| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sometime in the future, I'm planning on running an Eberron game for my group of players. I ran an Eberron game several years ago, but we had to drop it for various reasons. I now wish to start it back up, and convert to the Pathfinder system.
Most of the conversions are pretty easy, and I've been having a lot fun with it.
I've been working on a conversion for the Artificer class. I am posting the link below, and I would appreciate some constructive feed back about the class. I will summarize the changes below.
Here: PF Artificer Draft
----------------------------------
A link to the original 3.5 Artificer can be found here for reference.
Infusions
This is the only part I haven't done yet, but I was thinking of pulling primarily from the Alchemist spell list, and adding some Eberron spells. What do you think?
Craft Reserve
I've changed the points in the crafting reserve from XP to a gold piece value. The reserve will represent an essence of magic that the artificer can call on to replace gold (instead of XP) in the crafting process. The numbers you see here have been converted from XP in the old 3.5 system to an amount equal to half the value in gold that XP is normally worth. This seems in line with Pathfinder's rules regarding crafting.
The biggest change here is that I'm allowing players to carry-over excess reserve to new levels, whereas old rules required players to spend all their reserve or lose it on level-up. To temper this ability a bit, I'm requiring that no more reserve than is default for that level can be spent on any single magic item, so players cannot save up several levels worth of reserve and blow it all on some ungodly powerful item way earlier than expected.
Artificer Knowledge
I've changed and upgraded this ability to represent the Artificer ability to discern the nature of magical items. I feel the upgrade is in line with powers similar to Pathfinder's powers.
Item Creation
This is roughly the same as the original, except that I've removed the ability to create "weak" versions of spell scrolls and simplified it. Now artificers simply create items at an effective level +2, period.
Bonus Feats
I removed most of the old feats and added a ton of pathfinder feats that I feel are in line with the artificer. I'm retaining some old Eberron feats for this game, however, and you'll see some here.
Craft Homunculus
I completely gutted the original rules and replaced them with Paizo's rules for making Homunculi. The rules presented here are a direct copy from the PFSRD.
Transfer Essence
This ability replaces "Retain Essence" which allowed players to basically eat magic items and add it to their reserve (which was lost on level-up). Instead, I'm making it so players must eat the item during the creation of a brand new item, so that they can't just add to their reserve indefinitely; the gained essence will have to be spent on the brand new item, and any excess bonus reserve is lost.
Metamagic Spell Completion
Only changes here is that I lowered DC to use this ability (the x3 modifier seemed a bit much), and now the uses per day are taken from the Artificer Knowledge ability above.
-------
If you have been reading to this point, I applaud you good sir and/or madam. Please leave any comments, criticisms, or new ideas that you may have. I'm happy to read them, and may even use a few.
Thanks for reading!
I think its neat. I like your changes. I feel like this does alot out of combat but I am worried about his in combat abilities. Maybe it would be beneficial for put some options for folks. For instance you offer bonus feats. What if you were to give them the ability to supercharge a wand/potion/scroll beyond what a standard person caster could do? Maybe have the artificer be able to temporarily disable a magic item for so many rounds using a touch attack? OR maybe give them the ability to give all allies a bonus to weapons similar in thought to how one of the skald archetype can give enhancement bonuses to weapons.
Just some ideas.
See, I use Artificers as well, but all I really did was let them craft for way less gold and added a few crafting feats to the empty areas. I did let them use some the of the Alchemist "spells" as well, but other than that, they work really well as is. That's what I found in play anyway.
Artificer conversions are always tricky because the magic item creation rules changes in Pathfinder impact the underlying foundation of the class. That said, this one does a good job of retaining the essence of the class while allowing it to work within the Pathfinder rules.
My only real critique is the lack of a level 20 capstone ability. Perhaps the abilty to create true (perhaps limited to lesser) artifacts? Or a major upgrade to the Metamagic Spell Completion and Metamagic Spell Trigger abilities?