Artificer / Weird Science Inventions

[Dhaenon]

Hello again everyone,

I was checking out the Artificer class and I had a question about the Weird Science Inventions. It sort of has this level progression that goes up to 4th level spells. Here is my question, say you are a 5th level Artificer, how many inventions can you have? For inventions it has it listed as 3|1|1. I was thinking that maybe that meant you could have 5 total inventions, 3 inventions with a level one spell on it, 1 with a 2nd level spell and 1 with a 3rd level spell. Then of course you could add them up and instead have 1 inventions with all 5 spells on it.

"Combining multiple magical effects into a single device means that both effects function simultaneously upon activation (effectively casting two or more spells at once)."

Could you load up all 5 spells onto one device, hit the button... and kaboom? Say you load up a gun that has three 1st level spells, (Burning Hands, Magic Missle, Ear piercing Scream) a single 2nd level spell, (Scorching Ray) and a single 3rd level spell, (Lightning bolt).

Would you really be able to do 2d6 + 1d4+1(x3) + 5d4 + 4d6 + 5d6 all in one click of the button... 4 times a day?

[LazarX]

Depends on which Artificer you're talking about. There's a couple of different variations out there, none of which are actually published by Paizo.

[Dhaenon]

LazarX wrote:

Depends on which Artificer you're talking about. There's a couple of different variations out there, none of which are actually published by Paizo.

The Artificer in "The Tome of Secrets" a 3rd party Pathfinder book.

[SanguineRooster]

Dhaenon wrote:

Could you load up all 5 spells onto one device, hit the button... and kaboom? Say you load up a gun that has three 1st level spells, (Burning Hands, Magic Missle, Ear piercing Scream) a single 2nd level spell, (Scorching Ray) and a single 3rd level spell, (Lightning bolt).

Would you really be able to do 2d6 + 1d4+1(x3) + 5d4 + 4d6 + 5d6 all in one click of the button... 4 times a day?

Yes, you can load them all up like that. I played with someone who used this class. This class is balanced terribly. Thankfully, the person I played with kept things from getting too absurd, but he did make the gun you described, minus burning hands. Also, the ability to take spells off any list lets him get things like Haste as lvl2 and Summon Monster 5 as lvl4 (both from the Summoner list) gets bad. If he wanted he could fully buff our whole party, summon backup, and kill an enemy in a single standard action. If his uses ran out he just needed a UMD check to bypass it. That whole weird science mechanic is poorly thought out and broken. I wouldn't touch it unless you can really trust your player to keep things reasonable.

[Dhaenon]

It says that you can pull from the arcane and divine lists. Personally I would limit it to Wizard/Sorcerer and Cleric minus the domains of course. I think it seems balanced enough if you look at it in the right light. Yes you could use the mega gun and drop 4 things in one day, insta-kill them, but then you would be relying upon a Use Magic Device check with a decent chance at breaking your gun.

[Cheapy]

Skill focus (UMD), pump charisma. Make a wondrous item that gives a +10 bonus to UMD. That's only 10,000 gp.

[Dhaenon]

True if you power-game. But in theory... you could have a gauntlet that let you cast a cure spell, a gun that shot a lightning bolt and burning hands, a arm band that shot magic missile and a shield that protected you. It would be a cool character idea, as long as the person didn't meta game so hard.

[Dhaenon]

Also I wish the failure at Use Magic Device had a list of random effects, instead of just the item breaking. It could add some flavor and comedy to a character based on being a inventor / mad scientist.

[LazarX]

The major fault in the class was allowing the combination of multiple weird science effects into one device. That's where the action economy can be blown to smithereens by a novaing munchkin.