Artificer Subclass Tier Rankings in D&D 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by stibbles codex of companions which is now available for pre-order at the ghostfire games online store designed by our amazing friend logan at runesmith this book is jam-packed full of crazy critters to add to your games your characters can befriend these companions and follow them on their adventures so for all of you that have a party that is notorious for building up a small menagerie of adorable followers this is the perfect way to get some rules for that so that you can control the chaos that such creatures bring so you can add all of these fun and adorable little monsters to your adventuring party by pre-ordering the book using the links below stills codex is coming off the rails of a fantastically successful kickstarter campaign and is now coming up for pre-order for its eventual delivery very soon so check out that pre-order in the description below and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to the channel so that you never miss an episode today we are ranking the subclasses available to artificers in dungeons and dragons 5th edition although the artificer originally appeared in the eberron source book with three subclasses a fourth subclass the armorer was introduced in tasha's cauldron of everything so we will be evaluating all four of the subclasses based on how they are presented in tasha's cauldron if you look on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria that we use to rank the subclasses we've pitted the subclasses against each other and not those of other classes also keep in mind that we will not be taking the role play or flavor that you bring to your artificer into account with these rankings also we might touch on some multi-classing but it is not a core mechanic that we are looking at in our rankings it is worth noting that when we evaluate the subclasses we look at more than just combat we consider how the subclass augments the features of the base class in exploration encounters problem solving and social situations as well one of the key things with all the artificial subclasses though is that many of them do have a pretty strong combat bent although some of them cause the artificer to diverge from roles from being a damage dealer to being a support character to even being a little bit of a front liner as well the artificer is also the newest class introduced in dungeons and dragons 5th edition and the subclasses overall we feel are far more balanced against each other compared to those of prior classes with only four subclasses presented for the base class and this later set of design principles being applied to it overall we think that the artificer subclasses are much closer to each other even as we go into the analysis there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so as we dive in there are two main features that are common to all of the artificer subclasses the first of which is that all artificial subclasses grant an additional set of tool proficiencies and sometimes additional weapon and armor proficiencies often allowing the various artificer subclasses to use those tools or weapons as a spell casting focus for their artifice or spells in addition to that artificers do gain an extended spell list for each of these subclasses this works basically in the same manner as the expanded cell spell lists available to clerics in which that artificers gain two spells of each level from first to fifth level that they always have prepared and don't count against their spells known so let's kick things off by looking at the alchemist subclass that was introduced the alchemist is the master of potions now if you're looking for exploding potions and blowing up the battlefield by hucking vials at your enemies this isn't quite what you're going to get here this is more the potion creator who is giving out potions to the rest of the team and using them themselves to amplify and bolster the party that said the spell list for the alchemist does have some cool options for spells that feel like explosive alchemical concoctions the spell list includes spells like healing word and raised dead but also spells like flaming sphere gaseous form and cloud kill so you do get a little bit of that flavor of throwing out some sort of volatile mixture but it actually comes in the form of the spells looking at the overall spell list though given to the alchemist i give this a 4 out of 10 overall yeah four four or five out of ten i feel like there are some really cool spells here but there are other ones that i could give or take having an expanded spell list is never a bad thing and i'm sure you can find uses for a lot of these but overall i won't say it's the greatest spell list presented to the artificers that said it does have a few really great spells and having healing word on an artificer is one of the best spells in the game it's really really useful and so i'm not gonna knock getting that spell when you take the subclass at third level you're going to gain experimental elixir and this is kind of the bread and butter of the entire subclass so now every time that you finish a long rest you can create a magical potion if you do this it is randomly determined from the table presented in the book however you can also use a spell slot of first level or higher to create the potion of your choice and then you can take it yourself or give it to a companion these potions last until they are consumed or until you take another long rest so they have a very short life span so you can't really stockpile them but as you gain levels you are able to create more when you finish a long rest but the ones that you create when you finish a long rest are always determined randomly by rolling on the table it's only when you expend a spell slot that you get to choose the effect the the effects vary and last from anywhere from one minute to an hour they include effects like adding a d4 to attack rolls and saving throws gaining a very small but significant flying speed increasing your speed and also healing potions and the ability to transform your shape what's interesting about all of these is that these often mimic the effects of several spells like cure wounds or fly or bless or alter self in a slightly reduced capacity but what's notable is that they don't require concentration and i think even blowing a first level spell slot on creating the potion of your choice which is giving you a smaller version of the spell but without the limitations of concentration is a really key component for a spell caster to keep in mind at fifth level you gain alchemical savant and now any spell that you cast that either is a healing spell or a damaging spell that does uh acid fire necrotic or poison damage you get to add your intelligence modifier to it at level 9 you gain the restorative reagents feature anytime someone consumes one of your experimental elixirs they gain a number of temporary hit points equal to 2d6 plus your intelligence modifier and you can also cast lesser restoration a number of times per day equal to your intelligence modifier without expending a spell slot at 15th level you gain chemical mastery you are now immune to the poison condition resistant to poison and acid damage and you can cast greater restoration or heal once per day without expending a spell slot or requiring material components well i'm a little bit disappointed that the alchemist doesn't throw fireballs and come up with more the explosive side of the alchemist area this is a pretty decent support class there's a the ability to gain effects like bless flight or even just make up a couple extra healing potions that you can give to your party members has some interesting implications for concentration limitations and the action economy and i think that the the features here meld pretty nicely with the artificer infusions in a pretty neutral way it definitely feels like a character that's going to be creating potions and giving them out to the rest of the party on a very regular basis you get to do it a lot you can use your spell slots which is a pretty significant limitation but that's a fine one i just don't think that anything here jumps out to me as particularly amazing i think that that's that's the only thing if you enjoy that play style of supporting your allies giving them out potions and making everyone else around you feel awesome and patching them up when they get beat up i think that this does a very respectable job of that and will combine well with the other artificer base features it doesn't really augment any of the other artificial base features so much as giving you new ways to do things that you probably could have already done um but with with a potion sort of theme so overall for me this is a solid b um i i think that a creative player could probably take this as an in an interesting direction and play a really really solid healer with it um and bring in a lot of important buffs and i'd be interested to see how this might combine with some of the infusions and the other spells of the artificer so i think a b is very appropriate comparatively speaking with the capabilities of the artificer class and compared to the other subclasses available i'm willing to agree with that assessment i do think that this is a b subclass i i actually really like the idea of this subclass and i think that it offers a really unique play style when i look at what i want my artificer to be able to do this one does seem the least exciting to me but still i think that i would have a great time playing this character and whipping potions around to blow things up is a really cool idea that i wish had been implemented here but at the same time i can just say that all my spells are potion bottles that i'm throwing into battle so there is still that element that i am a spell caster and i can kind of decide what i want to do with that as in terms of being a support utility character this does offer something pretty unique do i think it's the most powerful option no do i think that in the hands of the right player at the right table it could be amazing sure i think that there's a lot of fun to be had here i i do agree that all the abilities there's not a single one that i read and go oh that that ability sucks but everyone that i read i go oh that's neat and it really doesn't do much more than be pretty neat uh so a b ranking i think is is very suitable for this subclass if you had a party of four characters you could expend all your first level spell slots to give everybody in the party flight for 10 minutes or give everybody in the party some sort of ultra self transformation for 10 minutes as well i mean you're blowing all your spell slots to do it so there is it's not without cost and it is limited to 10 minutes so it's powerful but there are reasonable limits on on the feature there's some power there and some implications for exploration uh and problem solving which i think is something that is quite unique for the alchemist i think that the tagline for the alchemist is that it is a pretty neat utility option yeah it's it's got a lot of utility and support in there and a creative player can find ways to bolster and amplify the party in meaningful ways i i think it's cool i think it would have been really cool if the alchemical concoctions upscaled by using higher level spell slots and it feels like something that should have been able to scale in some way shape or form next up we come to the brand new subclass that was introduced in tasha's cauldron of everything for all of you out there wanting to live your iron man fantasy we have the armorer like all artificers you're going to get tool proficiency in smith's tools right away when you take the subclass but you're also going to gain proficiency in heavy armor which is really key for the other features that come with the rest of the subclass when we look at the spell list for the armorer i have two things to say one this is one of the best spell lists i've seen number two it almost is nonsensical how good it is some of the choices here i don't really associate with the flavor of an armorer but i'm not going to argue with that because there are great spells on this list this spell list is amazing it has magic missile and thunder wave it has mirror image hypnotic pattern i don't understand why that's there you know i think we can just imagine that our armor has like all of these maybe it's shimmers magic maybe it's got lightning bolt it's got greater invisibility again i can understand that's like a stealth suit function um and it has wall of force and pass wall i give it a 10 out of 10. yeah even the niche spells here like pass wall you know how many times in a campaign i wish i had packed past wall but it's hard it's a hard spell to take yeah because it's only useful in niche but now it's here and so when you need pass wall you got it and so even the niche spells on this list are ones that i love having there is not a single dud here which is is really impressive like shatter and fire shield are also great spells so everything here is good at third level you gain arcane armor which is the again the bread and butter of the armorer now you can touch a suit of armor that you're wearing and turn it into your arcane armor which now gains a bunch of benefits these benefits include that you can now ignore the strength properties required for the armor the armor could not be removed against your will the armor is also your spell casting focus and you can put it on or you can put it on and take it off as an action no matter how long it would normally take also if you are missing any limbs the armor can replace those limbs which actually gives you a really cool sort of element to play around with where now you can live out your winter soldier fantasy or your uh agent venom fantasy so they're they're obviously i'm pulling a lot on comic books here but there's a lot of ideas out there that you could play into with your armor in addition you get to define what armor model your armor has which can either be the guardian or infiltrator model of the armor both of these are going to give your armor an interesting attack that you can do which is a melee attack for the guardian version and a ranged attack for the infiltrator version and what's cool about this is that you can use your spell casting ability in as intelligence instead of strength or dexterity for the attacks that you make with these gauntlet or chest mounted weapons whatever you kind of imagine that to be so kind of hidden in the text here is saying you get to use your spell casting ability mod to make melee and ranged attacks with your armor weapons what's interesting about this is that with the infiltrator model it is a ranged weapon attack even though it does elemental damage you apply your ability score modifier to the attack and damage rules and you can actually use that with a feat like sharpshooter which is kind of cool although it's a one-handed weapon in the case of the um in the case of the guardian armor so you're not gonna be able to use that with say great weapon master but you could still use it with a shield both of them have additional properties beyond that as well um in the case of the guardian armor if you hit someone with the melee attack they actually have disadvantage on all attacks that they make except attacks against you and you get temporary hit points from the guardian armor whereas the infiltrator armor is going to increase your speed and give you advantage on stealth checks or negate the disadvantage of stealth that normally comes with that armor um you can change this each day as well so you get the flexibility you don't have to choose or commit to which model your armor is if the situation demands you be an infiltrator or the situation demands that you be the um tank basically you can change that out which is awesome this little option to be able to choose with a bit of foresight means that your armorer gets to be prepared for any situation that might come in front of them at level five you're gonna get extra attack so you can attack twice instead of once when you make a weapon attack this applies to the weapon attacks that you make using your armor so you can shoot twice with the infiltrator uh shock gauntlet or you can punch twice with the guardian thunder gauntlets at ninth level you gain armor modifications and now all the parts of your armor are considered to be separate for the sake of infusions you now have your helmet your chest plate your gauntlets your weapons your boots and not only that but you now gain two additional infusions on top of the amount you already have which have to be used on your armor but you're probably going to be wanting a few infusions on your armor anyway this ability really amps up what the artificer can do because the infusions are kind of the main thing that the artificer gets to play around with and now you get to power your armor up in really cool and unique ways this also comes with a lot of extra flexibility because at ninth level when this feature comes online artificers can only actually have three infusions active at once but they know far more than that so this means that now not only can you have go from three to five active infusions two of those infusions always have to be on your armor but you don't have to stack up all the infusions on yourself you could do that if the situation demands it but it now means that you have greater flexibility to make sure that you have some infusions for yourself but also can be giving them out to your other party members items as well this is pretty potent at 15th level you gain perfected armor this adds an additional benefit depending on whether you're using the guardian or the infiltrator armor with the guardian armor if an enemy ends their turn within 30 feet of you you can force them to make a strength save or you can kind of scorpion get over here and drag them 30 feet towards you and make a melee attack against them as part of the reaction you can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your proficiency modifier and the maximum size of the creatures that you can pull with this ability are huge or smaller you can't pull a gargantuan creature using this power and with the infiltrator you also gain a pretty cool ability that i kind of feel works like fairy fire light if you hit a target with your lightning launchers they now glow and have disadvantage on attack rules against you and the next attack against them has advantage and if that attack against the target hits it receives an extra 1d6 lightning damage what's really potent about this power is that this happens every time you damage someone with your lightning gauntlets so because you can make two attacks per turn with your lightning mountains thanks to extra attack you can actually be sending out this advantage and disadvantage twice per turn i've got to say that the armorer checks all the boxes for me i think that this is exactly what i pictured when i thought of an artificer and allowing the artificer to build the suit of armor and continue to enhance and build upon it not only that but the versatility of the two different suits of armor that you get to choose from and the fact that you can change every time that you take a rest the abilities stack up really nicely as you level up i feel like this subclass gets more and more potent at what it's advertising it delivers i honestly think that this is not only my favorite artificer subclass it is one of the most inspiring subclasses to me in the game uh that is a little bit biased on my part but i can't i can't discredit the fact that every time i read this subclass i get 101 ideas for characters that i could play using this i get excited about all the abilities presented here there isn't a single element of this subclass that i feel isn't great or better so i think that this is the s tier of the artificer subclasses i think that a lot of the artificial subclasses are great but i think this one just pushes a little bit further on what we want the artificer to be amazing at and it's collaboration between the armor and the infusions i think really speaks to how it amplifies the core class features of the artificer i think that this builds on everything the artificer has at its core in really meaningful ways i totally agree with you kelly i think this is an absolutely s to your subclass and i think the key thing here is the ninth level feature that is giving you two extra infusions to put on top of that this is just adding a really large amount of flexibility combined with a truly amazing spell list i think that you have an opportunity with the armor artificer to go in a lot of different directions with your artificer which is really saying something if you want to build a melee combatant or a ranged combatant with the artificer your spells and feats and infusions can take you in that direction if you want to build this character as a little bit of a frontline tank i think that you can do that it's really going to depend on how your ability scores and your other attributes shake out but you have that flexibility and at the same time even if you build your artificer armor in one specific direction you have the ability to just swap everything out and build a new suit of armor if the adventure demands that so this you're not even in danger of over specializing because you have really good features that you can pull in the other direction if such a thing is even necessary as well i think that the flexibility afforded by being able to use all of your infusions on yourself and getting additional ones and stacking them up or alternatively sharing them with your party member i think one of my biggest gripes actually with the artificer was it felt like it was so limited the number of infusions you could have in play i remember making lists of being like oh man i really want to be able to have this infusion this infusion this infusion but i'd love it if i had an extra infusion to give it to a party member and this subclass solves that problem i think that this subclass overall does something that we've we've talked about the flaws of many subclasses through our videos and i think what's important here is we talked about how versatility in key moments can be important but if there's too much versatility sometimes it can be a hindrance however you also want a class that builds on the core in a meaningful way and that if you do specialize it's it's this weird combination here where you get this specialization of pushing the core artificer forward while still giving you bits of versatility to adapt and change to whatever is presented to you in the situations before you and and let's put it this way this subclass could make life way harder on you like one of the biggest things that i missed on my first reading of the subclass but then i saw was that the armor lets you use your intelligence modifier instead of strength or dexterity for the attack and damage rolls with it and it's just that small little thing like that that saying hey don't worry about having to spread your ability scores out don't you don't have to worry about you know the balance between your intelligence or strength and dexterity you can just put it all on intelligence and have a really good constitution score and not worry about what your strength or dexterity is is a pretty big benefit um it's things like that it's those little details that mean that there's nothing clunky around the build here there's nothing that you kind of have to clutch to make it all work it all works together really really well so now we move on to the artificer who just wants to blow things up and this is the gun toting artillerist artificer so in addition to gaining proficiency in woodcarver's tools the artillerist gets a pretty decent spell list and here's the blowing up part that you're all looking for the artillerist gets spells like shield scorching ray shatter fireball ice storm wall of fire cone of cold and of course wall of force this is a pretty great evoker blaster spell list with a couple really good control spells in the form of wall of fire and wall of force i really like this spell list it's a lot of fun and you also get shield in there which is an amazing defensive spell at third level you're also going to gain your eldritch cannon this is a very long-winded ability so i'm going to try to summarize it as best i can generally what this boils down to is you can create a little artillery cannon that either can be held or can walk around on its own you get three options for what type of cannon it is either a flamethrower a force ballista or a protector so depending on what needs you have i would probably lean more towards the force option most of the time but the other two options could be pretty cool in certain situations as a bonus action on your turn you can have the little cannon move around it can walk or it also has a climbing speed so it can go on walls or ceilings as well and on top of that not only can it move but it can also fire as a bonus action so your bonus action you just get a little contraption that can run around the battlefield and deliver extra damage to your enemies or protect you yeah it's a respectable shot too the force ballista does 2d8 points of force damage to a target within 120 feet of it which is great and it uses your spell attack modifier to do this so it's always going to be based on however accurate you are as a spell caster keep in mind that your canon does have ac and hit points so it can be destroyed however i'm definitely building this thing to be a little r2d2 that follows me around like 100 it's my droid buddy yeah it's pretty slow and it lasts for one hour or unless you dismiss it and you can only have one active at any one time but you can always expend a spell slot to create a new one so even though the initial one uh once you create it only lasts for one hour if it does get blown up or destroyed or you need it for longer than an hour you can just use any one of your spell slots even a first level spell slot will do to build a new one at fifth level you gain arcane firearm now the wander staff that you have is transformed into a magical firearm this can be used as a spell casting focus and when you use it to cast artifice or spells it now does an additional 1d8 damage of whatever the damage type of the spell was so as an example of this if you're a fifth level artificer and you have the firebolt can trip and you shoot it through your arcane firearm your fireball camera does 2d 10 fire damage plus an extra 1d8 fire damage and then you can use your bonus action to fire your force ballista not a little bad damage dealing loop there your damage dealing is actually augmented a little bit further at ninth level when you gain the explosive cannon class feature normally does this add an extra d8 to all the damage that your eldritch cannon does as an action you can force it to explode in it which causes damage in a 20-foot radius creatures within it have to make a saving throw against your spell save dc it's a dexterity save or they take 3d8 force damage after which of course you can create a new cannon but you know you better be using this for a good purpose because it takes an action to do this damage and it is gonna take your cannon out for the rest of the fight at 15th level you gain fortified position now if you or your allies are within 10 feet of your cannon you gain half cover not only that but you can now create a second cannon and control both of them with your bonus action the damage output doesn't end up being too bad here 68 fourths of damage from the two force ballistic attacks works up to roughly 27 force damage if they both hit and if you're just throwing your own cantrips that's also going to be some pretty decent damage there as well also considering that none of this uses any of your concentration so if you do want to drop a spell like wall of fire which is on your spell list or start throwing fireballs i think you've got a pretty decent blaster in the entire package i don't think by any means is it the most jaw-dropping bat blaster in the game i don't think so but i think it gives stuff like a warlock a pretty close run for its money in terms of the amount of force damage it can throw around and it's got some interesting utility in the other infusions and everything else available um i'm not certain it is the best blaster in the game i think this again it suffers from the artificer's base level slow spell progression there's actually nothing in here that says you are good at shooting a crossbow yourself your forceful list is pretty cool but if you pick up a firearm you actually would need to invest in your own dexterity score and you don't get getting anything like extra attack so i think that what the overall artillerist is actually encouraging you to do is to kind of be like this gunnery commander that has your ballistas lined up you're like an artillery captain with your ballistas and then you're using your spells and cantrips to be the artillery rather than you yourself carrying a gun of some kind i i do think that it's cool that the wand or staff that you have kind of becomes a gun and does additional damage so you do have the feeling of being a gun-toting wizard yeah so overall like if you're looking at your average cantrips here and everything hitting you know if you're casting a spell like ray of frost or firebolt and getting the extra bonus from arcane firearm and firing the two shots from your ballista you've got basically this this damage dealing loop that you can do reliably round after round after round after round that deals about 10 d8 damage which works out to roughly 45 damage on average and that's at will damage assuming all the attacks hit which you know even if you're hitting 65 of the time not too bad the fact that that's not requiring any concentration from you that you could be adding another spell on top of all that finding another way to deal more damage on top of that i think you've got a pretty decent damage dealer out of this is it the best ranged damage dealer no i think that you're gonna fall pretty short of say what a dedicated archer could pull out at least in terms of single target damage but you're bringing things like fireball and wall of force at the same time i'm a little bit on the ba fence here but i i think i'm leaning a little bit more towards like an a minus i don't think it i think i would rather play this than the alchemist i'm gonna push you into the a because i i mean again i might be biased because this is the artificer i played for a two shot that is that that is and i thought jerry riggs was a cool character i thought you did great damage with with it i i had so much fun yeah and i the artificer is doing this really important thing for dungeons and dragons actually and i i just want to point this out that the artificer is actually advertising re-flavoring which is something we've talked about instead of you having to think like oh how does my cleric cast their spells the artificer in both the armorer and the artillerist the artillery's just saying hey imagine that all of your spells are being blasted out of a cannon and imagine what that feels like and that's a really cool vibe to have where you're like blasting cone of cold out of your big arm cannon or whatever like it's so cool and i do think that this is an excellent blaster i i think that to fault any of the subclasses for the slow progression of spells is kind of also comparing it to other classes a bit within the context of what it is it is a half caster and for being a half caster and in the context of just if we remove all other classes and just look at the artificer this is the blaster artificer and it is the best blaster artificer i think this is an a subclass and again all the elements here really feel like they gel well together you have these cannons at your side you have your own cannon you're yelling at your two r2d2s to shoot force blasts at your enemies well you put up a wall of force at very high levels um i i love the vibe here and i do think that this is an a subclass it's a very strong blaster but the artificer in general is a really strong utility and support character so adding the blaster on top of your utility and support options because you still have your infusions and things like that this is a well-rounded character that can actually excel in several different play styles the armorer if they are taking a sharpshooter they're taking that minus five penalties to their attack roles whereas the artillerist has a lot of damage coming from a lot of attacks um and doesn't have that big penalty to the attack rules so there's an opportunity there potentially depending on what spells you're doing i think you could see comparable damage output from both of them yeah i do think that the artillerist uh in the same way that the armor does but also slightly different uh adds this element of both specializing but also giving you versatility yeah there's a lot of different places that your damage can come from and you actually don't need to pour out damage if you don't want to you could be using your spell slots for utility and support purposes while you still have two turrets that are blasting enemies so you actually get this sort of versatility in your play style where you can always be outputting damage but also your spell selection and the way you choose to use it allows you to kind of meld into different places in the battlefield or in the situations presented while still being a cool blaster so i don't know i think it's a strong subclass i think it's an a next we come to the battlesmith this protective guardian has a guardian of their own in the form of their magical steel defender and takes to the field with this arcane construct at their side giving a little bit of a beastmaster sort of feel but of a mechanical sort right away uh when you take up the subclass just as before you're going to get proficiency in smith's tools and you're going to get the expanded spell list now the battlesmith has an interesting expanded spell list and the fact that actually it's a bunch of the paladins might spell spells like branding smite and banishing spike smite but also some of the other aura spells um such as aura of vitality and aura of purity you also get shield i will say that i think this spell list is really unique and a cool thing to see added to the artificer although it doesn't excite me as much as uh the armor or the artillerist spell selection yeah the shield and the smite spells are cool conjure barrage is kind of an interesting choice as well you also have a fire shield on here i think i give it like a 4.5 or a 5 out of 10. that seems fair yeah yeah also a third level you're going to gain the battle ready ability you now have proficiency with martial weapons and if you are equipped with a magical weapon you get to use your intelligence modifier for your attack and damage roles and this works whether it's a ranged or melee weapon it just has to be a magic weapon but it could be a magic weapon that you create with one of your infusions also third level you're gonna get the steel defender this is your magic battle puppy that follows you into into battle it actually has a stat block uh of its own uh and you can command it and control it as a bonus action it uses kind of the more sophisticated and updated wording which i think is quite the the comparison of the beastmaster ranger is actually quite apt here because it really feels like a fully well developed animal companion that has a set of restrictions on what it can do if you don't command it but essentially you're going to be using your bonus action most turns to command it to force it to attack it shares your initiative count and if you don't command it it just dodges if you're incapacitated it does decide what to do on its own um and it's got some interesting attacks behind it its main attack is a force empowered rend which works on your game statistics and it is an attack which deals 1d8 force damage itself but it also has a really interesting reaction that it can use that imposes disadvantage on on someone attacking someone other than itself so it is very much a steel defender in that it will kind of go around on the battlefield protecting either you or your allies by imposing disadvantage on your enemy's attack rolls its hit points scale up it's pretty quick at 40 feet i think it's a pretty robust creature and you can repair it with the mending spell as well at ninth level you gain arcane jolt which is sort of a variation on a smite where now if you hit something with your magical weapon or your steel defender hits something you can do 2d6 extra damage or you can do 2d6 healing to a creature within 30 feet it's a little bit of extra damage and you can only use it once per turn you can't stack this and have you apply it on both your attacks in one turn and your steel defender benefit from it yeah so smite light at 15th level you gain improved defender which gives a number of benefits to overall bolster your defenders properties first of all your jolt goes up to 46 damage your steel defender now has a plus two to their ac and when your steel defender uses their reaction ability to deflect an attack the attacker now takes 1d4 plus your intelligence modifier in damage this is a pretty nifty subclass and i quite like it i think that the versatility that you get proficiency with martial weapons and as long as it's a magic weapon you can use your intelligence modifier with it is great so it means that again you've got a great character here that is a vehicle for great weapon master or sharpshooter if you want to use two-handed weapons if you want to do weapon and shield like any of the concepts that you have for a character that fights in melee or ranged and has a pet will work here because all of these abilities don't really drive you towards any one type of weapon i think the only thing that i'm really missing here is proficiency and heavy armor because you're not gonna you might not invest in your dexterity you might not invest in anything else so it's kind of it kind of does make me wonder where your armor class is gonna shake out with with this whole thing but you got your steel defender to protect you so i think this is quite good i think that you could end up with a very interesting utility character and most readily again i would compare this to like an arcane beastmaster ranger it's again i know we try to avoid that comparison but i think it's pretty good if you think about it in that way and that's the what you expect from it and i think that it would be a lot of fun to play yeah i i fully agree with an a this is probably my it goes back and forth between whether this is my second favorite or the artillerist is my second favorite but i actually feel like this is slightly of a stronger subclass than the artillerist but slightly weaker than the armorer and i mean again we shouldn't compare it to other classes but i do think it needs to be said that this is kind of a variation on the beastmaster ranger yeah for somebody who doesn't want to play a beastmaster ranger luckily tasha's fixed the beastmaster ranger as well but what we get here is the more magical yeah the arcane beastmaster yeah yeah and it's really cool it's really cool vibe i love having a pet in d yeah so i i think the subclass is awesome i i do think that it is missing a few things that i would have liked to see here like you said uh i feel like a lot of the attention goes to the uh steel defender and you're kind of left just being a basic artificer but luckily you have a cool pet so that is kind of the thing but i wish there was a little bit more to make you feel like you could be on the front lines with your steel defender yeah that's true but uh i'm happy to give this an a i even if i'm trying to find things to not like about it the fact is that i love this subclass as well and as we come to the end of all of these subclasses i think the artificer is really well designed i think it's a very well designed class and the subclass presented here are really cool yeah i i don't think that there is any one subclass that i would call out amongst these for being a dud and even though i think the armor is stronger than the other ones overall i don't think that it stands head and shoulders over the others i think it is very very close in all these and i think there is a compelling reason to play any of them the only one that i don't think i would consider playing myself would be the alchemist if somebody told me that i had to play an alchemist i would have a blast doing it but if i was choosing i would choose the armorer the artillerist is probably my second favorite for flavor purposes the battle master and then the alchemist so that's kind of my my scale in my head but really they're all compelling they're all really well designed and i think that we move like it's b plus to s minus is kind of the scale here um and really all of them have ways to push forward in meaningful ways and don't have a lot of detriments so up on screen right now you're going to see the rankings that we have given the artificer subclasses now there's a new question that we put in our poll asking who has played these subclasses so now while on screen you're going to see how many people have actually played these subclasses who contributed to our community poll so in our taxes community pool we had over 5 000 people respond and fill out the survey when it first went up of those people what we saw is that 487 or 9.5 percent had played an alchemist 867 have played an armorer 705 or 13.8 percent played in artillerist and 769 have played a battlesmith i find the popularity of the subclasses interesting in light of the way we rank them i also agree that that viewing this in this way and looking at which ones were most popular is kind of another thing to take into account on how well these were received obviously the people who are more excited to play a certain subclass saw something great within that subclass but how did they rank them let's take a look so first up we have the alchemist who gets a 3.6 for s tier a 23 for a tier a 46 for b tier 21 for c tier and only five percent for a d tier this is massively landing in the b tier category which kind of agrees with what we had said anyway uh it's kind of divided very clearly on whether it got c or a tier as well which again means that this lands perfectly in the middle of the road in terms of subclasses now the armor on the other hand got the most s tier rankings of any artifact or subclass with 29.4 percent of respondents giving it an s-tier ranking and 45 giving it an a with only 21.6 giving it a b 3.6 giving it a c and such a small sliver of people giving it a dta ranking it's not even worth putting in on the chart yeah again with the armorer it's interesting that it lands safely in the a category but it should be noted that it is the highest s tier that we saw in any of the artificers for the artillerist we see 14.9 but 15 of respondents given nest here and fifty one point five get it give it an a 29.7 gave it a b and three point four percent gave it a c tier again with a sliver for the d tier ranking very solidly landing the artillerist in the a tier with a very high proportion putting it there with the next highest being b so this is definitely a sort of an a minus sort of ranking here when we move on to the battlesmith it gets a 23 for s tier 50 on the dot for a tier a 23 for b tier and 3.3 for c tier and again negligible d tier what's really interesting is the alchemist actually gets the highest amount of d tier the rest nobody thought that they were de-tiered i think that says something the battlesmith very much lands in an a tier but it should be noted that it is the second highest s tier looking through the community responses and the comments that we got on this on this many people shared the sentiment that we had as well which was that the artificer subclasses are very well balanced against each other because we see looking at the community ranking almost everything gets an a except for the poor alchemist who gets a b and i i think it's a it's a pretty resounding consensus that actually bears out both in the number of people who have said that they played the class and the way that they were ranked especially when we go past just the a ranking and see that the armorer got a significantly higher proportion of s-tier rankings compared to the other ones so i think what this says overall is that you're going to have a good time no matter what artificer you play they're all really well constructed and really well designed subclasses with the armor being a little bit stronger perhaps and the alchemist being a little bit more i would say the alchemist's biggest weakness is really it's not flashy it pulls you back down into the support role and not in a mind-blowing way that we might see with some of the other um s-tier support characters when we look at the artificer overall it had the benefit of being the newest class added into dungeon the dragon's fifth edition which means that it came in after the initial humps of figuring out what worked and what didn't work in fifth edition so what we actually see here is what i would consider a blueprint for things moving forward in fifth edition i i completely agree every class should be should feel like this yes right we we should not see the variants that we see with the other classes where they have like a tier and d d tier and s t or stuff everything really ideally every class should be if every class in the game was an a tier then that would be a perfect game it's impossible to achieve that but i think that the artificer is the closest we've gotten to a like it's the best balance i i think the biggest thing here is that we see even with classes like the bat with subclasses like the battlesmith and the armorer we see these little quality of life improvements like we see things in the those two ones specifically they're both the ones that get you extra attack and they also will say hey you don't have to go through that rigmarole of figuring out which ability score is supposed to be your most important one it's intelligent still don't worry about your strength or dexterity for this class intelligence and constitution are the thing that you care about as an artificer and those tiny little quality of life improvements that make the ability score breakdown really clear that make the play style really clear that support the flexibility while still giving you room for creativity really makes the artificial city so up on screen right now you're going to see our final rankings for the subclasses and next to that you will see the community rankings for the subclasses again i feel like we're all in agreeance here that the artificer is awesome and if you're going to play one then you're going to have a great time so this has been a look at the artificer subclass tier rankings in dungeons and dragons 5th edition tell us about your thoughts on the artificer subclasses in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we create here on youtube please consider joining our community by following the links in the description below also we are making a book dungeons of drakenheim season one of our live play campaign is coming to kickstarter we've partnered with ghostfire games to bring this campaign to life as a fifth edition module you can follow the links below or go to drakenheim.com to join the mailing list so that you're up to date on all the news regarding this kickstarter and don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv dungeon underscored dudes you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have plenty more guides to the classes and subclasses of dungeons of the dragons 5th edition right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 136,230

Rating: 4.9706421 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: SdWhTSB5sis

Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021