The Artificer, Or An Overwritten And Rambling Analysis Thereof
An updated version of the Unearthed Arcana playtest artificer (found here) was released and I got a chance to play it in a quick dungeon crawl, so let's talk about it!
The character I played was basically myself as a 4th-level artificer (alchemist). The dungeon crawl was very basic and not set in a specific place since we were only going for one short session.
We fought bandits and wolves, ran into some kobolds and delved into some caverns, then fought some giant-spider-riding kobolds and encountered a trap (which the rogue-ranger set off) and half-ogres (or maybe bugbears, I'm not sure). Resting in a cave, we got ambushed by more bandits in the night and, once morning came, hauled a cart full of junk back to town using a wheelbarrow I whipped up with the help of my one-eyed malfunctioning-chameleon-skinned homunculus mutant which broke down halfway between the dungeon and the town but I'm happy that I made it at all — and I'll let you guess which of the two creations I mean broke down.
Nothing spectacular happened except that I got to play D&D and tinker around with a new class with a few acquaintances. Thinking back on it, we might have played a tweaked part of The Keep on the Borderlands? I've watched others play it but never played it myself, a few of those pieces ring a bell now... Are there giant-spider-riding kobolds in that adventure? Anyway. Onto the more important part of this blog post: unofficial class playtest feedback!
Before diving in, I want to point out again that this feedback is mostly from questions and concerns I was having at the table during my one session of play with a smattering of thoughts about it immediately afterwards. I'm not spending much time thinking about damage output or ways to exploit class features or multiclassing, I just played a session and have some thoughts. Mostly thoughts about terminology...
Infuse Item
Specifically, the term "infusion." It completely throws me off. To me, it implies creating mixtures, fluids, concoctions, extractions, imbibing, or it implies distillation; ideas that work for alchemists, but not characters who tinker with clockwork contraptions. Less important to me, it also implies something (usually a fluid substance) that is strong and fully saturated whereas this feature is meant to be used to add a minor supplementary or auxiliary effect to a small object until you reach higher levels — though, even at higher levels, the implications of "fully saturated" don't really fit most of the given "infusions" to me.
Thinking about what might be better, words like "relic" or "artifact" or "talisman" don't quite fit since they imply a sense of time and historical importance. Other words like "mechanism" or "contraption" also don't quite fit since they often imply a larger scale and, especially with the latter, a certain amount of complexity.
Ideas: gadget, tool, instrument, trinket, bauble, device, curio, apparatus, contraption, widget, prototype, accessory, charm, bangle, signet, pendant, capsule, knickknack, toy.
"I create fascinating [trinkets, baubles, gadgets] out of mundane objects, like this one..." all sound much more on-brand to me compared to "I create wonderful infusions..." which is what an alchemist (specifically) would say. Additionally, I suspect "trinket" and "bauble" (and many of the other words listed above) are more apt to inspire artificer players to come up with their own ideas and techno-babble-icious names for their creations than "infusion" would, but that's more of a gut feeling than anything I can back up with science.
Lastly for me (for this part), "infusions" don't line up with the fantasy I had in mind of tinkering with your spellcasting focuses and gadgets created using this feature to prepare my spells. If I'm making infusions, I think of chemistry class and teas and homemade tinctures.
I feel like creating "infusions" should be part of an artificer subclass (the alchemist), not built-in to the base class as the featured mechanic, at least with that name.
As for the name of the class feature, there are plenty of other words that are more open to interpretation or that fit my fantasy better. Having "Infuse Item," "infusion," "Artificer Infusions list" use the same word is great for consistency and grokkability, they work together well and match the given flavor of imbuing items with your magic, but the word itself lacking the proper fantastical flavor still casts a shadow over those aspects and whole feature for me.
I assumed that the words "Tinker" and "trinket" were intentionally not used in order to avoid being confused with "trinket lists" (lists of mundane, often useless items) in some books. However, "tinker's tools" and "tinker" abilities elsewhere are used by other creatures and NPCs all over the place (books and settings) to create clockwork devices and other gadgets that very much resemble the magic items created with this class feature. Tools that are more likely to be involved with creating an "infusion" (alchemist's supplies, herbalism kits, etc.) are not specifically mentioned for the base artificer whereas tools to create clockwork devices and gadgets are (tinker's tools).
The feature and its terminology as-is makes me disconnect from the rules as-written, but, judging by how little it mattered to me by the end of the session, it's possible that it will make a large chunk of artificer players construct their own words and flavors at the table out of and in character to express their own specific fantasy. Even if I don't like it or I disagree with deciding on that terminology, it will probably do its job just fine and it has the potential to (intentionally or not) inspire players to infuse their character with their own fantasy. But for a handful of reasons it does bug me.
I like when the words to match the mechanics and the narrative, I don't like when they don't.
Specialist Summons
Both subclass options, the alchemist and artillerist, both gain features at 3rd-level to create or magically summon a homunculus or arcane turret. I find the idea of having a small homunculus ally following me around and concocting potions fairly interesting and funny, but having a pet is not something I wanted to be doing as an artificer. The flavor for the alchemist specialist is fine, and the other features make sense mechanically and narratively, but the other option of being an artillerist specialist and summoning walking cannons feels out of place everywhere — except Eberron with its magi-tech and Ravnica, also with some magi-tech including the guild keyrune artifacts. I want to play a solo artificer, so of course not having a solo-focused specialist is somewhat disappointing. Not having a seafaring, gunpowder-blasting turret option when there is a seafaring adventure book coming up is another slight letdown but changing the flavor of the turret at the table is effortless.
A bigger discrepancy I have with the artillerist is that the given flavor is that you "summon" or "conjure" an arcane turret basically the same way you would conjure up any other summoned creature or cast a spell with a literal and figurative hand wave, as opposed to "constructing" the contraption and "deploying" it when needed. I wish there was a somewhat bulky turret crafting system built-in to the artillerist, however, the system being so lightweight also makes it easy to build on and incorporate other homebrew systems into, so I can't complain about it (too much).
Despite my disinclination to play either subclass, both offer a lot of fun potential with their summons alone, and the summons have a very large creative design space for different homunculus and turret options both for flavor and in-depth mechanical changes, all of which I really appreciate. They're bizarre, but they inspire me in weird, fun ways.
Artificer Infusions
I dislike the name of the feature, I want the written flavor to be different, and I wish there were more low-level-low-power-but-interesting effects rather than "+X/-X of a stat" effects (for the boring weapon and armor enhancements). That said, I think these are pretty cool. Each infusion acts like an optional class feature but with a lot of artificer-y flavor behind it. And, for settings like Eberron and Ravnica, the created items fit so naturally.
Specific infusion notes:
- Boots of the Winding Path. A simple teleport was surprising to see, but at 4th-level the 15-foot BAMF! seemed fine and worked well for moving between shelves at the library, as well as in combat for bouncing around and avoiding head-to-head fights and attacks of opportunity.
Side note: This particular infusion played out almost exactly like an ability my old beguiler had (minus some ethereal phasing nonsense that I crammed in), which moves my rating from an A to an A++. - Enhanced Weapon. Turning a non-magical weapon into a magical one — and one that anybody capable of wielding it can use — by spending one of your infusions and not spending a spell slot is nice. At 5th-level (when you acquire Arcane Armament) and higher, it's likely that you'll have a magic weapon or at least the arcane weapon spell, but the ability to make another one on the fly is nice. It's just nice. It could be better or worked into Arcane Armament somehow, I don't know how, but the simplicity makes it a nice on-off effect and doesn't really step into the territory of anyone else augmenting weapons/attacks.
- Returning Weapon. A.k.a. Mjolnir a.k.a. boomerang weapon. Nothing extreme or convoluted in the slightest, it's another on-off infusion to make a weapon magical and give it the Mjolnir property. Cool.
- Many-Handed Pouch. Can you connect the pouches to a bag of holding, or vice-versa? How do you "infuse" a pouch with an alchemical substance that creates a shared interdimensional space between a bunch of other pouches...? How do infusions work, really?
"A pouch operates as long as it is within 100 miles of another one of the pouches; the pouch is otherwise empty and won’t accept any contents." (p. 9)
Why can you not store anything in a deactivated pouch? If the infusion ends, I assume the pouches revert to being the same regular, everyday pouches they were before they were infused, just like all infusions, so why would they not function like mundane pouches when out of range? Does another rule in the game that I'm unaware of call for that line for when the item deactivates from being out of range but not for when the infusion ends? It just seems odd.
I'm being overly critical with this one, but I did find myself internally asking a lot of questions about this particular infusion and infusions in general. I used it once and mostly forgot about it, which in my experience is what happens with everyone who has a bag of holding. - Replicate Magic Item. I didn't understand how this "infusion" worked at all, mechanically or narratively. I scratched my head, scratched my chin, held The Thinker pose for several seconds if not for one whole minute, and came up with nothing.
"Using this infusion, you replicate a magic item." (Replicate Magic Item, p. 9)
"At 2nd level, you gain the ability to imbue mundane items with certain magical infusions. The magic items you create with this feature are effectively prototypes of permanent items." (Infuse Item, p. 5)
"Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch a nonmagical object and imbue it with one of your artificer infusions, turning it into a magic item." (Infusing an Item, p. 5)
Every other infusion makes a point to say that, mechanically and narratively, you are imbuing an item with magic. Taking magic from yourself or your environment and cramming it into an object. As I read it, it seemed like I was somehow imbuing an already-magic item with more, different magic to duplicate that item. That didn't make any sense.
Another way I interpreted it is that you learn the ability to create one of the magic items listed as long as you have your tools and are at the required level (and I guess have random scrap lying around), but the name is "replicate," not "craft" or "create" or "construct." This also doesn't make sense.
After the session, I went back to try figuring it out again and concluded that it isn't written well for me. I had more questions including "Can this infusion take the properties of the listed item and add them to any other mundane item?" which felt like another poor interpretation. If it read "you replicate the effects of another magic item" or something along those lines, then it would line up with that thinking, but it doesn't feel like that's what this ability is meant to do... yet, it somehow does feel like it should do that at the same time...
The last gripe I have with this feature is that it doesn't tell me where to find any of the items listed, or if it does then I didn't see it. Granted, when I skimmed over the lists I assumed that the items would be from multiple books.
I didn't use this ability because I didn't understand how it worked so I ignored it completely after reading it. In this case — unlike my ramblings on the term "infusion" above — I do think this ability needs another revision to get across the mechanics and narrative. Or, someone should explain to me how they used it and if that worked for them.
Arcane Weaponmaster
With the Enhanced Weapon infusion, Arcane Armament feature, and the new arcane weapon spell, I'm confused about why these are part of the artificer class. Individually, the Enhanced Weapon and Arcane Armament give some variety and utility and fit in fine. Altogether, the bundle of abilities doesn't make sense; I would expect to see them in a lurk or duskblade or wizard long before the artificer. They also confuse the class. "Am I about making contraptions, or about using my magic sword?" Perhaps as an alchemist specialist it makes sense to apply a poison or alchemist's fire effect to a weapon, but an artillerist? And since we had a rogue with poisons that could deal necrotic or psychic damage and a cleric that might have been able to give weapons radiant or fire damage, how useful or redundant is my ability? (An artificer subclass focused on creating power fists or power armor or complimenting warforged would do well with an attack bundle... Anyhow.)
Arcane weapon doesn't require the weapon to be magical or that you attune to it, so you can do some odd things to boost the damage of a weapon in a few ways and give it to a fighter or barbarian ally to attack with as long as you maintain concentration on the spell. One time we made it work and it was useful and effective and kind of neat, but doing that often or using it on my own weapons regularly doesn't fit any of my artificer, alchemist, or artillerist fantasies. And again, it felt like other characters should be doing this even it's something I'm also intended to do.
This splotlight feature being a concentration spell is odd to me too. I want to invest my time and resources into preparing an array of magic items to supplement my list of ranged crowd control or area damage or wild magic spells and other capabilities, rather than focusing on maintaining one weapon augmentation like this. If it was a concentration spell that somehow worked with the summon, I would be more interested in an obviously artificer-flavored feature despite not wanting this to be a pet-oriented class.
In short, I want a feature that makes my infusions or artificer-ness stronger instead of a feature that lets me make more magic weapon attacks, unless that weapon is something like an Izzet pyroconverger or mizzium mortar (which, sadly, are wondrous items, not magic weapons). Which makes me wonder for a future artificer session: "What if I change this to say 'wondrous items' and bring along a pyroconverger or two?" That sounds like fun. Potentially (probably) broken, but fun.
Overall Experience
I'm not displeased with the class, I had a lot of fun playing it, but at the end of the night I was left unsatisfied with the mechanics and narrative; the fantasy didn't quite hit my mark. I think the biggest reason for that was the lack of a subclass that matched my idea of what an "artificer" is: a 24/7 obsessed tinkerer and 1-gnome-arcane-gizmo-factory, a clockwork aficionado, a scrap-hoarding power-suit-wearer, or a steam or aetherpunk Junkyard Wars or mecha-fied BattleBots veteran.
The two subclasses pretty much hit the marks for their respective fantasies, but I won't want much more than a scoop or two of either flavor once in a blue moon (if that often). As it stands, whenever the full class is released, chances are I'm going to homebrew a few features and add in extra mechanics or downtime activities to amp up the later levels, if not make an entire subclass package for myself to enjoy.
