The artificer returns

[Rukelnikov]

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Artificer should have racial limitations, just like how the Bladesinger and Battlerager do. It makes a lot more sense, to me, to require Gnomish Artificers than it does Dwarvish Battleragers.

And for those who don't like the restriction...remove it! Just like you would with the other classes. Gnomes don't have a strong identity, and I think making the Artificer a Gnome-specific class would really help with that.

I don't think its entirely wrong, but the other cases are subclasses, and here you are gating a whole class, maybe gate just a couple of the subclasses like in the other cases?

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't think its entirely wrong, but the other cases are subclasses, and here you are gating a whole class, maybe gate just a couple of the subclasses like in the other cases?

That's a very valid point. I wouldn't even know what Artificer subclass is more "Gnome" than any other. Artillerist, probably. Gnomes love to blow stuff up. One of them having a "giant" turret and some otherworldly knowledge of technology is exactly what I think of as a classic Gnome trope.

I don't foresee the Battle Smith or the Archivist seeing real play. They feel like generic half-casters, not like actual Artificers. The Alchemist and Artillerist are people who make stuff, but the Archivist and the Battle Smith are people who do stuff.

[Anderlith]

That's a very valid point. I wouldn't even know what Artificer subclass is more "Gnome" than any other. Artillerist, probably. Gnomes love to blow stuff up. One of them having a "giant" turret and some otherworldly knowledge of technology is exactly what I think of as a classic Gnome trope.

What about Warforged? My warforged wants kids gosh darn it! Also... ALL of House Cannith would be out of a job...

[Man_Over_Game]

What about Warforged? My warforged wants kids gosh darn it! Also... ALL of House Cannith would be out of a job...

Warforged aren't...kinda(?) AL official...I think. You can use them in Eberron Adventure League, but nowhere else.

Additionally, the classic lore is that Warforged were made by Artificers. Heck, there's a note in the UA that the original Warforged were Archivist pets. I guess they could become self-sufficient, but I think it'd fit more of a trope if someone else was their creator, not their own.

[Makorel]

What about Warforged? My warforged wants kids gosh darn it! Also... ALL of House Cannith would be out of a job...

You might still be SOL since, if you're a Battle Smith, you can make a body but because you're not an Archivist you can't give it a mind. Perhaps you'll need to find a second Artificer who is an Archivist and enter into a mutual contract with them to make new Warforged, with equal ownership between you two. And you can't just go with any Archivist you need to find one you can trust so you'll need to conduct serial interviews with a prospective partner. A good rule of thumb is that you won't know who you can spend many hours together in the workshop with putting nuts and bolts together until the third interview.

[Rukelnikov]

That's a very valid point. I wouldn't even know what Artificer subclass is more "Gnome" than any other. Artillerist, probably. Gnomes love to blow stuff up. One of them having a "giant" turret and some otherworldly knowledge of technology is exactly what I think of as a classic Gnome trope.

I don't foresee the Battle Smith or the Archivist seeing real play. They feel like generic half-casters, not like actual Artificers. The Alchemist and Artillerist are people who make stuff, but the Archivist and the Battle Smith are people who do stuff.

Agreed, the BS feels like a fighter that uses "tech", and the Archivist as a caster that uses "tech". But how much they will feel like an artificer will depend almost entirely on the fluff the player gives to it, since allowing for any infused item to work as a casting focus means if don't wanna do fancy stuff you can just have your infused armor be your casting focus and move on.

[Anderlith]

You might still be SOL since, if you're a Battle Smith, you can make a body but because you're not an Archivist you can't give it a mind. Perhaps you'll need to find a second Artificer who is an Archivist and enter into a mutual contract with them to make new Warforged, with equal ownership between you two. And you can't just go with any Archivist you need to find one you can trust so you'll need to conduct serial interviews with a prospective partner. A good rule of thumb is that you won't know who you can spend many hours together in the workshop with putting nuts and bolts together until the third interview.

A Battlesmith & Archivist Warforged adventure to find one of the lost Creation Forges & become parents

[Rukelnikov]

A Battlesmith & Archivist Warforged adventure to find one of the lost Creation Forges & become parents

Are they also trying to get out of addictions or abussive relationships?

[Anderlith]

Are they also trying to get out of addictions or abussive relationships?

I don’t really see why...
Two Warforged seeking to procreate has enough appeal in & of itself. Plus what would a Warforged be “addicted” too?

[Rukelnikov]

I don’t really see why...
Two Warforged seeking to procreate has enough appeal in & of itself. Plus what would a Warforged be “addicted” too?

It was a joke, in my head it sounded like a movie trailer.

[GlenSmash!]

I find myself wishing for an option got Martial Weapon Proficiency without the Int for weapon attacks thing.

[Man_Over_Game]

I find myself wishing for an option got Martial Weapon Proficiency without the Int for weapon attacks thing.

I think they should have implemented a battle suit Artificer that had this.

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but you could add firearms to the campaign, grant Artillerists proficiency in them, and replace the word "wand" with "firearm".

[Anderlith]

It was a joke, in my head it sounded like a movie trailer.

This summer, a tale of two lovers, a Warforged soldier, the veteran of a hundred battlefields, a weapon of destruction abandoned & despised after the war, & a lonely Warforged librarian, a slave to the academy which built her, will find each other... but if their dream is to be complete, they must fight, & trust one another, risking it all to find a way to have a child. coming soon, War & Pieces

[GlenSmash!]

I think they should have implemented a battle suit Artificer that had this.

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but you could add firearms to the campaign, grant Artillerists proficiency in them, and replace the word "wand" with "firearm".

I think I just want someone that can make a Belt of Hill Giant Strength for themselves and actually have a reason to use it.

[Rukelnikov]

This summer, a tale of two lovers, a Warforged soldier, the veteran of a hundred battlefields, a weapon of destruction abandoned & despised after the war, & a lonely Warforged librarian, a slave to the academy which built her, will find each other... but if their dream is to be complete, they must fight, & trust one another, risking it all to find a way to have a child. coming soon, War & Pieces

[Garfunion]

This summer, a tale of two lovers, a Warforged soldier, the veteran of a hundred battlefields, a weapon of destruction abandoned & despised after the war, & a lonely Warforged librarian, a slave to the academy which built her, will find each other... but if their dream is to be complete, they must fight, & trust one another, risking it all to find a way to have a child. coming soon, War & Pieces

I don’t know why but, “Batteries Not Included” came to mind.

[GlenSmash!]

I don’t know why but, “Batteries Not Included” came to mind.

Love that movie.

[Misterwhisper]

This summer, a tale of two lovers, a Warforged soldier, the veteran of a hundred battlefields, a weapon of destruction abandoned & despised after the war, & a lonely Warforged librarian, a slave to the academy which built her, will find each other... but if their dream is to be complete, they must fight, & trust one another, risking it all to find a way to have a child. coming soon, War & Pieces

I actually had a 5e game that went from 1 to 20 where the entire party were warforged of different classes on a holy mission to build a god for their people.

[Tetrasodium]

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Artificer should have racial limitations, just like how the Bladesinger and Battlerager do. It makes a lot more sense, to me, to require Gnomish Artificers than it does Dwarvish Battleragers.

And for those who don't like the restriction...remove it! Just like you would with the other classes. Gnomes don't have a strong identity, and I think making the Artificer a Gnome-specific class would really help with that.

@Man_Over_Game wtf no... bleep no!! Not everything needs to be exclusively themed to 200% fit into every bit of FR lore. The gnomes of eberron have a distinct identity that is wildly different from FR. They run the library of korranberg, they have House Sivis, they are the only ones on khorvaire who know how to bind the elementals to the airships/stormships/lightning rails/etc that. House Cannith builds due to being the ones who are implied to have stolen the method from the drow of xendriik (also nothing like FR drow), and maybe most importantly they have The Trust as a not so secret secret secret police force where agents are authorized to preemptively act as judge jury & executioner.

Eberron is a setting with magic treated as a science & almost certainly has public education in addition to a number of colleges & universities. Members of any race in knorvaire could be a skilled artificer

But thing is pet is medium sized, so to ride it you gotta be small, and gnomes are the only small +Int race. Of course you could play a Loxodon artificer and it will work, but it kinda seems like small races get the best deal with the pet.

@Rukelnikov a kobold is small & would actually gain something (pack tactics always active), with the iron defender being medium even mounted combatant would only really help if there were a significant number of tiny/small creatures in a campaign. 5e has very little benefit from riding a mount unless it's faster than you & a 40foot move speed mount is hardly anything to write home about considering a riding horse is 60 & a mastiff/pony is 40 but nothing stops size small creatures from riding a riding horse.

That's a very valid point. I wouldn't even know what Artificer subclass is more "Gnome" than any other. Artillerist, probably. Gnomes love to blow stuff up. One of them having a "giant" turret and some otherworldly knowledge of technology is exactly what I think of as a classic Gnome trope.

I don't foresee the Battle Smith or the Archivist seeing real play. They feel like generic half-casters, not like actual Artificers. The Alchemist and Artillerist are people who make stuff, but the Archivist and the Battle Smith are people who do stuff.

@Man_Over_Game the main continent of focus in eberron (khorvaire) just wrapped up nearly a century of ww1/ww2ish civil war that ended badly & only because one of the six nations blew up from something that basucally turned it into an arcane irradiated wasteland with everyone saying "oh bleep... we didn't do that... who did that! we need to stop and make sure we don't make it worse" while secretly hoping for a way to restart the war on their most favorable terms to seize the victory they were cheated out of. Artificers of khorvaire make well... everything.... the average citizen owns multiple minor magic items & has a decent chance of knowing one or more cantrips. all of the artificers "do stuff" in eberron.

Warforged aren't...kinda(?) AL official...I think. You can use them in Eberron Adventure League, but nowhere else.

Additionally, the classic lore is that Warforged were made by Artificers. Heck, there's a note in the UA that the original Warforged were Archivist pets. I guess they could become self-sufficient, but I think it'd fit more of a trope if someone else was their creator, not their own.

@Man_Over_Game Not really no. House cannith has the dragonmark of making causing them to be much better at making stuff/being artificers than almost anyone else sure... but it's strongly implied that Cannith found the creation forge in xendriik where the giants probably made it. There is also good reason to beliewve that the giants made them for some reason involving the quori invasion that ultimately led to the giants doing something that made The Dragons go full Vorlon & destroy their civilization. House Cannith just figured out how to make it work & it took them a while to get the hang of things. The whole time they were making warforged was iterative improvement/experimenting.

FR based AL likes to pretend that it's the only true d&d, but plenty of games have people playing eberron races in eberron games or custom settings or even non-al following games using published content.

You might still be SOL since, if you're a Battle Smith, you can make a body but because you're not an Archivist you can't give it a mind. Perhaps you'll need to find a second Artificer who is an Archivist and enter into a mutual contract with them to make new Warforged, with equal ownership between you two. And you can't just go with any Archivist you need to find one you can trust so you'll need to conduct serial interviews with a prospective partner. A good rule of thumb is that you won't know who you can spend many hours together in the workshop with putting nuts and bolts together until the third interview.

@Makorel You still need an eldritch machine called a creation forge. It's rumored that cannith is still has one secretly operating one despite being currently forbidden by law from doing so. There is reason to believe that the lord of blades and his followers might have & be operating one deep in the mournland. A warforged is not simply a collection of parts or an advanced construct, they have a soul & spells that require a soul work on them. If you tear the adamantine/mithral plating off a warforged you can't forge it into something else because it will corrode/rust/rot away despite the fact that those metals can not normally do any of those things.

An iron defender is a very far cry from a warforged... they are more dangerous than our civilian security robots (military ones are usually called things like mines & drones), but they really are not much smarter than our security robots.


If some warforged wanted to make a warforged, there are already multiple faiths/cults trying to do that sort of thing (Lord of blades ffollowers & kind of cult of the becoming god)

[Bloodcloud]

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Artificer should have racial limitations, just like how the Bladesinger and Battlerager do. It makes a lot more sense, to me, to require Gnomish Artificers than it does Dwarvish Battleragers.

And for those who don't like the restriction...remove it! Just like you would with the other classes. Gnomes don't have a strong identity, and I think making the Artificer a Gnome-specific class would really help with that.

That would make no sens in eberron, the birth setting of artificers though

[Constructman]

An iron defender is a very far cry from a warforged... they are more dangerous than our civilian security robots (military ones are usually called things like mines & drones), but they really are not much smarter than our security robots.

Angri doge

[Ventruenox]

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash?

[Arkhios]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Fnissalot]

I think they should have implemented a battle suit Artificer that had this.

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but you could add firearms to the campaign, grant Artillerists proficiency in them, and replace the word "wand" with "firearm".

Personally, I would maybe like both. I think an archer that calculates trajectories in their head before shooting and such could use Int for their attacks. At the same time, I think this game overall mechanically overemphasizes SAD builds for people who wants to optimize but that is maybe another discussion.

I agree about the wands/guns and to person who lives in a magical world and have never seen a gun before, they would be the same. I would even go so far in the other direction to call the turret a walking, self-casting wand. For an artillerist, guns and wands are pretty much the same thing.

[NatureKing]

Considering a Paladin 2/Archivist 18. Paladin Wrathful Smite, Hypnotic Pattern, Great Weapon Fighting Style and eventually Radiant Weapon could make a decentish support gish. Finish up with Capstone Spell Storing item. Enhanced Defense and Boots of the Winding Path seem like a decent combination.

Starting at 6th.

Any thoughts?

[Arkhios]

Considering a Paladin 2/Archivist 18. Paladin Wrathful Smite, Hypnotic Pattern, Great Weapon Fighting Style and eventually Radiant Weapon could make a decentish support gish. Finish up with Capstone Spell Storing item. Enhanced Defense and Boots of the Winding Path seem like a decent combination.

Starting at 6th.

Any thoughts?

I think it's somewhat funny that Paladin or Ranger can afford to have odd level when multiclassing with Artificer, thanks to their opposing rules for spellcasting when multiclassed.
Likewise, Artificer alone can afford to have an odd level when multiclassed.

Paladin or Ranger is forced to round their levels down, but Artificer round them up, so together, they come up with a perfect match as compared to single-classed Artificer, Paladin, or Ranger of the same character level.

To explain with my own build idea (Oath of the Ancients 13/Artificer 7; not sure which sub-class, tbh)
When multiclassed, Paladin 13 counts for 6.5 levels, rounded down to 6.
When multiclassed, Artificer 7 counts for 3.5 levels, rounded up to 4.
When together, Paladin 13 and Artificer 7 = 10 multiclassed spellcasting levels (6 + 4), which has exactly the same amount of spell slots as either class would have, when single-classed.

Compared to Paladin 13/Ranger 7:
When multiclassed, Ranger 7 also counts for 3.5 levels, but with their level rounded down to 3, together, Paladin 13/Ranger 7 would equal to only 9 levels for multiclassed spellcasting, which is same as a 18th level Paladin or Ranger would have.

[Damon_Tor]

I've been thinking about how best to abuse Spell Storing Item and Warding Bond.

It seems like the best use would be to hand it off to your Iron Defender and have it cast it on you, but Spell Storing Item says the caster needs to have the object "in hand" and the ID has no hands.

Tiny Servants have hands, though they only have 10 hitpoints each. I suppose you could cast Tiny Servant at level 5 to create 5 of them and just carry them in your backpack along with the SSI. The first has standing orders to use the SSI on you when combat starts, or perhaps a perpetually readied action along with a codeword from you. The second has standing orders to Ready an Action every round, using the SSI on you if it sees the first Servant die. The third through the fifth have the same order, but triggered by the next Servant in order dying.

Tiny Servants last 8 hours, so it seems like a reasonable investment for that spell slot. Especially considering the fact that it's just the last line of defense for a guy with half-plate+shield, +3 to AC from infusions, and permanent 3/4 cover. Oh, and at level 20, +6 to all saves.

[Wildarm]

Already thinking of mods to the Iron Guardian. It's a creature of your own creation. Would need to work with DM but perhaps we can also tweak the stats to be more stealthy:

Battle Smith 5/Arcane Trickster X

Iron Infiltrator:

- 4HP per Artificer Level vs 5
- Small Sized
- Swap Dex/Str (AC and damage remain the same)
- Gains Proficiency in Stealth

Losing some HP seems like a fair trade off for small size and proficiency in stealth.

Any thoughts? Artificer always struck me as a good base for an arcane investigator or dungeon delver. Combine with AT for more magic tricks and sneakiness.

[Anderlith]

Already thinking of mods to the Iron Guardian. It's a creature of your own creation. Would need to work with DM but perhaps we can also tweak the stats to be more stealthy:

Battle Smith 5/Arcane Trickster X

Iron Infiltrator:

- 4HP per Artificer Level vs 5
- Small Sized
- Swap Dex/Str (AC and damage remain the same)
- Gains Proficiency in Stealth

Losing some HP seems like a fair trade off for small size and proficiency in stealth.

Any thoughts? Artificer always struck me as a good base for an arcane investigator or dungeon delver. Combine with AT for more magic tricks and sneakiness.

You could base it off of the old Furtive Filtcher Homunculus. I know I’d like the Artillerist to get the Arbalester Homunculus rather than his turret

[Misterwhisper]

Went back and updated my review with the last two subclasses added to it.