Dungeons and Dragons has confirmed more details about the revised Artificer 5e class that will appear in its upcoming book, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer. A D&DBeyond post shows a few more minor tweaks that have been made, mainly concerning the Artificer's signature Flash of Genius feature.
In case you haven't been paying close attention to D&D's many playtests, let's recap on where the class is currently at. Conceptually, it still commands a very specific niche in the DnD classes pie. Artificers are partial casters whose mastery of magic items allows them to juggle many party roles, depending on their subclass.
To bring the Artificer up to speed with the 2024 rules, Wizards of the Coast first changed its level-one Magical Tinkering feature. Rather than a way to create Presitdigitation-style effects with your artisan's tools, this now lets you create a number of ordinary trinkets. Think crowbar, rope, torch, and so on. It's not very exciting, but hey, at least you can also cast spells from level one - and now you can swap one of your known cantrips on every long rest.
The 2014 Artificer's signature feature was crafting magical infusions, but this has since been replaced with the Replicate Magic Item feature. This gives you a set of plans to craft classic magic items, all without the need for attunement. The number of plans you know - and their power levels - increase as you level up.
So far, this all looks unchanged from the Eberron playtest that we saw almost a year ago. That being said, D&DBeyond has only given us short summaries to work with, so it's hard to say for sure that nothing has changed.
The level-three feature Right Tool for the Job quietly upgrades your Magical Tinkering powers, but nobody is paying attention to that when you're about to pick a subclass. Speaking of, there are now five options: the Artillerist, the Battle Smith, the Alchemist, the Armorer, and the Cartographer.
Based on the playtests, it seems like these subclasses will make or break the Artificer's power levels, just like in the 2014 rules. However, Wizards of the Coast remains tight-lipped about the final versions of these subclasses, so we'll have to wait for release day to form a full opinion.
Levels six and seven also appear to closely resemble the most recent Artificer playtest. 2014's Tool Expertise, an admittedly not-amazing feature, is swapped for Magic Item Tinker, another sort-of-okay feature.
It allows you to convert a magic item you crafted into a level-one or level-two spell slot - neat! Alternatively, you can convert a spell slot into additional charges for an existing magic item you made. Given how few spell slots the Artificer has to work with, there aren't many cases where this will be a crucial strategic move. There's also the option to turn one magic item into another you can replicate, which could come in handy on occasion.
If you've ever played an Artificer, level seven's Flash of Genius should look very familiar by now. The main change that playtesting made was that it specifically triggers when a creature fails an ability check or saving throw. Similarly, Magic Item Adept at level 10 changed very little from 2014 to 2024, with its reduced crafting costs accounted for by Tinker's Magic at level one.
Spell-Storing Item saw a few changes before reaching its new, final version. That was mainly because you could create some truly broken combos with it (though, thankfully, the magic items that fueled such a combo have also been removed from the Artificer's Replicate Magic Item repertoire).
This final draft is still pretty handy, as it lets you charge a weapon or spellcasting focus up with a spell of up to level three. The new caveat is that said spell can't have a specific, costly material component - which shuts you out of storing any overly potent spells.
The D&DBeyond post finally introduces an entirely new, never-seen-before feature at level 14, in the form of Advanced Artifice. Now replacing Magic Item Savant entirely, this feature apparently "envelopes" some of that feature's abilities (presumably, the ability to attune to a few more items, since the ability to ignore special requirements on magic items was axed).
The shiny new part of the feature allows you to regain a Flash of Genius use when you finish a short rest. We'll see this theme repeat in the only other change made to the core class, the level-20 capstone. Soul of Artifice no longer has that truly excellent boost to all your saving throws, but it does give you a hefty dose of hit points rather than just one when you drop to zero HP. Plus - and this is the entirely new part - you regain all uses of Flash of Genius after a short rest, provided you're attuned to at least one magic item.
What do you think of the revised Artificer? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord. Or, if you'd prefer to hold judgement until you've seen the full set of rules, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer releases globally on December 9.