Lookin' good. I especially like the flavor of the spell list and the feature that lets you swap out a cantrip at a rest like you're a wizard in D&D Online.
I think there's a host of good ideas in there but they've botched the landing on execution.
This thing's definitely got the right feel to it. It's running around as more of a skill box class with some cool magical tricks it builds, with a heavy focus on just having magic items.
However the actual mechanics are a bit of a mess.
Right off the bat, it's casting feels like its just on the wrong side of limited, especially for what those spells do and how many youd likely be using in combat, and how they should be working flavor wise I think they could be on a warlock casting progression with the slight twist of having to prepare on short rest (literally them building the doohickey that produces the spell) probably a more limited number of spells prepared in that case, pretty much makes them the "give me an hour, i can build something that'll help us with what we're doing" archetype.
As well I think they are really onto something with investitures. Just "yeah i always have a magic sword, I'm the guy that makes magic swords". However i think they could do a few things. One increase ther number of them you get.
Two move the second teir down to 8 and have 4 teirs (base, 8, 12, 16), three expand the replicable magic items table to include interesting magic weapons and armor. Not even necessarily climbing the bonus track or anything but like the various magic shields that do interesting and beneficial things that aren't growing your AC.
The sub classes feel a bit of a mess. I think you could take the 6th level feature for both archetypes and put them as the second 3rd level feature next to the spell casting and proficiency gains no problem (as well the wand should hold int mod cantrips from any list from the jump so it keeps pace with the alchemist bonus which amplifies cure spells). Just eliminate the third level feature for both and make them spells the subclas gets. Find familiar with a homunculus sidebar and monster entry would better cover the alchemical homunculus better, and you could have a conjure turret spell and a bunch of turret entries. Make the 6th level feature more skill box engaging. An expertise like feature for their crafting skills seems the very least to be done.
I think they have the ideas here they just executed them poorly.
I think one of the big hangups that articifers are going to run into every time, no matter what, is that they're a crafting class in a game with all but nonexistent crafting rules. It's a weird spellcaster, not a crafter of any sort. And I want a crafter.
I think one of the big hangups that articifers are going to run into every time, no matter what, is that they're a crafting class in a game with all but nonexistent crafting rules. It's a weird spellcaster, not a crafter of any sort. And I want a crafter.
It's a class that depends on flavor in the extreme.
It's likely not going to expand the lacking crafting rules much beyond what already exists (unfortunately) so it depends more on makin sure that the way you recharge your abilities is you crafting things. Like when a wizard prepares spells they read from a book. When the artificer prepares spells, they break out their alchemist supplies and mix up a few ingredients so they are prepared and can finish off the process by dumping in water and swirling it about to make a quick and dirty haste potion to drink on the battlefield. The thing would never keep so you definitely gotta drop and go like a jaggerbomb but it'll get it done out there in a pinch.
It's why I wish they recharged more things on short rest. So that every time the party sets down to rest the artificer pulls out their tools and sets to work fixing or preparing something.
I also think they should see even more reduced crafting times/costs in their subclass crafting focus. The alchemist can make 1 2d4+2 basic healing potion in 6 hours for 6 gold in materials (if you use Xanathars)... they should be able to do more than 1 a night on the adventure and for even less. Like that's the major thing is that in some adventures you don't get much downtime, so normal crafting can't happen even when reduced to a quarter of the time and cost.
The investitures are a moderate way around that problem, but again you've gotta be flavoring it correctly. It shouldn't be that at the end of a long rest you just touch the item and boom magic, it should be that you spend the long rest making the necessary changes to the mundane item to turn it into the magic item. So you don't just grab any sword in the morning, you gotta spend the night inscribing the sword with arcane runes, or dousing it in a series of magical ugents and liquids to invest it with some magic or something like that.
Like i said there's a lot of good ideas in this version, they just didn't quite stick the landing.
I think the Artificer would make a much better key NPC in a campaign or a part time player rather than a full PC class
It worked okay in some previous editions.
Well, sorta. Okay translates as "entirely broke the PC loot economy" and "was an unremarkable leader" respectively. I think it is solid conceptual space but hard to nail down in a more simulation-y D&D ruleset. It begs for something like the Blades "Flashback" mechanic where you prepared the perfect tool for the job because you're an awesome crafty/planny person.
I think the Artificer would make a much better key NPC in a campaign or a part time player rather than a full PC class
It worked okay in some previous editions.
Well, sorta. Okay translates as "entirely broke the PC loot economy" and "was an unremarkable leader" respectively. I think it is solid conceptual space but hard to nail down in a more simulation-y D&D ruleset. It begs for something like the Blades "Flashback" mechanic where you prepared the perfect tool for the job because you're an awesome crafty/planny person.
When you describe how you're using your tools to cast the spell it should almost always include some flashback to the few minutes you spent preparing each spell.
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now.
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed out and even had a bout of depression over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
Those items are designed badly in a LOT of ways, one of which is that they interact with other systems that are also designed badly, namely the morality system. Were I running CoS, I would redesign that part of the temple. I have a bunch of thoughts on how, but this isn't that.
So, as it stands, I see three ways for you to deal with this.
1. Retire the character, reroll. That's also known as the "bad" option.
2. Reconsider what "power" and "evil" means. In my head, "good and evil" map way more closely to "selfless and selfish". So, you're selfishly trying to get people out of Barovia. Maybe that means that you start to consider who really deserves to leave. Barovia is full of terrible people, why do they all deserve to get out? How do you take the "right" ones out? Likewise, "power" can mean a lot of things. You need power to get people out, so taking on more power is going to help there. Plus, it means you can better weed out the unworthy. Maybe just organizing a mass of people looking to leave gives you the kind of power you're seeking.
3. Talk to the DM about lifting the curse(s). There's any number of ways that are Barovia appropriate that would get a curse off of you.
Good luck, sorry there's that one, giant, shittily designed part of what's otherwise a pretty solid module. It upsets the vast majority of people who run into it, they should have done it way, way, way, way better.
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed out and even had a bout of depression over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
Those items are designed badly in a LOT of ways, one of which is that they interact with other systems that are also designed badly, namely the morality system. Were I running CoS, I would redesign that part of the temple. I have a bunch of thoughts on how, but this isn't that.
So, as it stands, I see three ways for you to deal with this.
1. Retire the character, reroll. That's also known as the "bad" option.
2. Reconsider what "power" and "evil" means. In my head, "good and evil" map way more closely to "selfless and selfish". So, you're selfishly trying to get people out of Barovia. Maybe that means that you start to consider who really deserves to leave. Barovia is full of terrible people, why do they all deserve to get out? How do you take the "right" ones out? Likewise, "power" can mean a lot of things. You need power to get people out, so taking on more power is going to help there. Plus, it means you can better weed out the unworthy. Maybe just organizing a mass of people looking to leave gives you the kind of power you're seeking.
3. Talk to the DM about lifting the curse(s). There's any number of ways that are Barovia appropriate that would get a curse off of you.
Good luck, sorry there's that one, giant, shittily designed part of what's otherwise a pretty solid module. It upsets the vast majority of people who run into it, they should have done it way, way, way, way better.
The power thing from the staff isn't a curse, and cannot be removed by any means, to my knowledge
It's like a fragment of an earlier edition of D&D and I can smell the worst parts of Chris Perkins' DM style all over it
I think Ill be fine because iirc the last room doesn't contain any gifts that would be direct power upgrades, ill probably take the reincarnate one? But I have on portent thats an 11 which should be good enough. I've managed to avoid the pitfalls of this place pretty well so far... except the bard has scooped up a half dozen dark gifts and is a walking ball of murderhobo godhood at this point
Ah yeah that's rough, but like, "you might descend into being as evil as the one you fight" is like a central plot expectation from CoS isn't it?
Also yeah mechanical alignment is pretty bad almost every time it shows up.
Yes but it's supposed to happen from evens and temptations not from "you rolled a 9 instead of a 10" on one roll. Just telling someone "you are evil now" is not satisfying, and doesn't feel good.
On the other hand, my character murdered a guard, because we found our cleric strung up in town, butchered. My character ran over to her swinging, disemboweled body and started trying to cut her down and a guard stopped me and told me to move along. He wouldn't let me by, I warned him, and another guard jabbed me in the back with a spear shaft to make their point. I said "who the fuck do you think you are", and told the DM that I activate my aasimar racial and shocking grasped his face, obliterating him with ... necrotic energy, and not radiant? The DM pointed out that I realized my ethereal wings were black and skeletal, not luminous and white, and I just grabbed the dead cleric and dimension doored away, the party meanwhile killed the burgermeister and shit fell apart throughout the whole town
She told me the wings returned to the expected color when my character calmed down, and that this wasn't the body of our cleric, it was glamoured to look that way... when it faded, it was the mutilated body of the Druid that I had spared and convinced that Strahd was the enemy of this land, not their savior (with a heckin chonker of a persuasion roll). Strahd himself showed up to taunt me and I activated the holy symbol of ravenkind, counterspelled whatever he was casting, and threw a fistfull of scorching rays at him and he misted out, leaving a pile of wolves that ignored me and ripped apart the remains of the druid
THAT is the good shit, not "you rolled bad so you're evil now"
Edit: I need to stop worrying, our new DM is fucking great and I should trust how she'll handle it, whatever happens.
I don't like the fact that they're all pet classes...
They seem to be a hybrid attack type class(two attacks with a magical weapon and a new spell that gives them bonus to damage when they hit) but don't have access to martial weapons. The two martial weapons they do have access to don't let you attack more than once per action.
Their secondary progression is heavily tied to intelligence modifier but again they look to be a hybrid attack type class.
You then get bonuses to cantrips equal to your intelligence modifier because we wanted to split this class even more.
The way i read it if you're combat focused then your secondary characteristics are kind of meh. And your attack is OK unless you wait a long time and spend infusions on stat boosting items.
The infusions are really strong (especially getting magic weapons without having to attune) but the replicable magic items table is... well limiting. If you chose a lantern of revealing as an example, and then get other ways to detect invisibility then you're stuck.
This isn't so bad but the way i see magic items your infusion list looks like "Magic Weapon", "Magic Armor", "6 different replicable magic items". Maybe you take radiant instead of enhanced (but this costs you an effective higher level replicable magic item because infusions do not appear to be replaceable). The other problem is that all of a sudden at level 20 you want to attune to all of the magic items... but if you were picking "for today" you're probably a mix of attunable and not.
If i were to make any one change it would be trading the "2 attacks" to "One per turn when you hit with a weapon attack you may channel a cantrip into that attack"
If i were to make two i would another sub class that didn't have a pet mechanic.
edit: Additionally there is a LOT of knowledge and choice overhead in this class about design because you're pretty well stuck with the items you choose and this means a lot of "which ones do i really want". It happens less so for sorcerers and spells because spells are things you use and not really features you have. These are more like innate abilities.
The Artificer's strength is clearly a ton of versatility. Also you can swap out your infusions as you level, so sure it might suck if you get something that can handle invisibility, but you can swap it out it later. Also that seems like a bit of a dm problem as they control what they give you.
I do think Artificer getting two attacks but their best weapon proficiency is crossbows is a little awkward. Crossbow expert is almost a mandatory feat at that point.
Although the other pretty damn good option is the spear with the Returning Weapon infusion
Technically by 8th level you could make a 3 +1 weapons to hand out to other party members while you stick to cantrips and bonus action pet attacks... that's actually pretty cool from the support end of things.
Also what's everyone's bets we don't actually get that artificer unearthed arcana article in february?
I'm pretty sure everyone still gets to collect their money on this - the fact that Crawford posted this to twitter on a Thursday night on Feb 28th, alongside the fact that this is the only way to access it because the article itself still isn't actually on the website if you look for the unearthed arcana articles directly, suggests to me that he saw a bunch of posts like Sleep's and went 'oh shit, I guess I need to crank this out and get it posted right now so it'll be technically on time, which is the best kind of on time.'
As for the class itself:
Hey, a new spell! Stop me if you've heard this one before, you guys: It's a first-level spell, bonus action cast time, has a 1 hour duration, requires concentration, is only available to one class, upleveling it increases the duration up to 8 hours, and its function is to cause you to deal 1d6 extra damage each time you hit an enemy. That's right, I'm talking about hexhunter's mark arcane weapon! Behold, exciting new class features for an exciting new class!
It's weird that they prep spells like a divine caster in spite of being an arcane caster; I suppose it's intended to represent their flexibility, but this seems like a pretty uninteresting way to do that. Their spell list looks like a weird wizard/cleric/druid hodgepodge at first, but on a second look it seems like the defining feature is that they mostly get spells that enchant/alter/buff their allies, and don't get a lot of stuff to cast on enemies - presumably they're supposed to be dealing their damage with weapon attacks + not-hex and the turret.
Item infusions seem like they're probably too good in all but the most magic-flush campaigns. Having 3 or 4 magic weapons/armor to hand out at-will and on-the-fly to whoever needs them will fill a lot of gaps in the party, and a 12th-level artificer being able to unilaterally give +2 armor and a +2 shield to the same guy (or two guys!) is probably above the intended power curve.
"you can attack twice when you take the attack action but one of the attacks must be made with a magic weapon" on a class that can make its own magic weapons is a silly ribbon to add to Extra Attack that doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose except to give the DM a way to go 'gotcha! I engineered a situation where you lost your infused weapon and now you suck!'. Takes on the artificer always seem to be rife with this sort of thing - needless complexity which serves no real purpose but to try (and often fail) to impart some sort of flavor to the class. I suspect that's related to the point someone else already made above - artificer is a crafting class in a game without crafting rules, so it ends up weighed down with a bunch of dumb fiddly shit aimed at trying to make it 'feel' like it's crafting things when it isn't.
The class is clearly int-primary, and is so heavily rewarded for having a good int mod that its mandatory for an artificer to start with 16 int and pump it to 20 just like any other class's primary stat - but it also gets extra attack and hunter's mark arcane weapon and clearly needs to attack for its damage, and it doesn't get anything that lets it attack with its int mod. Result: It's going to be bad at fighting, which you may recall is what you spend a lot of your time in DnD doing. It seems like the pet is probably supposed to fill the gap by giving them a bonus-action attack, but A)other classes can already bonus-action attack and attack with their actual primary stat and B)if you want it to be a pet class, why give it extra attack? give the pet extra attack, or make its attacks better, or let the pet attack as part of the artificers attack action instead of locking up his bonus action every turn. The class is unsatisfying because it's all over the place - it's kind of a spellcaster, but only gets half progression and doesn't get attack spells, it's kind of a buffbot but it needs to spend buffs on itself to keep its own class features online, it's kind of a melee/ranged shooty guy but it's going to miss a lot because its attack bonus is going to be 2-3 points too low, it's kind of a pet class but the pet uses up the master's action economy and doesn't have enough punch to be satisfying because if it did it'd be too good with the extra attack feature the class gets for no reason. Pick a lane.
The pets at least don't have the problem of being so squishy that they'll get picked off in a fight; they're as beefy as the caster himself - but only under certain conditions. First off, on the unnecessary complexity front, why is the turret so much tougher than the homunculus? One has AC 13 and hp equal to (artificer level*5)+INT mod while the other has AC 18 and HP equal to (artificer level *5). Why the wildly different AC? For that matter, why the different HP calculation? If the turret is supposed to be tougher, why does the homunculus get the extra INT mod HP? Is that even enough HP to matter in a practical sense, especially compared to the huge AC gap? Your guiding design principle is supposed to be about simplifying the game and yet it's like the guy who designed the homunculus and the guy who designed the turret didn't talk to each other. Secondly, artificers seem pretty reliant on these pets for their combat effectiveness, but the pet HP only scales on artificer level, not character level, which penalizes multiclass builds for Artificers pretty heavily.
Subclass-wise, the Artillerist seems substantially more powerful than the Alchemist. The pet is tougher, the pet does more damage, the pet is more flexible, you eventually get two pets, the spell list gives you things like Shield and Fireball instead of things like Ray of Sickness and Stinking Cloud - the Alchemist just really doesn't have anything on the same power level as what the Artillerist gets.
Overall it still seems pretty sloppily designed and unsatisfying, and like a lot of their recent material seems at odds with the supposed simplicity-based design ethos of 5e as a system; that homebrew artificer from a while back that gets to build an Iron Man suit or a custom gun remains both more fun, more interesting, more focused, and more professionally-designed than any version of the class WotC has been able to put out.
We ran into a very similar issue when we played Strahd. My bard picked up the staff. Not to attune it or even use it, just to pick it up and bring it to the rest of the party. We play over Roll20 but it's with people we've known for 20+ years. So when the session ended there and I get sent a message about the staff's change my character I was pretty put off. Especially because there was no save against it. I wasn't being corrupted for doing something evil, I was corrupted for picking something up off the floor. I even vented to the board about it.
In the end, I sent a message to my DM. Him and I talked it out and he agreed it was a poorly set up part of the campaign. In our game I was given challenges to resist the other persona and it faded more and more every time I over came it. Through lucky rolls I was able come out of the temple without excepting any of the gifts and gained a Shield Guardian!
CoS should present you with horrors and tough choices. It shouldn't outright change your character for picking up a log.
We ran into a very similar issue when we played Strahd. My bard picked up the staff. Not to attune it or even use it, just to pick it up and bring it to the rest of the party. We play over Roll20 but it's with people we've known for 20+ years. So when the session ended there and I get sent a message about the staff's change my character I was pretty put off. Especially because there was no save against it. I wasn't being corrupted for doing something evil, I was corrupted for picked something up off the board. I even vented to the board about it.
In the end, I sent a message to my DM. Him and I talked it out and he agreed it was a poorly set up part of the campaign. In our game I was given challenges to resist the other persona and it faded more and more every time I over came it. Through lucky rolls I was able come out of the temple without excepting any of the gifts and gained a Shield Guardian!
CoS should present you with horrors and tough choices. It shouldn't outright change your character for picking up a log.
I feel like the DM has to pick up the slack, spoiler:
The staff was cursed as a dying action by a Mage, not an Archmage, just a Mage.
At this point in the game, we're just about level 9, the staff should just be a Curse requiring... something to break. Even the costs given by the Dark Powers (actual Powers in D&D) have conditions by which they can be ended listed
Basically I think it's just a "Curse" or magical condition, and either Dispel Magic or Remove Curse should work just fine, just because they forgot to put an end condition doesn't imply one doesn't exist
Our next COS session will be played together at Garycon and that should be fun
Subclass-wise, the Artillerist seems substantially more powerful than the Alchemist. The pet is tougher, the pet does more damage, the pet is more flexible, you eventually get two pets, the spell list gives you things like Shield and Fireball instead of things like Ray of Sickness and Stinking Cloud - the Alchemist just really doesn't have anything on the same power level as what the Artillerist gets.
The turret
1) Costs an action to set up
2) Has a move speed of 15 and requires a bonus action to use
3) Only lasts for 10 minutes at tops
4) requires a spell slot to resummon.
The Homculus
1) Does not cost an action to set up
2) Has a fly speed of 30 and does not require any action to move (or dodge)!
3) Lasts until its dies or is resummoned
4) can be resummoned as an action for a spell slot
5) can perform the help action as a bonus action!
Subclass-wise, the Artillerist seems substantially more powerful than the Alchemist. The pet is tougher, the pet does more damage, the pet is more flexible, you eventually get two pets, the spell list gives you things like Shield and Fireball instead of things like Ray of Sickness and Stinking Cloud - the Alchemist just really doesn't have anything on the same power level as what the Artillerist gets.
The turret
1) Costs an action to set up
2) Has a move speed of 15 and requires a bonus action to use
3) Only lasts for 10 minutes at tops
4) requires a spell slot to resummon.
The Homculus
1) Does not cost an action to set up
2) Has a fly speed of 30 and does not require any action to move (or dodge)!
3) Lasts until its dies or is resummoned
4) can be resummoned as an action for a spell slot
5) can perform the help action as a bonus action!
Eh. The Homunculus also costs a bonus action if you want it to do anything other than take the Dodge action (which, on reflection, I guess is why its AC is 13 while the turret is 18 - hitting 13 AC with disadvantage is usually about the same as hitting 18 AC without it). It can take the help action, but only by also eating your bonus action - a worse trade than making an attack with it if you're just using the Help action to get advantage on an attack, which is gonna be the most common scenario where Help from a minion matters (since otherwise you could just get Help from a party member). And even if you really wanted the help action out of your minion instead of just an extra gun, you could get that cheaper with a familiar from a wizard dip or feat or whatever than by taking the bad spec for your main class.
Also, its attacks are less accurate and deal less damage (at least until close to the level at which the Artillerist gets a second turret anyway), the turret doesn't really care about the slower move speed because it has much longer range. Both pets can be resummoned as an action for a spell slot, and neither is too likely to die in the first place because they'll have almost as much AC as you do.
The turret takes an action to set up, but that really only matters if you go into a fight you weren't expecting, otherwise its duration is more than long enough for you to set it up before the fight starts.
The only real advantage the homunculus has is that you can fight->short rest->fight and still have it up without spending a spell slot, and that's really not enough to offset all the other ways in which the turret is better, before even getting into the other subclass features and spells.
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now.
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
Our barbarian was the one to pick up the staff, but he is self aware he can't do anything with it (weapon he had before is better) and have it to a wizard. He picked it up because he was the first to the scene and picks up everything lol.
I would assume high level magic (like say wish, or maybe something there Abbot can do for another favor) can deal with failed charisma save consequences.
You get one combo wrong. You can only make one piece of +x armor/shield because you can only know the infusion once and can only invest with it once, the reason you can hand out 3 +1 weapons is because of enhanced weapon , radiant weapon, and returning weapon. I think, "oh also i bring magic items" is perfectly on point for the class and this is starting to hit a mechanical way they can build stuff for themselves and their party that doesn't have as much a chance to be permanently stolen from them. I think they should actually be able to make more magic items at a time and that we can probably expand some of the selection as well.
I like arcane weapon conceptually, it's totally hunters mark/hex by any other name but it's an interesting take on the idea of "my attacks do extra damage", and one that doesn't eat your bonus action to switch around which keeps it open for the pet. Unfortunately unlike hex your +1d6 dmg ability doesnt affect spells. You do have some jazzed up cantrips from your sub class (int mod to damage), but unfortunately they don't get jazzed up until 6th freakin level so you can't build with those jazzed up cantrips in mind. A warlock with hex can have both +cha and +1d6 by 2nd level with eldritch bolt and then it multiplies the d6 its adding as you level. Honestly I think there's a couple of ways you could change arcane weapon that would be interesting deviations from the other +1d6 damage spells. 1 make it so I can put it on other people's weapons, 2 make it scale by number of weapons it can enhance rather than hours of concentration (especially considering half my shit is concentration breaking so holding arcane weapon all day is basically impossible).
The one aspect of the pets I do like is the idea of "I have a thing I built/engineered that I control as a bonus action and partially power with my spells." I think there's ways to leverage that core idea with stuff that isn't necessarily pets, but also if we're gonna do pets with it, make that a focus of the sub class like the turrets are for the artillery guy.
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now.
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
Our barbarian was the one to pick up the staff, but he is self aware he can't do anything with it (weapon he had before is better) and have it to a wizard. He picked it up because he was the first to the scene and picks up everything lol.
I would assume high level magic (like say wish, or maybe something there Abbot can do for another favor) can deal with failed charisma save consequences.
the failed charisma checks can be undone with Wish or Divine Intervention from a Cleric
Or, since XTGE was written later, hilariously, the Ceremony spell
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
In the campaign I'm currently in, only the DM and myself have DnD experience, and while the other three players are longtime friends, they are new to DnD. So I deliberately made a wacky character that wasn't necessarily focused on leveraging the class for maximum effect, since everyone else was cutting their teeth on DnD.
Fast forward a year, and my DM has intimated my character is not long for this world. The other players, who know me well outside of DnD, asked for me to make a Try Hard character, to see the DM's reaction, since my three friends have a pretty good read on both my and the DM's personalities. So I gleefully did a bunch of research on 5e multiclassing, and concocted a fairly cheesy Divine Soul Sorcerer/Hexblade. I had so much fun reading up on all the stuff that has come out in the last few years (I'd been only using the Core 3 books), and now cannot wait for my first PC to bite the bullet and be succeeded by this monstrosity. The two characters are even narratively linked!
I showed my successor character to my DM to review on roll20, and he immediately calls me to yell "You made a Try Hard character!" I guess mission success, other players? I laughed that my player friends and DM friend both ended up using the same way of describing the character.
That said, about the character: I built this character for a few reasons. I've been having a lot of fun with my current Great Old One Warlock, so I wanted to find another build of Warlock. I initially thought of a Fiend Warlock for fire blasting power, but a friend of mine in a different DnD group told me about Hexblade, and how it's apparently all the rage these days, both to play and multiclass with. I also wanted to be able to at least cover Healing Word, since my current group is Rogue, Barbarian and Divine Soul Sorcerer, but the player piloting the Sorcerer only has Cure Wounds, so we've had multiple characters die, only to recover for plot reasons/being force fed potions. A little googling found the Divine Soul/Hexblade is a very common and somewhat maligned combo, but I had faith I could be reasonable about it.
For this campaign, Divine Soul mainly gives me access to the cleric spell list (which is huge), a bonus spell known that must be a cleric spell, and a one use luck manipulation on a short rest. Also regular Sorcerer things, including eating Warlock slots to make Sorcery points (which is probably the most OP part of the combo).
In this context, I don't think I'm leveraging the Hexblade for everything that's good about it. Medium Armor and Shields for free is a nice AC boost (sitting at 18, up from 16 on my current single class Warlock). Martial weapons with CHA as my attack stat still probably won't be used over multiple beam Eldritch Blast, since there's no way to attack multiple times with a weapon as a Level 3 Warlock. I didn't look into Invocations much past Agonizing Strike, Repelling Blast, and Devil's Sight, which are the ones I'm currently enjoying on my Warlock, so there
may be ones out there in supplemental material I didn't think to consider. Plus the namesake Hexblade Curse, for extra damage on one target per short rest.
It still seems pretty strong at Eldritch Blasting things, but able to flexibly buff and Healing Word downed characters.
What's the best spell in 5E for taking out an army?
Tsunami takes one minute to cast, but it creates a 300 ft wide wave that deals tons of bludgeoning damage (and even more cold damage to creatures with water susceptibility) and moves 50 feet each round. Plus nothing in the spell says it has to be cast on solid ground or a body of water, so you could create a flying tsunami to decimate a flying army.
Meteor Swarm has a 1 mile range and drops four 80ft diameter rocks that do 20d6 fire and 20d6 bludgeoning damage each (No overlap). You've just got to spot the command tent, cast your spell then go home for breakfast.
I just looked it up: an 80ft diameter meteor packs 1 megaton of energy. That's 50 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That should probably work on an army.
Meteor swarm is pretty good but for a whole army storm of vengeance is stronger. Meteor swarm has a range of one mile and a sq footage of 20k. Pretty great. It does probably kill everything in there but that is kinda small in area.
Storm of Vengeance?
Range = sight. (Earth sized planet about 3 miles on the ground... but you could be elevated increasing its range)(technically the storm originates at a point you can see so you can cast this beyond visual range of the army since it hits everything up to 5,000 feet below it)
Radius = 360 feet -> 400,000 sq feet. Next closes spell is Tsunami which hits 90k sq ft.
On round 1 everyone in the storm takes a con save for 2d6 damage and deafened for 5 minutes. If the army is weakish this probably kills 50% of them. A majority of the commanders cannot receive orders or communicate except through flags. Issuing orders locally is almost impossible
On round 2 each creature takes 1d6 acid, no save. This kills another 25%.
On round 3 you may lightning bolt 6 creatures in the storm for 10d6.
On round 4 the storm does 2d6 bludgeoning. At this point everything that isnt higher level is dead.
On round 5-10 each creature takes 1d6 cold damage. The area is difficult terrain and heavily obscured. The entire army is now effectively deaf, blind, and immobile. Spellcasters must make concentration checks to cast and maintain spells. Ranged weapon attacks are impossible.
If the army contains one soldier every 5 feet then Storm of Vengeance can hit 16,000 soldiers or so.
But Tsunami (which does need to be cast on the ground, its a wall with a height) is probably second best with a covered area of 90,000 sq ft. Major downside is that it requires a full minute to cast. Major upside? Also has a range of sight.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
But Tsunami (which does need to be cast on the ground, its a wall with a height)...
Looking at the PHB and Xanathar's, the various "Wall of x" spells all have some specification for where they can appear.
Wall of Fire: "You create a wall of fire on a solid surface..."
Wall of Force: "It can be free floating or resting on a solid surface."
Wall of Ice: "You create a wall of ice on a solid surface..."
Wall of Light: "It can be free floating, or it can rest on a solid surface."
Wall of Sand: "You create a wall of swirling sand on the ground..."
Wall of Stone: "The wall doesn't need to be vertical or rest on any firm foundation. It must, however, merge with and be solidly supported by existing stone."
Wall of Thorns: "The wall appears within range on a solid surface..."
Wall of Water: "You create a wall of water on the ground..."
Wind Wall: "A wall of strong wind rises from the ground..."
Tsunami states "a wall of water springs into existence at a point you choose within range." The description of the spell does not specifically state that it must be on the ground, but neither does it specify that it can be free floating.
The spell's description does specifically use the phrase "wall of water", like the spell, so it could mean to treat Tsunami like a giant Wall of Water spell and that it therefore needs to be on the ground. However, Wall of Water creates a wall that is "up to 30 feet long, 10 feet high, and 1 foot thick", whereas Tsunami creates wall that is "up to 300 feet long, 300 feet high, and 50 feet thick". Looking at in terms of 5 foot squares, a Wall of Water would be six spaces long, whereas the Tsunami would be sixty spaces long. Plus, the Tsunami can also move, whereas the Wall of Water is immobile.
Regarding Wall of Water, further into the spell description it states that "spells that deal cold damage...cause the area of the wall they pass through to freeze solid...reducing a frozen section to 0 hit points destroys it...when a section is destroyed, the wall's water doesn't fill it." Therefore, although the Wall of Water must be generated on solid ground, one could hypothetically freeze all the ground sections and destroy them, leaving a floating Wall of Water (Wall of Stone, in contrast, specifies that "reducing a panel to 0 hit points destroys it and might cause connected panels to collapse at the DM's discretion").
My guess, then, is that Tsunami doesn't specify that the generated wall must be on the ground because its length is such that it can be difficult to ensure that all sixty of the spaces that its base occupies will be level, especially as it moves. Further, we also have proof from Wall of Water, a third-level spell, that sections of the conjured water can float in midair, so it could be that the eighth-level Tsunami is an improvement upon Wall of Water designed to not require solid ground for its generation. There also exists the fourth-level spell Watery Sphere, which allows the generated water to either touch the ground or hover up to ten feet above the ground.
Edit: There's also the further question of how Tsunami works if it hits large objects, like boulders or buildings. Does it pass through them without any sections of the wall being lost, does it lose sections blocked by them, does the entire wall stop against them like a single solid mass, etc? Basically, does it act like a huge tidal wave or as a solid wall?
I attempted to do a (very loose) conversion of a 4E Wizard power called Soul Puppets. The idea here is that it's a low-level necromancy spell for wizards who don't yet have Animate Dead. In terms of mechanics, it's basically Danse Macabre except you seize control of already existing Skeletons and Zombies, and only for a max of one minute...at which point the Skeletons and Zombies become hostile.
Soul Puppets
2nd-level Necromancy
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Choose up to five Skeletons or Zombies you can see within range. You can use your bonus action to mentally command the creatures, issuing the same command to all of them. A creature must be within 60 feet to receive the command. You decide what action the creatures will talke, such as to attack a creature or guard a room. If you issue no commands the creatures do nothing except defend themselves. Once the spell ends the creatures become hostile to you.
At Higher Levels: One additional Skeleton or Zombie per slot level above 2nd.
I don't know how good this spell would be normally, but my campaign has a lot of undead milling about, and I thought my wizard player might appreciate it. Alternatively I could just make a magic item with this effect, I guess.
I tried running a complex trap in my D&D session today, one that was basically a reskin of the first example from Xanathar's. My players mostly acted like they didn't know what to do, so one just pulled out his Ring of the Ram that he'd never used before to bust down a wall so they could leave.
My "Dad's Group" game (I need a better name) has another session this Friday and, depending on how much tomfoolery goes on, I think we're going to finish LMoP. Yay! Now to really figure out what to do next...
Immediately though, one of the players wants to run a one shot afterwards and asked me to make a character. So I've been tooling around and I've made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! Or Oogway from Kung Fu Panda, if that reference suits you better. Picasso the 5th level Tortle Open Hand Monk! Relatively low DEX and a STR of 19. Kinda miss out on Unarmored Defense at higher...but he has a shell, ffs, that gives AC17! Also maybe missing out on better chances for deflecting missiles, but meh. I'll live with it for a one shot character.
I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.
Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.
I disagree, my goal is to free myself and as many people as possible from barovia, turning evil means I now have to make a new character, one who's presumably a murder hobo serving the dark powers completely. You're thinking of the staff, which I already picked up, which forces me to pursue power at all costs. - which is why I was forced to accept several dark gifts already and if I wasn't a divination wizard I'd be fucked
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now.
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
Our barbarian was the one to pick up the staff, but he is self aware he can't do anything with it (weapon he had before is better) and have it to a wizard. He picked it up because he was the first to the scene and picks up everything lol.
I would assume high level magic (like say wish, or maybe something there Abbot can do for another favor) can deal with failed charisma save consequences.
the failed charisma checks can be undone with Wish or Divine Intervention from a Cleric
Or, since XTGE was written later, hilariously, the Ceremony spell
I picked up that stupid staff (it was actually handed to me by Vilnius) and I hate it! My character is a magic-item hoarding asshole now. As a player it really sucks to become completely greedy.
I think one of the big hangups that articifers are going to run into every time, no matter what, is that they're a crafting class in a game with all but nonexistent crafting rules. It's a weird spellcaster, not a crafter of any sort. And I want a crafter.
It's a class that depends on flavor in the extreme.
/snip
Okay I wanna talk about this more.
The flavor thing is a problem. Lets say a player goes alchemist. They flavorfully mix two potions together and throw it, giving them chemical reaction just enough time to work and a fireball erupts where the vial hit. Can that be counterspelled? Its two potions mixing, not "direct" magic.
Also, the turret currently counts as an object, not a construct. So theres a lot of buffing effects that won't do anything to it, making it scale even worse than I first thought. Although, since basically every offensive spell in the book says it only affects creatures, which an object emphatically is not, they could be decently effective mage killers.
The class is running headlong into a lot of design issues the game has and I don't like it.
I think one of the big hangups that articifers are going to run into every time, no matter what, is that they're a crafting class in a game with all but nonexistent crafting rules. It's a weird spellcaster, not a crafter of any sort. And I want a crafter.
It's a class that depends on flavor in the extreme.
/snip
Okay I wanna talk about this more.
The flavor thing is a problem. Lets say a player goes alchemist. They flavorfully mix two potions together and throw it, giving them chemical reaction just enough time to work and a fireball erupts where the vial hit. Can that be counterspelled? Its two potions mixing, not "direct" magic.
Also, the turret currently counts as an object, not a construct. So theres a lot of buffing effects that won't do anything to it, making it scale even worse than I first thought. Although, since basically every offensive spell in the book says it only affects creatures, which an object emphatically is not, they could be decently effective mage killers.
The class is running headlong into a lot of design issues the game has and I don't like it.
It is not purely chemical it is explicitly still magic. It can definitely be counterspelled. The idea is that you are in fact producing the exact same magical spell effect, you just do it a different way than a wizard or sorcerer or warlock does. It's literally just the flavor front end which should be different in all 4 of these cases. The artificer just uses a bit of technology to hack the universe rather than having it born in like a sorcerer, or getting the ability from an otherworldly patron like a warlock, or by memorizing mnemonics to complete rituals on the fly like a wizard.
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Lookin' good. I especially like the flavor of the spell list and the feature that lets you swap out a cantrip at a rest like you're a wizard in D&D Online.
This thing's definitely got the right feel to it. It's running around as more of a skill box class with some cool magical tricks it builds, with a heavy focus on just having magic items.
However the actual mechanics are a bit of a mess.
Right off the bat, it's casting feels like its just on the wrong side of limited, especially for what those spells do and how many youd likely be using in combat, and how they should be working flavor wise I think they could be on a warlock casting progression with the slight twist of having to prepare on short rest (literally them building the doohickey that produces the spell) probably a more limited number of spells prepared in that case, pretty much makes them the "give me an hour, i can build something that'll help us with what we're doing" archetype.
As well I think they are really onto something with investitures. Just "yeah i always have a magic sword, I'm the guy that makes magic swords". However i think they could do a few things. One increase ther number of them you get.
Two move the second teir down to 8 and have 4 teirs (base, 8, 12, 16), three expand the replicable magic items table to include interesting magic weapons and armor. Not even necessarily climbing the bonus track or anything but like the various magic shields that do interesting and beneficial things that aren't growing your AC.
The sub classes feel a bit of a mess. I think you could take the 6th level feature for both archetypes and put them as the second 3rd level feature next to the spell casting and proficiency gains no problem (as well the wand should hold int mod cantrips from any list from the jump so it keeps pace with the alchemist bonus which amplifies cure spells). Just eliminate the third level feature for both and make them spells the subclas gets. Find familiar with a homunculus sidebar and monster entry would better cover the alchemical homunculus better, and you could have a conjure turret spell and a bunch of turret entries. Make the 6th level feature more skill box engaging. An expertise like feature for their crafting skills seems the very least to be done.
I think they have the ideas here they just executed them poorly.
It's a class that depends on flavor in the extreme.
It's likely not going to expand the lacking crafting rules much beyond what already exists (unfortunately) so it depends more on makin sure that the way you recharge your abilities is you crafting things. Like when a wizard prepares spells they read from a book. When the artificer prepares spells, they break out their alchemist supplies and mix up a few ingredients so they are prepared and can finish off the process by dumping in water and swirling it about to make a quick and dirty haste potion to drink on the battlefield. The thing would never keep so you definitely gotta drop and go like a jaggerbomb but it'll get it done out there in a pinch.
It's why I wish they recharged more things on short rest. So that every time the party sets down to rest the artificer pulls out their tools and sets to work fixing or preparing something.
I also think they should see even more reduced crafting times/costs in their subclass crafting focus. The alchemist can make 1 2d4+2 basic healing potion in 6 hours for 6 gold in materials (if you use Xanathars)... they should be able to do more than 1 a night on the adventure and for even less. Like that's the major thing is that in some adventures you don't get much downtime, so normal crafting can't happen even when reduced to a quarter of the time and cost.
The investitures are a moderate way around that problem, but again you've gotta be flavoring it correctly. It shouldn't be that at the end of a long rest you just touch the item and boom magic, it should be that you spend the long rest making the necessary changes to the mundane item to turn it into the magic item. So you don't just grab any sword in the morning, you gotta spend the night inscribing the sword with arcane runes, or dousing it in a series of magical ugents and liquids to invest it with some magic or something like that.
Like i said there's a lot of good ideas in this version, they just didn't quite stick the landing.
It worked okay in some previous editions.
Well, sorta. Okay translates as "entirely broke the PC loot economy" and "was an unremarkable leader" respectively. I think it is solid conceptual space but hard to nail down in a more simulation-y D&D ruleset. It begs for something like the Blades "Flashback" mechanic where you prepared the perfect tool for the job because you're an awesome crafty/planny person.
When you describe how you're using your tools to cast the spell it should almost always include some flashback to the few minutes you spent preparing each spell.
It feels really bad, not like "cosmic dread' bad, but facing someone in a collectible card game who top decked lethal. I'd rather strahd just kill us and that be the end of the campaign than be forced to roleplay a horrible person. Since I HAVE to seek power at any cost, if I'm evil, that means I just bide my time until I can TPK the party and take all their stuff. Presumably immediately after we beat strahd, which will just hurt a lot of IRL relationships because they want to keep playing after COS - so I'll just tell the DM at the appointed time I've deleted my character and she's an NPC now.
I want to avoid all of that unpleasantness, I've done so by just either bullshitting a reason why we need to rest so I can get favorable portents, or just keep my mouth shut when entering a new room while the evil bard scoops up every single dark gift (only can be given out once in this game). I've been legitimately, IRL, stressed over the impending lack of agency that I knew would come with this part of the campaign because as a wizard- you will touch the staff, you will get the flaw that you MUST seek power, and you WILL fail a save against the dark gifts. I've done everything I can to avoid that and so far it's worked, and there's only one left.
The closest was that I had to say yes to the vampire gift but the party pointed out that wereravens cant become vampires so I didnt have to become one
So, as it stands, I see three ways for you to deal with this.
1. Retire the character, reroll. That's also known as the "bad" option.
2. Reconsider what "power" and "evil" means. In my head, "good and evil" map way more closely to "selfless and selfish". So, you're selfishly trying to get people out of Barovia. Maybe that means that you start to consider who really deserves to leave. Barovia is full of terrible people, why do they all deserve to get out? How do you take the "right" ones out? Likewise, "power" can mean a lot of things. You need power to get people out, so taking on more power is going to help there. Plus, it means you can better weed out the unworthy. Maybe just organizing a mass of people looking to leave gives you the kind of power you're seeking.
3. Talk to the DM about lifting the curse(s). There's any number of ways that are Barovia appropriate that would get a curse off of you.
Good luck, sorry there's that one, giant, shittily designed part of what's otherwise a pretty solid module. It upsets the vast majority of people who run into it, they should have done it way, way, way, way better.
The power thing from the staff isn't a curse, and cannot be removed by any means, to my knowledge
It's like a fragment of an earlier edition of D&D and I can smell the worst parts of Chris Perkins' DM style all over it
I think Ill be fine because iirc the last room doesn't contain any gifts that would be direct power upgrades, ill probably take the reincarnate one? But I have on portent thats an 11 which should be good enough. I've managed to avoid the pitfalls of this place pretty well so far... except the bard has scooped up a half dozen dark gifts and is a walking ball of murderhobo godhood at this point
Also yeah mechanical alignment is pretty bad almost every time it shows up.
Yes but it's supposed to happen from evens and temptations not from "you rolled a 9 instead of a 10" on one roll. Just telling someone "you are evil now" is not satisfying, and doesn't feel good.
On the other hand, my character murdered a guard, because we found our cleric strung up in town, butchered. My character ran over to her swinging, disemboweled body and started trying to cut her down and a guard stopped me and told me to move along. He wouldn't let me by, I warned him, and another guard jabbed me in the back with a spear shaft to make their point. I said "who the fuck do you think you are", and told the DM that I activate my aasimar racial and shocking grasped his face, obliterating him with ... necrotic energy, and not radiant? The DM pointed out that I realized my ethereal wings were black and skeletal, not luminous and white, and I just grabbed the dead cleric and dimension doored away, the party meanwhile killed the burgermeister and shit fell apart throughout the whole town
She told me the wings returned to the expected color when my character calmed down, and that this wasn't the body of our cleric, it was glamoured to look that way... when it faded, it was the mutilated body of the Druid that I had spared and convinced that Strahd was the enemy of this land, not their savior (with a heckin chonker of a persuasion roll). Strahd himself showed up to taunt me and I activated the holy symbol of ravenkind, counterspelled whatever he was casting, and threw a fistfull of scorching rays at him and he misted out, leaving a pile of wolves that ignored me and ripped apart the remains of the druid
THAT is the good shit, not "you rolled bad so you're evil now"
Edit: I need to stop worrying, our new DM is fucking great and I should trust how she'll handle it, whatever happens.
I don't like the fact that they're all pet classes...
They seem to be a hybrid attack type class(two attacks with a magical weapon and a new spell that gives them bonus to damage when they hit) but don't have access to martial weapons. The two martial weapons they do have access to don't let you attack more than once per action.
Their secondary progression is heavily tied to intelligence modifier but again they look to be a hybrid attack type class.
You then get bonuses to cantrips equal to your intelligence modifier because we wanted to split this class even more.
The way i read it if you're combat focused then your secondary characteristics are kind of meh. And your attack is OK unless you wait a long time and spend infusions on stat boosting items.
The infusions are really strong (especially getting magic weapons without having to attune) but the replicable magic items table is... well limiting. If you chose a lantern of revealing as an example, and then get other ways to detect invisibility then you're stuck.
This isn't so bad but the way i see magic items your infusion list looks like "Magic Weapon", "Magic Armor", "6 different replicable magic items". Maybe you take radiant instead of enhanced (but this costs you an effective higher level replicable magic item because infusions do not appear to be replaceable). The other problem is that all of a sudden at level 20 you want to attune to all of the magic items... but if you were picking "for today" you're probably a mix of attunable and not.
If i were to make any one change it would be trading the "2 attacks" to "One per turn when you hit with a weapon attack you may channel a cantrip into that attack"
If i were to make two i would another sub class that didn't have a pet mechanic.
edit: Additionally there is a LOT of knowledge and choice overhead in this class about design because you're pretty well stuck with the items you choose and this means a lot of "which ones do i really want". It happens less so for sorcerers and spells because spells are things you use and not really features you have. These are more like innate abilities.
Although the other pretty damn good option is the spear with the Returning Weapon infusion
Where to begin? I guess first of all:
I'm pretty sure everyone still gets to collect their money on this - the fact that Crawford posted this to twitter on a Thursday night on Feb 28th, alongside the fact that this is the only way to access it because the article itself still isn't actually on the website if you look for the unearthed arcana articles directly, suggests to me that he saw a bunch of posts like Sleep's and went 'oh shit, I guess I need to crank this out and get it posted right now so it'll be technically on time, which is the best kind of on time.'
As for the class itself:
Hey, a new spell! Stop me if you've heard this one before, you guys: It's a first-level spell, bonus action cast time, has a 1 hour duration, requires concentration, is only available to one class, upleveling it increases the duration up to 8 hours, and its function is to cause you to deal 1d6 extra damage each time you hit an enemy. That's right, I'm talking about hex hunter's mark arcane weapon! Behold, exciting new class features for an exciting new class!
It's weird that they prep spells like a divine caster in spite of being an arcane caster; I suppose it's intended to represent their flexibility, but this seems like a pretty uninteresting way to do that. Their spell list looks like a weird wizard/cleric/druid hodgepodge at first, but on a second look it seems like the defining feature is that they mostly get spells that enchant/alter/buff their allies, and don't get a lot of stuff to cast on enemies - presumably they're supposed to be dealing their damage with weapon attacks + not-hex and the turret.
Item infusions seem like they're probably too good in all but the most magic-flush campaigns. Having 3 or 4 magic weapons/armor to hand out at-will and on-the-fly to whoever needs them will fill a lot of gaps in the party, and a 12th-level artificer being able to unilaterally give +2 armor and a +2 shield to the same guy (or two guys!) is probably above the intended power curve.
"you can attack twice when you take the attack action but one of the attacks must be made with a magic weapon" on a class that can make its own magic weapons is a silly ribbon to add to Extra Attack that doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose except to give the DM a way to go 'gotcha! I engineered a situation where you lost your infused weapon and now you suck!'. Takes on the artificer always seem to be rife with this sort of thing - needless complexity which serves no real purpose but to try (and often fail) to impart some sort of flavor to the class. I suspect that's related to the point someone else already made above - artificer is a crafting class in a game without crafting rules, so it ends up weighed down with a bunch of dumb fiddly shit aimed at trying to make it 'feel' like it's crafting things when it isn't.
The class is clearly int-primary, and is so heavily rewarded for having a good int mod that its mandatory for an artificer to start with 16 int and pump it to 20 just like any other class's primary stat - but it also gets extra attack and hunter's mark arcane weapon and clearly needs to attack for its damage, and it doesn't get anything that lets it attack with its int mod. Result: It's going to be bad at fighting, which you may recall is what you spend a lot of your time in DnD doing. It seems like the pet is probably supposed to fill the gap by giving them a bonus-action attack, but A)other classes can already bonus-action attack and attack with their actual primary stat and B)if you want it to be a pet class, why give it extra attack? give the pet extra attack, or make its attacks better, or let the pet attack as part of the artificers attack action instead of locking up his bonus action every turn. The class is unsatisfying because it's all over the place - it's kind of a spellcaster, but only gets half progression and doesn't get attack spells, it's kind of a buffbot but it needs to spend buffs on itself to keep its own class features online, it's kind of a melee/ranged shooty guy but it's going to miss a lot because its attack bonus is going to be 2-3 points too low, it's kind of a pet class but the pet uses up the master's action economy and doesn't have enough punch to be satisfying because if it did it'd be too good with the extra attack feature the class gets for no reason. Pick a lane.
The pets at least don't have the problem of being so squishy that they'll get picked off in a fight; they're as beefy as the caster himself - but only under certain conditions. First off, on the unnecessary complexity front, why is the turret so much tougher than the homunculus? One has AC 13 and hp equal to (artificer level*5)+INT mod while the other has AC 18 and HP equal to (artificer level *5). Why the wildly different AC? For that matter, why the different HP calculation? If the turret is supposed to be tougher, why does the homunculus get the extra INT mod HP? Is that even enough HP to matter in a practical sense, especially compared to the huge AC gap? Your guiding design principle is supposed to be about simplifying the game and yet it's like the guy who designed the homunculus and the guy who designed the turret didn't talk to each other. Secondly, artificers seem pretty reliant on these pets for their combat effectiveness, but the pet HP only scales on artificer level, not character level, which penalizes multiclass builds for Artificers pretty heavily.
Subclass-wise, the Artillerist seems substantially more powerful than the Alchemist. The pet is tougher, the pet does more damage, the pet is more flexible, you eventually get two pets, the spell list gives you things like Shield and Fireball instead of things like Ray of Sickness and Stinking Cloud - the Alchemist just really doesn't have anything on the same power level as what the Artillerist gets.
Overall it still seems pretty sloppily designed and unsatisfying, and like a lot of their recent material seems at odds with the supposed simplicity-based design ethos of 5e as a system; that homebrew artificer from a while back that gets to build an Iron Man suit or a custom gun remains both more fun, more interesting, more focused, and more professionally-designed than any version of the class WotC has been able to put out.
In the end, I sent a message to my DM. Him and I talked it out and he agreed it was a poorly set up part of the campaign. In our game I was given challenges to resist the other persona and it faded more and more every time I over came it. Through lucky rolls I was able come out of the temple without excepting any of the gifts and gained a Shield Guardian!
CoS should present you with horrors and tough choices. It shouldn't outright change your character for picking up a log.
Comics, Games, Booze
I feel like the DM has to pick up the slack, spoiler:
At this point in the game, we're just about level 9, the staff should just be a Curse requiring... something to break. Even the costs given by the Dark Powers (actual Powers in D&D) have conditions by which they can be ended listed
Basically I think it's just a "Curse" or magical condition, and either Dispel Magic or Remove Curse should work just fine, just because they forgot to put an end condition doesn't imply one doesn't exist
Our next COS session will be played together at Garycon and that should be fun
The turret
1) Costs an action to set up
2) Has a move speed of 15 and requires a bonus action to use
3) Only lasts for 10 minutes at tops
4) requires a spell slot to resummon.
The Homculus
1) Does not cost an action to set up
2) Has a fly speed of 30 and does not require any action to move (or dodge)!
3) Lasts until its dies or is resummoned
4) can be resummoned as an action for a spell slot
5) can perform the help action as a bonus action!
Eh. The Homunculus also costs a bonus action if you want it to do anything other than take the Dodge action (which, on reflection, I guess is why its AC is 13 while the turret is 18 - hitting 13 AC with disadvantage is usually about the same as hitting 18 AC without it). It can take the help action, but only by also eating your bonus action - a worse trade than making an attack with it if you're just using the Help action to get advantage on an attack, which is gonna be the most common scenario where Help from a minion matters (since otherwise you could just get Help from a party member). And even if you really wanted the help action out of your minion instead of just an extra gun, you could get that cheaper with a familiar from a wizard dip or feat or whatever than by taking the bad spec for your main class.
Also, its attacks are less accurate and deal less damage (at least until close to the level at which the Artillerist gets a second turret anyway), the turret doesn't really care about the slower move speed because it has much longer range. Both pets can be resummoned as an action for a spell slot, and neither is too likely to die in the first place because they'll have almost as much AC as you do.
The turret takes an action to set up, but that really only matters if you go into a fight you weren't expecting, otherwise its duration is more than long enough for you to set it up before the fight starts.
The only real advantage the homunculus has is that you can fight->short rest->fight and still have it up without spending a spell slot, and that's really not enough to offset all the other ways in which the turret is better, before even getting into the other subclass features and spells.
Our barbarian was the one to pick up the staff, but he is self aware he can't do anything with it (weapon he had before is better) and have it to a wizard. He picked it up because he was the first to the scene and picks up everything lol.
I would assume high level magic (like say wish, or maybe something there Abbot can do for another favor) can deal with failed charisma save consequences.
I like arcane weapon conceptually, it's totally hunters mark/hex by any other name but it's an interesting take on the idea of "my attacks do extra damage", and one that doesn't eat your bonus action to switch around which keeps it open for the pet. Unfortunately unlike hex your +1d6 dmg ability doesnt affect spells. You do have some jazzed up cantrips from your sub class (int mod to damage), but unfortunately they don't get jazzed up until 6th freakin level so you can't build with those jazzed up cantrips in mind. A warlock with hex can have both +cha and +1d6 by 2nd level with eldritch bolt and then it multiplies the d6 its adding as you level. Honestly I think there's a couple of ways you could change arcane weapon that would be interesting deviations from the other +1d6 damage spells. 1 make it so I can put it on other people's weapons, 2 make it scale by number of weapons it can enhance rather than hours of concentration (especially considering half my shit is concentration breaking so holding arcane weapon all day is basically impossible).
The one aspect of the pets I do like is the idea of "I have a thing I built/engineered that I control as a bonus action and partially power with my spells." I think there's ways to leverage that core idea with stuff that isn't necessarily pets, but also if we're gonna do pets with it, make that a focus of the sub class like the turrets are for the artillery guy.
the failed charisma checks can be undone with Wish or Divine Intervention from a Cleric
Or, since XTGE was written later, hilariously, the Ceremony spell
Fast forward a year, and my DM has intimated my character is not long for this world. The other players, who know me well outside of DnD, asked for me to make a Try Hard character, to see the DM's reaction, since my three friends have a pretty good read on both my and the DM's personalities. So I gleefully did a bunch of research on 5e multiclassing, and concocted a fairly cheesy Divine Soul Sorcerer/Hexblade. I had so much fun reading up on all the stuff that has come out in the last few years (I'd been only using the Core 3 books), and now cannot wait for my first PC to bite the bullet and be succeeded by this monstrosity. The two characters are even narratively linked!
I showed my successor character to my DM to review on roll20, and he immediately calls me to yell "You made a Try Hard character!" I guess mission success, other players? I laughed that my player friends and DM friend both ended up using the same way of describing the character.
That said, about the character: I built this character for a few reasons. I've been having a lot of fun with my current Great Old One Warlock, so I wanted to find another build of Warlock. I initially thought of a Fiend Warlock for fire blasting power, but a friend of mine in a different DnD group told me about Hexblade, and how it's apparently all the rage these days, both to play and multiclass with. I also wanted to be able to at least cover Healing Word, since my current group is Rogue, Barbarian and Divine Soul Sorcerer, but the player piloting the Sorcerer only has Cure Wounds, so we've had multiple characters die, only to recover for plot reasons/being force fed potions. A little googling found the Divine Soul/Hexblade is a very common and somewhat maligned combo, but I had faith I could be reasonable about it.
For this campaign, Divine Soul mainly gives me access to the cleric spell list (which is huge), a bonus spell known that must be a cleric spell, and a one use luck manipulation on a short rest. Also regular Sorcerer things, including eating Warlock slots to make Sorcery points (which is probably the most OP part of the combo).
In this context, I don't think I'm leveraging the Hexblade for everything that's good about it. Medium Armor and Shields for free is a nice AC boost (sitting at 18, up from 16 on my current single class Warlock). Martial weapons with CHA as my attack stat still probably won't be used over multiple beam Eldritch Blast, since there's no way to attack multiple times with a weapon as a Level 3 Warlock. I didn't look into Invocations much past Agonizing Strike, Repelling Blast, and Devil's Sight, which are the ones I'm currently enjoying on my Warlock, so there
may be ones out there in supplemental material I didn't think to consider. Plus the namesake Hexblade Curse, for extra damage on one target per short rest.
It still seems pretty strong at Eldritch Blasting things, but able to flexibly buff and Healing Word downed characters.
Too much? Just enough? Context specific?
Tsunami takes one minute to cast, but it creates a 300 ft wide wave that deals tons of bludgeoning damage (and even more cold damage to creatures with water susceptibility) and moves 50 feet each round. Plus nothing in the spell says it has to be cast on solid ground or a body of water, so you could create a flying tsunami to decimate a flying army.
Storm of Vengeance?
Range = sight. (Earth sized planet about 3 miles on the ground... but you could be elevated increasing its range)(technically the storm originates at a point you can see so you can cast this beyond visual range of the army since it hits everything up to 5,000 feet below it)
Radius = 360 feet -> 400,000 sq feet. Next closes spell is Tsunami which hits 90k sq ft.
On round 1 everyone in the storm takes a con save for 2d6 damage and deafened for 5 minutes. If the army is weakish this probably kills 50% of them. A majority of the commanders cannot receive orders or communicate except through flags. Issuing orders locally is almost impossible
On round 2 each creature takes 1d6 acid, no save. This kills another 25%.
On round 3 you may lightning bolt 6 creatures in the storm for 10d6.
On round 4 the storm does 2d6 bludgeoning. At this point everything that isnt higher level is dead.
On round 5-10 each creature takes 1d6 cold damage. The area is difficult terrain and heavily obscured. The entire army is now effectively deaf, blind, and immobile. Spellcasters must make concentration checks to cast and maintain spells. Ranged weapon attacks are impossible.
If the army contains one soldier every 5 feet then Storm of Vengeance can hit 16,000 soldiers or so.
But Tsunami (which does need to be cast on the ground, its a wall with a height) is probably second best with a covered area of 90,000 sq ft. Major downside is that it requires a full minute to cast. Major upside? Also has a range of sight.
Looking at the PHB and Xanathar's, the various "Wall of x" spells all have some specification for where they can appear.
Wall of Fire: "You create a wall of fire on a solid surface..."
Wall of Force: "It can be free floating or resting on a solid surface."
Wall of Ice: "You create a wall of ice on a solid surface..."
Wall of Light: "It can be free floating, or it can rest on a solid surface."
Wall of Sand: "You create a wall of swirling sand on the ground..."
Wall of Stone: "The wall doesn't need to be vertical or rest on any firm foundation. It must, however, merge with and be solidly supported by existing stone."
Wall of Thorns: "The wall appears within range on a solid surface..."
Wall of Water: "You create a wall of water on the ground..."
Wind Wall: "A wall of strong wind rises from the ground..."
Tsunami states "a wall of water springs into existence at a point you choose within range." The description of the spell does not specifically state that it must be on the ground, but neither does it specify that it can be free floating.
The spell's description does specifically use the phrase "wall of water", like the spell, so it could mean to treat Tsunami like a giant Wall of Water spell and that it therefore needs to be on the ground. However, Wall of Water creates a wall that is "up to 30 feet long, 10 feet high, and 1 foot thick", whereas Tsunami creates wall that is "up to 300 feet long, 300 feet high, and 50 feet thick". Looking at in terms of 5 foot squares, a Wall of Water would be six spaces long, whereas the Tsunami would be sixty spaces long. Plus, the Tsunami can also move, whereas the Wall of Water is immobile.
Regarding Wall of Water, further into the spell description it states that "spells that deal cold damage...cause the area of the wall they pass through to freeze solid...reducing a frozen section to 0 hit points destroys it...when a section is destroyed, the wall's water doesn't fill it." Therefore, although the Wall of Water must be generated on solid ground, one could hypothetically freeze all the ground sections and destroy them, leaving a floating Wall of Water (Wall of Stone, in contrast, specifies that "reducing a panel to 0 hit points destroys it and might cause connected panels to collapse at the DM's discretion").
My guess, then, is that Tsunami doesn't specify that the generated wall must be on the ground because its length is such that it can be difficult to ensure that all sixty of the spaces that its base occupies will be level, especially as it moves. Further, we also have proof from Wall of Water, a third-level spell, that sections of the conjured water can float in midair, so it could be that the eighth-level Tsunami is an improvement upon Wall of Water designed to not require solid ground for its generation. There also exists the fourth-level spell Watery Sphere, which allows the generated water to either touch the ground or hover up to ten feet above the ground.
Edit: There's also the further question of how Tsunami works if it hits large objects, like boulders or buildings. Does it pass through them without any sections of the wall being lost, does it lose sections blocked by them, does the entire wall stop against them like a single solid mass, etc? Basically, does it act like a huge tidal wave or as a solid wall?
Soul Puppets
2nd-level Necromancy
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Choose up to five Skeletons or Zombies you can see within range. You can use your bonus action to mentally command the creatures, issuing the same command to all of them. A creature must be within 60 feet to receive the command. You decide what action the creatures will talke, such as to attack a creature or guard a room. If you issue no commands the creatures do nothing except defend themselves. Once the spell ends the creatures become hostile to you.
At Higher Levels: One additional Skeleton or Zombie per slot level above 2nd.
I don't know how good this spell would be normally, but my campaign has a lot of undead milling about, and I thought my wizard player might appreciate it. Alternatively I could just make a magic item with this effect, I guess.
Immediately though, one of the players wants to run a one shot afterwards and asked me to make a character. So I've been tooling around and I've made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! Or Oogway from Kung Fu Panda, if that reference suits you better. Picasso the 5th level Tortle Open Hand Monk! Relatively low DEX and a STR of 19. Kinda miss out on Unarmored Defense at higher...but he has a shell, ffs, that gives AC17! Also maybe missing out on better chances for deflecting missiles, but meh. I'll live with it for a one shot character.
I picked up that stupid staff (it was actually handed to me by Vilnius) and I hate it! My character is a magic-item hoarding asshole now. As a player it really sucks to become completely greedy.
The flavor thing is a problem. Lets say a player goes alchemist. They flavorfully mix two potions together and throw it, giving them chemical reaction just enough time to work and a fireball erupts where the vial hit. Can that be counterspelled? Its two potions mixing, not "direct" magic.
Also, the turret currently counts as an object, not a construct. So theres a lot of buffing effects that won't do anything to it, making it scale even worse than I first thought. Although, since basically every offensive spell in the book says it only affects creatures, which an object emphatically is not, they could be decently effective mage killers.
The class is running headlong into a lot of design issues the game has and I don't like it.
It is not purely chemical it is explicitly still magic. It can definitely be counterspelled. The idea is that you are in fact producing the exact same magical spell effect, you just do it a different way than a wizard or sorcerer or warlock does. It's literally just the flavor front end which should be different in all 4 of these cases. The artificer just uses a bit of technology to hack the universe rather than having it born in like a sorcerer, or getting the ability from an otherworldly patron like a warlock, or by memorizing mnemonics to complete rituals on the fly like a wizard.