Would artificers fit in the Forgotten Realms setting?

Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Quote from JaimeVonCarstein >>

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Weren’t followers of Gond into firearms and inventions?

 

That sounds interesting! My point is, would Artificer firearms and inventions fit in the Forgotten Realms? Aren't they too futuristic? 🤔 (just wondering, I must be absolutely wrong, since I don't know much about artificers).

You can basically bar firearms if it doesn't fit.  This "issue" largely stems from most of the official art for Artificers being Steam punk themed. And people for whatever reason, people struggle to think outside that box.   If you think as the foundation as highly skilled craftsman who can imbue objects with power, rather than manipulating magical energy directly (aka witchcraft that tried to rebrand itself as wizardry), there is no thematical difference between a wizard who enchants objects and artificers who make things powered by magical energy.  

If you want to think about the scale of magic to technology, at the arcane end of the magical spectrum you have Magitech.  Technology specifically designed to take magical energy of any viable source, and used to power the device like a battery. Standarized, mass produced, and has some degree of interoperability.  Its purpose is to make the power of magic mundane enough that the average person can use it in their every day life.  Applications are wide spread, and you can design an entire city around its capabilities.  Designs lean more toward modern technology, because the esoteric nature of the magic is not a limiting factor in designing things powered by it.  

Toward the middle of you the default Faerune level of magic items, which are specially crafted objects, with specific purposes, and created on a needs vs resource basis.  Thus a lot of magic items in the world are usually old, and new items are NOT produced in large quantities.  This uncommon nature, and limited supply, lends toward your average citizen of even the most wealthy cities to have one low tier items AT MOST in their familty, while upper class citizens might hoard them like treasure or leverage the power of those items to secure social or political status.  Hence a gang leader might be decked out in magic items, while trusted lieutenants may be allowed to have one or two, and the rest of the mooks get nothing.  

In lower fantasy or low technology settings, magic items are rare and coveted, and if any new ones are made, that person is going to be someone notable in the world.   Possibly even a god or demi god.  Outside of that, attempts to "create" magic items are primitive and could be as crude as etching runes into otherwise mundane items, subjecting them to rituals in places of power, or made from the parts or essence of powerful monsters.  IE the magic of the item has to come externally, and transferred into the item. 

An Artificer in a low magic campaign is a true rarity, and flavoring their design can be fairly easily modeled after Rune smiths or Shamans who learned to repurpose the magic of the things they defeat, places of power they visit, or invoking the favor of deities into a object they use in battle.  The nature of the setting also demands more curation of what items are allowed; but the core list of items in basic DnD are pretty straight forward, and mechanically uncomplicated. 

An Artificer in a High fantasy setting like FR has the opportunity to flavor the abilities based on the artisans of their home land.   And FR kind of being a mixed bag, you could get concepts like simple Rune carvings taken from Giants, to Clockwork designs inspired by Mechanus, objects adorned with fine carvings or embroidery that house its enchantments, Scrapyard designs made from crude materials and tied together with rope and a prayer, demiplanes that house a fragment of other planar energy thats unleashed when the item is used, or are powered by magic rocks.    If anything, it gives a strong excuse to learn about the different regions a character comes from, and represent an aspect of that culture that can be as pragmatic or as ostentatious as the player is willing to go into.  

I have a Goblin Battlesmith in a custom campaign thats similar to Faerun, but with better civil engineering.  All of this magic items and spells are reverse engineered from need, and are attempts to recreate magic effects in more crudely magical ways, or applying weak versions of spell effects to items to get it to do things.  The most ambitious thing hes ever built was the Steel Defender, which is modeled after the Party's Warforged Paladin.  He got the body portion somewhat right, being a pseudo-golem with armor plating as a shell.....  but how the mind of a warforged works is lost arcana, and has been impossible for him to even figure out.  So the Defender is barely functional mentally, and needs the Homunculus servant to supervise it.   And on the basis of this, I concepted the bot's dynamics as a mixture of a (Titanfall) Titan/Pilot relationship, Master Blaster from Mad Max, and Watchet and Omega from Transformers (2007).  

Quote from starlinvf >>

Quote from JaimeVonCarstein >>

Quote from ArmorStorm >>

Weren’t followers of Gond into firearms and inventions?

 

That sounds interesting! My point is, would Artificer firearms and inventions fit in the Forgotten Realms? Aren't they too futuristic? 🤔 (just wondering, I must be absolutely wrong, since I don't know much about artificers).

 

You can basically bar firearms if it doesn't fit.  This "issue" largely stems from most of the official art for Artificers being Steam punk themed. And people for whatever reason, people struggle to think outside that box.   If you think as the foundation as highly skilled craftsman who can imbue objects with power, rather than manipulating magical energy directly (aka witchcraft that tried to rebrand itself as wizardry), there is no thematical difference between a wizard who enchants objects and artificers who make things powered by magical energy.  

If you want to think about the scale of magic to technology, at the arcane end of the magical spectrum you have Magitech.  Technology specifically designed to take magical energy of any viable source, and used to power the device like a battery. Standarized, mass produced, and has some degree of interoperability.  Its purpose is to make the power of magic mundane enough that the average person can use it in their every day life.  Applications are wide spread, and you can design an entire city around its capabilities.  Designs lean more toward modern technology, because the esoteric nature of the magic is not a limiting factor in designing things powered by it.  

Toward the middle of you the default Faerune level of magic items, which are specially crafted objects, with specific purposes, and created on a needs vs resource basis.  Thus a lot of magic items in the world are usually old, and new items are NOT produced in large quantities.  This uncommon nature, and limited supply, lends toward your average citizen of even the most wealthy cities to have one low tier items AT MOST in their familty, while upper class citizens might hoard them like treasure or leverage the power of those items to secure social or political status.  Hence a gang leader might be decked out in magic items, while trusted lieutenants may be allowed to have one or two, and the rest of the mooks get nothing.  

In lower fantasy or low technology settings, magic items are rare and coveted, and if any new ones are made, that person is going to be someone notable in the world.   Possibly even a god or demi god.  Outside of that, attempts to "create" magic items are primitive and could be as crude as etching runes into otherwise mundane items, subjecting them to rituals in places of power, or made from the parts or essence of powerful monsters.  IE the magic of the item has to come externally, and transferred into the item. 

An Artificer in a low magic campaign is a true rarity, and flavoring their design can be fairly easily modeled after Rune smiths or Shamans who learned to repurpose the magic of the things they defeat, places of power they visit, or invoking the favor of deities into a object they use in battle.  The nature of the setting also demands more curation of what items are allowed; but the core list of items in basic DnD are pretty straight forward, and mechanically uncomplicated. 

An Artificer in a High fantasy setting like FR has the opportunity to flavor the abilities based on the artisans of their home land.   And FR kind of being a mixed bag, you could get concepts like simple Rune carvings taken from Giants, to Clockwork designs inspired by Mechanus, objects adorned with fine carvings or embroidery that house its enchantments, Scrapyard designs made from crude materials and tied together with rope and a prayer, demiplanes that house a fragment of other planar energy thats unleashed when the item is used, or are powered by magic rocks.    If anything, it gives a strong excuse to learn about the different regions a character comes from, and represent an aspect of that culture that can be as pragmatic or as ostentatious as the player is willing to go into.  

I have a Goblin Battlesmith in a custom campaign thats similar to Faerun, but with better civil engineering.  All of this magic items and spells are reverse engineered from need, and are attempts to recreate magic effects in more crudely magical ways, or applying weak versions of spell effects to items to get it to do things.  The most ambitious thing hes ever built was the Steel Defender, which is modeled after the Party's Warforged Paladin.  He got the body portion somewhat right, being a pseudo-golem with armor plating as a shell.....  but how the mind of a warforged works is lost arcana, and has been impossible for him to even figure out.  So the Defender is barely functional mentally, and needs the Homunculus servant to supervise it.   And on the basis of this, I concepted the bot's dynamics as a mixture of a (Titanfall) Titan/Pilot relationship, Master Blaster from Mad Max, and Watchet and Omega from Transformers (2007).  

 Amazing answer! Thank you for all your information! ❤️