Krash4031 wrote:
Perhaps this has already been addressed.... But I didn't see any thing. Ok so the more I look at the arcanist revision, the more I like it, yet the more I worry about the numbers. At first level, their arcane reservoir can hold up to three points, and they gain 2 per day. No biggie. At 2nd level, their reservoir can hold six points, and they get back 2 per day. This forces you to consume spell slots, of shich you don't have very many, in order to fill your pool. You also, in order to be of any use, need to spend all of your money on scrolls wands, etc in order to have your pool be of any use. I am not sure how well balanced the numbers are here... Your AR is used for so much, particularly that +1 CL and DC.
Actually, nothing says to round that 1/2 level number up, so first level Arcanists get a whole one point in the pool.
I'm honestly worried about this class at early levels (< 6). It has fewer spells per day than both the Wizard and Sorcerer, and the Arcane Pool is so anemic that it's not reliable. Here are my 2cp on each of the available exploits:
As written, the elemental blasts just aren't worth spending exploits on. If the blasts were at-will or 3+(Cha Mod), they would be more attractive. As it stands, requiring both a touch attack and a Reflex Half (meaning anything with Evasion ignores it) makes them worse than most School/Bloodline blasts, PLUS you have to spend AP to fuel them. The force blast is on-par with a School/Bloodline blast - it's probably still not worth spending your very limited AP on, but at least it's at the same power level as a Sage-blooded Sorcerer.
Spell Tinkerer is really powerful, so much so that I could see splitting it into two separate exploits (and it definitely needs a comment about whether it can be applied to the same spell multiple times).
Counterspell is really nice, though since you have fewer spells/day now, a straight 1-on-1 fight with either a Sorcerer or Wizard will burn you out of counterspells long before they run out of things to throw at you (aside from the fact that you'll run out of AP long before either).
Potent Magic is also probably worth spending an exploit on, particularly at early levels (1 AP to make Mage Armor last +2 hours, why not?).
Dimensional Slide is really well written, and I love the thematics of it. It's nowhere near as powerful as the Teleportation school's Shift ability (since it has to be done as part of a move, it can't be used to escape from a grapple), but the idea of ripping a momentary portal in space to step through is awesome.
Metamagic Knowledge is the Arcanist's version of the Rogue's Combat Trick. Free feat. Useful, but you can only take it once, so pretty hard to break.
Metamixing is...odd. I can see uses for it, but I don't like that the core spellcasting mechanics were modified to make it more useful. Instead of saying you can't apply metamagic to meta-prepared spells in the base mechanic, I'd instead let Metamixing spend 1 AP for lowering time to standard casting time, or 2 AP to reduce the overall metamagic cost by one spell level (min +0).
Finally, we come to Consume Magic Items. This exploit has to be present, since it was part of the initial design spec...but it needs to be rebalanced. Other people have gone into the details on the costs of consuming potions/scrolls/wands; frankly, as-written I just don't think it's worth the costs except in extremely rare circumstances. You can pay 150gp for a single AP, usable once...or 2000gp for an extra AP per day for the rest of your career.
I'd either like to see the AP front-loaded so the pool is larger at lower levels (3 + 1/2 lvl or Cha Mod + 1/2 lvl, round up), or the spells/day brought back up to 5s and the AP left where it is (under the assumption that the char will have to choose whether to burn those extra spells for AP or use them as spells). The former focuses the class on the arcane exploit ability, the latter focuses on versatility.
I'd also like to see some way for this class to get an arcane bond, even if it's limited to item bonds instead of familiars - a full caster without a way to get an arcane bond just seems...wrong, somehow.
Finally, I really liked an idea posed by someone in one of the other Arcanist threads - an exploit which lets you consume a scroll (of something on your spell list) to add the spell to your spells known for the day. Essentially, you burn two rounds, the scroll, an AP, and a spell slot in order to cast the scroll using your level and save DCs.
