D&D 5E (2024) What's New with the Artificer in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer

[WanderingMystic]

I mean, they're probably not as good as Battlemaster or Artilerist, but I'd definitely put them above Cartographer!

The Forge Adept is decidedly worse than the Battle Smith, Artillerist, or the Armorer in combat and honestly, I would still take the Alchemist or Cartographer due to their utility. The Mavrick is even worse it focuses on improving your spell list but until 15th level you don't really get anything.

In that book their is however a great monk subclass focusing on enhancing shifter, warforged, changling or kalashtar albitites in melee combat.

In Dread Metrol you have a class that is very similar to the Armorer but no ability to choose between forms. You replace parts of you with artificed versions, gaining the ability to use heavy armor as well as a 1d10 int keyed enhanced arm. Two attacks at level 5, then an extra infusion slot at 9th along with your arm counting as a shield and your weapon bumping up to 2d10
Your weapons however deal a good deal more damage at 9th level. Finally you become a construct at 15th. great class.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The Alchemist is not bad by any means.
They can entirely focus on int with true strike or cantrips doing fire or Acid damage. Acid splash is an area spell. Adding int bonus to it is great. Poison spray and fire blast have high damage dice. Adding int bonus to the damage helps preventing dealing neglegible damage at times.
Flaming sphere. Nice extra damage with a bonus action. The initial cast deals extra damage. Keeping concentration is not that hard for artificers in general.

Homunculus is doing things without any action needed by the alchemist.

That all adds up.

But this is not the main thing alchemists do. They cam freely give away most of their created magic items. They could keep the mind sharpener or the wand of the war mage if noone else is in greater need though.

Their potions are good buffs no matter what they roll. They are concentrationless and usable as a bonus action from either character.

After level 7, giving a +4 bonus to saves or checks 4 times per day as reaction on their main stat is great. 1st, they don't need to be as close to the receipient as the paladin, their bonus is higher because paladins usually don't have charisma as their highest stat.
And at times addding to checks is helping too.
Their bonus is more reliable than bard dice. And they it is usable as a reaction.

Of course you miss high level spells, but so do paladins and rangers and eldritch knights and arcane tricksters.

 

[Mephista]

The Forge Adept is decidedly worse than the Battle Smith, Artillerist, or the Armorer in combat and honestly, I would still take the Alchemist or Cartographer due to their utility. The Mavrick is even worse it focuses on improving your spell list but until 15th level you don't really get anything.

Maverick is bad overall, yeah. But I was mainly thinking about Forge Adept.

Forge Adept being worse than Battle Smith and Artillerist, I'll give you, but I don't think its by too much. Armorer? Current Armorer is... really, really bad. Level 3 is okay, but every other level is terrible, imho; this is compounded by the crap damage scaling upgrades and the Arcane Armor options all have individual issues. While there were a number of things you could do in 2014 to make Armorer really good and fun, the changes to the base class and the level 9 ability have actually nerfed this option really badly. If you think the Cartographer's utility is worth taking? Then I would suggest Armorer below every other subclass except Maverick.

Alchemist honestly gets a bad rep. People that hate any kind of randomness really have issues with it, but frankly, I found that the potions always have a use, no matter which comes up, and spending a spell slot works just as well if necessary in a pinch. The potion that gives you concentration-less flight is probably the trickiest one to use, and that's saying something when flying is the hardest use case. The potions now scale with level slightly, you get more potions as you level, AND there's the fact that 5e24 potions are a Bonus Action now. And don't get me started on getting Tasha's Cauldron at level 15. That spell is AWESOME. The only real issue I've run into is a need for somehow getting a magical Alchemist Tools for fighting with, and I'm kinda annoyed that you don't get access to Greater Resotration.

Forge adept, on the other hand? You get scaling +x bonuses, which stack on top of things like Flametongue that don't normally have +x scaling. Extra Attack is standard at 5. Level 9 and 15 are direct damage boosters; simple, but that's kinda what you want to see. The subclass is simple, but its damage is decent, and that's what people who want a gish generally are looking for. The subclass does need a few quality of life tweaks, such as the new crafting discount methods and allowing the ghall'shaarat to work as an arcane focus, to bring it in line with the other subclasses.

The main benefit of Forge Adept is that, unlike Armorer or Battle Smith, all of its abilities synergize with the magic weapons you make, rather than against. The only real issue holding it back from matching battlesmith, i think, is that the damage, reaction, and extra HP from the Steel Defender is better than the +X bonus at low levels. At higher levels, I do think it evens out.