Artificers of Ravnica

Yes, I'm obsessing a bit about Artificers.

Introduced in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Artificers are the newest D&D class. Given that Ravnica is now an official D&D setting, though, and mentioned in the Green blurb "Artificers of Other Worlds," I thought I'd speculate on where you might find Artificers in Ravnica, and possibly other Magic planes.

Indeed, Artificers are profoundly important to Magic's lore. Urza, the greatest and most important Planeswalker in the game's lore (at least for the first decade or so) was an Artificer (though I think I'd have put him as having 20 levels of Wizard on top of 20 levels of Artificer - remember that Planeswalkers were basically gods back then.)

Looking specifically to Ravnica, it's very obvious that one guild in particular feels like the place for Artificers: the Izzet League.

Called out explicitly in the Eberron book, the Izzet, as essentially magical engineers and experimentalists, naturally would have tons of Artificers in their employ.

However, thinking about the Character Creation chapter in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, I thought I'd speculate on which guilds might also make use of them.

Guilds do, after all, cooperate with one another sometimes to provide services to one another.

First, stepping more into Magic's gameplay mechanics, we should talk about Artifacts and colors. Artifacts in Magic are cards that represent anything that was constructed or built to serve as a tool, weapon, or other kind of artificial useful item (though things like buildings are usually treated as lands instead.) Artifacts are typically colorless, meaning anyone can use them, but some colors tend to be more destructive toward artifacts (Green and Red, usually) while others often have synergy with them (Blue, primarily.)

The Izzet League is the Red and Blue guild, which in a way works perfectly - they love to build artifacts but also blow them up. Naturally, I think any flavor of Artificer could work perfectly in the Izzet League.

There are three other Blue Guilds - the Azorius Senate (Blue and White,) the Simic Combine (Blue and Green) and House Dimir (Blue and Black.) Each of these could, I think, make use of Artificers.

First off, my favorite guild, House Dimir. The Dimir already have some proprietary technology in the form of a Spy's Murmur, which is essentially an earpiece radio to talk to other agents. I could see a Dimir Artificer working quite well as a kind of technologically advanced assassin. Having expertise in all manner of tools would be useful not just to build traps and hidden compartments in a room, but also to be able to disassemble weapons.

Despite arguably being the loudest of Artificer subclasses, I actually think that the Artillerist makes a lot of sense for a kind of magical sniper, who could set up their turret in advance of a target coming into view and firing it from a hidden position.

Moving on, the Azorius are known to use Homunculi as office assistants, and given their tendency to try to enforce the law on the streets, I could see an Azorius Arrester who fights with their intellectual guile backed up by a hulking Steel Defender being a very good fit - meaning a Battle-Smith could work quite well for them.

Meanwhile, the Simic are all about seeing the results of various things on biological specimens, which to me screams Experimental Elixirs and the Alchemist subclass. You could even flavor your alchemy as using mutagenic agents - the effects being temporary mutations in the subject.

Moving outside of the Blue guilds, I could imagine Artificers finding homes in several other guilds as well.

For much the same reason the Azorius would like Battle-Smiths, I could see the Boros doing the same, with a strong emphasis on their smithing abilities to outfit and arm the Legion. A Rakdos Artificer might be a master of Pyrotechnics - perhaps an Artillerist - who builds fireworks displays (and actual artillery, perhaps aimed at the audience) for Rakdos shows. The Gruul would probably really not like Artificers in general, but you could play one as a sort of... um, how do I put this... Eco terrorist? Using technology to blow up buildings?

The point is, Artificers would be very much at home in Ravnica, with its quasi-modern magical technology similar to Eberron. Given that I'm planning on running a Ravnica campaign next year, I'm hoping some of my players consider the class.