Post/Author/DateTime	Post
geekpocket 07-20-05, 12:16 PM	First Question: Can Artificers make magic items [i.e. wands, scrolls, staves] with their Infusions? Ex. A wand of Skill Enhancement Second Question: The infusion Item Alteration says you can alter an item that provides a certain type of bonus to change the type of bonus it provides. The example given is a Ring of Protection +1 that provides a natural armor bonus instead of a deflection bonus. There are two main limitations in the spell. You can't alter an item that provides a sacred or profane, nor change a bonus into one of those types. The second is that you cannot alter an item to provide a dodge bonus to AC. By my understanding, all the other bonus types are fair game. So you could alter an item that gave a competence bonus to a skill, [Eyes of the Eagle, +5 competence bonus to Spot, pg 256 DMG] to instead provide any other type of bonus, save for sacred and profane. So you could have Eyes of the Eagle that give you a Circumstance bonus to Spot, or an Alchemical bonus. Or a Racial bonus. Or any of the other 15 eligible bonus types. While it may seem silly to have a natural armor bonus to Spot, that's what the spell can do, If im reading it correctly. If all the above is true, then have your 20th level Artificer make a Wand of Skill Enhancement and a Wand of Item Alteration, both at CL 18. The feat Wand Mastery will bump your CL up to 20 when you use the wand. Now go and use the Skill Enhancement wand on 16 items, each item getting a +12 to a skill of your choice. Make them all the same skill. Now use your Item Alteration wand on 15 of those items and change them to different bonuses. You now have 16 items that provide 16 types of bonuses at +12 each. That's a total +192 to any skill of your choosing, which lasts for 200 minutes, minus the 31 rounds you spent using the wands. The Wand of Skill Enhancement has a base price of 13500 and the Wand of Item Alteration has a base price of 27000. Both well within the reaches of a 20th level character. I heard somewhere that it was ruled Artificers cant make wands of their infusions. However, I haven't actually seen it, so if someone has a link or a page reference or a good argument I would like to know about it. It's not as game shattering as the Nanobots, but any Artificer can do this, and with 3 minutes of prep time own any skill for about 3 and a half hours.
Caelic 07-20-05, 12:24 PM	I'm 99.9% certain they errataed away the Artificer's ability to make magic items of infusions--that's why we don't have infinite feedback loops with Wands of Power Surge.
geekpocket 07-20-05, 12:49 PM	Yeah, Im dragging myself through the Unofficial Artificer Thread [link: UAT (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=373293&page=1&pp=30) ] and everyone keeps saying that Arts cant make magic items of infusions, but I havent seen an actual reference yet.
SigmaJargon 07-20-05, 01:26 PM	It was a super-stealthy nerf. The first sentence of the 8th paragraph of the Infusions class feature states:Like a spellcaster, an artificer can apply item creation feats and metamagic feats to his infusions.This would seem to allow the artificer to make infusion items... but the errata changed the text to read:Like a spellcaster, an artificer can apply metamagic feats he knows to his infusions.Note the non-inclusion of item creation feats in the updated sentence. This is taken by the majority to mean that artificiers cannot apply their infusions to item creation feats, for even if it is not specifically prohibited, the statement which allowed such use was removed.
geekpocket 07-20-05, 01:36 PM	While that's a good start, I'm not going to take that as the end-all be-all close of the discussion. There should be another resource somewhere that says whether they can or cant. I agree that one can draw that conclusion from the omission, but it doesnt make sense to me. Why would the class that can create any magic item using any spell from any spell list not be able to make magic items from their own list? I know the Infusion list isn't a spell list, but "they function just like spells and follow the same rules for spells." [ECS, pg 31]
Gravmyr 07-20-05, 02:49 PM	Infusions are put into items so therefor cannot be cast directly onto creatures, we're going to leave out living-constructs for now. I prefer to look at their infusion list as a list of abilities that they can temporarily enchant into items, look at the lengthy casting times and durations. That right there is the reason they can't do it, they are already enchantments of a sort. I suppose that you could make them into spells in their own right but by doing so you bring into existense a number of possible inifinate loops that in the end make it overpowered. For example the most easily broken the power surge loop would make a staff an near infinate combo, allowing you to make a staff of power so game breaking that nothing is going to touch the 15th level caster with it in it's hand. The line that you quote is correct in that infusions function just like spells and follow the same rules for spells, but because each item creation feat also speaks of casting the spell required infusions cannot be used they aren't spells. They act like spells but are not spells. They don't need to change any other rules just a miswording the the ECS to halt the use of infusions as enchantable spells.
Caelic 07-20-05, 04:12 PM	Without an explicit rule altering the rules for item creation (which require spells or psionic abilities,) you're not going to be able to make infusion items by RAW. There WAS such an explicit rule; there's not anymore. I think it's VERY bad form to make such a significant change on the sly, but they did.