Artificers are the only class to be added to 5th Edition after the initial release of its Player's Handbook. While we've gotten many subclasses, and the unholy mess that was the Mystic in Unearthed Arcana, the Artificer brings its own unique class features to the game.
Included in the sourcebook for the Eberron campaign setting, Artificers are a perfect encapsulation of the setting's general vibe: where magic has allowed the world to attain a semi-modern (well, roughly mid-20th-century) level of technology, but via magic, instead of the physics and engineering we understand in our world.
Personally, I love it, which is why Eberron is probably my favorite official D&D setting outside of extra-planar stuff.
But while some of us are eager to fill our D&D games with anachronism and blend fantasy with light science fiction, some prefer that things be kept strictly in a medieval style. How, then, to reckon with Artificers?
They're coming: slated to be reprinted in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, complete with a fourth subclass (the Armorer,) I think if we haven't already, we should embrace the Artificer as a full-fledged and equal member of the 5th Edition class list.
But if you aren't quite so into the steampunk-y nature of the class, worried what its effect will be on your setting, what are you to do?
The thing is, I think that inventors and tinkerers have always been a big thing in the fantasy genre. Saruman was using black powder in Lord of the Rings, for example.
So I think the easiest way to limit the impact of artificers on your setting is to consider the individual artificer to be a rare exception - someone who is forward thinking and unique in their use of this magical technology.
But to take it a step further: I think that Artificers aren't as inherently steampunk as they first appear.
The fundamental idea is that the Artificer is using tools they have prepared to cast their spells. Your Faerie Fire, for instance, is not some ethereal, conjured energy, but is projected from some physical object you have on your person.
As such, I think you could go very, very far from the typical Artificer vibe on this.
Consider, for example, that you've got some sort of Norse myth-inspired setting. Perhaps rather than shiny brass grenades the artificer has prepared, instead, your artificer might have spent their long rest taking some stones and carving runes into them. In your culture, you're referred to as a "Runecarver," and use the magic of runes and stone to cast your spells.
The Steel Defender that battle-smiths get is very easily translated into a less technological device by simply referring to it as a kind of golem. Maybe your artificer was trained by ancient sages about the secret ways the gods first created life, and as a member of that mystical order, you have bound elemental spirits into a frame of metal (or you could just have it be stone or clay - something I think any DM would happily allow.)
An artillerist might treat their cannons as something less physical - not a mechanical, literal cannon that walks around on legs, but a floating arrangement of ethereal shards of pure magic, which can conjure forth blasts of energy that attack from afar. You might look more like a wizard than some oil-covered grease-monkey.
The new Armorer subclass obviously evokes Iron Man, and as such feels pretty futuristic. But the notion of magical armor is pretty universal in fantasy, and the armor you've built could easily look like a classic knight's plate, but perhaps it is etched with magic runes that allow it to change shape.
I think it's also worth noting that technology in general is omnipresent through human history - arguably, the thing that really distinguishes us from other animals is our use of technology. If Archimedes could build things like water screws and (possibly apocryphally) a concave mirror to focus sunlight and burn enemy ships, it seems that some kind of tinkerer should fit in any setting.
Still, I do think that the Artificer can look very different in different contexts, and deserves a place in even the most pre-technological settings (I'm actually really into that "Runecarver" idea.)
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