The Future of the Artificer

 I love the Artificer. It might be my favorite class overall in D&D 5th Edition. Naturally, it has a few things in its favor: being the only full new class to be introduced after the launch of the edition, they were able to build it with years of experience in mind. I was very happy to see it reprinted in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, making it legal for Adventurer's League should I ever play that again, but I was even more encouraged to see the addition of the Armorer subclass - telling us that this class is not just a one-off oddity, but something that might see future support throughout the edition's lifespan.

That is to say, depending on how WotC's philosophy evolves.

Throughout 5th Edition, the philosophy WotC has used to approach its releases has always been that any new book published should stand on its own as long as the reader has the core three books - the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. Every published adventure has worked this way - if they ever use a monster from Volo's or Mordenkainen's, they always publish it in the appendix (or within the adventures in the case of Candlekeep Mysteries, which... to be honest I hope they go back to the old format.)

And I understand the reason for this: WotC does not want there to be any lockout for new books. I'm a bit of a madman in that I have nearly every 5th Edition release in my library (including two copies of Volo's because of an impulsive purchase of the limited edition cover I made not realizing I couldn't cancel my amazon order of the original.) But not everyone has the hundreds (is it up to a thousand yet?) of dollars to buy everything. Even if we get rid of every adventure book, and even all the campaign setting books to just have the universally-useful rule and monster books, if each book is 50 bucks, that's still $350 bucks for the core 3 plus Volo's, Xanathar's, Mordenkainen's, and Tasha's.

So I think it's both a morally admirable and a smart business move to avoid making more and more books "required." There's nothing stopping you from running a great D&D game with just the core three books, and the fact that you can buy any other of them and use it to run a perfectly functional campaign that's also great is fantastic.

But it does make it very hard to develop more recent ideas.

The Artificer was only able to get an additional subclass because Tasha reprinted the class in its entirety (and made a couple minor changes to make it more setting-agnostic).

So I wonder, if we get another "Everything" book at some point, will they need to fully reprint the Artificer in order to add anything to it? And thus also publish the four existing subclasses along with any new ones they come up with?

WotC has not used any titles like "Monster Manual 2" or "Player's Handbook 2" this edition, though they have in the past. I think there are a couple reasons. The first is that they're not very flavorful names. But the other is that they come with the implication that you need them for the game to function.

Could we ever see a book that adds new Artificer subclasses, the way that Xanathar's and Tasha's do with other classes, without giving you the base class? I'd be really happy to see that, but I also understand the dangers - that you create a product that not everyone can make full use of.

Still, it would be a shame for the Artificer - as awesome as it currently is - to be left to stagnate over however long 5th Edition lasts.

I'm hoping that when a hypothetical 6th Edition comes out we'll see it made one of the base classes in the Player's Handbook, but I'm also in no rush for that to happen.

    Ok, but future concerns aside, what could we imagine for the Artificer moving forward?

One of the things I think is really interesting about it as a class is how your subclass truly changes whether it's a martial class with some spells or a "pure" spellcasting class that gets by with lower-level spells.

I'm kind of curious to see if that balance remains.

One thing I think is notable about the class is that its two weapon-attack-based subclasses both get to use intelligence as the ability they use for attacking with weapons. If my paladin in Curse of Strahd dies (Ekeroth, lord of the grave, forbid) my back-up Artificer (who is a battle smith) could pick up her +2 greatsword and wield it nearly as easily (just without the great weapon fighting style.)

I'd like to see any future weapon-based Artificers have something similar. It seems like it could be one of the great benefits of playing an artificer that if you're going to be making weapon attacks, you don't have to sideline your spellcasting class. Currently, Battle-Smiths are the kings of this kind of gameplay - as long as the weapon is magical, they can use Intelligence (and artificers are well-positioned to, you know, make their weapon magical if it's not) while Armorers are limited to using their built-in weapons this way (though both built-in weapons are pretty damn good.)

Because Artificers are themed around any sort of craftsmanship or invention, they have a ton of potential for future subclasses. Frankly, the Fighter's Rune Knight could easily have been an artificer subclass (I had a concept for a Goliath Armorer whose artificer infusions are themed around carving giant runes into a suit of stone armor). The Gunsmith, from an early unearthed arcana, is an idea they could revisit.

In terms of spellcasting, I think you could play a lot with a more guile-focused subclass that creates projected illusions and that sort of thing. I even started homebrewing a subclass based on the Ghostbusters, where you get a proton pack to use as a spell focus and get a souped-up Witch Bolt (which, let's be honest, needs some souping up.)

I've also been kind of obsessed with the Western-themed part of my homebrew setting, creating monster stat blocks for infernal gunslingers and the like, and the Artificer fits very well into a Weird West/Cattle Punk environment.