As a follow up to last week’s Artificer teardown, we’re taking a dive into the Artificer subclasses: Artillerist and Alchemist. We’ll analyze the subclasses and develop a template for brewing your own subclasses.

Structure

The subclass features unlock at 3rd, 6th, and 14th levels. This mirrors the Bard progression, which is notoriously difficult to design for, since there’s only three levels. The Artificer overcomes this by pushing multiple abilities into each level.

Tools of the Trade

The Artificer gains proficiency and a set of two different tools.

This drives the flavor of the subclass, since tools are used as a spellcasting focus to reflavor the spells. If you haven’t read Eberron creator Keith Baker’s Artificer article on how it works, go give it a read.

Outside of combat, it takes a quarter of the normal time and half the gold to craft items from those categories. Go check…