With the revised Artificer in playtest/survey, and the survey not having a section for additional feedback not directly related to what is being rated, I think now could be a good time to discuss some potential new subclasses for the Artificer and what they would be all about. I have a few ideas on this, which will be shared in a moment, but I think it could be interesting to see what others have thought of and share here as well. To be clear, these subclasses could already be in the homebrew section or not, but I personally have yet to think ways to impliment what I'm talking about over here, and it's just fun talk about this stuff on the forums and not just put it in the homebrew section for someone to hopefully find and play with on their own, this also hopefully makes things more seen by the official arms of that talk with the development team.
First concept from me, what I'm calling the "Scrounger," this is an archetype that basically plays into the using everything at your disposal while having little to no access to the means that would make the other subclasses a possibility, basically low resources with potentially high payouts. The way the Scrounger works is that literally use monster parts in part of their crafting, and have gotten so good at it that any items, equipment, accessories, and sometimes even foods that maintain some aspect or ability of the monster(s) whose part/parts were used in the crafting, this is more a case of granting a temporary buff and/or debuff in the case of being used to make food items; this subclass basically plays up the fantasy of using monster parts to make all kinds of gear, from the seemingly more common to the super unique equipment you expect for a hero to get on their journey to deal with some kind of threat in the story that nothing else seems to be able to hurt; if this sort of subclass is printed, they could also include a set of what I'm calling "Bone Shaping Tools," basically a set of tools used to carve and manipulate bones and bonelike materials to make items, equipment, and the like. I think this suitably thematic and could play into a niche not usually seen up to this point, and the idea of an Artificer tapping into the Ranger's territory while totally doing its own thing so the two would be more of an oddly thematic coexistence is just a fun thought for me.
The other one I'm calling the "Mystic Gunsmith," this one is a bit different you would typically expect from a subclass, which I think speaks well to the general identity of the Artificer class; basically this subclass is built around the idea that you made a special kind of firearm tailor-made for literally shooting spells (yes, the idea for this comes from the anime Outlaw Star, if you haven't seen then go watch it, seeing as the descriptions for abilities and whatnot will be heavily inspired from that series), it's just the gun you craft but also special shells for holding whatever spells the maker of the firearm to shoot from the firearm, which is usually some kind of handgun, you would also start off with proficiency in Pottery Tools because the shells are made from clay that has been specially treated to contain the spell in addition to literally being stored in the shell but not actually imbued into the shell, there is a difference that is subtle that only the makers of the shells fully understand, even if they don't fully comprehend it; this subclass was a result of Artificers trying to figure out a workaround for their spell casting deficiencies, and have some spells not typically available to them on hand, possibly even spells that are entirely for other classes that they are unable to use as viable surprise options; they would have an early feature similar to the Alchemist's ability to create random alchemical concoctions where they create shells with random spells within their casting level range but with the distinction of these shells being more shoddy in their construction and thus typically more fragile than their other shells, the firearm itself would act as something just shy of an attuned item, it will have features that advance as the creator of the firearm levels up but only while in close proximity to them, this firearm can also be handed off to other characters so they make use of it if/when needed, the firearm itself can act as spell focus from the start, but with a few extra features that get added on as part of the level scaling for the subclass, one of the mid to high level features would be the gun's ability to actually neutralize spells on the caster's spell list (along with any spells they have made shells for) but only within the range of the one holding the firearm and thus make the firearm a genuinely viable option for being used as a defensive tool, another mid to high level feature would to be the ability to place multiple spells into a single shell (this feature would not be possible in combination with the feature allows for the creation of random shells during a long rest) but you can still technically cast combination spells on your own by firing off the shell for one spell while casting a spell at the same time your fire the spells, but that would probably be a mid-level subclass feature, at best, and would more likely be a high level subclass feature.
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With the revised Artificer in playtest/survey, and the survey not having a section for additional feedback not directly related to what is being rated, I think now could be a good time to discuss some potential new subclasses for the Artificer and what they would be all about. I have a few ideas on this, which will be shared in a moment, but I think it could be interesting to see what others have thought of and share here as well. To be clear, these subclasses could already be in the homebrew section or not, but I personally have yet to think ways to impliment what I'm talking about over here, and it's just fun talk about this stuff on the forums and not just put it in the homebrew section for someone to hopefully find and play with on their own, this also hopefully makes things more seen by the official arms of that talk with the development team.
First concept from me, what I'm calling the "Scrounger," this is an archetype that basically plays into the using everything at your disposal while having little to no access to the means that would make the other subclasses a possibility, basically low resources with potentially high payouts. The way the Scrounger works is that literally use monster parts in part of their crafting, and have gotten so good at it that any items, equipment, accessories, and sometimes even foods that maintain some aspect or ability of the monster(s) whose part/parts were used in the crafting, this is more a case of granting a temporary buff and/or debuff in the case of being used to make food items; this subclass basically plays up the fantasy of using monster parts to make all kinds of gear, from the seemingly more common to the super unique equipment you expect for a hero to get on their journey to deal with some kind of threat in the story that nothing else seems to be able to hurt; if this sort of subclass is printed, they could also include a set of what I'm calling "Bone Shaping Tools," basically a set of tools used to carve and manipulate bones and bonelike materials to make items, equipment, and the like. I think this suitably thematic and could play into a niche not usually seen up to this point, and the idea of an Artificer tapping into the Ranger's territory while totally doing its own thing so the two would be more of an oddly thematic coexistence is just a fun thought for me.
The other one I'm calling the "Mystic Gunsmith," this one is a bit different you would typically expect from a subclass, which I think speaks well to the general identity of the Artificer class; basically this subclass is built around the idea that you made a special kind of firearm tailor-made for literally shooting spells (yes, the idea for this comes from the anime Outlaw Star, if you haven't seen then go watch it, seeing as the descriptions for abilities and whatnot will be heavily inspired from that series), it's just the gun you craft but also special shells for holding whatever spells the maker of the firearm to shoot from the firearm, which is usually some kind of handgun, you would also start off with proficiency in Pottery Tools because the shells are made from clay that has been specially treated to contain the spell in addition to literally being stored in the shell but not actually imbued into the shell, there is a difference that is subtle that only the makers of the shells fully understand, even if they don't fully comprehend it; this subclass was a result of Artificers trying to figure out a workaround for their spell casting deficiencies, and have some spells not typically available to them on hand, possibly even spells that are entirely for other classes that they are unable to use as viable surprise options; they would have an early feature similar to the Alchemist's ability to create random alchemical concoctions where they create shells with random spells within their casting level range but with the distinction of these shells being more shoddy in their construction and thus typically more fragile than their other shells, the firearm itself would act as something just shy of an attuned item, it will have features that advance as the creator of the firearm levels up but only while in close proximity to them, this firearm can also be handed off to other characters so they make use of it if/when needed, the firearm itself can act as spell focus from the start, but with a few extra features that get added on as part of the level scaling for the subclass, one of the mid to high level features would be the gun's ability to actually neutralize spells on the caster's spell list (along with any spells they have made shells for) but only within the range of the one holding the firearm and thus make the firearm a genuinely viable option for being used as a defensive tool, another mid to high level feature would to be the ability to place multiple spells into a single shell (this feature would not be possible in combination with the feature allows for the creation of random shells during a long rest) but you can still technically cast combination spells on your own by firing off the shell for one spell while casting a spell at the same time your fire the spells, but that would probably be a mid-level subclass feature, at best, and would more likely be a high level subclass feature.