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View Full Version : Arcane Empowerment working with Draconic Incarnation's Conduit?



Eltharrion
03-09-2022, 03:03 AM
Hi, I remember having read waaaaay back in the day when Artificer was just announced that lot of its abilities did not stack with other abilities, making it really weird to work with Epic destinies.

Nowdays with Artificer changes after few years though, and me finally leveling up to Epic with friends with Artificer, this question has risen up in my head and I was hoping to find out if someone has concrete answer to this.
So, Arcanotechnician's milestone ability, "Arcane Empowerment", reads as follow:

The patterns of the most complex magical formulae are like children's drawings to you. You gain +4 Intelligence and +5 Spellcraft. You treat any non-scroll activated equipped item that casts spells (such as wands, rods, armor, or other activated items) as if they were staves, increasing their caster level to equal yours as well as increasing Save DCs to (10 + your Intelligence bonus + level of spell) if it would be an improvement. These increases are applied after Artificer Knowledge, so do not stack.
Important part is the "treat as staves", due to this next part.

Epic tree Draconic Incarnation, ability Conduit:

Double the implement bonus of quarterstaves you wield.

Question is, as there are no other staves than quarterstaves in the game, does this actually mean that Draconically Incarnated Artificer could double implement bonus on any clickies they use? I mean, it's not a big thing, since artificer can't really use quarterstaves normally due to runearm (and let's be real, if you are piling points into arcanotechnician, there's no way you are NOT using runearm for that sweet +50 electric spellpower), but this did make me curious.

Artos_Fabril
04-15-2022, 06:27 PM
Question is, as there are no other staves than quarterstaves in the game, does this actually mean that Draconically Incarnated Artificer could double implement bonus on any clickies they use? I mean, it's not a big thing, since artificer can't really use quarterstaves normally due to runearm (and let's be real, if you are piling points into arcanotechnician, there's no way you are NOT using runearm for that sweet +50 electric spellpower), but this did make me curious.
This is a matter of poor wording and inconsistent language. "Staff" is a class of magic item in D&D distinct from the "Quarterstaff" which may be magical or just a length of wood. It is one of three types of magic item that stores spells (wands, staves, and rods) edit: after checking the SRD, Rods only have non-spell magic effects, but can still be used by anyone regardless of class (or UMD) Thus, Rods of Resurrection, Healing, and Teleportation are not appropriate to 3.5e, but for DDO that ship sailed so long ago it's over the horizon and run aground on the shores of lost Kadath.

Implement Bonus is specifically the bonus to universal spell power on "caster weapons" some abilities in the game even continue to refer to the old formula (3*+value) rather than the current one (=minlevel) This is the value that Conduit doubles.