Allow Rune Arms as a Main Hand Weapon.

[Enderoc]

There is no reason why an artificer should not be allowed to be a tower shield using tank retaining rune arm use.

[Discpsycho]

I was about to jump in and start nope-ing and realized this would be a great idea for the 3rd Artificer tree.

Right now, I can't see why Artificers should try to tank. Their current trees don't support it at all, their spells are subject to ASF which disincentivizes heavy armor, and splashing Artificer doesn't provide current tanks with any real benefit.

Runearms don't fire particularly quickly and scale off Artificer level, so with the current setup I can't see these tanks dealing any damage and therefore they won't be causing any threat. If we want Artificers to tank, the new tree would have to do one or more of:
- adding a bunch of defenses on par with Sacred/Stalwart Defender
- allow the artificer pet to share damage somehow (let's be real, even the best summoner builds out there don't have good enough pet dps)
- grant a lot of ASF reduction, shield bashes, guard damage, or runearm boosts so they have some form of damage

[Wh070aa]

I would love to have rune arm in any hand. Or having 2 of them. Pew-pew-pew!
dunno about tanking the pet is kinda meant for that, and tanking newer works out anyway. the game mechanics are geared towards manual evasion from damage, not tanking tings with shields and stuff.

[psykopeta]

i would say no

specially in the part that says "defenses on par with Sacred/Stalwart Defender"

allowing to use 1 runearm in mainhand with that tree, or even allowing to use 2 runearms? ok, interesting, at least

allowing to transfer incoming damage to pet, to allow arti receive more damage? not bad

reducing asf? not bad idea

but nothing about defenser on par with 2 tank trees, something, oriented, ok, but not even close

[RD2play]

...
Runearms don't fire particularly quickly and scale off Artificer level, ...

This is simply not true! Artificer level has nothing to do with scaling of Rune-Arms, only the battle engineer tree does augment them and for that you'll need only 5 levels of the class. And they fire plenty quickly, if you don't charge them to to the max before each shot! With enough Spell Power and DC boosts they will be a very effective weapon in your arsenal.

[Discpsycho]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Machination_of_Madness

The description says that at Charge Tier 5, it deals 8 to 30 damage plus 1d10 per Artificer level. At Artificer 5, that's 5d10 + 8-30, which is substantially different from the 20d10 + 8-30 that you could get if you were pure. While charge rate, spell power and DCs will help, that's still a scaling 15d10 difference.

[RD2play]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Machination_of_Madness

The description says that at Charge Tier 5, it deals 8 to 30 damage plus 1d10 per Artificer level. At Artificer 5, that's 5d10 + 8-30, which is substantially different from the 20d10 + 8-30 that you could get if you were pure. While charge rate, spell power and DCs will help, that's still a scaling 15d10 difference.

You are right, I stand corrected!

Edit: Though that is only while standing still, as a stable T5 while moving is not possible atm. Also if you want to fire it rapidly you never really get higher than charge tier2 anyway which is only d4/level.

[Qhualor]

I cant find anything that says an Artificer cant have a runearm in their main hand, but Artificers are not proficient with shields. that means either spending 2 feats for Tower shield proficiency or multiclassing into fighter.

I don't play Artificers so I don't know the power of runearms, but I would assume they would be a swap item for situations unless you have to have it equipped to charge.

[Hobgoblin]

my question to you is why?

provide more logical reasons and i will say ya or nay!

[Enderoc]

The shield can be used as a weapon and with runearm in the main hand it should allow you to charge your runearm while blocking. I think it would open up a lot of creativity in character creation, and if multi classing fighter could build with both repeater and shield mastery in mind.

If you just fired at tier one or two it would be pretty much a tanky version of warlock, and a tree for it does sound like a good idea. Maybe make a new set of rules for the runearm as a main hand weapon.

[Memnir]

No thank you.

[Chi_Ryu]

Right now, I can't see why Artificers should try to tank. Their current trees don't support it at all, their spells are subject to ASF which disincentivizes heavy armor, and splashing Artificer doesn't provide current tanks with any real benefit.

Artificer infusions and spells are not subject to arcane spell failure (though arcane scroll use is).

[Uska]

meh

[HastyPudding]

Hmmmm

It would be interesting if an artificer could have some REALLY nice rune arm enhancements. Like the ones in battle engineer, but much stronger. The downside would be a penalty to your weapon damage, balancing out the large increase to your rune arm/spell damage. It would be an interesting addition to Arcanotechnician.

[Enderoc]

An enhancement tree that allows a rune arm to stabilize at half its maximum tier to create an energy shield would be kind of neat or enlarges the shield as it is charged in tiers like buckler, small shield, medium shield, large shield , tower shield. Would make way for more melee oriented artificers.

[Enoach]

While I see the interesting potential of basically creating a shooter type character. I do have to agree that to me the only way to make this work would be via multi-class.

But there are other things I would also like to see...

• Bastard Swords and Dwarven Axes able to be used with two hands (Only requires martial weapon proficiency to use two handed)
• Duel Crossbows <- with penalty to hit much like with oversized off hand weapon
• Duel Throwers <- Similar concept to duel crossbows

Another suggestion of having the runearm charge up as a shield is also interesting, maybe something along the lines of activated with shield block command. It doesn't place it in the main-hand, but does open up a defensive option.

[HastyPudding]

An enhancement tree that allows a rune arm to stabilize at half its maximum tier to create an energy shield would be kind of neat.

Another suggestion of having the runearm charge up as a shield is also interesting.

YES!!!!

You could have temporary HP gained per current charge tier, which stays until it's removed or your charges are used. That way you can stand still and charge to tier 5 and get a little extra padding while casting spells or shooting stuff.

Also, relevance:

[JOTMON]

I would love to have rune arm in any hand. Or having 2 of them. Pew-pew-pew!
dunno about tanking the pet is kinda meant for that, and tanking newer works out anyway. the game mechanics are geared towards manual evasion from damage, not tanking tings with shields and stuff.

[Shall]

Sorry about replying to a month old thread, but would an enhancement deep in the battle engineer tree (maybe added to the 18 core or capstone so as to not be unbalanced in heroics) that allows artificers to treat a runearm as a large shield similar to tempest rangers treating scimitars as light weapons make any sense? Artificers already get general shield proficiency and it would provide the large shield multiplier to mrr against traps which could help with traps that require walking through the trap to reach the box. It may also result in a small buff to damage and defense of melee artificers as they could then benefit from both the thf and shield mastery lines like some dwarven axe & bastard sword vanguard builds do. I suppose if it was added to a core it would have to be a toggle or part of a multi-selector or something in case a player would want to use evasion from a rogue splash or epic destiny ability instead.