered magical if enchanted by these effects and offer unique, and strong abilities - Using the Infusion rules as written acts as a built-in balance and prevents easy abuse, considering that the arrows are fundamentally similar to the artillerst's cannons.
Overall: Personal thoughts are that it's too close to the Arcane Archer in overall concept and doesn't provide enough tradeoffs OR cost resources considering you presumably can fire off as many of these as you would like - basically you'd be firing one of these every attack you make, and thus have to be balanced accordingly. Fundementally not too different from a cantrip, but if applied to a heavy crossbow w/repeating shot or crossbow expert you could potentially be in danger of overshadowing spellcasters.
Starting at the end: You can't use them in a cross bow with repeating shot. The repeating shot cross bow makes it's own ammo that would not be the custom ammo.
The point of splitting these up is to limit their power and impact. so that, yes, they are like cantrips.
I do agree the grapple arrow needs to be nerfed. A successful hit should allow you to make grapple checks from a distance. Not just auto grapple.
This magic weapon grants a + 1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it's used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it. If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you make a ranged attack with it. The ammunition created by the weapon vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.
It only creates its own ammo if you don’t load it. That’s part of the balance issue.
okay, but with repeating shot you, you lose the benefit of repeating shot if you are loading it yourself. Crossbow expert, might push it there. But the ammo does not do any more damage than it normally does. and as we've set it up here, you get 5 per day to start with, and you can make more through the day later on. The artificer can't make more than one cross bow shot per round no matter what.
Frankly, I'm surprised no one has brought up the major feature I made sure to write in, or at least not write out.
okay, but with repeating shot you, you lose the benefit of repeating shot if you are loading it yourself. Crossbow expert, might push it there. But the ammo does not do any more damage than it normally does.
This magic weapon grants a + 1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it's used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it. If you load no ammunition in the weapon, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when you make a ranged attack with it. The ammunition created by the weapon vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.
First of all, Arcane Archer's shots recharge on a *short* or long rest. Which, if you follow the usual rules, you get two short rests a long and that'd give a fighter 6 shots (on top of being a fighter with all sorts of other amazing things.)
Second, this is clunky. Making 5 arrows is too resource heavy for dnd 5e that tries to get away from tracking every little thing.
Instead, I'd make it a bonus action thing. More specifically, more in line with the Artillerist arcane turret.
'As a bonus action you can enhant a ranged weapon you're proficient in to make special shots (w/e you wanna call it.) This lasts for a minute, or until you drop the weapon or end the effect as a bonus action.
During this time when you hit with an attack using the weapon, you can make the shot into a magical shot with a bonus effect. You can't enchant a weapon again until you take a long rest, or you use a spell slot of first level or higher.'
Or something. Wording isn't my strong suit. Then, you can have it so they pick a number of effects equal to half their int mod a long rest. They can only activate one effect a turn.
This puts it more in line with the other subclasses, and doesn't step on the arcane Archer's toes. Why? This class doesn't give multi attack, and it's effect lasts for a minute while an archer can pick and choose.
Okay, so far "does no extra damage" I mean, that the custom ammo as I have written it does not deal extra damage until level 5, and that is conditional on the target removing the ammo. The custom ammo changes the damage type but, with the exception of the "toxic" arrow, does not do extra damage (toxic arrow could give vulnerability to itself, which is why I call it out)
I have a feeling I'm being a bit thick and defensive. Could someone explain to me why they feel it is OP? I tried to keep it balanced by not adding extra damage, and not giving extra attacks. I wanted this subclass to have a lot of utility, but not much in he way of independent damage.
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Fletcher (Artificer)
Tool proficiency: Alchemist supplies and “Fletcher’s kit”, you also gain proficiency with all bows and crossbows.
Custom Ammo: Beginning at 3 Level, whenever you finish a long rest, you can use one of your uses of Artificer’s infusion to make a few arrows, bolts, or other ammunition (5 pieces) into more potent ammunition. They now count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance or immunity and retain this property for 24 hours or until used. This does not consume one of your active infusions, just one of your daily abilities to infuse (A previously infused item stays infused). When you infuse the bundle, you may choose from one of the following types of Custom Ammo
Burning Ammo: A creature struck with one of these has disadvantage on attack rolls until they use a bonus action to remove the ammo. The damage dealt by this piece of ammunition is fire damage
Gravity ammo: A creature struck by this arrow has it’s movement speed halved. Flying creatures must make a strength saving throw against your artificer spell save DC, or be forced to land. The ammunition can be pulled out, and when they get more than 10ft from it, their speed returns to normal. Damage dealt by this is Bludgeoning Damage
Toxic ammo: A creature struck by this arrow must make a constitution saving throw versus your artificer spell save DC. On a fail, they loose poison damage resistance, and poison damage immunity they have becomes resistance. If they did not have resistance or immunity to poison damage, they gain vulnerability to poison damage. They can make a constitution save at the end of each turn to shrug off the condition. If they have taken poison damage since the last time they made the save, they make the save with disadvantage. Damage dealt by this ammunition (After the save is performed) is poison.
Corrosive ammo: A target struck by this arrow must make a Dexterity saving throw against your artificer spell save DC. If they fail, their AC is reduced by 2 until the end of the attacker's next turn. Damage dealt by this ammo is Acid
Grapple ammo: if A target struck with this ammo, the attacker can make a grapple check from a distance. if the grapple check is successful, part of that grapple check can be to move the target up to 10ft closer to the attacker. This lasts until the target defeats the grapple check, or the target uses a bonus action to pull out the ammo. Damage from this ammo is Force Damage
Sick Ammo: When creature is struck with this Ammo, it must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save the target feels slightly dizzy and distracted. It has disadvantage on the next saving throw it is forced to make. Damage from this ammo is necrotic
Woozy Ammo: When a creature is struck with this ammo, it must make an intelligence saving throw. If failed, the creature has disadvantage on all ability checks until the end of the attacker's next turn. This also results in a -5 to it’s passive abilities. Damage from this ammo is Psychic
Barbed Ammo
starting at 5 level, you have crafted your ammo to be a bit more vicious. Any of your Custom Ammo resists being removed. It now takes an action to remove the ammunition, and when it is pulled out, it deals 1d4 of the same damage. Further, you can perform a ten minute ritual to enchant normal ammunition so that it’s damage counts as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances and immunities.
Creative uses
Also at level 5 you come up with creative ways to use your custom Ammo
Burning ammo can now be ignited independently and used like a torch. It can also be used to ignite flammable objects that are not being worn or carried.
Gravity Ammo can be shot into sheer surfaces. While there, a 10ft sphere around the ammo will treat the surface it is in as “Down”.
Grapple Ammo can be climbed like a rope.
Other creative uses will be down to the DM to decide.
Fast Fletching
Starting at 9 level you have mastered crafting this ammunition so that you can infuse it on the fly. As a bonus action, you may expend a spell slot, and enhance 5 pieces of ammunition per spell slot level. If you are using a spell slot of 2 level or higher, you can do more than one type of Custom Ammo, BUT, only in groups of 5.
A Little KICK:
Starting at level 15, as an action, you can place a spell into a piece of ammunition, expending the spell slot, and material components necessary. If used before the end of your next turn, the ammunition delivers the spell upon impact, if the spell has an area of effect, the area is centered on the ammunition. If it would normally require a save, the creature hit automatically fails the save (if multiple saves are involved, the creature hit only fails the first save)
This is pile be awesome, but it is WAY overpowered. Look at the Arcane Archer, they only get two whole “magic shots” per Long Rest. Maybe instead base it on the Alchemist more closely, and instead of “Experimental Elixir” just change it to “Experimental Ammunition.” It would be more balanced that way, and a lot less work for you too.
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1: I dislike the randomness of Experimental elixer. It's the only factor of the class that uses randomness. I don't want it to be rando.
2: Originally, the d6 of extra damage was reserved for the capstone ability along with the spell thing. I kind of think moving that up might have been a mistake.
3: I strongly dislike the arcane archer because it feels like the only time you are an arcane archer is when you have those 2 magic shots per day. That's why i originally didn't increase the damage, just added effects. Do those effects without any extra damage still make it OP?
My major concern is that this ability “uses one of your uses of artificers infusion” but doesn’t count as an infusion itself, so it bypasses the rule that says you can only have 1 active version of each infusion at a time. Also the special ammunition doesn’t disappear whenever you create a new batch. There is nothing preventing a party from stockpiling these arrows like hoarders.
If this was an infusion instead of a subclass and followed the normal infusion rules I would be all about it.
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Well, yes you can stock pile them. Also, it takes the opportunity to infuse something else away for that day, that was the cost I was looking for. I wanted to tie it in to an existing class feature, other than spell casting, looking to use new mechanics. So, yes, in down time stock piling can be done. Perhaps I could give it a number of days until it looses it's magical nature?
1 day would be balanced with other similar features. More than that involves too much bookkeeping.
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So I added the 24 hour limit, and defined the ability to make mundane ammunition magical was dependent on a 10 minute ritual. and removed the extra damage at level 5. Does this seem a bit more balanced?
The ritual is irrelevant, just make it so the Fletcher can only use the ability 1ce/Long Rest, just like a regular Infusion.
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Okay, the ritual is at level 5 and all it does is make mundane ammo magical, no pluses or bonuses, it's just magical.
The Making of custom ammo is at level 3, and until level 9, can only be done once per day IF they do it in place of an infusion.
Notes: Not sure if this is subclass-worthy. The initial pitch is interesting as it relies more on debuffs/battlefield control, but imo, the arrrow tips could use some streamlining so, notes as follows:
Overall: Personal thoughts are that it's too close to the Arcane Archer in overall concept and doesn't provide enough tradeoffs OR cost resources considering you presumably can fire off as many of these as you would like - basically you'd be firing one of these every attack you make, and thus have to be balanced accordingly. Fundementally not too different from a cantrip, but if applied to a heavy crossbow w/repeating shot or crossbow expert you could potentially be in danger of overshadowing spellcasters.
Needs tweaking.
Starting at the end: You can't use them in a cross bow with repeating shot. The repeating shot cross bow makes it's own ammo that would not be the custom ammo.
The point of splitting these up is to limit their power and impact. so that, yes, they are like cantrips.
I do agree the grapple arrow needs to be nerfed. A successful hit should allow you to make grapple checks from a distance. Not just auto grapple.
You could use this with repeating shot:
It only creates its own ammo if you don’t load it. That’s part of the balance issue.
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okay, but with repeating shot you, you lose the benefit of repeating shot if you are loading it yourself. Crossbow expert, might push it there. But the ammo does not do any more damage than it normally does. and as we've set it up here, you get 5 per day to start with, and you can make more through the day later on. The artificer can't make more than one cross bow shot per round no matter what.
Frankly, I'm surprised no one has brought up the major feature I made sure to write in, or at least not write out.
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What is that?
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Also, for Fast Fletching I would limit it to 1 piece of ammo at a time. It’s the “groups of 5” that make it OP.
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First of all, Arcane Archer's shots recharge on a *short* or long rest. Which, if you follow the usual rules, you get two short rests a long and that'd give a fighter 6 shots (on top of being a fighter with all sorts of other amazing things.)
Second, this is clunky. Making 5 arrows is too resource heavy for dnd 5e that tries to get away from tracking every little thing.
Instead, I'd make it a bonus action thing. More specifically, more in line with the Artillerist arcane turret.
'As a bonus action you can enhant a ranged weapon you're proficient in to make special shots (w/e you wanna call it.) This lasts for a minute, or until you drop the weapon or end the effect as a bonus action.
During this time when you hit with an attack using the weapon, you can make the shot into a magical shot with a bonus effect. You can't enchant a weapon again until you take a long rest, or you use a spell slot of first level or higher.'
Or something. Wording isn't my strong suit. Then, you can have it so they pick a number of effects equal to half their int mod a long rest. They can only activate one effect a turn.
This puts it more in line with the other subclasses, and doesn't step on the arcane Archer's toes. Why? This class doesn't give multi attack, and it's effect lasts for a minute while an archer can pick and choose.
Who can use my fletcher’s custom ammo? This was worded very carefully to include this concept
anyone. The artificer is a support class. The make the ammo and can hand it off
I saw that right away, that’s why I mentioned that “the party” could stockpile your ammo the way you had it before.
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Okay, so far "does no extra damage" I mean, that the custom ammo as I have written it does not deal extra damage until level 5, and that is conditional on the target removing the ammo. The custom ammo changes the damage type but, with the exception of the "toxic" arrow, does not do extra damage (toxic arrow could give vulnerability to itself, which is why I call it out)
I have a feeling I'm being a bit thick and defensive. Could someone explain to me why they feel it is OP? I tried to keep it balanced by not adding extra damage, and not giving extra attacks. I wanted this subclass to have a lot of utility, but not much in he way of independent damage.