Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Introduces The Artifcer

I don't think anyone saw this coming!

 

[occam]

Alchemist
Aka the evil midnight bomber what bombs at midnight.

Nice reference! Haven't thought about that in a while.

AlchemistIt has unlimited alchemical fires in its satchel. That's a little funky. And the vial doesn't just become inert when it leaves your hand. It vanishes. Whaa?
I like the concept but it hurts my verisimilitude. I'd prefer a set number that recharges after a Short or Long Rest. X number of potions, chosen when used.

Actually, this is what I've always despised about prior artificer implementations. If I can spend an hour making four potions (for example), why can't I spend two hours and make eight? That hurts my sense of verisimilitude.

The satchel is a magical creation, making materials available for easy grabbing, and magically reclaiming them after a certain period. I can accept magic a lot easier than I can accept arbitrary limitations on my ability to work.

 

[TwoSix]

The design team is apparently unable to remember just a few months back when the released the revised ranger that there was two years of consistent negative feedback, and gave out a companion as a class feature that doesn't scale. Either rip out this abortion or make it scale, but right now all it's doing is being an opportunity cost that there isn't something else written there except for a few levels.

You'll have to rip the mechanical rhino from my mounted combatant gnome gunslinger's cold, dead hands.

 

[TwoSix]

'Constructs' or 'Animates,' then.

Sure, but this class can do that. Just not humanoid baseline, but it has a reskin option right in the text.

 

[occam]

The Artificer Wants to Stay At Home
Between free magic items and infusions, the best artificer is one who stays in town (or otherwise away from the action) - you just come back to visit them to get recharged. During an adventure, the artificer isn't making a whole lot of interesting decisions about being an artificer. All those decisions are made before they start the adventure (and the things they enable aren't things that they need to do)

I don't really understand this. Do you think an artificer will be giving away her magic items on a regular basis, when she only gets to make 5 of them over the course of 20 levels? And infuse magic is very limited: the spells only last 8 hours, and the artificer can have no more than 5 (with a 20 Int) in existence at any one time. Even if you do take all the artificer's magic items away and leave her at home, you're going to be missing the alchemical formulas or thunder cannon, the spells, etc.

Outclassing the Ranger
Hi, my beast companion is better than yours, I hope that's OK. But also, it can't be a humanoid, so I hope you didn't want a humanoid golem?

"The servant... can look however you like, as long as its form is appropriate for its statistics."

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I feel the gunsmith is more or less another atempt at the Arcane archer from another angle, just change the wording and you have an interesting take on the classic A.A.
Master smith -» Master fletcher: gain woodcarving prof. to create arrows and bows + Mending
Thunder Cannon -» Arcane Bow: gain ranged weapon prof. that deals 2d6
Arcane magazine -» Arcane Quiver, Thunder monger -» Thundering strike, Blast wave -» Blast arrow, Piercing round -» Arrow of piercing, Explosive round -» Explosive arrow (it was a thing with the old arcane archer IIRC)

I think in the end we'll have an Artificer class with three flavors of archetype:
1) Alchemist (the bag of tricks + animated creature, be it mechanical or flesh)
2) Arcane archer (the enchanter of weapon for warfare uses)
3) Runecarver (perhaps the ''prestige class'' we had in an other UA but as an archetype)

 

[occam]

Wondrous Invention - a class feature that grants items instead of innate abilities. I'm okay with it but I can see pushback, especially with people doing lower or higher amounts of magic then default. Or from parties who give magic items evenly and count these class features.

I'm not more than okay with it because of the tiny list of possible items that isn't future proofed or fit to a campaign. And what happens if you are captured and your class feature is taken from you? Or your DM gives out one so you aren't all that special. Or you start with a bag of holding but at 10th really want that Hewards Handy Haversack and now your lower level class feature is obsolete. I'd rather is was treated as a class feature and you need to keep renewing it (so you can't sell it) but instead you can change what the item is and the old one falls apart and you can get a different one. Also good if your class feature gets stolen or disenchanted, which can't happen to others.

That seems like a good idea.

I wish mechanical servant was a subclass feature, I don't see every artificer having one.

The design team is apparently unable to remember just a few months back when the released the revised ranger that there was two years of consistent negative feedback, and gave out a companion as a class feature that doesn't scale. Either rip out this abortion or make it scale, but right now all it's doing is being an opportunity cost that there isn't something else written there except for a few levels.

I agree, this would fit better in a dedicated subclass.

Alchemist - does the line "After you use one of those options, the bag reclaims the materials" mean you can only have one of these out at a time? If so, spell it out. I can't tell and that vastly changes the balance of the powers.

I think it's clearly designed so that you only have one at a time, but it needs to be spelled out.

Healing drought needs an action to take out and an action to use? If you can only have one out so giving one to your front liner will it negate all of your other alchemist uses, it's effectively non-combat. If not then it's the first thing you do when you awake (and refresh every hour when they expire) is to hand one out to everyone.

I agree that it'd be best to hand off a healing draught to someone prior to combat so that you can save that action cost. However, you can only hand off one; you can't provide healing draughts to everybody in the party, at least not at the same time.

 

[SkidAce]

Some similarities to this

Artificer-of-Alancia

I like the infuse ability. Its very similar to the method I was cribbing from 2e of placing runes on objects.

So there will be some continuity of mechanics in my game if they keep it as is.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I would have preferred the magical items to be temporary things ie: "at the end of a long rest, you can create one of the following, it lasts for 24 hours or the end of your next short rest, whichever is sooner". Mainly to avoid the problems of class abilities which can be permanently transferred or lost.

I find it weird that the gunsmith gets a bag that creates ammo at a massive rate instead of simply saying that the boom stick has as much ammo as it needs. Does anyone expect to ever see over 60 rounds of shooting per day?

Compare with the alchemist's bag which has an unlimited supply of vials and assorted reagents, which disappear back into the bag if not used promptly.

I would much, much rather reverse those two: have the alchemical bag allow for some reduced quantity of items (preferably while accounting for glass vials, which seem odd to just conjure out of thin air) while the gun can just always shoot (eliminating the need for the ammo magazine entirely and allowing it to be flavored as a magical staff or the like).

Otherwise I quite like it as a standalone class.

As something intended for eberron however, it's still missing the mark. I suppose one could reflavour the alchemical bag or boomstick as magical wands and staves and it works. But that should probably be the base assumption, with the option to reflavour as alchemy and gunsmithing explained in a sidebar.

 

[Demetrios1453]

As something intended for eberron however, it's still missing the mark. I suppose one could reflavour the alchemical bag or boomstick as magical wands and staves and it works. But that should probably be the base assumption, with the option to reflavour as alchemy and gunsmithing explained in a sidebar.

Honestly, the best way for WotC to do this is to simply say "you create a 2-handed ranged weapon, which can take the form of a wand, staff, crossbow, or firearm..." and let the players and DMs fluff it however they want, as long as the mechanics stay the same...

 

[Demetrios1453]

I'm beginning to wonder if our upcoming Big Book of Crunch is actually going to specifically update important mechanics for the various settings, considering how much of the UAs seem dedicated towards that end. Perhaps we'll get a lot of mechanical options, and then a chapter dedicated to each of the main settings (outside of FR which already has SCAG, and Planescape which will probably get its own Manual of the Planes-type book) to update them and their particular peculiarities for 5e, with references to all the updated crunch from the rest of the book. That way we could get all these new classes, racial options for warforged, thri-kreen, kender (I heard you all groan there), and the like, and a small bestiary with setting-specific creatures like draconians. With WotC wanting to take the route of multi-purpose books, it would be a good idea to combine the common requests for more player options and for setting-specific stuff to be updated to 5e....