Artificer Path Feats!

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Allow people to choose between a Melee Path feat and a Ranged path feat at level 1, and make it a free feat chosen upon character creation!

Melee path feat: You gain proficiency with Bastard Swords and Dwarven Waraxes, additionally you may use your intelligence instead of Charisma for use of Use Magic Device skill, and you gain the Precision feat. (This path would rob you of all crossbow related feats that you'd get naturally now).

Ranged path feat: You gain proficiency with light and heavy repeating crossbows as well as great crossbows, additionally you will gain the rapid reload feat (Choosing this path would not actually change anything, this would actually represent the current standard Artificer).

[gv1807]

I get what you're suggesting and as far as it goes, I ok with it with one exception.
Int to UMD? NO! JUST NO!

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

I get what you're suggesting and as far as it goes, I ok with it with one exception.
Int to UMD? NO! JUST NO!

Going melee rather than ranged in a class best optimized for ranged combat needs to have some extra benefits.

[gv1807]

Why? Surely it's a personal choice to choose melee over range even though you know the downside.
As I said, I have no problem with the premise just no to Int to UMD.
That for me is the deal-breaker.

PS I play arties all the time.

[droid327]

This seems pointless and ill-thought-out. Why force artis to choose between two playstyles that are already pretty much mutually exclusive? Is there a big problem with hybrid artis being OP? Also by autogranting Precision you're preventing them from taking PA if they wanted.

Seems like you just want INT to UMD on your own arti.

[Memnir]

lol no

[Discpsycho]

Going melee rather than ranged in a class best optimized for ranged combat needs to have some extra benefits.

I'm curious - how many artificers have you seen of late? I've seen a couple but they run Inquisitive (like everyone else) because that gives them so much more damage than any other artificer option. This includes Battle Engineer, which gives comparable melee and ranged benefits when in a vacuum.

I'd argue Artificer does have melee benefits: bonus feats. Ranged and melee builds require comparable numbers of feats, but IMO melees benefit more from metamagics - they have transit time between attack targets in which they can cast spells without reducing damage output, or often need to Quicken a Reconstruct (or admixture) to keep from dying in melee. Melee builds also benefit more from defensive feats like Insightful Reflexes or Dodge because they often have less time to react to AOE spells and effects

Khopeshes have a better crit profile and therefore take a feat. Knight's Training and Swords to Plowshares take a feat to comparably improve the crit profiles of their respective weapons. Bastard Swords and Dwarven Waraxes are effectively Longswords and Battleaxes that grant glancing blows, which are comparable (historically, not so much anymore) to crit profile increases

If you want to use a Dwarven Waraxe without spending a feat slot, roll Dwarf, as proficiency is pretty much the only incentive to do so these days. If you want to use a Bastard Sword, spend a feat. You have a limited number of feat slots for a reason

[Xgya]

Allow people to choose between a Melee Path feat and a Ranged path feat at level 1, and make it a free feat chosen upon character creation!

Melee path feat: You gain proficiency with Bastard Swords and Dwarven Waraxes, additionally you may use your intelligence instead of Charisma for use of Use Magic Device skill, and you gain the Precision feat. (This path would rob you of all crossbow related feats that you'd get naturally now).

Ranged path feat: You gain proficiency with light and heavy repeating crossbows as well as great crossbows, additionally you will gain the rapid reload feat (Choosing this path would not actually change anything, this would actually represent the current standard Artificer).

It's almost a direct buff to ranged inqui arti builds.
Lose one mandatory feat (rapid reload) in order to gain one (precision) while ALSO getting int to UMD?

Make the feat less ubiquitous, more linked to melee combat, THEN we'll talk.
Since artificers are meant to be using runearms, maybe grant the first SWF feat?

Remove int to UMD altogether. The devs have been doing their best not to grant any high bonuses to the skill for balance reasons, and I agree with them on this one.

If you really want to replace a dump stat to a useful skill, here's an option.
There was an old feat that replaced Wisdom in every skill and save in 3.5 with Int.
In DDO, that would be Will saves and Heal.
Instead of Will saves, make it work with Heal, and the melee version adds half the artificer's level to the skill (so, if you spend points every level in Heal, you end up with as much Heal as someone that would have had the skill as a class skill from the start)