D&D 5E Artificer - What concepts are missing?

[Ancalagon]

Indeed. Not to call too many people out, but a lot of the suggestions in this thread are flavor; themes and concepts and aesthetics. All things that can be accomplished with choice of tool proficiency and spell descriptors. Too few of them have specifics on the mechanics of how the subclass is going to differentiate itself in gameplay. Given how much weight Artificer puts on the subclass side this is very important.

About this.

If you REALLY want to talk mechanics, you have to go deeper. Why does an artificer have spell slots at all? How is throwing a grenade at a foe in any way related to spell slots?

What you need is a way to balance artificer power - or any "consumable class" - in a way that is not "X effect per time" - where time is either long rest, short rest or at will. That's real mechanical innovation.

Alchemists and resources - a hard nut to crack

So today I was reading a series of post on DIY & Dragons about resource management, and it reminded me of this old bugaboo of mine - the ...

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[Kurotowa]

If you REALLY want to talk mechanics, you have to go deeper. Why does an artificer have spell slots at all? How is throwing a grenade at a foe in any way related to spell slots?

What you need is a way to balance artificer power - or any "consumable class" - in a way that is not "X effect per time" - where time is either long rest, short rest or at will. That's real mechanical innovation.

There's a line between "I'm tired of just following the instructions with my Legos, I want to make something cool and new with them" and "I'm tired of making things with official Legos, I'm going to buy a 3D printer and teach myself to use CAD and make my own Lego pieces." What you're talking about is very much in the latter field, where instead of talking about a new subclass that would fit in the existing framework of the class and edition, you want to get into the guts of the game engine and rebuild things.

Which is fine if that's what you want to do, and everyone involved is on board with it. But it's a big jump across that line, and not one that everyone will want to make casually.