Artificer UA to be released in February

LuisCarlos17f · Feb 20, 2019

The fantasy is changing and fantasy videogames have got their own influence. Now there are more steampunk and arcanepunk machines, And gunners appear with knights and wizards. Firearms aren't seen with good eyes in fantasy settings because the classic hand-to-hand fighters would be replaced by the gunslingers. Then it wouldn't be medieval fantasy but weird western.

And d20 system isn't really ready for firearms yet. Not only about balance of power in the gameplay, but also because players could create homebred tricks against gunpowder, for example creation of a piece of ectoplasma to block cannons. And somebody could wonder about supernatural factions (dragons, giants, lord feys) wouldn't allow in the zone. A war god could punish firearms in the battlefield sending petitioners from Valhalla with bulletproof resistance, and temples could summon an area effect curse where guns couldn't work in the streets or public domains.

And it isn't only gundpower, now there is the biopunk, living beings working like machines, for example a crossbow what reload itself, created by tiranids from Warhammer 40.000 or yuzhaan vong from Star Wars legends.

Tony Vargas · Feb 20, 2019

SkidAce said:
Thats how we got homunculous (sp?) in the first place, right?

As a D&D familiar? No, not really. The 0e & AD&D Find Familiar spell didn't deliver a homunculus, rather, a wizard could make a homunculus if he really wanted to. I can't recall if the formula (materials/costs, time & spells) was in Eldritch Wizardry, or the AD&D MM or somewhere else, but it existed.

The AD&D homunculus was remarkably derivative of the monster of the same name in Harryhausen's awesome 1973 opus, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The Tom Baker's evil Prince Koura constructs a "living homunculus" from chemicals and gives it life with his own blood, at the cost of aging visibly - actually, all his magic looked pretty alchemical, but was derived from pacts with dark powers, and caused him to age as a 'price.' D&D used the aging as a price of powerful magic, a lot. Koura can see through the eyes of his homunculus and is harmed when it is killed.

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Except for the sleep-inducing bite, the D&D homunculus is a pretty close match.

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Neither bear much resemblance to a 'real' homunculus. You see, back in the 16th century a crazy/brilliant guy calling himself Paracelsus prettymuch just pickled a foetus and called it an homunculus.

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OK, that was a tad flipant: Paracelsus was arguably a father (great grandfather? crazy old uncle?) of modern medicine. Google him. It's interesting.

Paul Farquhar · Feb 20, 2019

Something to consider is the artficer may not be planned for one setting, but two. There have been some pretty persistent rumours about something Lantan related in the pipeline. It may be that artificer with Alchemist and Magewright subclasses is published in an Eberron book, and artificer with Alchemist and Gunsmith subclasses published in a Lantan book

Twiggly the Gnome · Feb 20, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Something to consider is the artficer may not be planned for one setting, but two. There have been some pretty persistent rumours about something Lantan related in the pipeline. It may be that artificer with Alchemist and Magewright subclasses is published in an Eberron book, and artificer with Alchemist and Gunsmith subclasses published in a Lantan book

This is a great point. Since they are making this a base class, they must be looking at making it fairly extensible. A Lantan suppliment would be a perfect place for the Gunsmith, but certainly not Eberron.

NaturalZero · Feb 21, 2019

AndrÃ© Soares said:
My point is that the thunder cannon is not what the setting proposes as artillery. A wand or Staff specialist artificer would make more sense. And I guess that maybe my problems with it are intensified by the fact that the class, in the last UA, did not represent Eberron at all, so the subclass intensified my dislike of it.

The thunder cannon isn't technically artillery, since it's an ordinance weapon. If you swapped in a bunch of cannons during the Last War, sure, that would change the flavor, but having a few select people with magical small arms that produce magical effects doesn't really seem to change the base flavor, IMO. It's not like they're adding mundane guns to common solders, magewrights, and wand-slingers. The thunder cannon is a magical thing in the exact same vein as Eberron's magical trains and magical robots.

Making a dedicated wand-slinger could be cool and could fill the gunslinger niche, but my issue is that it would essentially be using the same items and spells as everyone else, with some tweaks. Alternately, it could use completely unique class items and spell effects, but then you're basically re-making the thunder cannon, with its special features.

People keep claiming that the UA artificer doesn't represent Eberron and I'm still not seeing how. Eberron, by default, was intended to be a setting where everything DnD has a place and, even if you toss out the thunder cannon subclass, everything else about the UA artificer seemed to fit just fine in core DnD, and thus, Eberron. What does it need to be Eberron and why? Dragon shard abilities? Dragonmark abilities?

Vael said:
The main reason I don't, and I think this is also one that Keith Baker has opined is that Eberron is a world where magic has taken the place of science. That's why instead of steam engines, we have bound elementals. Guns are a little on the scientific part of the spectrum. There are gun analogues, like Eternal wands of Magic Missile, but they are magic first.

I won't gainsay someone that wants to use firearms in Eberron, but that's why I don't.

I think I'd understand this viewpoint more if they were adding mundane guns to the setting as a general item. The thunder cannon is an explicitly magical artifice and, to me, it lies exactly in line with the magical trains, magical robots, magical steetlights, etc, that reproduce scientific tech in Eberron already.

Paul Farquhar · Feb 21, 2019

If I may address the issue of "why no guns in Eberron", the point of the setting is magic REPLACES technology. So trains, airships, street lighting all function magically, and so does weaponary. Eberron has no non-magical trains, and no non-magical wands (AKA guns).

CapnZapp · Feb 21, 2019

I shake my head at the notion the upcoming class will cater mostly to one specific setting.

It will obviously cater chiefly to those playing generic D&D. If it works for Eberron that's nice for sure, but it sure won't be the chief concern.

WotC have been quite ruthless about focusing on a vaguely Realmsian target because they know most of their customers play either in Forgotten Realms or in a homebrew where Realmsian material is at the very least grudgingly accepted.

They won't create a class specific to one small sliver of the customer base. There's way too much talk about Eberron around here. If they didn't feel they could make an Artificer work in their generic game, they would never do one.

Enevhar Aldarion · Feb 21, 2019

CapnZapp said:
I shake my head at the notion the upcoming class will cater mostly to one specific setting.

It will obviously cater chiefly to those playing generic D&D. If it works for Eberron that's nice for sure, but it sure won't be the chief concern.

WotC have been quite ruthless about focusing on a vaguely Realmsian target because they know most of their customers play either in Forgotten Realms or in a homebrew where Realmsian material is at the very least grudgingly accepted.

They won't create a class specific to one small sliver of the customer base. There's way too much talk about Eberron around here. If they didn't feel they could make an Artificer work in their generic game, they would never do one.

Yeah, but unless they surprise us with a separate release of just the finalized class, the only way to get the official, polished version will be to buy the Eberron PDF, because that is where it will be found once the playtesting is done. Why would they put something generic in a specific book like that?

Paul Farquhar · Feb 21, 2019

Enevhar Aldarion said:
Yeah, but unless they surprise us with a separate release of just the finalized class, the only way to get the official, polished version will be to buy the Eberron PDF, because that is where it will be found once the playtesting is done. Why would they put something generic in a specific book like that?

As I said earlier, it might appear in more than one book (as many races and subclasses do), and whichever upcoming book features Lantan would be a likely candidate.

It could even be released as free content on D&D Beyond.

NaturalZero · Feb 21, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
If I may address the issue of "why no guns in Eberron", the point of the setting is magic REPLACES technology. So trains, airships, street lighting all function magically, and so does weaponary. Eberron has no non-magical trains, and no non-magical wands (AKA guns).

Sure. So the magical thunder cannon that only the artificer can manage to create and use passes muster then, correct?