Base Class: Wizard
A puppeteer is a wizard who turns their magic towards matters of the soul, tinkering with the very nature of life and sentience. The pursuit manifests foremost in their puppets, intricate constructs strung along by the artificer’s strings and acting more as additional appendages than individual units. To a puppeteer, the battlefield is a stage and their puppets the actors, dancing along to scripts of their own design with surgical precision and unthinking obedience.
Tool proficiency
You gain proficiency with woodcarver’s tools and weaver's tools. If you already have this proficiency in either, you gain proficiency with one other type of artisan’s tools of your choice.
Animate puppets
You have discovered a technique to imbue your creations with a spark of life, allowing you to create Puppets to aid you and your companions. At the end of a long rest, you can use woodcarver’s tools and weaver’s tools to create animated puppets. These puppets are friendly to you, and obey your instructions. See these creatures’ game statistics in the puppet statblock, which uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in numerous places. You determine each puppet’s appearance, whether it has wheels, legs or other ways of transportation, your choice has no effect on its game statistics. You can only possess and control no more than two puppets at once. The maximum number of puppets you can possess and control increases as you gain levels in this class, to three puppets at 9th level and four puppets at 15th level.
The puppets are Tiny Constructs, but are considered nonmagical objects for the purposes of any spell you cast that affects objects. In combat, these puppets share your initiative count, taking their turns immediately after yours. However, the puppets are limited in their independence and require your direct supervision for complex actions. They can’t move or take reactions on their own and can only take the Dodge action on their turn, unless you use your bonus action to command them to move and/or take some other action. You can command multiple puppets with the same bonus action, and issue different commands to each puppet. You can also use your reaction to command one puppet to take its reaction. If you are incapacitated, the puppets move to surround you and attack any hostile creature approaching you, and take the Dodge action otherwise. The puppets also perish if you die.
A puppet regains 2d6 hit points if the mending spell is cast on it. Additionally, you can use your weaver’s tools as an action and expend a spell slot to revive a number of puppets up to the spell slot's level, provided you are within 30 feet of the puppets’ corpses and they died within the last hour. The puppets come back to life with 1 hit point.
Puppet waltz
The coordination between your puppets improves, allowing them to perform sophisticated maneuvers with each other in the form of complex dances. As a bonus action, you can issue a special command to any number of your puppets.
On their turns, these puppets move up to their speed to a space you designate, then use their actions to combine into a Medium formation that lasts for 1 minute, until there's only one puppet in formation, or until you choose to end it (no action required). The formation can occupy another creature's space, and vice versa. If a puppet in formation moves on its turn, takes an action or reaction, or is incapacitated, it breaks out of the formation until you command it as a bonus action to move to the formation and rejoin it with its action. When the puppets enter formation, choose one of the following effects:
Cancan. The puppets form an orderly line around a creature within the formation's space, protecting it from harm; this formation moves with the creature. The creature gains half cover, and when it makes an attack against a creature within 5 feet for the first time on its turn, each puppet in formation can make an attack against the same creature.
Perfect atonomy
Your puppets gain a limited spark of sentience, though they still rely on your magic to act. Your puppets no longer require your commands to move, take actions other than the Dodge action, combine into a formation, or take reactions; you can still control them in combat (even while incapacitated) as they unerringly follow your mental directions.
Additionally, your puppets gain the following traits:
Coordinated Assault. The puppet has advantage on an attack roll against a creature if another puppet is within 5 feet of the creature and that puppet isn't incapacitated.
Evasion. If the puppet is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage on a success, and only half damage on a failure.
Return Inanimateness. When the puppet dies, you can use your reaction to violently release the magic that animates it and cause an explosion in a 20-foot radius around the puppet. Each creature in the area must make a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC, taking 8d6 force damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The puppet is then destroyed, and the maximum number of puppets you can control is reduced by one until you finish a long rest.
Resonant threads
The intangible threads controlling your puppets are empowered by magic. When a creature fails its saving throw against a spell cast by you, your puppets’ attacks against that creature gain a bonus to their damage rolls until the start of your next turn. This bonus is equal to your intelligence modifier.
Additionally, the increased magical conductance of your threads allows you to cast spells as if you were in the puppet’s space, though you must use your own senses and the puppet must not be incapacitated.