D&D 5E How would you do an alchemical knight in 5e

[Shades of Eternity]

I'd love to see an alchemist knight that uses all those alchemical items from 3e and I'm trying to figure out the best way to emulate it..

1. Just take an artificer?
2. Some sort of mixing with fighter?
3. some sort of dedicated class that has yet to be built?
4. or a good old fashion reskinning of some other class?

Trying to see how you would do the base concept.

 

[Fenris-77]

Warforged, plus some fighter levels, plus Artificer. Either one or two levels in fighter depending on whether you want action surge. Fighter gets you heavy armor and martial weapons plus a fighting style. Sounds cool to me. Warforged isn't essential obviously, but I like it.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I would also go primarily with Artificer.

Alchemist's primary ability isn't super great (I think the Alchemist should get two random potions at 3rd level, three at 6th, four at 15th) but the Alchemist class is pretty cool and does what I'd expect you're looking for.

If you want to be more knightly, however, you might consider Battle Smith because you get martial weapons, Extra Attack, and Int attack and damage rolls. It's not that difficult to reflavor Battle Smith to alchemy instead of pure artifice.

Alright, I've now got a new character. A Gnome Battle Smith named Bunson Honeydew and his steel defender named Beaker.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Battle Smith artificer subclass seems designed for this theme, but there are other options that could be fun - eldritch knight with a couple of artificer levels perhaps?

 

[Jediking]

Arcane archer, eldritch knight, arcane trickster, ranger, even warlock could all work

Reflavour their spells as tonics/inventions/alchemical ingredients. Haste could be some type of adrenaline syringe; Shatter could be an explosive, Burning Hands could be a limited use flamethrower.

I ran a warlock in a pirate themed one-shot. Used my “rifle” (eldritch blast) with my grenade belt (flashbang = blindness/deafness) and it worked well