An Artificer's Place

[Cardea]

What place do Artificer's have in your campaign or campaign setting? Are they just general craftsman like in Eberron? Are they rarer or more common than Wizards? Is it an obscure art/craft that only a few learn?

I'm working on a campaign setting right now, and trying to figure out an Artificer's role in the grand scheme of things. Part of my project is to meaningfully divide classes into different sects or power groups to give better identity to the class. Druids join cults that determine their chosen form of nature worship (Eternal Obsidian is more militant and loses some spellcasting, Order of the Flow trades out Wild Shape and Animal Companion for a better focus in spellcasting, etc. etc.), Wizards go to specific colleges that determines Specialized and Banned Schools or learn on the road and pick no specialization, Sorcerers get different restrictions based on race. But I've no idea how to approach an Artificer.

Any answers to the above questions or suggestions to my issue is greatly appreciated.

[ekarney]

I usually (read: Almost exclusively) run Forgotten Realms with a couple of minor changes, which amounts to a town and a few new factions around Interior Faerun, so technically there should be zero.

However one of the factions is crafting based and honestly it would be stupid (imo) to exclude artificers, so I remade a slightly more combat focused variant to populate said guild. With artificers existing outside of that in smaller numbers.

I wouldn't say that it's obscure, you could probably find at least one in any decently sized city, it's just that because Faerun is already so magically charged there's a lot of magical items floating around anyway so that Artificers arent as heavily required as they are in Eberron. They're still definitely rarer than wizards but not totally unheard of.

[ko_sct]

In one setting I was making (but never finished), artificiers were pretty much ubiquitous.

In the settings, mortal couldn't develop their own magical powers. They had to pass a contract or coerce a spirit to casts spells. As such, your average mage or priest was, in fact, an artificier who scribed scrolls. It fitted nicely with my lore.

The priest of the eternal mountains were artificiers, who were taught how to impose order upon unruly spirit. Forcing spirits to serve their normal purpose through binding contracts (scrolls) and trapping the truly unrepent ones into items.

The Mages of the Screaming city had mastered the spirits of the land, imposing their will. Trapping them in gems, wand, and staff, till the spirits inevitably escaped weakened, easy to captures yet again.

The witches of the cursed forest had learned how to extract and distill the powers of natures spirits, condensing their abilities into oils and potions.


There were a few clerics who were chosen by powerful spirits and directly given spells every day without having to make contracts or trap spirits into objects but they were generally high ranking and as such, not prone to adventuring. There was a location where every tribe had a patron spirit and shaman who had normal casters levels, either cleric, druid, shaman depending on what was appropriate.

[Calthropstu]

An artificers place is in the kitchen.

[Extra Anchovies]

Personally, I think Artificers only make sense in a setting with generally low NPC levels like Eberron, because an abundance of mid- or high-level spellcasters in a setting more like Faerun means there's not much room for another type of magic item crafter.


An artificers place is in the kitchen.

Ha-hey! This gave me a good chuckle. It's got some truth to it, too - most of the Artificers I see or hear about are Leadership cohorts who stay at home crafting new items for the PCs all day. Burn your dedicated wrights! Artificers' liberation now!

[Milo v3]

They used to be rather common in my settings since I like manapunk (and not just eberron-style steampunk with a coat of magic paint), but when I moved my games to Pathfinder, rule changes rendered the class much less unique so now they're much rarer.

[Fizban]

So Artificers have a bunch of crafting feats, which means. . . they shouldn't be crafting, not like it's their default role in society. Every single Artificer can craft, which means if they're actually a part of the setting (as common as other caster classes) it doesn't even make sense for them to do so: it's not like every single Wizard was crafting before Artificers showed up.

What Artificers really are, is masters of spontaneous casting with a slight delay. They can use any infusion off the entire list spontaneously, and the infusions in turn can pull up any spell, weapon, or armor enhancement within a certain magnitude. A Wizard can theoretically know every spell, but an Artificer doesn't even need to learn them, just boom and anything from 1st-4th level with only 1 minute of prep. Weapon and Armor enhancement give out some seriously good long duration buffs and they can put those buffs on the actual combat guys instead of just themselves, and they can also throw some mean burst damage with a wand or staff +Metamagic Item. Crafting just lets them carry around more options and make items to cast spells they can't do spontaneously.

So you will find Artificers anywhere a person with a wide variety of problem solving talents and burst damage can be found, which is anywhere. If you really want to specify, well what's another burst damage class with Trapfinding? The only limitation is that Artificers don't sit around doing repetitive tasks (they have constructs for that). The xp cost of their good infusions is trivial, but that's only true if you're using them to win encounters appropriate to your level. The gp cost of their good infusions is a bit less trivial but still doable as long as you're winning appropriate encounters (consumable budget from random treasure-WBL is about 10%). Artificers only take jobs that pay well, push their knowledge and experience forward, or preferably both. Unless of course you handwave the xp/gold they spend on infusions the same way you handwave the xp/gold spent on crafting/spells by non-Artificer classes, in which case we're back to just super-versatile caster doing whatever.

As for giving them faction based ACFs there's not much to do, you could trade infusions for more beef (HD etc), or trade a bunch of feats for either beef or infusions, but without so much as a spell school system there's nothing to specialize in for an Artificer, they are grand generalists. You could force them into the spell school system in order to differentiate them from generic Artificers, or categorize the infusions into their own schools, but spell schools are all over the place and infusions probably won't separate nicely either. As a class with plenty of options, they already determine their own leanings: those that spend bonus feats on more crafting are crafters, those that get other things do other things. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Homunculus class feature is anything to focus on: it's just a Familiar with less hp and more telepathy.