WIP Artificer 2.0 (+Warsmith)

This is good feedback. Detailed feedback is always good. 1) I have considered it, but they need to be able to make armor in my opinion. Maybe I can drop the heavy armor (or just not count at it, as its basically their level 3 feature) and give them both. 2b) They can make a bunch, but only be attuned to 1, I guess I can tweak the wording. I don't want to encourage that behavior too much. 3b) I think the next version I will try will drop that, but I'm pretty worried about swapping back and forth too much. 3c) This is a major concern. 3d) This is next version (I just posted that to the comment on the poll, basically). I really don't want to make strength painlessly dumpable, but I think if I do -X +X it is punishing enough as you won't get max strength easily if you dumped it. 4a) I will just rename it Warsmith's Armor or something. 4c) It is technically useful for dual wielding and some other things. But you are mostly right. When I did that I was making the Energy projector a "light" weapon. I might go back to that, but I forgot it was a ranged spell attack, so didn't work with TWF and decided to go a different route. 4d) It no longer takes a set of platemail. So it's roughly the same cost or cheaper. 4e) My thought is you are stuck with integrated armor. It's a specialist route. 4f) There shouldn't be too many that are Warplate specific besides defensive/piloted golem, but I guess that is a lot. They will probably not be fully expanded until the next Expanded Toolbox update. 5a) Technically true, but the power of "Strength" (Artificial Strength) Warsmith's is up a lot due to flexibility, even with an action to switch between the modes. Ultimately some of all this power has to come out of somewhere, so there is going to be some nerfs as Warsmith was already very very close to the high water mark. I may step back some of this though if I can find a better way. It's mostly Martial Grip/Strength Warsmiths that take the hit, as Power Fist and Int are getting a free upgrade from their gauntlet compared to the old way. 5c) Upgrades level is the level the upgrade was gotten, not the level of the upgrade selected. Upgrade slots are one of the more janky things, but I have never found a way to remove them without breaking everything (Warlocks don't use them, but Warlock Invocations are way weaker at high levels and have few level gated options). 6a) I will consider. There needs to be some more investment here as otherwise Warsmiths can be good at everything too easily, but maybe thats not the right way to do it. I also liked tying the element mods to the projector, and I'll have to remove that if I don't tie them together. b) It's effectively the same but it just costs more to get, though Ether Reactor has a bit of an additional benefit. 7) This seems to be something people don't like, so I will probably drop it. I like it, but I think I like the Jump spell more than most people. 9) I guess I could drop it. I was just looking for something to do with this that wasn't free spells. 10b) I'd say the player, it doesn't matter too much though. The AI is acting on the player's behalf though, so probably player unless the player would prefer the DM is handling their AI. 11) Lot of people did not like the spell save DC getting as high as it did. I think it was fine when the ARtificer was overall weaker, but I've started to agree with them more as it has power creeped upward a bit. 12) I will expand on this later I think. 13a) It just does what it says (you can't move). I may change the wording. 14a) This will tweak with Articial Strength tweaking. 15) Dimension door seemed less useful in most cases, especially with trying to reduce the free spell slots overall, as the Artificer has precious few 4th level slots. 16) They are way too good at wrestling Dragons. Barbarians only get away with it because most things are too big for them to wrestle. People have convinced me to buff this back a little (up to large, return the strength saving throws). 22b) I think this is a thing with lances even when mounts, so I guess. Always seemed weird to me they work that way though, but I'm not here to rewrite all the rules. I just thought it would be cool to use a lance. 22c) I may add that. Fleshsmith will get basically the same thing, so I don't think it breaks anything that bad. I'm deeply skeptical of TWF with heavy weapons, but other than that it doesn't do anything that crazy. 23b) I think I'm pretty thoroughly on record for thinking shields are OP, so I'm a little biased here. Appreciate all the feedback! The Warsmith was I don't think quite there yet. This will take some more work. I've been stuck on it for a long time, and I had an idea I thought was clever with Artificial strength, but I think it wasn't as clever as I thought. Thanks! It's the community and players that will get us to the best version of the class it can be.

KibblesTasty

Ok so… feedback! 1) Wasmith’s Proficiency: a) I still think it should give Tinkerer’s Tools. I struggle to imagine someone building something like a projector or capacitor with a hammer and anvil. 2) Warplate Gauntlet a) I wholeheartedly endorse this change. b) The text says if you lose your gauntlet you can remake it. Does this mean you can’t craft spares and are always stuck with the first upgrade you picked? 3) Artificial Strength a) I was pretty uncertain about this at first but after reading through the rest of the subclass I think it’s actually cool. Not a huge fan of a lot of the changes that appear to have flown on from this though. b) I kinda feel like switching back to INT mode shouldn’t take a full action. I imagine it like dropping concentration on a spell which you can do whenever. Then again being forced out of it when taking damage or incapacitated would suck so I can handle the compromise :P. c) This could cause issues of backwards compatibility for existing Strength Warsmiths. You might want to create a couple of upgrades for them. d) I like the suggestion of letting you control how many points you move over. That way if you do dump Strength (which mechanically you shouldn’t but people could do for RP reasons) you don’t automatically become an imbecile. 4) Warsmith’s Gear a) Not sure about the name. b) The removal of the innate Strength boost ties the stat progression directly to upgrades. c) I love that you automatically get a second version of your gauntlet upgrade, although it’s not super useful for anything other than Power Fist. d) The cost of creating new armor was doubled to 2000g. Why? e) If you created Integrated Armor, can you create additional sets of armor and then wear/don them? If not are you just stuck with your upgrades. f) There’s a heap of upgrades for Warplate at the moment but very few for the other two. Understandable given that they’re both new but still something to work on. 5) Fully Customized Gear a) So Intelligence Warsmith’s require one less upgrade due to Sentient Armor getting changed to a single upgrade, but Strength Warmith’s don’t really come out further ahead. For them this is just a straight nerf. b) I’d suggest changing the wording to be more like Gadgetsmith’s Additional Upgrade. At the moment it’s unclear if this would apply to all suits of armor you make or just the one you were attuned to when you levelled up. c) The text says you can swap upgrades for ones of the same level requirement. Does that mean that if my level 15 Warsmith makes a set of armor with all unrestricted upgrades they can only swap those upgrades for other unrestricted ones? 6) Projectors a) I don’t like that theses all require Energy Projector. It feels unnecessarily limiting. b) Yay more spells. On the other hand, I’m not sure about shifting all the charges to Ether Reactor. c) I like that they’re no longer incompatible with each other 7) Jump Gear a) Meh. Although to be fair more options aren’t a bad thing (unless the become prerequisites for other better things…) b) This would allow you to cast jump on other people which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’d suggest changing the wording to match the Gadgetsmith’s Jumping Boots. Alternatively, just remove it… 8) Sentient Armor a) I love the interaction with Artificial Strength. 9) Divination Visor a) Most divination spells aren’t combat spells so the bonus action thing isn’t really useful and concentration becomes less of a problem. I’m struggling to see where this would be good. See Invisibility as a bonus action? It lasts and hour though, so you can precast (if you have notice). 10) Emergency Protocol a) I find this amusing. What does an unconscious person taking the dodge action look like :P. b) Who determines what action the sentient intelligence takes? GM or player? 11) Focal Refletors a) So half of Virtual Wizard went here (at a much lower level requirement) and the other half disappeared. Shame about the DCs. 12) Mechanical Enhancement a) The only Integrated Armor upgrade. Luckily I like it, I just wish there were more. 13) Ether Reactor a) What does it mean for the armor to be deactivated. Can you still gain the benefit of upgrades? 14) Iron Muscle a) Cheaper Powered Limbs but later. Ok I’ll take it. 15) Phase Suite a) I miss Dimension Door :(. Misty Step is nice though. 16) Piloted Golem a) Why the restrictions on when you get advantage? Barbarians get it at level 1. And Enlarge also just gives you straight advantage. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. 17) Virtual Interface a) Love it. 18) Distributed Force a) Yay. Finally some love for two weapon fighting. 19) Energy Surge a) Not sure about it using up your bonus action for Intelligence Warsmiths, but then again it could get silly for Strength Warsmiths without that restriction. b) Why remove the knockback? Warlocks can do it with an invocation at level 2 so letting Warsmith’s do it at level 9 with some other benefits doesn’t seem too broken. 20) Flash Freeze Capacitor a) What type of action does it take to cast “totally not Cone of Cold”. b) Not sure why you didn’t leave it as the spell. The way it is not it can’t be used by Emergency Protocol. 21) Power Slam Capacitor a) Please remove the prerequisite… Please. b) Ok so we’ve swapped knockdown for friendly fire and slightly less predictable damage… Doesn’t seem like a great deal. 22) Titan Grip a) This. Is. Awesome. b) When wielding a lance in this way do you still get disadvantage when attacking targets with 5 feet of you? c) I’m a little disappointed there’s no way for Integrated Armor to get this. 23) Shield Arm a) Titan Grip just got even better! b) Shame about the prerequisite. Wow that ended up being longer than I expected...

It is optional, but it will change (as per the poll and my comments there, it seems I didn't quite hit the mark this time). The reason it is an action as I don't want it to be "you switch every time you want to cast fireball", but almost two separate "combat modes" you can choose. If it was a bonus action, people would switch back and forth in the middle of combat, and that would get annoying to track in my opinion. Things like rage and wildshape, you start but don't want to end, so you wouldn't "toggle" very often, where if this was a bonus action, it would be "toggled" every time they wanted to cast a spell, which would be a bit too much. I am trying to reduce the static upgrades, and particularly the dead upgrades, but the problem is that makes the class a lot stronger, so it's a bit of balacing act. There will be a take-2 of this version soon based on the feedback, but it may take awhile to think up, as I thought this is a tricky problem to solve, and clearly I haven't solved it yet, based on the general feedback and poll :)

KibblesTasty

Is Artificial Strength optional? It looks like it should be "you can spend an action". I'm pretty okay with it if it's optional, then it's a nice touch of flavor that also cuts down on MADness. It's an action because it's not core to the subclass I suppose? Any state change that's core, like rage, bladesong, or wildshape for moon druids is a bonus action. I like how you merged some of the upgrades. I want to take Sentient Armor to get to Virtual Wizard, but I've been agonizing over the first level of it because my intelligence is 16. I like the choice of gauntlet upgrade at first level too, lets you sort into brawler or blaster right away.