Unearthed Arcana

[Rinnbaku]

Need help finding the latest version of the Unearthed Arcana: Artificer PDF. My brother swears up and down that there's a specialization that lets you (basically) be Magical Iron Man, but I can't find the 'new version' of the UA that he's using, and he won't give us a link to the page, just a printout of the class features and such. The printout looks legit, with the proper art-style and most of the basic class features correct, but I'm suspicious that he's using a homebrew and trying to pass it off to the DM as legit, and I kinda want to call him out on it. Any assistance would be appreciated.

[Dudewithknives]

Need help finding the latest version of the Unearthed Arcana: Artificer PDF. My brother swears up and down that there's a specialization that lets you (basically) be Magical Iron Man, but I can't find the 'new version' of the UA that he's using, and he won't give us a link to the page, just a printout of the class features and such. The printout looks legit, with the proper art-style and most of the basic class features correct, but I'm suspicious that he's using a homebrew and trying to pass it off to the DM as legit, and I kinda want to call him out on it. Any assistance would be appreciated.

There is a homebrew version of artificer that gets something similar on dmsguild.

What he is probably talking about is the new wizard subschool that give them a mechanical suit and random casting abilities.

It is wizard though not artificer.

[DarkKnightJin]

Sounds like he is either using something from DMs Guild, which is usually pretty balanced, from what I've seen.

Or he's talking about the 'School of Invention' spec for Wizards from one of the latest UA drops.

It's sorta like Arcane Iron Man, but also tosses in some Wild Magic Sorcerer, for some reason..

[Dudewithknives]

Sounds like he is either using something from DMs Guild, which is usually pretty balanced, from what I've seen.

Or he's talking about the 'School of Invention' spec for Wizards from one of the latest UA drops.

It's sorta like Arcane Iron Man, but also tosses in some Wild Magic Sorcerer, for some reason..

Yeah, I did not get that either.

Wizard who creates tech to enhance his magic, I can understand but the random spell ability makes no sense.

[Tetrasodium]

the latest UA (https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA-3Subclasses0108.pdf) has this ability & is probably what your friend is talking about


[quote]Arcanomechanical Armor
Innovation is a dangerous practice, at least as far as members of this school practice it. As a shield against this risk, you have developed a suit of arcane armor.
Starting at 2nd level, you gain proficiency with light armor and gain a suit of arcanomechanical armor—a magic item that only you can attune to. While you are attuned to it and wearing it, it grants you resistance to force damage.
The armor is light armor and provides an AC of 12 + your Dexterity modifier. it weighs 8 pounds. You can create a new suit of it at the end of a long rest by touching a nonmagical suit of
studded leather armor, which magically transforms it. Doing so removes the magic from your previous arcanomechanical armor, turning it into nonmagical studded leather

Alchemical Casting
At 6th level, you learn to channel magic through your arcanomechanical armor to augment spells in a variety of ways. When you cast a spell while wearing that armor and attuned to it, you can expend one additional spell slot of 1st or 2nd level to alter the spell. The effect depends on the spell slot you expend.
A 1st-level slot allows you to manipulate the spell’s energy. When you cast a spell that deals acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage, you can substitute that damage type for another one from that list.
A 2nd-level slot increases the spell’s raw force. If you roll damage for the spell when you cast it, increase that damage by 2d10 force damage against one of the spell’s targets (your choice) this turn.

The UA does not copy/paste well (spaces are tabs & such), so I won't copy & paste the other abilities.

I cam definately see why your friend would call it an artificer considering some of its other abilities put it much closer to artificer than any of the artificer UA's to date, so much so that I had to double check that it wasn't when I first skimmed it. The armor & a few other abilities are straight up copy & obvious offspring/cousin of the armor worn by one of the artificers in the dreaming dark books (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40656-the-dreaming-dark).


The wildmagic-like abilities are unusual when compared to the mechanical 3.5 artificer class yes, but when held up to the lore of it they make perfect sense. While wizard is quite well schooled in the exact recipe to follow in order to get a particular spell & how to follow those recipies (scroll/spellbook entries)... In short, the wizartd casts a clean efficient spell where they know both the fact that it will work as well as how it will work. An artificer is more like a magical hacker who eyeballs the position of the moon, length of their own shadow, time of day, & any number of other seemingly random variables in order to kludge together a spell that will probably do the job of blowing something up, melting it, electricuting it, or otherwise making it a little more dead.

In real world terms think of the difference as being similar to how an experienced developer can produce clean, efficient, & well designed code to accomplish something while an experienced systems administrator is specialized in a different realm entirely & that specialization allows them the ability to probably hack together some ugly kludge of crappy code that gets the same or very similar results in a pinch. The wuzard & the developer don't need to know or worry about a lot of the things the admin does because they do things the correct way. The SA doesn't need to care about the "right" way of doing things because their focus is on a different area (running/managing the server) so a one off/rarely run kludge like the artificer does is just fine if it gets the job done in a pinch.

[Unoriginal]

Need help finding the latest version of the Unearthed Arcana: Artificer PDF. My brother swears up and down that there's a specialization that lets you (basically) be Magical Iron Man, but I can't find the 'new version' of the UA that he's using, and he won't give us a link to the page, just a printout of the class features and such. The printout looks legit, with the proper art-style and most of the basic class features correct, but I'm suspicious that he's using a homebrew and trying to pass it off to the DM as legit, and I kinda want to call him out on it. Any assistance would be appreciated.

It's probably the last UA, the one about the three new subclasses (including the Brute and the Spore Druide)

[Regitnui]

I can definitely see why your friend would call it an artificer considering some of its other abilities put it much closer to artificer than any of the artificer UA's to date, so much so that I had to double check that it wasn't when I first skimmed it.

I'm still of the opinion that the School of Invention is an artificer subclass that's only made a wizard subclass because they don't want to assume that everyone has the UA artificer.

OP, there are no subclasses for the UA artificer that give you armour. The Alchemist and the Gun/Wandsmith are the only two that were in the UA. Anything else right now is homebrew.

[Tetrasodium]

I'm still of the opinion that the School of Invention is an artificer subclass that's only made a wizard subclass because they don't want to assume that everyone has the UA artificer.

OP, there are no subclasses for the UA artificer that give you armour. The Alchemist and the Gun/Wandsmith are the only two that were in the UA. Anything else right now is homebrew.

I was thinking sneaky water testing of the concept without calling it artificer, but like your musing better. Having artificer as its own class is probably much better than wizard archtypes so they can have things like alchemist & wandsmith as archtypes along with other stuff like the school of invention & maybe an arcane/divine hybrid caster. Plus very importantly it opens the doors for wizards to multiclass. like charisma based casters& to a lesser degree wis based casters.

[Rinnbaku]

Thank you all for your help! We eventually made my brother show us the whole printout, and found out it was definitely a standalone homebrew for the UA Artificer class. He claimed all kinds of bull**** class features, like integrated, retractable simple/martial weapons, darkvision/truesight visors (at higher levels), base AC of 18+DEX bonus (because it's counted as 'light armor'), at-will boots of spider climb, the ability to (at-will, as a free action) instantly don and doff the armor (from and to a hammerspace sub-dimension), etc. Higher levels (lvl. 8+) gave straight up unlimited flight speed of 80 feet (perfect maneuverability), a hand mounted 'spell mortar' that eschews material components and doubles the range of spells, increasing bonuses to proficiency bonus (+2/+4/+6 at lvl. 8/12/16) while the armor is equipped, extra spell slots integrated into the armor.

All that on top of the usual class features given to Artificers. Yeah. I thought he was trying to slip stuff past us, the cheater. Don't know why he thought we wouldn't catch it. Maybe he wanted to start the campaign and just spring the bull**** on us after it was too late to do anything but either Rocks Fall his character or scrap the campaign. I'm a bit salty about it, now, most of the group is a little soured about the campaign after that. Hoping it can work out, but... Anyway, thanks for all your help, guys, it means a lot to me that I can get so many helpful responses so quickly!

[pdegan2814]

Thank you all for your help! We eventually made my brother show us the whole printout, and found out it was definitely a standalone homebrew for the UA Artificer class. He claimed all kinds of bull**** class features, like integrated, retractable simple/martial weapons, darkvision/truesight visors (at higher levels), base AC of 18+DEX bonus (because it's counted as 'light armor'), at-will boots of spider climb, the ability to (at-will, as a free action) instantly don and doff the armor (from and to a hammerspace sub-dimension), etc. Higher levels (lvl. 8+) gave straight up unlimited flight speed of 80 feet (perfect maneuverability), a hand mounted 'spell mortar' that eschews material components and doubles the range of spells, increasing bonuses to proficiency bonus (+2/+4/+6 at lvl. 8/12/16) while the armor is equipped, extra spell slots integrated into the armor.

All that on top of the usual class features given to Artificers. Yeah. I thought he was trying to slip stuff past us, the cheater. Don't know why he thought we wouldn't catch it. Maybe he wanted to start the campaign and just spring the bull**** on us after it was too late to do anything but either Rocks Fall his character or scrap the campaign. I'm a bit salty about it, now, most of the group is a little soured about the campaign after that. Hoping it can work out, but... Anyway, thanks for all your help, guys, it means a lot to me that I can get so many helpful responses so quickly!

Rule #1 of allowing ANY unofficial content should be that unless the DM has already ruled it eligible, the player needs to show the DM a complete copy of the material so they can rule on allowing it in the game. Your brother should be forced to buy the snacks & drinks for the next session just for TRYING to sneak some broken bs like that into the game :)

[Vogie]

If they're stuck on that concept, there's a decently balanced MFoV homebrew of a Warlock Patron that would work for that:

http://mfov.magehandpress.com/2015/11/the-enhanced.html