So to tease out a few threads...
Party Role might define a class and Artificers have a different role than wizards!
...I don't buy it. 5e party roles are not set in stone. While the versatility of various classes in meeting various roles is open, the wizard is actually one of the most role-flexible classes in the game (defender, controller, face, sage, explorer, damage dealer....none of that is outside of the wizard's wheelhouse).
Extending this to psions or warlords, the same issue occurs: 5e doesn't have strict roles. "Replacing a cleric" or "replacing a wizard" isn't a thing.
FLAVOR might define a class and Artificers have a different flavor than wizards!
I call shenanigans. "Flavor" is, at best
insanely subjective. Who is to say that eldritch knights and assassins don't have "distinct flavor" but artificers and sorcerers and paladins do? Anyone who makes any call on that is going to be wrong with a lot of people.
Furthermore, artificers, much like psions or warlords, simply don't have remarkably different flavor from a wizard.
Hi, I am a character who relies on magic to do their things, and my magic comes from study and training.
Just because you jam your spells into wands vs. jamming them in your brain isn't a strong distinction. It is not something that comes up in play in any relevant way. It is effectively cosmetic.
There is absolutely NO reason that a wizard can't be Tony Stark or MacGuyver. D&D wizards are closer to billionaire genius inventors than they are to divine emissaries like Gandalf or Merlin anyway (both of those are better off as warlocks or perhaps druids). Nothing stops them except this completely unreasonable characterization of the wizard as some necessarily frail weak little fairy-man.
Well, you could do how far can you change the wizard before it's not really the WIZARD anymore?
Look, the main thing about the wizard isn't spellcasting or "I am a dork with a spellbook and an old man beard" aesthetics.
The main thing about the wizard is that they
study magic.
The PHB wizard is scholarly. An artificer is greasemonkey. But they are both studious. They both learn magic with their brains. They both rely on spell effects to do their jobs. One is simply more "practical magic" than the other.
Fralex said:
Have you played an artificer? What, in your view, made the class fun? What did you do with that class that you couldn't have done otherwise? Why did you choose that class rather than another one? What do you think would make it unique in 5th edition?
Yeah, a brief 4e campaign with an dragonmarked gnome artificer from House Sivis (I
dug in when presented with an Eberron campaign).
I chose it specifically to explore its role in this setting, to see what the setting added, to see what the setting did differently than other places. It played essentially like a conjurer with healing.
I didn't play an artificer in 3e, and 4e homogenized most of the class experiences, so I'm reluctant to say that my 4e experience was in any way definitive (it did help codify some of my frustrations with the sameness of character options in 4e).
I've sat down to think of how I'd do an artificer in 5e as a unique class and every time I've done it, I've run smack into "well, they should basically cast spells like a wizard only call their spells infusions and maybe let allies activate them....and then have different proficiencies and maybe a slightly different spell list." Which is disappointingly
not big. It is not a major choice of how my character is going to play out. It is playing a particular kind of wizard. It isn't very special.
Minigiant said:
The issue is unique mechanics. A new class needs unique mechanics and unique flavor. Also it needs 20 levels of class features of similar strength or the other classes.
YES GOD YES
Take away the armor, the weapon, the skills, the particular spell list, the "I infuse items, not memorize spells!" non-distinction, on the presumption that none of this really is big enough to make a distinction, and
what is left?
With a wizard, you have arcane traditions (non-spell magical abilities and spell enhancers), rituals (non-slot magical abilities) and the spellbook (the most versatile way to gain spells known), in addition to some capstone abilities.
Without considering armor, weapons, skills, the particular spell lists, or the non-difference between using an infusion and casting a spell, what is it that an artificer does?