The Artificer: Armorer subclass

hey up demancers chris here so time to go back and talk about the artificer again when the artificial first came out in ebron rising of the last war i did a bunch of videos i went over the entire class i did a bit of question and answer and then i did builds for each of the subclasses today i mainly want to go over the changes to the base artificial class they fixed a few things for us here and i want to go over the new subclass which is the armor i want to focus most of this video on looking at the new subclass the armorer but before we get into that i want to thank some of my patrons i have a patreon the link is in the video description down below if you are interested these are some of my top level patrons and their support helps me take the time to review the content as i do and bring you these videos today i want to thank dash panther dave peters david f dewey cheatham and howe dawn ed iverson eric wasserman and glenn wilson thank you all so much for your support it is truly appreciated so let's get going [Music] so now that tash's cauldron of everything is out and we're talking about it let's look at the artificer and with the artificer the first thing to note is because the artificer is a class that was added to the game after the player's handbook we don't see it in the player's handbook and it was actually included in ebron rising of the last war which is a setting specific book now there was some text under the artificer suggesting that it could be added to other campaign settings but if your dm was running a campaign in a different setting and they disallowed eberron rising from last war unless they made an exception allowing artificer the artificial wasn't available to you so i do think we'll be able to see the artificer available in more campaigns now and that is definitely a good thing now on the other hand i'll note that every class in the game except for artificer got some optional class features which are a boost to those classes and the artificer missed out on those which is too bad because the artificer i wouldn't say is one of the more powerful classes and they really could have used if everybody else is going to get a boost it would have been nice for them to get a boost as well and they didn't get that and that is unfortunate but one thing they did do with the artificer is with the reprint they have made some changes and a lot of those changes i think they're not necessarily power boosts but they definitely fix some issues with the way that the class was presented mechanically and so we are going to have a lot of the questions we had before answered and so that is going to make playing an artificer a lot more clear in how it is supposed to work so i'm far more comfortable with the artificer as it's presented in tash's than i was with how it was presented in ebron rising from the last war so there has definitely been improvement so what we're going to do in this video is first off i'm going to go over the mechanical changes we saw to the artificer explain how they work and the problems that they fixed i'm going to talk about at least one problem they didn't fix and then what we're going to do is we're going to look at the new infusions that are available to artificer and then i'm going to go into the armor subclass in detail and then i'm going to finish the video by kind of going over how good i think it is and how i think you could make it work effectively for your character so let's go over the changes they made to the base class we'll go over these pretty quickly the first thing they fixed was with spell casting because with spell casting in the original printing it said that in order for an artificer to cast spells they had to be holding a set of tools or some other kind of spell focus that might have been one of their infusions but regardless of whether the spell had a material component or the m component under the components of the spell they had to hold their spell focus now the problem is because of the way spell focuses work in combination with somatic components it wasn't entirely clear that if a spell didn't have a material component whether or not you could use your hand that was holding that focus in order to complete the somatic component in fact technically if we were to read the rules very carefully and technically you wouldn't be able to you would have had to have had one hand to hold the focus and another hand to complete the somatic component if the spell didn't have a material component already but now what they've done is basically if it is an artificial spell it automatically has a material component which makes sense thematically because of course remember that the artificer is technically using technology in order to kind of complete their magical spells so i think it makes sense that their spells would always have a material component but in addition it makes it so that as long as you're holding a spell focus including potentially an infusion which might be your shield that's an infusion or a weapon that's an infusion then you don't need that free hand to complete the somatic component so that is a big improvement in the way that the artificer is worded though i do think it was probably played that way at most tables now at least it clarifies that's the way it's intended to be played the second thing we see are the way the homunculus and the steel defender which are kind of pets that an artificer might have either a base artificer or specifically a battlesmith and in ebron rising from the last war there was some very strange wording in how proficiency bonus interacted with the abilities of those creatures that has been cleared up now so nice changes there so for example if you want your homunculus to use your spell storing item for example that's been opened up and whatever else you wanted to do been opened up as well so all good things now on the downside i'll mention that the level 7 ability flash of genius which allows you to add your intelligence modifier to an ability check or saving throw of yourself or potentially somebody else using your reaction that has always had the issue where it doesn't say when you use it because sometimes these kinds of bonuses are added before the role is made sometimes they're added after the role is made but before the results are known and sometimes they're actually added after the results are known potentially changing the results and we see examples of all three of those in the game and these abilities usually specify when they are used but flash of genius still doesn't say when it's used so it's up to your dm when it's used personally if i'm your dm i would have you add it after the role is made but before the results are known but that's not necessarily going to be universal because the ability doesn't say so it's going to be up to your dm when it's going to be used so those are the changes to the artificer so now let's get into the infusions the first new infusion we see is arcane propulsion armor this is a 14th level infusion so you are not going to get this until very late game if at all depending on the campaign and it requires attunement so i would expect something that is not available at the 14th level and is going to require attunement to be really good i don't think arcane propulsion armor is all that great it increases your walking speed by five feet i'll take a movement boost but five feet isn't that much we're going to get gauntlets that we can use as weapons they're not great weapons they do d8 damage which is fine now it's force which is reliable but honestly magical damage whether it's piercing bludgeoning or slashing tends to be pretty reliable anyways and they get the throne property and they essentially work like returning weapons throne isn't that strong an option for characters in dungeon dragons if you were going to make a throwing build you probably needed to have it worked out before 14th level now the armor can't be removed against your will i don't see that coming up at all and if you are missing any limbs this works basically like a prosthetic you can wear it and it's going to replace those limbs that could be useful in some situations though generally speaking there's not a lot of mechanics for losing limbs and dungeon dragons there's some optional rules in dungeon master's guide for doing so but i think in most campaigns it doesn't come up so i don't see arcane propulsion armor being used in a lot of campaigns i don't see selecting at 14th level myself unless i was in one of those unique situations where maybe somebody did lose a limb and we don't have the regeneration spell this would be an option for that but i think for the most part i think it's pretty weak considering its 14th level and requiring attunement second thing we see is the armor of magical strength this one fortunately does not have a level requirement so we could take it right at second level when we first get infusions i think this one is pretty good number one if you are going to make a strength check or strength saving throw you can use a charge and add the intelligence bonus to the roll now it is the intelligence bonus of the person who's wearing it not of the artificer so if you are actually making this for somebody else if they don't have a good intelligence bonus they're not going to get much from this but if we're going to use it on ourself we're going to expect we'll probably have a good intelligence so we could really make use of this the second is if you're not prone you could use a charge and not be not prone now that is pretty circumstantial but sometimes being knock prone is really bad so i could see it being occasionally useful but where i see this being most useful is if i was going to make something like say a grapple build and i was to take even two levels of artificer i could see grabbing armor of magical strength because it would allow me to add that intelligence bonus to those grapple checks and if i had say advantage through some other source it would stack so it could make your grapple checks even more reliable next one we have is helm of awareness this is a 10th level infusion so it is pretty high level and it does require attunement but this is basically like a weapon of warning it's going to give you advantage on initiative rules and you can't be surprised unless you're incapacitated and these things are both really good and like a weapon of warning is good this is something i would want to have now the homunculus servant existed before but as i mentioned before we have got new options with the homunculus because the actions it can take are no longer limited and that's a big boost to this so i like the homunculus servant a lot more now also if you have nothing to do with your bonus action it's worth taking a monthly servant it doesn't do much damage but you can use your bonus action to deliver a little bit more damage so if you're not going to use your bonus action it's better than not using it the next new infusion is the mine sharpener this is an infusion you're going to put on a set of armor or robes and basically it's got four charges if the wearer fails a constitution save for concentration they can just use one of the charges and then they succeed instead nice thing here is this is something that you're going to use after you fail so you're only using the charges when they're going to be useful to you and this is just really good now this is not something i'd use on myself as an artificer because as a half caster you're likely not nearly the best caster in your party you're going to give this to you know the cleric or the druid or the bard or the sorcerer or the warlock or the wizard they all can make better use of it than you can it's a really good item for them but if they have this item and this item does not use attunement so they're not even giving up an attunement slot basically four checks they would have failed they can turn into successes and generally with a spellcaster i'm not expecting to fail more than four concentration saves in a day if i do i'm in big trouble then i'm not a very good spell caster but this is going to take up to four fails and turn them into successes and that really makes a big difference especially in those mid levels where you're just concentrating on really powerful spells and game changing spells and often the tactic of the enemy is to try to break the concentration of the caster and you're going to make that pretty impossible for them and that is really big as a boost to your party so i think this is a really good infusion to take this brings us to the last item which is the spell refueling ring this requires attunement it's available at six level and this is basically a pearl power so you can recover a spell slot of up to third level and you can do it basically once per day and i would at six level consider taking this and i would hand it again off to a full caster because they are going to make better use of this than you can at that level because they are going to have access to their level spells and you won't but once you do get access to third level slots it might be better for you because those third level slots will be more valuable to you than to those other party members and you can have less spell slots altogether so recovering a third level slot is kind of a big deal now i don't think this is a super powerful item but pearl power is a decent item and so using this for infusion i think is a decent choice and something i would at least consider but i think if i got high level and you know i'm into fourth or fifth level slots as an artificer i think we still can come up with better things to do than this but between six level and you know the point where i'm still using third level slots is my highest level slot i think in those levels in that window this is a still pretty decent item so let's talk about the new subclass in tash's cauldron of everything the armorer so the theme of this subclass is it is an artificer who specializes in enhancing armor and they're going to enhance their own armor and there's a number of different ways they can do so now we get a fair number of abilities at third level the first one of those is tools of the trade what you're going to get is proficiency with heavy armor and proficiency with smith's tools and if you already have smith's tools proficiency you can take a different kind of tool now the thing i'll note here is this makes the armor the only kind of artificer that gets proficiency with heavy armor then of course we're going to get our subclass spells so the armor spells are at third level you're going to get magic missile and thunder wave apparently in the unearthed arcana shield was one of these spells and shield would be really nice on this subclass and it is unfortunate they don't get it now i will mention that artificer and wizard multi-class very easily i could easily see taking a two-dip level in wizard and grabbing something like war magic and that could get your shield spell and a couple other reaction options but i would prefer if it was right on the list that said magic missile thunder wave are both decent spells at low levels but it is a little strange that a subclass that is focused on armor seems to have generally offensive spells and we have two offensive spells at level three at fifth level we're going to get mirror image and shatter mirror image i think is a nice spell for this subclass actually especially if you're going into the melee option and i'll go over that in a little bit and shatter is a decent low level area of effect damage spell now by the time you get shatter full casters are going to be able to cast spells like fireball fireballs a lot better than shatter but for a half caster at fifth level i could see using shatter the ninth level spells we get hypnotic pattern and lightning bolt hypnotic pattern is a great addition to this spell list because not only is it a great spell but it's one of those spells that continues to be great at higher levels so despite the fact that you're getting it as a half caster it's still going to be really really good even though you're getting it four levels later than full casters lightning bolt is the opposite situation it's one of those spells that reduces an effect as you go up in levels and so by ninth level 8d6 isn't all that impressive anymore and the problem with lightning bolt especially compared to fireball is you can expect to get a lot less creatures in the area of effect in a lightning bolt than a fireball and this is kind of the point of these big area of effect spells is to get lots of creatures in them lightning bolt really doesn't deliver on that not that lightning bolt is a terrible spell but i don't think it's something that i'm likely to use my third level slots for at 13th level we get fire shield and greater invisibility i actually like both these spells for this subclass shield on this subclass is really nice and i'm going to talk about that a little bit later but i do think that fire shield is a really good spell to be on the armor list greater invisibility is generally speaking a pretty decent spell and i could see casting it once in a while i think it's the weaker of the two on my 13th level list i'm more likely to be casting fire shield then at 17th level we're getting past wall wall of force while the force of course is one of the best spells for its level in the game thing is is as a half caster when you are 17th level your spells just aren't really impressive compared to any of the full caster spells so while the force is a good addition on here but i don't think you're going to find it particularly dramatic anymore at 17th level so the armor spells i totally understand why people are disappointed to see shield gone from here but overall this is a pretty solid list so the final feature we get at third level is arcane armor and this is really two features because we are getting the ability to create two very distinct sets of armor but no matter which kind of armor you're creating there are certain universal benefits you're going to see so when you have a suit of armor you are wearing you can use an action to turn it into arcane armor and i'm going to note that unlike a lot of other abilities of subclasses for artificer you are not limited on this so you can do this if you gonna switch your armor you can do it again it's not going to use spell slots or in any way limited so technically speaking we could switch armors out over and over again and we can always enhance them with our arcane armor feature all it's going to take is one action so the universal enhancements you're going to get is if the armor normally has a strength requirement arcane armor lacks the requirement for you so this only applies to heavy armor so if you are wearing heavy armor you don't have to worry about your strength so this is going to allow us to wear the heavy armor and we can still really focus on our intelligence second thing we can use the arcane armor as a spell casting focus for our artificer spells third thing the armor attaches to you can't be removed against your will i don't think armor being removed against your will is that big a thing in d d i don't remember that ever happening to me i mean occasionally i guess if you're captured but if you're captured you kind of have to comply with their wishes regardless so i'm not sure i see that coming up it also expands to cover your entire body although you can retract or deploy the helmet as a bonus action i assume this is because they obviously were inspired by iron man so they want like the helmet that can retract and then recover automatically armor replaces any missing limbs functioning identically to the limit replaces so as you can see we are seeing that redundancy i mentioned with the arcane propulsion armor which is why you probably don't want to use that infusion on yourself and you can doff or dawn the armors in action this one i can actually see coming up i have absolutely played in d d in multiple additions including fifth where you are stuck in heavy armor and you wish you could get it off or you are stuck with no armor and you wish you could don your armor much faster and then the armor continues to be arcane armor until you dawn another suit of armor or you die now there's an application of that that you might not consider so just to remind you if ever you do actually die in combat and then you brought back with something like a revivify and you're going right back into the action remember that you're going to have to use an action to re-enchant your armor now as i mentioned when you change your suit of armor into arcane armor you're going to make one of two selections you're going to choose either the guardian or the infiltrator armor in either case you're going to get a special weapon without armor and that weapon and that weapon alone you can add your intelligence modifier instead of strength or dexterity for the attack and damage rolls now i'll mention that's not as good as the ability that the battlesmith gets because the battlesmith has a lot more versatility battlesmith can use a hand crossbow and get their intelligence bonus they can use a heavy weapon and get their intelligence bonus and that's going to allow them to use their intelligence bonus in conjunction with a lot of feats that make different combat options effective the armor is not going to have that because these weapons as we're going to look are okay but they're not great so our first option is the guardian option and this would essentially be our melee option now the weapon we get with this are thunder gauntlets and basically the gauntlets count as simple weapons nope they do not count as light weapons so you can't do two weapon fighting with them or anything like that they are a 1d8 melee weapon so the same damage you would expect from doing say a long sword one-handed they do thunder damage instead of bludgeoning damage as you might expect so thunder damage is pretty reliable though it is no more reliable than bludgeoning damage if it is magical the nice thing about these weapons is a creature hit by the gauntlet has disadvantage on attack roles against targets other than you until the start of your next turn and so you get a tanking option so here again we see the point where we would kind of like to see the shield spell here because although you could have heavy armor and a shield and you could probably have a fairly decent armor class for this character you don't have that boost that a shield spell would get you and when you put yourself in that tanking position that is something you probably want to be thinking about because as soon as you become a target of all the enemies when you don't have a defensive option such as the shield spell you don't have all that many hit points either you could just be in a position where you're going to end up down yourself though when we do get to the level where we can gas fire shield i can see that actually being really good here because it's not using our concentration and if we're incentifying creatures to attack us then that's more creatures that are going to be taking that 2d8 damage now it does give you the ability to boost your durability to a certain extent because you also get the defensive field this requires a bonus action to use and you get temporary hit points equal to your level in the class and of course temporary points don't stack so if you already have temporary hit points this just replaces those and you can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and you get it back after a long rest now i have to say this isn't enough this is a pretty weak defensive option your level and temporary hit points is less than you can get from a lot of different methods in dungeon dragons this is a fairly low amount of temporary hit points and we can't use it very often your proficiency bonus every long rest means at third level you can do this twice in an entire day and at fifth level will go to three times per day that is not a heck of a lot of temporary hit points i'll also note that in tash's we see lots of different ways that temporary hit points can be awarded often to the entire group so this might also be redundant so i don't think this ends up being a particularly strong ability the defensive field part the thunder gauntlets first thing i'll note is you are not going to do a lot of damage with these this is not going to be a striker character d8 plus your intelligence bonus damage is not a lot of damage and our options for making these powerful through feats are really limited so it really just becomes about tanking you know getting the disadvantage to attack anybody but you but if you're going to go that route i think you really need to think about how you're going to protect yourself because again you do not have the shield spell now having spells like mirror image helps having spells like fire shield can help at least punish those who are attacking you but if i wanted to go the route where i'm really going to focus on using the guardian aspect of the armor then i really would consider some multi-classing here but one way or the other on its own i'm not sure it's going to work out of the box all that well i think you are going to need to multi-class to make this effective and again you're not going to be a damage dealer this is generally something you would do as a method of defending other party members the other option you have is the infiltrator armor so if you do the infiltrator option instead of the guardian option you're going to get the lightning launcher as your weapon this is a ranged weapon has a 90 foot short range 300 feet long range the damage deals is 1d6 lightning damage on a hit now i'll note that lightning damage is probably actually less reliable than magical piercing damage and the special ability of this weapon is once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with it you can do an extra d6 lightning damage so take a d6 roll it add it to the damage that alone is not going to make this a good damage weapon the lightning launcher just doesn't have the options you have say with a hand crossbow and using it with things like crossbow expert do i think you can at least get decent damage with this through the sharpshooter feet ideally you'd be looking for ways to get advantage in addition to this so i could see doing something like maybe two levels of rogue grabbing the sharpshooter feet and then going through with the lightning launcher and that could work okay but i just don't think you're going to be doing the damage that if you were just using a weapon you could do but i think you can get it to the point where at least it's relevant damage you actually get two additional abilities with the infiltrate armor the first is your walking speed is going to increase by five feet the second is you're going to get advantage on dexterity stealth checks note that if your armor normally imposes disadvantage on stealth then that's just going to cancel out so if you really want to make a stealthy character you're probably going to want to put this on some armor that isn't going to impose that disadvantage now when i first read these abilities the first thing i thought is well maybe you could just have two sets of armor right you have a set of full plate and then maybe have a set of studded leather or something like that and you could just switch because of course you can dawn and off the armor very quickly and then you could use one for guardian armor and the other for infiltrator armor and i probably would do that except i will point out that i think you need to kind of specialize in your character build on one or the other if you want to be effective if you're just doing straight armor and you're just kind of counting on the these abilities on their own to make your character effective i think you're going to be disappointed because whether you're in the guardian armor or the infiltrator armor unless you specialized in it to some degree or thought about your build you're not going to do good damage and i don't think you're going to have a big impact on the battle at fifth level we get extra attack this is vital to this subclass so i'm glad to see this here now at ninth level i think we get what i would consider the premier ability of the armor and if i was going to play an armor the ninth level feature is what i'd be looking forward to your armor counts as separate items for the purpose of infusing so your chest piece boots helmet they're all considered separate so you can put multiple infusions on your armor and our maximum number of infusions is going to increase by two now those two extra infusions both have to be in our arcane armor but i'm probably going to want a couple infusions in my arcane armor so that's not a problem so if you are playing an artificer the arcane infusions are pretty much the best stability you get as the base class and getting two additional infusions is a big deal i mean at level nine you could expect to have three infusions normally so we're talking about going right from three infusions to five infusions now there is a downside here that i'm thinking about that won't affect everybody but let's say you are in a campaign where you just happen to find some really good magical full plate armor well you can't do infusions on magical items so just be aware of that and you dm might say that you know hey if you're going to infuse different pieces of your armor as different items then maybe only the chess piece is considered to be magical i don't know that's totally in the realm of the dm and so this is a really nice feature and frankly as far as i'm concerned the most attractive one that the armorer gets and then at 15th level we get our final ability it's called perfected armor and it's going to improve the guardian and infiltrator features for our armor the guardian feature honestly i consider pretty disappointing the idea is if a creature that's huge or smaller ends its turn within 30 feet of you you can use your reaction to try to pull it towards you and then if it ends within five feet of you you can make a melee attack as part of that reaction that in itself would be a pretty good ability but there's two reasons why i don't think this is very good the first is it is going to provide a saving throw so we're using our reaction and nothing might happen the second is that we can only do this a number of times equal to our proficiency bonus and even at high levels that we're going to go through that pretty quick so we have a ability that's really limited in use and even when you use it it's going to use your reaction might not work so if it works i think it's still pretty good but the unreliability along with the limited use especially considering the level we are this is a high level ability i just don't think it stacks up the infiltrator ability i think is better when you hit somebody with your special weapon it's going to emit magical light it's going to have disadvantage on attack rules against you that's good in addition the next role you are going to have against it has advantage and if you're specializing in infiltrator armor you probably have sharpshooter so that's good and it's going to inflict an additional v6 lightning damage and that's okay i mean it's not a big boost for that level but i'll take another d6 so the 15th level ability for infiltrator i think is a fairly decent ability and so when we put all this together what i see is a missed opportunity here to make an armor somebody who could switch between melee and ranged reasonably effectively because i don't think we quite get there i think we can make a moderately effective melee character with this if we are focused on tanking rather than doing damage this is not the subclass you want to play if you want to be a melee damage dealer i think with the infiltrator armor with a little bit of specialization we can make a half decent range character not the best range character a battlesmith can make a better range character than an armorer can in terms of doing damage but we do get those advantage on the stealth checks and the other bonuses that the arcane armor gives us really if i'm going range the main reason i would consider going armor instead of battlesmith is for the ninth level ability that gives you the two extra infusions that's a really good ability and that is something that might make that worthwhile but in either case if i want to do melee or range i think if you want to be effective you have to kind of specialize your build for one or the other so we don't get the versatility that this initially reads like it provides i think you're either going to be a moderately decent range build that's pretty lousy in melee or a moderately effective melee build that's pretty lousy at ranged and that's too bad i wish they had designed it in a way that you could be effective in either and kind of switch back and forth i think that would have been really cool so how good do i think the armor is overall well i think because of the ninth level ability giving the two extra infusions i think this isn't a bad subclass but i would still call it one of the weaker ones for artificer i think we're looking at the battlesmith still being the best subclass for the artificer with the artillerist following up especially at lower levels the artillerist works really well i don't think the artillerist works as well at high levels and then the armor comes in third now i'll say that the armor is probably closer in rank to the battlesmith and the artillerist than it is to the alchemist i think with a few smart choices you can make a reasonably effective armor and i can go into combat with an armorer and i know what i'm supposed to do and those are things the alchemist doesn't have so overall i i don't think this is a terrible subclass but i'm less excited about this subclass than a lot of other ones i see in tasha's but i do like the fact that there is another artificer that i might consider if i'm going to make an artificer but i am kind of excited to look at some builds for armor because i do have some ideas i think if i was doing a straight class armor something like the goblin and working that in with sharpshooter and the infiltrator armor i think could work reasonably well i haven't done the build yet i haven't done the math yet but that's what i'm kind of get my instincts are telling me right now anyway is that if i did that that could work out reasonably well and i am thinking about some multi-class options that i think could work reasonably well as well whether i was focusing on guardian or on infiltrator so i'm kind of interested to play with some builds here because i think there are good things in the armor even though i don't think it's necessarily the strongest subclass overall so i will probably be presenting some armor builds at some point so stay tuned to the channel for that otherwise next week i'm thinking i'm going to start looking at the druid subclasses so stay tuned for that and until then i'm going to sit back relax and have some fun d d is for everyone thanks everyone talk to you next week [Music] you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

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Id: UmUl2KTKx8Q

Length: 34min 8sec (2048 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020