[DF] Artificers questions

[Carlos]

In my group, no one never tried to make an artificer. Reading about them, some things wasn't very clear to me:

1. How to make them useful? DF 2 brings guidelines to make every DF 1 delver to shine, but the same doesn't happens in DF 4: Sages and thanks to the complicated and abstract nature of gadgeteer, I think it's really challenger for GMs to make artificers really useful.
   
2. Artificer's Power-up, Spellsmith (DF 11, p. 18), allow them to modifier magic item's enchantments. But the penalties of -1 per $1,000 of the initial enchantment value looks too overwhelming. The listed example is to turn a Fireball wand into a Shape Fire wand. Looking at DF 8 (p. 44) the Fireball enchantment costs $16,000. That said, to change a Fireball wand into a Shape Fire wand would require the roll against the lower of Engineer (Gadgets) and Thaumatology at -16? Is that right or am I missing something? Because that sounds nearly impossible unless you roll a critical success or has Engineer (Gadgets) and Thaumatology, both at level 30+. Can he use Extra Time (B346)? Even so it still looks almost impossible...
   
3. Still about Spellsmith, the power-up says "the price to have the final spell on an item cannon exceed that of the initial spell." So lets take an example: it's ok if an Artificer modifiers a Fireball wand ($16,000) into a Burning Death wand ($14,000). But what if he wants to change it back into a Fireball wand later? Can he do that? The initial price now would be $14,000 and the final cost would be $16,000. is that so? Or the original price of $16,000 would be maintained?

I think that's all for now. Thanks in advance.

[Dustin]

Speaking only to question 1, they seem to have a natural place in the spotlight in helping the party as a whole overcome environmental hazards and challenges (climbs, falls, traps, barriers) -- the more complex the environment, the better they do. The thief can climb the wall, the wizard can fly up the wall, but the artificer can rig an ascender to get the priest, the torchbearer, and the mule up.

Additionally, their gadgets can also be handed off to other characters, which is often challenging with magic. A noisemaker can be handed off to the thief to plant for a timely distraction, that kind of thing. So they're definitely support characters who will often seem pretty sidelined until the moment when they turn the near-impossible into a roll vs Mechanic.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Dustin

Speaking only to question 1, they seem to have a natural place in the spotlight in helping the party as a whole overcome environmental hazards and challenges (climbs, falls, traps, barriers) -- the more complex the environment, the better they do. The thief can climb the wall, the wizard can fly up the wall, but the artificer can rig an ascender to get the priest, the torchbearer, and the mule up.

Additionally, their gadgets can also be handed off to other characters, which is often challenging with magic. A noisemaker can be handed off to the thief to plant for a timely distraction, that kind of thing. So they're definitely support characters who will often seem pretty sidelined until the moment when they turn the near-impossible into a roll vs Mechanic.

Yeah, that. Also, they are the class that has the highest potential starting Alchemy skill, and that has great synergy with Fast Gadgeteer amd Gizmos, which Artificers get and Wizards (the next-highest Alchemy guys) don't.

With regard to #2, I'd personally treat that as the sort of thing that a normal PC could maybe accomplish instead of improving skills during a long period of IC downtime with the extra time bonus, unless they have truly epic levels in the relevant skills, in which case they deserve to do it casually.

#3: Eh, I'd let him do it for the lower price as long as he makes the rolls. It's an expensive and fairly-specialized ability in a cinematic genre; go nuts.

In a very-high-power game, it's just a different flavor of badass, of course. Our group's 500-point fantasy game has a Gnome Artificer / Knight who's rolling around in a SM 0 clockwork battlesuit equipped with semi-autonomous (Ally) drones, for example.

[lachimba]

IMHO Artificers are more useful than thieves (who need a bigger boost to make them useful) they can do most of what a thief can and then some.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by lachimba

IMHO Artificers are more useful than thieves (who need a bigger boost to make them useful) they can do most of what a thief can and then some.

[Speaking as an Artificer fan] Thieves are, IMHO, more deadly in spontaneous combat and about equally-dangerous at trap-setting, and Perfect Balance is not to be ignored for certain kinds of challenges, but ultimately both classes depend on a GM willing to throw them a bone with challenges suited to their talents.

[Danukian]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

[Speaking as an Artificer fan] Thieves are, IMHO, more deadly in spontaneous combat and about equally-dangerous at trap-setting, and Perfect Balance is not to be ignored for certain kinds of challenges, but ultimately both classes depend on a GM willing to throw them a bone with challenges suited to their talents.

Agreed: Artificer can be Thief with less Combat Skills or Sage with more Utility Skills, but work best (IMHO) as a gadget-based supporter/problem-solver.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Danukian

Agreed: Artificer can be Thief with less Combat Skills or Sage with more Utility Skills, but work best (IMHO) as a gadget-based supporter/problem-solver.

RAW thieves have all sorts of problems.

Theres a thread on Dungeon Fantastic about what needs to be done by a GM to make them viable.

Combat wise though? No way starting skills so low. A bard outclasses them. An Artificer is more useful at the 250 point level.
At least they can fling chemical conconctions.

The Dwarven demolisher outshines the thief too and can do everything they can except backstab. They have flamethrowers though!

[mlangsdorf]

I agree that the Artificer can be problematic. I wrote an article with some house rules for giving them a bit of help (basically by giving them more discounts when purchase stuff they can make) and listing some some sample devices that should be available to an artificer:

http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...n-fantasy.html


I think the key thing with the artificer is that the player and the GM both must have the attitude that an artificer is just as much a problem solver as the wizard, just with a different attitude. Few GMs would balk at a wizard using Shape Stone to effectively create an elevator and lift all the PCs up the side of a chasm at the cost of a few points in skills and a few points of FP. An artificer should be able to get the PCs up the side of a cliff for a few FP and very little time, even if the GM personally thinks that the building a primitive elevator should be expensive and time consuming.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Carlos

How to make them useful? DF 2 brings guidelines to make every DF 1 delver to shine, but the same doesn't happens in DF 4: Sages and thanks to the complicated and abstract nature of gadgeteer, I think it's really challenger for GMs to make artificers really useful.

The artificer exists for the amusement of a certain kind of gamer, and is worth playing only if the player and GM have a contract that the game will include a lot of fantasy in the vein of dwarven engineering (e.g., early steam-tech), the death machine from The Princess Bride, and monstrous clockworks. It works best if tech and magic are inherently inimical, with effective TL giving a big penalty to spells, as GURPS Cabal discussed years ago; I like -5 to spells per effective TL above TL4. If all problems have easy magical solutions, then no amount of help for the artificer is going to make the profession competitive.

Note also that artificers are intended primarily for cash-poor groups with few casters. They can adapt and improvise the whole gamut of mundane gear. If all the heroes have Vows related to owning little or no gear, or just very low Wealth, and their magical support is a single Poor cleric who mostly has Healing spells, it suddenly becomes very relevant that this one delver can adapt found gear and jury-rig solutions that normally call for expensive tool kits. Rich groups have much less use for an artificer, as do groups full of high-end casters. Like I said: "a certain kind of gamer."

Originally Posted by Carlos

Artificer's Power-up, Spellsmith (DF 11, p. 18), allow them to modifier magic item's enchantments. But the penalties of -1 per $1,000 of the initial enchantment value looks too overwhelming. The listed example is to turn a Fireball wand into a Shape Fire wand. Looking at DF 8 (p. 44) the Fireball enchantment costs $16,000. That said, to change a Fireball wand into a Shape Fire wand would require the roll against the lower of Engineer (Gadgets) and Thaumatology at -16? Is that right or am I missing something? Because that sounds nearly impossible unless you roll a critical success or has Engineer (Gadgets) and Thaumatology, both at level 30+. Can he use Extra Time (B346)? Even so it still looks almost impossible...

In a game where enchantment is unavailable even to wizards, crafting magic items isn't meant to be easy or a primary function of artificers, but rather a high-level trick for artificers who've earned lots of points and want to specialize. Start with Improvisation 5 [25] in order to ignore the first -10 to skill; see Dungeon Fantasy 11, p. 17. Buy a backpack tool kit (Dungeon Fantasy 1, p. 24) with an Equipment Bond (Dungeon Fantasy 4, p. 4) for a further +1. Now the first -11 ($11,000) isn't an issue for you. You'll still need high skills, of course, but it's workable.

There are ways to get even more bonuses: drink a wisdom potion (Dungeon Fantasy 1, p. 29), get a miraculous toolbelt (Dungeon Fantasy 8, p. 41), have a caster put a Bless or Wisdom spell on you, and so on. The GM can certainly allow up to +5 for Time Spent (p. B346). I think that rule is a headache for DF, but taking 30× as long to carry out a task that normally requires 1d×20 minutes – i.e., 1d×10 hours – isn't utterly impossible in town (1d×10 hours is on average about a workweek). The GM would have to decide that it applies to such an esoteric task.

Originally Posted by Carlos

Still about Spellsmith, the power-up says "the price to have the final spell on an item cannon exceed that of the initial spell." So lets take an example: it's ok if an Artificer modifiers a Fireball wand ($16,000) into a Burning Death wand ($14,000). But what if he wants to change it back into a Fireball wand later? Can he do that? The initial price now would be $14,000 and the final cost would be $16,000. is that so? Or the original price of $16,000 would be maintained?

This process isn't reversible. "Lost" energy stays lost. The new item has no history of previous enchantments to which it can revert. If you go from A to B to C, the existence of A is irrelevant to the B-to-C transition, even if A and C are the same spell.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In a game where enchantment is unavailable even to wizards, crafting magic items isn't meant to be easy or a primary function of artificers, but rather a high-level trick for artificers who've earned lots of points and want to specialize. Start with Improvisation 5 [25] in order to ignore the first -10 to skill; see Dungeon Fantasy 11, p. 17. Buy a backpack tool kit (Dungeon Fantasy 1, p. 24) with an Equipment Bond (Dungeon Fantasy 4, p. 4) for a further +1. Now the first -11 ($11,000) isn't an issue for you. You'll still need high skills, of course, but it's workable..

If the GM allows Wildcard skills (or destiny points etc) italso mean it can be done without fail a couple of times a session.