I also really feel like WotC's missing the mark on all these new features like the Eldritch Cannon or the various pets for different classes, where you just cause it to appear from nowhere with an action. I understand that this is better from, like, a balance standpoint? Like, having a feature that requires way more setup time than other characters often means you won't get to use it? But there's gotta be a better way, because these feel so fake, so video-gamey. The Artificer is supposed to be building these things, but instead he uses a spell slot and it just spawns in.
I mean...not necessarily. The more recent material shows a trend towards WotC not wanting to proscribe flavor. Using an action to whip out your Steel Defender could be a zillion things. You have an enchanted gem that you break and the dust forms the pet, you have a stone carved with runes that when invoked generates a pet made of light, or a small pocketwatch that expands, cogs and wheels flying out and reconfiguring to form the pet when you press a button. They want to give you enough to build on and make something your own. Surveys and stuff have shown that when there's very specific flavor, a lot of players and DMs (particularly newer ones) feel uncomfortable deviating from it and it ends up stifling creativity. It may be anecdotal, but apparently its a thing, so they try to leave it loose.
However, for some people, it has the opposite problem, where they can't envision anything to match the mechanics without it being written out for them.
Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
Wow. Seeing Artificer be the most hated, even more than Monks, kind of hurts my heart. Are people still salty about Eberron? Eberron and Artificers have been in the game for almost as long as I've been alive.
I personally dislike Monks the most. They're too specific to East Asian-style martial arts. They should include basically all forms of "fighting without normal weapons" characters, not just be every kung fu movie and anime stereotype ever rolled into one class. Open them up to include Pugilists/Boxers, Brawlers, and Wrestlers. Let them focus more on strength than relying on Dexterity for mostly everything. Give them proficiency in improvised weapons, rename "Ki" to "Grit" or something like that, and let even more characters fit into the class. Paladins are no longer just the Knights Templar, Druids aren't just Celtic Druids, and Rangers aren't just Aragorn anymore, so Monks shouldn't just be Wuxia characters. (I have nothing against playing the game in that style, I enjoy it quite a bit, I just think that classes shouldn't be locked into the stereotypes of a specific genre. They should all be very diverse in the theme and characters they can support in the base lore and mechanics of the class.)
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Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
Yeah that's all true, but (personal taste) that's what I like about them. They're the quintessential classic spell caster. And there are so many cool ways you can flavor them, and pick spells to match. You can be the scholar, the creepy necromancer, the seer, and so much more. But to each their own :)
Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
Yeah that's all true, but (personal taste) that's what I like about them. They're the quintessential classic spell caster. And there are so many cool ways you can flavor them, and pick spells to match. You can be the scholar, the creepy necromancer, the seer, and so much more. But to each their own :)
I like wizards a lot, especially the diviner subclass. I enjoy that they have so many spells and spell slots, but I find how little HP they have really frustrating at times. When I or other's played a wizard at low levels, we'd get hit once or twice and then go down.
I was playing once when the first level wizard got hit by a wolf and went unconscious immediatly.
Wow. Seeing Artificer be the most hated, even more than Monks, kind of hurts my heart. Are people still salty about Eberron? Eberron and Artificers have been in the game for almost as long as I've been alive.
I personally dislike Monks the most. They're too specific to East Asian-style martial arts. They should include basically all forms of "fighting without normal weapons" characters, not just be every kung fu movie and anime stereotype ever rolled into one class. Open them up to include Pugilists/Boxers, Brawlers, and Wrestlers. Let them focus more on strength than relying on Dexterity for mostly everything. Give them proficiency in improvised weapons, rename "Ki" to "Grit" or something like that, and let even more characters fit into the class. Paladins are no longer just the Knights Templar, Druids aren't just Celtic Druids, and Rangers aren't just Aragorn anymore, so Monks shouldn't just be Wuxia characters. (I have nothing against playing the game in that style, I enjoy it quite a bit, I just think that classes shouldn't be locked into the stereotypes of a specific genre. They should all be very diverse in the theme and characters they can support in the base lore and mechanics of the class.)
I don't like nor dislike artificers, I actually haven't gotten the chance to play them so I do agree with you on that. My main issue with monk though is that they're not very good mechanically. Same with ranger.
I just feel like these two classes could be stronger and better. They have interesting ideas but I feel like they just aren't very powerful.
For monks, maybe give them more KI or make some of their abilities worth less, I think that would help solve the balance problems for them. With rangers, I haven't played them so I wouldn't really know, but more spells & spell slots would probably help fix their underpowered issue.
Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
Yeah that's all true, but (personal taste) that's what I like about them. They're the quintessential classic spell caster. And there are so many cool ways you can flavor them, and pick spells to match. You can be the scholar, the creepy necromancer, the seer, and so much more. But to each their own :)
I like wizards a lot, especially the diviner subclass. I enjoy that they have so many spells and spell slots, but I find how little HP they have really frustrating at times. When I or other's played a wizard at low levels, we'd get hit once or twice and then go down.
I was playing once when the first level wizard got hit by a wolf and went unconscious immediatly.
Wow. Seeing Artificer be the most hated, even more than Monks, kind of hurts my heart. Are people still salty about Eberron? Eberron and Artificers have been in the game for almost as long as I've been alive.
I personally dislike Monks the most. They're too specific to East Asian-style martial arts. They should include basically all forms of "fighting without normal weapons" characters, not just be every kung fu movie and anime stereotype ever rolled into one class. Open them up to include Pugilists/Boxers, Brawlers, and Wrestlers. Let them focus more on strength than relying on Dexterity for mostly everything. Give them proficiency in improvised weapons, rename "Ki" to "Grit" or something like that, and let even more characters fit into the class. Paladins are no longer just the Knights Templar, Druids aren't just Celtic Druids, and Rangers aren't just Aragorn anymore, so Monks shouldn't just be Wuxia characters. (I have nothing against playing the game in that style, I enjoy it quite a bit, I just think that classes shouldn't be locked into the stereotypes of a specific genre. They should all be very diverse in the theme and characters they can support in the base lore and mechanics of the class.)
I don't like nor dislike artificers, I actually haven't gotten the chance to play them so I do agree with you on that. My main issue with monk though is that they're not very good mechanically. Same with ranger.
I just feel like these two classes could be stronger and better. They have interesting ideas but I feel like they just aren't very powerful.
For monks, maybe give them more KI or make some of their abilities worth less, I think that would help solve the balance problems for them. With rangers, I haven't played them so I wouldn't really know, but more spells & spell slots would probably help fix their underpowered issue.
For your Wiz issue, the solution is simple. Don’t get hit. 😜
Monk’s only problem is that it’s decent at everything, but the only thing it truly excels at is mobility and most people don’t value that nearly as much as they value DPR. The biggest thing going against the Ranger is that people don’t want to have to worry about tracking rations, water, or torches so some of what they were designed to be good at gets wasted.
The biggest thing going against the Ranger is that people don’t want to have to worry about tracking rations, water, or torches so some of what they were designed to be good at gets wasted.
Not to mention things like favoured enemy and terrain are pretty darn situational. There are campaigns where you can get a lot of use out of them and campaigns where you just… don’t, and that second possibility can really leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.
Ranger, in particular, benefits from some of their optional rules, which provide alternatives to these situation-limited abilities. I think it is great that Wizards acknowledged and fixed one of the “feels bad” elements of Ranger, though they still got a bit of the short straw insofar as most of the “optional features” other classes get are additive to the existing features, and Ranger’s are overrides.
The biggest thing going against the Ranger is that people don’t want to have to worry about tracking rations, water, or torches so some of what they were designed to be good at gets wasted.
Not to mention things like favoured enemy and terrain are pretty darn situational. There are campaigns where you can get a lot of use out of them and campaigns where you just… don’t, and that second possibility can really leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.
The same thing can be said for pretty much any class, though. High court drama campaign with little or no fighting? That Bear Totem Barbarian is gonna get bored pretty soon. A campaign with lots of fighting and no social interaction? Bards will probably have very little to do. And so on.
The biggest thing going against the Ranger is that people don’t want to have to worry about tracking rations, water, or torches so some of what they were designed to be good at gets wasted.
Not to mention things like favoured enemy and terrain are pretty darn situational. There are campaigns where you can get a lot of use out of them and campaigns where you just… don’t, and that second possibility can really leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.
The same thing can be said for pretty much any class, though. High court drama campaign with little or no fighting? That Bear Totem Barbarian is gonna get bored pretty soon. A campaign with lots of fighting and no social interaction? Bards will probably have very little to do. And so on.
Those are not equivalent examples. A Bear Totem Barbarian is still going to have some combat on a regular basis. A bard is still going to have some social interactions on a regular basis. Neither might be as common as they might be in other campaigns, but they will still turn up with a degree of regularity.
That is vastly different than, say, favoured terrain. Find yourself going through a jungle when your favoured terrain is desert? Enjoy having an entire feature of your class that will not show up at all in a session, until you leave the zone you are in. Pretty clear why “never show up for long swaths of time” would feel worse than “will show up from time to time, albeit rarely.”
I think its pretty fun to play a wizard or artificer. Especially wizards, they are amazing as control. That large a spell list is class feature enough, in my opinion. And wizard is super fun when you play for fun, instead of optimizing everything. Honestly, I really dislike sorcerer. Metamagic is neat and all, but the fact that there is a spellcasting class that can prepare so few spells just sucks for me.
Honestly, I really dislike sorcerer. Metamagic is neat and all, but the fact that there is a spellcasting class that can prepare so few spells just sucks for me.
Sorcerer is pretty fun as a quick multiclass dip though -- grab a few spells and features, maybe tack on Metamagic Adept for extra options there, and away you go
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Voted Ranger but haven't really played much else (picked that when 5e came out or maybe a bit later, played it to 20th lvl over the last few years - we don't play as often as some of y'all obviously). I can't say I can remember having gotten anything out of either favoured terrain or favoured enemy. Ever. It truly sucked for me as well to be out "martialled" (archer type) by the arcane trickster Rogue. We played without Feats and even so I probably played it in a wrong way.
Great initial flavour, but immense suckitude overall.
OTOH I have great expectations for the Hexblade I just started playing :-)
The thing that really slaps the Ranger in the face is that even if you do use all the survival rules and keep the campaign centered around the Rangers's favored terrain and favored enemies... It still doesn't even really matter. Wilderness survival is dead easy in this game. Besides the basic wisdom that if the adventure is happening in location X, the party is gonna get to location X whether they have the skill to get there or not; and if it isn't, then navigating there is a bad idea. (This is an issue with linear adventure paths... But I think the game has failed to provide DMs with the tools to easily improvise exploration in the way they can easily improvise social encounters. So while yes, you'll never need Persuasion to clear an adventure book either, you'll still get some use out of it, unlike Survival.)
I think its pretty fun to play a wizard or artificer. Especially wizards, they are amazing as control. That large a spell list is class feature enough, in my opinion. And wizard is super fun when you play for fun, instead of optimizing everything. Honestly, I really dislike sorcerer. Metamagic is neat and all, but the fact that there is a spellcasting class that can prepare so few spells just sucks for me.
The Tasha's sub classes go a long way to fix that problem. They get bunch of extra spells prepared. Never played one, though.
I don't like nor dislike artificers, I actually haven't gotten the chance to play them so I do agree with you on that. My main issue with monk though is that they're not very good mechanically. Same with ranger.
I just feel like these two classes could be stronger and better. They have interesting ideas but I feel like they just aren't very powerful.
I'm a forever DM, so I've only ever truly played a Hexblade Warlock (not multiclass, just pure Warlock) in a campaign that spanned over 8 levels. And I love Warlocks, but Artificers are still my favorite class. I personally am not sure if they're underpowered when compared to other classes, the artificer player I DM for is probably mid-tier in power when compared to the rest of the party, but a major reason why he's not the most powerful character in the party is because he spends all of his resources buffing his teammates. He has given out most of his infusions, his Spell Storing Item is given to his Homunculus Servant and has Enlarge/Reduce stored in it to help the party Monk deal crazy amounts of damage in combat, and he uses his first action in combat to Haste the monk so they deal even more damage.
The party monk has an Eldritch Claw Tattoo that he activates on his first round, and he has Hunter's Mark from the Fey Touched feat, so on his third turn in combat, he gets to make 5 attacks (2 from Extra Attack + 2 from Flurry of Blows + 1 from Haste), dealing a total of 100 (5d8 + 10d6 + 5d4 + 30) average damage per round of combat if all attacks hit (he has a +11 to hit, too).
Without the Artificer, the monk would just do 56 (4d8 + 4d6 + 24) average damage per turn, about half the damage he does with the Artificer's help. And while the Artificer may not be dealing that damage himself, he is the reason that extra damage is happening, so he's basically doing 44 damage per round in combat, on top of his normal 3 attacks per turn (2 from Extra Attack, 1 from his Steel Defender).
This is pretty niche and high level (level 15, IIRC), but this party's artificer is easily the best support character in the party, and the party has a Bard in it. The artificer in this campaign is really good.
It would be different if he had taken different infusions, or was a different subclass, but that's one of the core strengths of the Artificer. He's regularly dealing pretty good damage on his own, and he's also a great support character, and he's also the party's healer, and he also spends downtime making magic items for the party when they're not adventuring.
In my experience, the Artificer is good. No, they're not going to be dealing as much damage per round as a Paladin or Fighter, and they're not going to be as effective of a healer as a Cleric, and they're definitely not as good of a Spellcaster as a Wizard. However, they have a good amount of everything, and are good at support, good at damage, good at utility, and good at spellcasting.
In my opinion, the Bard isn't the true "Jack of All Trades, Master of None" class in D&D 5e, the Artificer is.
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The party monk has an Eldritch Claw Tattoo that he activates on his first round, and he has Hunter's Mark from the Fey Touched feat, so on his third turn in combat, he gets to make 5 attacks (2 from Extra Attack + 2 from Flurry of Blows + 1 from Haste), dealing a total of 100 (5d8 + 10d6 + 5d4 + 30) average damage per round of combat if all attacks hit (he has a +11 to hit, too).
Without the Artificer, the monk would just do 56 (4d8 + 4d6 + 24) average damage per turn, about half the damage he does with the Artificer's help.
That's just a smart use of spells. But for comparison sake, the Artificer can't access haste until level 9. Full casters can do so at level 5. Granted, it's not a fair comparison because you have a half caster compared to a full caster.
There's a couple Paladins who also get Haste. Take both of their spells away, and now how do they compare?
The half caster concept is supposed to be you get all this other stuff to make up for cutting your spell progression in half. So here's a thought experiment. Make a mental note of all the half casters in the game. Now take all of their spells away. How do they compare? The Artificer is left far behind. That's my main gripe. They don't get nearly enough to justify only being a half caster.
The party monk has an Eldritch Claw Tattoo that he activates on his first round, and he has Hunter's Mark from the Fey Touched feat, so on his third turn in combat, he gets to make 5 attacks (2 from Extra Attack + 2 from Flurry of Blows + 1 from Haste), dealing a total of 100 (5d8 + 10d6 + 5d4 + 30) average damage per round of combat if all attacks hit (he has a +11 to hit, too).
Without the Artificer, the monk would just do 56 (4d8 + 4d6 + 24) average damage per turn, about half the damage he does with the Artificer's help.
That's just a smart use of spells.
And what's your point? Because it's the Artificer class and its mechanics that allowed that smart combination of spells to be possible. No other class in the game can allow a single character to cast those to spells at the same time. Spell Storing Item is the only feature that makes this "smart use of spells" possible.
So, yes, it is a smart use of spells. That's only possible because of the Artificer class. Otherwise, it would take two different spellcasting PCs to make this combo possible.
But for comparison sake, the Artificer can't access haste until level 9. Full casters can do so at level 5. Granted, it's not a fair comparison because you have a half caster compared to a full caster.
Yep. Not a fair comparison. Because the Artificer is a half-caster and you're comparing it to a full caster. And even if you were to make that comparison, one character casting both haste and enlarge on one of their companions is not possible in the official rules.
So, sure, it takes them longer to get both spells, but they also get to do combos that no other class can possibly do.
There's a couple Paladins who also get Haste. Take both of their spells away, and now how do they compare? The half caster concept is supposed to be you get all this other stuff to make up for cutting your spell progression in half. So here's a thought experiment. Make a mental note of all the half casters in the game. Now take all of their spells away. How do they compare? The Artificer is left far behind. That's my main gripe. They don't get nearly enough to justify only being a half caster.
That's not a fair comparison. Artificers are more of a spell-focused class than Paladins are. They get spells earlier and get cantrips. That would be like saying Wizards suck compared to Fighters because they're completely useless while inside the range of an antimagic field while Fighters get to keep all of their features. Or like saying that Fighters suck compared to monks because when you take away a fighter's weapons and armor they're less effective in combat than monks are with no weapons or armor.
Spellcasting is a bigger part of the artificer class than it is for rangers and paladins. If you remove spellcasting from both, the artificer is going to be weaker because it makes more use of spellcasting than rangers and paladins do. That's a really stupid and fallacious argument.
And Artificers get quite a bit to make up for their half-casting. They get cantrips, spells at first level, more tools (which are campaign dependent, but still useful), infusions, and subclasses that give them more features than those of the other half-casters.
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Fair enough. Why is Wizard getting so many votes?
I mean...not necessarily. The more recent material shows a trend towards WotC not wanting to proscribe flavor. Using an action to whip out your Steel Defender could be a zillion things. You have an enchanted gem that you break and the dust forms the pet, you have a stone carved with runes that when invoked generates a pet made of light, or a small pocketwatch that expands, cogs and wheels flying out and reconfiguring to form the pet when you press a button. They want to give you enough to build on and make something your own. Surveys and stuff have shown that when there's very specific flavor, a lot of players and DMs (particularly newer ones) feel uncomfortable deviating from it and it ends up stifling creativity. It may be anecdotal, but apparently its a thing, so they try to leave it loose.
However, for some people, it has the opposite problem, where they can't envision anything to match the mechanics without it being written out for them.
Because all it really has is spells without much of anything else. It has (almost) all the spells, and is without a doubt the best caster in the game, but other than that it’s rather devoid of flavor for the most part. That and a good ⅓ of its subclasses are pretty “meh,” and another ⅓ are over the top.
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Wow. Seeing Artificer be the most hated, even more than Monks, kind of hurts my heart. Are people still salty about Eberron? Eberron and Artificers have been in the game for almost as long as I've been alive.
I personally dislike Monks the most. They're too specific to East Asian-style martial arts. They should include basically all forms of "fighting without normal weapons" characters, not just be every kung fu movie and anime stereotype ever rolled into one class. Open them up to include Pugilists/Boxers, Brawlers, and Wrestlers. Let them focus more on strength than relying on Dexterity for mostly everything. Give them proficiency in improvised weapons, rename "Ki" to "Grit" or something like that, and let even more characters fit into the class. Paladins are no longer just the Knights Templar, Druids aren't just Celtic Druids, and Rangers aren't just Aragorn anymore, so Monks shouldn't just be Wuxia characters. (I have nothing against playing the game in that style, I enjoy it quite a bit, I just think that classes shouldn't be locked into the stereotypes of a specific genre. They should all be very diverse in the theme and characters they can support in the base lore and mechanics of the class.)
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Yeah that's all true, but (personal taste) that's what I like about them. They're the quintessential classic spell caster. And there are so many cool ways you can flavor them, and pick spells to match. You can be the scholar, the creepy necromancer, the seer, and so much more. But to each their own :)
I like wizards a lot, especially the diviner subclass. I enjoy that they have so many spells and spell slots, but I find how little HP they have really frustrating at times. When I or other's played a wizard at low levels, we'd get hit once or twice and then go down.
I was playing once when the first level wizard got hit by a wolf and went unconscious immediatly.
I don't like nor dislike artificers, I actually haven't gotten the chance to play them so I do agree with you on that. My main issue with monk though is that they're not very good mechanically. Same with ranger.
I just feel like these two classes could be stronger and better. They have interesting ideas but I feel like they just aren't very powerful.
For monks, maybe give them more KI or make some of their abilities worth less, I think that would help solve the balance problems for them. With rangers, I haven't played them so I wouldn't really know, but more spells & spell slots would probably help fix their underpowered issue.
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HERE.For your Wiz issue, the solution is simple. Don’t get hit. 😜
Monk’s only problem is that it’s decent at everything, but the only thing it truly excels at is mobility and most people don’t value that nearly as much as they value DPR. The biggest thing going against the Ranger is that people don’t want to have to worry about tracking rations, water, or torches so some of what they were designed to be good at gets wasted.
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Not to mention things like favoured enemy and terrain are pretty darn situational. There are campaigns where you can get a lot of use out of them and campaigns where you just… don’t, and that second possibility can really leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth.
Ranger, in particular, benefits from some of their optional rules, which provide alternatives to these situation-limited abilities. I think it is great that Wizards acknowledged and fixed one of the “feels bad” elements of Ranger, though they still got a bit of the short straw insofar as most of the “optional features” other classes get are additive to the existing features, and Ranger’s are overrides.
The same thing can be said for pretty much any class, though. High court drama campaign with little or no fighting? That Bear Totem Barbarian is gonna get bored pretty soon. A campaign with lots of fighting and no social interaction? Bards will probably have very little to do. And so on.
Those are not equivalent examples. A Bear Totem Barbarian is still going to have some combat on a regular basis. A bard is still going to have some social interactions on a regular basis. Neither might be as common as they might be in other campaigns, but they will still turn up with a degree of regularity.
That is vastly different than, say, favoured terrain. Find yourself going through a jungle when your favoured terrain is desert? Enjoy having an entire feature of your class that will not show up at all in a session, until you leave the zone you are in. Pretty clear why “never show up for long swaths of time” would feel worse than “will show up from time to time, albeit rarely.”
I think its pretty fun to play a wizard or artificer. Especially wizards, they are amazing as control. That large a spell list is class feature enough, in my opinion. And wizard is super fun when you play for fun, instead of optimizing everything. Honestly, I really dislike sorcerer. Metamagic is neat and all, but the fact that there is a spellcasting class that can prepare so few spells just sucks for me.
N/A
Sorcerer is pretty fun as a quick multiclass dip though -- grab a few spells and features, maybe tack on Metamagic Adept for extra options there, and away you go
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Voted Ranger but haven't really played much else (picked that when 5e came out or maybe a bit later, played it to 20th lvl over the last few years - we don't play as often as some of y'all obviously). I can't say I can remember having gotten anything out of either favoured terrain or favoured enemy. Ever. It truly sucked for me as well to be out "martialled" (archer type) by the arcane trickster Rogue. We played without Feats and even so I probably played it in a wrong way.
Great initial flavour, but immense suckitude overall.
OTOH I have great expectations for the Hexblade I just started playing :-)
The thing that really slaps the Ranger in the face is that even if you do use all the survival rules and keep the campaign centered around the Rangers's favored terrain and favored enemies... It still doesn't even really matter. Wilderness survival is dead easy in this game. Besides the basic wisdom that if the adventure is happening in location X, the party is gonna get to location X whether they have the skill to get there or not; and if it isn't, then navigating there is a bad idea. (This is an issue with linear adventure paths... But I think the game has failed to provide DMs with the tools to easily improvise exploration in the way they can easily improvise social encounters. So while yes, you'll never need Persuasion to clear an adventure book either, you'll still get some use out of it, unlike Survival.)
PHB ranger is pretty tragic, but the Tasha's ranger is a great class.
The Tasha's sub classes go a long way to fix that problem. They get bunch of extra spells prepared. Never played one, though.
I'm a forever DM, so I've only ever truly played a Hexblade Warlock (not multiclass, just pure Warlock) in a campaign that spanned over 8 levels. And I love Warlocks, but Artificers are still my favorite class. I personally am not sure if they're underpowered when compared to other classes, the artificer player I DM for is probably mid-tier in power when compared to the rest of the party, but a major reason why he's not the most powerful character in the party is because he spends all of his resources buffing his teammates. He has given out most of his infusions, his Spell Storing Item is given to his Homunculus Servant and has Enlarge/Reduce stored in it to help the party Monk deal crazy amounts of damage in combat, and he uses his first action in combat to Haste the monk so they deal even more damage.
The party monk has an Eldritch Claw Tattoo that he activates on his first round, and he has Hunter's Mark from the Fey Touched feat, so on his third turn in combat, he gets to make 5 attacks (2 from Extra Attack + 2 from Flurry of Blows + 1 from Haste), dealing a total of 100 (5d8 + 10d6 + 5d4 + 30) average damage per round of combat if all attacks hit (he has a +11 to hit, too).
Without the Artificer, the monk would just do 56 (4d8 + 4d6 + 24) average damage per turn, about half the damage he does with the Artificer's help. And while the Artificer may not be dealing that damage himself, he is the reason that extra damage is happening, so he's basically doing 44 damage per round in combat, on top of his normal 3 attacks per turn (2 from Extra Attack, 1 from his Steel Defender).
This is pretty niche and high level (level 15, IIRC), but this party's artificer is easily the best support character in the party, and the party has a Bard in it. The artificer in this campaign is really good.
It would be different if he had taken different infusions, or was a different subclass, but that's one of the core strengths of the Artificer. He's regularly dealing pretty good damage on his own, and he's also a great support character, and he's also the party's healer, and he also spends downtime making magic items for the party when they're not adventuring.
In my experience, the Artificer is good. No, they're not going to be dealing as much damage per round as a Paladin or Fighter, and they're not going to be as effective of a healer as a Cleric, and they're definitely not as good of a Spellcaster as a Wizard. However, they have a good amount of everything, and are good at support, good at damage, good at utility, and good at spellcasting.
In my opinion, the Bard isn't the true "Jack of All Trades, Master of None" class in D&D 5e, the Artificer is.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
That's just a smart use of spells. But for comparison sake, the Artificer can't access haste until level 9. Full casters can do so at level 5. Granted, it's not a fair comparison because you have a half caster compared to a full caster.
There's a couple Paladins who also get Haste. Take both of their spells away, and now how do they compare?
The half caster concept is supposed to be you get all this other stuff to make up for cutting your spell progression in half. So here's a thought experiment. Make a mental note of all the half casters in the game. Now take all of their spells away. How do they compare? The Artificer is left far behind. That's my main gripe. They don't get nearly enough to justify only being a half caster.
And what's your point? Because it's the Artificer class and its mechanics that allowed that smart combination of spells to be possible. No other class in the game can allow a single character to cast those to spells at the same time. Spell Storing Item is the only feature that makes this "smart use of spells" possible.
So, yes, it is a smart use of spells. That's only possible because of the Artificer class. Otherwise, it would take two different spellcasting PCs to make this combo possible.
Yep. Not a fair comparison. Because the Artificer is a half-caster and you're comparing it to a full caster. And even if you were to make that comparison, one character casting both haste and enlarge on one of their companions is not possible in the official rules.
So, sure, it takes them longer to get both spells, but they also get to do combos that no other class can possibly do.
That's not a fair comparison. Artificers are more of a spell-focused class than Paladins are. They get spells earlier and get cantrips. That would be like saying Wizards suck compared to Fighters because they're completely useless while inside the range of an antimagic field while Fighters get to keep all of their features. Or like saying that Fighters suck compared to monks because when you take away a fighter's weapons and armor they're less effective in combat than monks are with no weapons or armor.
Spellcasting is a bigger part of the artificer class than it is for rangers and paladins. If you remove spellcasting from both, the artificer is going to be weaker because it makes more use of spellcasting than rangers and paladins do. That's a really stupid and fallacious argument.
And Artificers get quite a bit to make up for their half-casting. They get cantrips, spells at first level, more tools (which are campaign dependent, but still useful), infusions, and subclasses that give them more features than those of the other half-casters.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms