This is mainly a question for Eberron people:
One of my players wants to play a warforged artificer in my AoW which will be set in the FR. I like the artificer in the AoW as he could susbstitute for a rogue in concerns to finding and disabling traps (can he?), but he does not lose his most important combat ability due to fighting mainly undead. Flavor and background story is no problem, he fits in quite well (both artificer and warforged).
I do not have the rules, not playing in Eberron, but I had a short look on them. Is the artificer really balanced? He has a lot of abilities from many field. What about the warforged, I read that these infusions could only be "cast" on items, but the warforged can cast them on himself, is this unbalancing in some way?
I have to say, that the player is experienced, whereas my other players are not. So the artificer should not seem to be better and cooler than the normal core classes, so that they do not feel their PCs to fall short of this on.
Also this player is new to my group and I do not know him. He sounds like an adult and sensible player, but you never know. Could he play any tricks at me with this class (later class combinations, prestige classes) which make the PC overpowered and uncontrollable?
Thank you in advance for your advice.
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This is mainly a question for Eberron people:
One of my players wants to play a warforged artificer in my AoW which will be set in the FR. I like the artificer in the AoW as he could susbstitute for a rogue in concerns to finding and disabling traps (can he?), but he does not lose his most important combat ability due to fighting mainly undead. Flavor and background story is no problem, he fits in quite well (both artificer and warforged).
I do not have the rules, not playing in Eberron, but I had a short look on them. Is the artificer really balanced? He has a lot of abilities from many field. What about the warforged, I read that these infusions could only be "cast" on items, but the warforged can cast them on himself, is this unbalancing in some way?
I have to say, that the player is experienced, whereas my other players are not. So the artificer should not seem to be better and cooler than the normal core classes, so that they do not feel their PCs to fall short of this on.
Also this player is new to my group and I do not know him. He sounds like an adult and sensible player, but you never know. Could he play any tricks at me with this class (later class combinations, prestige classes) which make the PC overpowered and uncontrollable?
Thank you in advance for your advice.
I'm running AoW with an Artificer (not a warforged, though). One of the main things about the artificer is that he is a support character. His infusions, at least those that are not spells from the PHB, take a full minute to cast. Some, like magic weapon and greater magic weapon, and a few others, are standard actions.
Most of the time, when our artificer casts a buffing spell on a party member, or himself, he casts it on one of their possessions, such as a shirt, or gloves, or bracer.From his perspective, you'll probably need to give a some down-time between adventures for him to make items.
For the coolness consideration: The artificer is primarily a second-rank guy. He can't dish out a lot of damage, or blast massive amounts of damage, or that sort of thing. However, see abuses below.
That said, at some point (can't remember off the top of my head), the Artificer gets a special ability to take 10 on UMD. At that point, he can use a vast array of items that could possibly let him intrude on what other players consider their baliwick.
Possible abuses:
* Custom magic items: That's always a possible problem, depending on how cheesy he wants to be with the rules. As long as you restrict him to published items he can make, it's not a problem, really.
* Staffs: There is certain vagueness about the way staves are used that could result in brokenness. The problem is that the staff uses the caster level and ability mod of the user, unless those are less than the minimum for the staff. Some people have claimed that you can use Use Magic Device to roll for a higher caster level / ability mod and use those. My suggestion is that it comes up, use the actual character level / actual caster level of the artificer and actual ability modifier.
* Metamagic item: One of the abilities of the artificer lets them use a metamagic feat they possess on an item (maybe just wands). This consumes extra charges (one per spell slot bump of the metamagic feat), but can result in immensely invokations. An example: Artificer has Empower, Energy Admixture and a wand of fireball (5th level) at 50 charges. Normally, 1 charge gets a 5d6 fireball. By using the 1 charge to invoke it, and 2 charges to empower, it's a 5d6 * 1.5 fireball. He could also energy admixture it, for an extra 4 charges. That would be, depending on your interpretation of the metamagic rules, either a (5d6 * 1.5) + 5d6 fireball or a (5d6 + 5d6) * 1.5 fireball. Either way, it cost 7 charges. The cost scales, but with proper feat selection, he could possibly turn a dramatic encounter into a massive, disappointing explosion.
I rambled a bit <grin />. If you've more questions, let me know.
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A PC is an artificer in my campaign. They do seem fairly balanced. They excel mainly in making magic items and using them, so they are quite flexible. But they don't really dish it out in the same way as, say, a wizard. Also, a big constraint is available cash to make items with - if you don't like to hand out treasure, the artificer will have a hard time using his item creation feats. And yes, they can double as a rogue in the Open Locks/Disable Device stakes, and as such are quite a good substitute.
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In terms of PrC's, there isn't much developed that would suit an artificer, other than a few Eberron-specific things. My main concern is that they are not that powerful, being useful as support rogue/healer (with wands and scrolls)/wizard types but not front line. The main substitution is rogue - they can also do the magic stuff, but you will lack resources if you rely purely on an artificer for that, especially in the meat-grinder that is AoW.
I have a human artificer in my regualr Eberron game, and he dishes out the damage just as well as any fighter. He is set up as a dual wand wielder and with the abilities he gets to apply meta-magic feats to wands, staves, rods, and scrolls, he can dish out a serious amount of damage every round. he spends most of his down time rebuilding his wands though. One thing to watch for with the artificer, the party will look to him/her for upgrades that are conciderably cheaper than buying them from the book, and every magic item or magic device the party encounters, but does not want will be sucked dry of all experience value for the artificer to later turn around and remake new items. With the proper feats he/she will make be able to take on more experience than he/she outputs on the new item. The experience only goes into thier pool for item creation, but it has gotten to the point in my game that any gee-whiz magic item that is just there for decoration(ie ever-burning lanterns, a washing machine, auto filling food and water devices) gets sucked dry on the way out the dungeon.
I think artificer's are unbalanced as do some of the people in my group. No matter what foe we come up against the artificer can infuse their weapon to defeat it. Our Dm uses action points, so by spending an action point the casting time changes to a full round. I personally don't like action points either. I don't think an artificer compares with other base classes and should be a PrC. I also think warforged are broken. They should have an ECL. For example I'll go a Warforged BrB I'll rage and when I come out of it I'm not fatigued. The people who wrote Eberron are clearly powergamers(or munchkins as I prefer to call them) who designed a world to get their fix. I thought some stuff in FR was bad from what I've seen in Eberron is much worse.
Combining Warforged and artificer is just wrong, wrong, wrong!!!
Your kidding right? Eberron was written by powergamers? "What we don't understand, we mock."
As far as, artificers in AoW goes, let me just say that time and money are YOUR friends. An artificer can break any game just as much as a wizard can. The idea is that an artificer that has many months and a vast amount of wealth can make some sick equipment. The good news is that AoW can be a relatively quick campaign with only a month to two months worth of downtime between modules. I had an artificer in one game that had a year's downtime and made a +5 or so mithral full plate. He then became the party's tank. It was an error on my part. There are many many ways to correct this, but in the end, it didn't matter because he died and took his equipment with him. Artificers are very balanced. Their special bane (anything) attack works but compared to a rogue's sneak attack is sucks in most situations. Warforged players are also very balanced. A warforged barbarian doesn't get fatigued, but he also only gets half the healing of a human barb who also gets another feat. Warforged characters are great characters but hardly broken. They suffer just as much as the next character when facing touch attacks and the like. In the end, a warforged artificer will be very interesting but hardly broken. You just have to keep up with how much gold the party has and remember that that +7 longsword you rolled randomly on the treasure chart can easily become something else that you may not like. You need to let this player know that you will not tolerate meta- or powergaming and will deal with abuse harshly. If he will play his character for the group as a whole and not just himself, then great you now have an asset for you party. If not, here's six six-dice. You need to get up to date on the item creation rules. Be very very afraid of what that Forgotten Realms wizard/cleric can do rather than worry about the warforged artificer that will be viable at endgame.
BTW Eberron is a very balanced world in the right hands. Actions points are balanced since both the players and the enemies and NPCs can use them.
Also, to "suck an item dry" takes one day per item and was intended to max out at the artificers bonus experience pool. (Can't remember the name of it.) A good house rule is that for everyone 1000 xp drain the artificer spends one day. Also, artificers can't drain items that the artificer can't make. The artificer must have the proper item creation feat, so artificers can't drain artifacts.
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Also, to "suck an item dry" takes one day per item and was intended to max out at the artificers bonus experience pool. (Can't remember the name of it.) A good house rule is that for everyone 1000 xp drain the artificer spends one day. Also, artificers can't drain items that the artificer can't make. The artificer must have the proper item creation feat, so artificers can't drain artifacts.
Yeah, otherwise you could potentially use Kyuss's monolith as a super battery for making your own items. Imagine the irony of totally draining the monolith and turning it's power into a bunch of wands of cure light wounds!
Seriously though, the artificer is a pretty solid class. They are great at making magic items and buffing the party, but in a game where you don't use action points and have time-sensitive events like the AoW, they're a little more limited. Be sure you have a copy of the class description and understand its abilities very well before allowing it in your game. The class was designed for the technomagical world of Eberron, and may not fit in with your vision the of FR. If you're not totally at ease with allowing the class, don't. A wizard or cleric with item creation feats can be a good substitute.
As for the warforged being unbalanced...that's a loaded question. I've heard the debate rage on that for as long as the campaign setting has existed. The construct traits, immunities and option for adamantine full plate a lvl 1 are a strong arguement for a LA+1 or more, but the lopsided attributes and healing reductions help to mitigate it. I allow them IMC, but have placed some in-game social restrictions on them to even out any perceived imbalance in power.
Their special bane (anything) attack works but compared to a rogue's sneak attack is sucks in most situations.
Rogue's sneak attack ONLY works in certain situations.
Artificer can infuse when THEY CHOOSE TOO. Big difference. Yes a rogue's sneak attack is potent but limited to certain creatures and certain situations and there's the balance.A warforged barbarian doesn't get fatigued, but he also only gets half the healing of a human barb who also gets another feat.
Yes but they also can get healed normally its just not called Cure light Wounds but its a healing spell all the same.
Compare warforged to a half orc I know what I'd pick every time.
Compare a half-orc to a halfling or any other player class? The half-orc and the half-elf do not measure up when compared to the other races. From a min-max perspective, there are much better choices to go with. If I had to chose between playing a warforged in a world that lacks artificers or wizards willing to cast the ARCANE spell to heal me, then I would chose anything else. Being wounded for days at a time because no one in my group can heal me is not fun nor is it appealing. Your party arcane caster has to either sacrifice a spell slot or a learned spell to cast the arcane healing spell. If you are lucky enough to find a wand of repair light damage, then that's a different story. A wand of repair light damage doesn't come cheap either.Even then, a warforged character can be a liability. For example, to reach the next part of the dungeon the party will have to swim across. The warforged would have to walk along the bottom provided that he can even climb back up the other side. Also, what if something is waiting on the other side for the party. Goodbye warforged melee machine. Also, many would point out how a WF melee has adamantine armor at level 1; however, they are quick to forget that this same character will never benefit from the armor that the party comes across and will have to get enchanted to improve. The damage reduction may seem like a lot at low levels but let's compare DR/2 versus a wish spell or an empowered maximized fireball. Also, that DR will never get any higher and the armor requires a feat which the melee character will need a great deal of.
You could just get a potion. A wand of repair light injury would cost 750gp I believe not that expensive really.
Warforged is also a cheesy way of Dm's throwing challenging encounters at the party for little or no monetary award. Lets just p#!s the players off.
They can also repair themselves with the craft skill. People make out thats its nigh on impossible to heal them. No its not. They take less damage anyway with the DR. There are combinations that just make them sick.
Yes compared to an empowered fireball or wish dr 2 seems nothing but your talking really high level to get that far. Yes they can't wear armour that is found. More often than not you buy improved armour anyway.
I'm running AoW set in FR and the group has an Artificer. One house rule I have is that I only allow spells from PHB, PHBII and Spell Compendium. I've worked with the Artificer to create a custom spell list based upon the aforementioned books. The player is having fun with the Artificer and it doesn't seem overly powerful at this point (11th level group). If people are having fun and the power level doesn't seem broken it's mission accomplished in my book.
I currently run AoW in Eberron. We had a warforged until the player had to drop out. I have also had a long running warforged artificer character in my Planescape game.
Warforged are a bit tougher at the the lower levels than other players, but I have found that by the mid and higher levels the difference is not as noticable. While a warforge can repair themselves with Craft (armorsmith), it takes hours to do so. This does little more than cover their lack of natural healing.
The Admantine bodied warforge fighter in my AoW game was the first character to be dropped in battle against the lizard king in EaBWK. He was also starting to complain that the human battle dancer and kobold ninja were becoming more effective in combat than he was.
The warforged artificer in my planescape game has outfitted the party with most of their gear. I will agree with other people here in that they can really upset balance if you do not monitor what magicval equipment they create. This has only cropped up once or twice in my game and is really more of a problem with balance issues in the item creation rules. Enforce the time it takes to get custom items made and you should not have any real problem.
All in all, I don't think he will step on the toes of other the players. At least it has not been my experience.