I've started a campaign recently and I have a player who is an Artificer and is leaning towards the Armorer subclass. While discussing the subclass, it became apparent that we are interpreting some of the features very differently. We both are finding that some of these descriptions are quite vague, and I'm hoping you guys can help shed some light on our questions.

1. The first issue we ran into is that he is a Gnome. He feels that he should be able to buy Orc sized armor at a blacksmith and almost instantly, it should be able to fit him if he makes it into his Arcane Armor. I get that the book says he can make any armor Arcane in an instant, but I'd argue that the book never states that the armorer can change the shape and size of the armor set magically. I see it as he'd either have to get Gnome size armor made, find it, or forged it himself. I used the example that he could grab a chest plate made for an elephant, and it would fit him, essentially upon him touching it. He also thinks that the armor will also just immediately look like whatever he is thinking, again, I'm thinking he has to forge, find, or buy it. Is he right? Am I right? Are we both right? The vagueness is leaving it gray in our minds.

2. The second question comes from a line in the book, “It also expands to cover you entire body...” He argues that he should be able to find one plate glove, and that would just become an entire suit of plate armor. Instantly covering his chest, arms, legs and head. Now, it does say that, but is that really what they were going for? That seems crazy OP. Could he just find a steel jug, put it on his head, call it a helmet and have a full set of steel armor? Or does he have to part out the armor? Meaning forge or find each piece. Even he agrees that seems crazy, but the book does say, “cover your entire body.” Along with that, regarding the Armor Model, his gauntlets just...appear? Or is he applying either of the 2 magical affects to his current gauntlets?

3. This is more my question than his, going along with the, “It also expands to cover your entire body...” and the “The armor replaces any missing limbs, functioning identically to a limb it replaces.” Now, I have no plan to sever any of my players limbs, I've never had it happen before; but sometimes things happen. If a player was to lose a foot in combat, would the armor immediately replace the limb? Or does this have to be forged, like Bucky's arm from The Avengers?

Sorry this is so long. It's my first time dealing with this subclass, multiple parts of it seem vaguely worded to us, and I want to get it right. If any of my questions are unclear, please ask for any clarification; I will gladly give it.

Hi,

1.: I would consider Arcane Armor to be magical. Magical Armor fits the wearer. So a Gnome should be able to wear the Plate +1 he got from a Loxodon.

2.a: "As an action, you can turn a suit of armor you are wearing into Arcane Armor". Plate, Half Plate, etc, is all meant to be the whole thing ("Plate consists of shaped, interlocking metal plates to cover the entire body. A suit of plate includes gauntlets, heavy leather boots, a visored helmet, and thick layers of padding underneath the armor."). It is not meant to be an Iron Man gauntlet that expands into a full suit of armor.  "It also expands to cover your entire body" just means, that your armor will not have any blank spots. You still need a full suit of armor.

2.b: That's the point. The full suit of armor should have gauntlets. So the gauntlets don't just appear, they need to be there in the first place. D&D isn't supposed to be an RPG where you have to equip ordinary pieces of armor individually. A suit of armor is a suit of armor. You don't need to get the shoulder plate, breastplate, gauntlets and helmet individually. It's all included in "Plate". Obviously there are magical items like helmets and gauntlets. But those don't count as armor (increasing the AC).

3.: That's a good question. I would rule it, that the Arcane Armor replaces missing limbs when donning it, not on the fly, while wearing. 

Never be afraid to ask. That's what the community is there for :)

1. Arcane Armor is not iinherently magical unless the suit of armor you use is already magical. So Typically, It has special properties due to the features that grant it but It's otherwise a normal suit of armor you put on and doesn't even work as anything but a normal suit of armor for anybody else.  This means that the armor is still going to be sized for whatever type of creature that it was sized for and for the most part look mostly like whatever it looked like before. Except as altered by the power. It does not let you put on leather and turn it into glittering chain. It would just gain gauntlets or boots or whatever as necessary.

2. Arcane Armor is not going to work with just a glove. At the very least your going to need the main body of the armor. There is no putting on a gauntlet and bam your wearing Plate Mail.  However if he found the main body of plate mail it would fill in the Gauntlets and Boots and Helmet as necessary.  As somebody else mentioned. This is not some kind of overly portable version of the Iron Man Armor. It's more like the Full on Standard Iron Man suit that Stark quickly gets put into or opens up in the back and he jumps into and it closes around him essentially.

3. The answer to losing a foot and automatically replacing it is up to you. But the realistic by RaW answer is that at most they'd just have to redo the Arcane Armor effect on the armor to replace it so at worst your disabling them for a turn while they dig out their smiths tools and spend an action to do so.  Not that your really intending to sever body parts of course. But stranger things have happened really.

Thank you all so much. This has been truly helpful and I can definitely use this information to make a decision. Hopefully making my player happy...without giving him everything he wants. ;)

im having similar questions as both a player and dm

1. for how we ruled it the armor doesnt change shape unless it was already magical, but a gnome could still operate a larger sized armor mecha style (up to medium), effectively turning them medium while wearing it. 

2. the others covered that well enough.

3.  the ability for the armor to replace a limb is how i would argue the mecha style working in the first place. loosing a limb mid combat, id argue it would take an action for activating this feature if you were not already using it.

Quote from Lord_of_the_World_Below >>

I've started a campaign recently and I have a player who is an Artificer and is leaning towards the Armorer subclass. While discussing the subclass, it became apparent that we are interpreting some of the features very differently. We both are finding that some of these descriptions are quite vague, and I'm hoping you guys can help shed some light on our questions.

1. The first issue we ran into is that he is a Gnome. He feels that he should be able to buy Orc sized armor at a blacksmith and almost instantly, it should be able to fit him if he makes it into his Arcane Armor. I get that the book says he can make any armor Arcane in an instant, but I'd argue that the book never states that the armorer can change the shape and size of the armor set magically. I see it as he'd either have to get Gnome size armor made, find it, or forged it himself. I used the example that he could grab a chest plate made for an elephant, and it would fit him, essentially upon him touching it. He also thinks that the armor will also just immediately look like whatever he is thinking, again, I'm thinking he has to forge, find, or buy it. Is he right? Am I right? Are we both right? The vagueness is leaving it gray in our minds.

2. The second question comes from a line in the book, “It also expands to cover you entire body...” He argues that he should be able to find one plate glove, and that would just become an entire suit of plate armor. Instantly covering his chest, arms, legs and head. Now, it does say that, but is that really what they were going for? That seems crazy OP. Could he just find a steel jug, put it on his head, call it a helmet and have a full set of steel armor? Or does he have to part out the armor? Meaning forge or find each piece. Even he agrees that seems crazy, but the book does say, “cover your entire body.” Along with that, regarding the Armor Model, his gauntlets just...appear? Or is he applying either of the 2 magical affects to his current gauntlets?

3. This is more my question than his, going along with the, “It also expands to cover your entire body...” and the “The armor replaces any missing limbs, functioning identically to a limb it replaces.” Now, I have no plan to sever any of my players limbs, I've never had it happen before; but sometimes things happen. If a player was to lose a foot in combat, would the armor immediately replace the limb? Or does this have to be forged, like Bucky's arm from The Avengers?

Sorry this is so long. It's my first time dealing with this subclass, multiple parts of it seem vaguely worded to us, and I want to get it right. If any of my questions are unclear, please ask for any clarification; I will gladly give it.

 1. Player is correct. I am 99 percent sure that the armor will now fit them.

2. Player is incorrect. It just makes it so that the armor doesn't have holes, not that it instantly becomes something more powerful.

3. I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but if you are asking if the armor just automatically replaces their limbs then yes, it automatically replaces limbs.

Hope that cleared up some things!

Quote from Dragonslayer9 >>

3. I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but if you are asking if the armor just automatically replaces their limbs then yes, it automatically replaces limbs.

I think the sticking point is whether Arcane Armor replaces limbs only when you put it on, or can it also replace limbs immediately after they've been cut off (while already wearing it)?

The wording is a little vague in that regard but if you go by the part that says "You gain the following benefits while wearing this armor" this suggests the effects are constant, rather than only when the armour is created or donned; that said it's probably very much in "the DM decides" territory since losing a limb while wearing arcane armour means a part of the armour is probably being lost at the same time. While the armour can expand to cover you, it already did that when you put it on, so it's unclear whether it can do so again.

Artificer is an awesome class theoretically, and I feel like there is a lot that you can play into with this kind of stuff because over all, magical smithing or forging isn't really a mechanical thing otherwise, so the way I'd approach this kind of thing would be giving as much freedom as possible while keeping things somewhat realistic:

1. Yeah, he can make arcane armour in an instant, and it says nothing about size limitations, and while shrinking armour is definitely a possibility with magic, There's another fun way of viewing this. What if instead of the armour changing size, it simply accommodates the wearer (almost like a mech suit), so that he can use a larger set of armour, but while wearing it his size is effectively medium. A gnome rigging controls to move around in an oversized suit of armour is exactly the image I have in my head for what artificers would be in traditional high fantasy dnd.

2. Here there is specific wording that overwrites that unfortunately. If he made a full suit of arcane armour I'd argue flavour wise it could be cosmetically just hidden in gloves, but expand going into combat, but there wouldn't be advantages. as for mechanics, It's specifically stated that as an action, you can turn "a suit of armour", so no cheesing. if the game describes it as a suit of armour, it's a suit of armour.

3. This would kind of play into my answer to question 1, Yeah I think it would, for a few reasons; 1. the armour can't be removed against your will, so if you lost an arm, the gauntlet would come off with it, but then reattach (whether it would bring the severed limb back is up to you, though it wouldn't reattach it either way). 2. this subclass is essentially WotC giving a strong reflavour to the idea of an exoskeleton/mech suit/straight up magic armour, so while the limb is gone, like in question 1, you can still control the armours movement

1. Yeah, he can make arcane armour in an instant, and it says nothing about size limitations, and while shrinking armour is definitely a possibility with magic, There's another fun way of viewing this. What if instead of the armour changing size, it simply accommodates the wearer (almost like a mech suit), so that he can use a larger set of armour, but while wearing it his size is effectively medium. A gnome rigging controls to move around in an oversized suit of armour is exactly the image I have in my head for what artificers would be in traditional high fantasy dnd.

This is what I am doing with my armorer. If you need a visual, check out Copernicus (the armor) and Seng (my character) from Unicorn: Warriors Eternal. He gets in and drives it...just flavor, no inherent advantages.

Genndy Tartakovski is my co-pilot...not in game of course :P