D&D General Non-Spellcasting Artificer?

[doctorbadwolf]

So i had an idea for a rogue subclass that has no spells but can craft and modify magic items, even if they normally require being able to cast spells.

Then i thought, what if that was how the artificer worked?

Rather than spell slots, you have Aether Points, representing how much arcane energy you can imbue into stuff without resting.

Your inventions include consumables and nonconsumables, and each has an aether cost, except for your special class/subclass feature items.

So you can have your artillerist's cannon that is a crossbow that shoots embued alchemical arrows that explode or let you teleport to where you hit or whatever, and you can spend aether to turn an inert vial of liquid into a healing potion, and hduring a long rest (for temporary items) or downtime (for permanent items) you can modify a magic item to not have attunemwnt or to have more charges or to gain an additional feature like adding a +1 to a magic sword that normally lacks it.

Anyone else think this is doable and fun?

 

[Voadam]

In my 5e game conversion of the Pathfinder Iron Gods Adventure Path we did something similar. It was a Thudarr the Barbarian Sci-Fi in D&D type area and adventure theme with a crashed ancient space ship in a fantasy world, androids, robots, and sci fi stuff along with druids and barbarians. One of my players got super excited about the idea of playing an actual full on boop beep robot so we reskinned a warforged artificer as a recovered robot technologist reanimated by a technomage and a Acme cleric of invention and gadgets.

Everything magic from him was reskinned to be Sci-Fi technological. Magic stone was reskinned as finger guns. Levitate was rocket boots. His cartographer tools from his background was google maps. He was able to upgrade a fellow PC's acquired auto pistol with a smartgun link.

It worked fine and we had a blast with it. It fit with the theme and was a lot of fun all around.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In my 5e game conversion of the Pathfinder Iron Gods Adventure Path we did something similar. It was a Thudarr the Barbarian Sci-Fi in D&D type area and adventure theme with a crashed ancient space ship in a fantasy world, androids, robots, and sci fi stuff along with druids and barbarians. One of my players got super excited about the idea of playing an actual full on boop beep robot so we reskinned a warforged artificer as a recovered robot technologist reanimated by a technomage and a Acme cleric of invention and gadgets.

Everything magic from him was reskinned to be Sci-Fi technological. Magic stone was reskinned as finger guns. Levitate was rocket boots. His cartographer tools from his background was google maps. He was able to upgrade a fellow PC's acquired auto pistol with a smartgun link.

It worked fine and we had a blast with it. It fit with the theme and was a lot of fun all around.

That sounds rad as hell.

 

[eclair~]

A few red flags among your ideas: removing attunement requirements from an item or giving an item extra charges are both very balance-breaking.

 

[Voadam]

That sounds rad as hell.

Iron Gods and the area of Numeria has so much to riff off of if you want. The whole second module is set in a Mad Max type gang city that even has its own not-Thunderdome gladiator arena.

I, and my players, were able to get in a ton of riffing references: Star Trek, Paranoia, Shadowrun, Mad Max, Warhammer 40K, Looney Tunes Acme, Mage the Ascenscion Technocracy, TMNT, Godzilla, and Star Wars to name some prominent ones.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A few red flags among your ideas: removing attunement requirements from an item or giving an item extra charges are both very balance-breaking.

Kinda a misuse of that term.

That aside, attunement isn't gamebreaking (current artificer already partially ignores it) and charges are fine as long as there is a cost to doing it (again, current class already recharges them and can make an arcane battery to do so even more).

Like any feature it needs rails, but it isnt inherently game breaking by any stretch.