What to Expect with Artificer 2.0

First of all; I apologize that I've been a bit slow recently. I'm having some trouble with my day job and housing situation at the same time, and the combination has been a bit of time squeeze. That said, I certainly haven't forgotten making D&D content, and we can still expect 2-3 relatively minor things before the end of the month (including a few request items).

But moving on from that, I have three bigger projects still boiling - Psion, Crafting, and obviously Artificer 2.0. This post is primarily about the last one there.

So what will Artificer 2.0. I have three goals with it:

1) Remove "Tax" Upgrades to fix Clunky Mechanics.

The reload action on Thunder Cannon that requires your bonus action will go away. For awhile now this just been an upgrade tax that primarily existed to prevent Rogue/Cannonsmith multiclass from getting out of control, but I think there is a more interesting way to handle this. It will just gain the normal D&D loading property... this will also open up some ground up with better interaction with other mechanics.

Obviously just removing the need for an Upgrade is a major buff, so some balance changes will be required to implement these.

2) Item Charges and Tracking.

I'm going to rebuild the interaction between magic item charges - primarily the charges of the subclass items, and spell slots. The ability to recharge items with spell slots will come down quite a bit and be more core to the class, as and the charges will be more balanced across more items. This both helps the Artificer tie into their magic items, and tie into magic items in general.

As part of this, I'm aiming to pool the way certain upgrades work and simplify resource tracking.

3) The Cannonsmith will probably be retired...

...sort of :) This one is still prospective, but it's no secret that the Cannonsmith is both beloved and contentious, which makes it a tricky one. Obviously it is not actually going away, as it's probably the most popular subclass, but I see a chance I think to somewhat improve the subclass, while making it easier to integrate into more settings.

The Cannonsmith will probably become the Thundersmith, and the variant weapon choice will be made at level 1, with the various weapon variants more backed into the class.

This will both give more flexibility to players in what sort of weapon they want to and DMs for how they want to integrate it into their world. A Thunder Cannon will still be an option, as it has always been my view that a Thudner Cannon is not necessarily a firearm unless the player wants it to be.

4) Nothing that drastic. This is going to be bigger than a 1.8, but will be easily recognizable.

This might be a disappointment to some, but after spending considerably time playing around with it, I'm not going to do something like merge Cannon, War and Gadgetsmith, and Potion and Fleshmith, and Rune, Infusion and Wandsmith. I thought a lot about this, going to a Tinkerer/Apothecary/Arcanist model has some pros, but it also just introduces too many problems.

That said... we might seem some elements of that design, where they can interselect upgrades to an extent, but particularly with the ideal of opening up the Gadgetsmith, Potionsmith, and Arcanist upgrades to other subclasses, while allowing those subclasses to be the best and most general at what they do.

While realistically the Gadgetsmith, Warsmith, and Cannonsmith could be the same subclass, it just didn't seem like it was actually worth doing. I like Cannonsmith's Thundermonger quite a bit, as the sneak attack scaling is the only satisifying way to make a fire aim/Thunder Cannon I've really found.

There is a lot of appeal to Fleshsmith and Potionsmith merging, but I think rather than doing that, some interchangability + some degree of refocusing on their differences will be a more compelling path.

Runesmith, Infuisionsmith, and Wandsmith could be combined, but their playstyles are significantly different enough there's no real reason to do it.

We are going to see more ways of taking limited upgrades off the other lists, particularly from Gadgetsmith. And to be clear, this is has always existed to an extent - Cannon, War and Gadgetsmith all have a variant of the Grappling Hook, and Cannonsmith and Gadgetsmith both of have a way of electrifying their grappling hook. There's a lot of overlap, and the goal here would be to find both the existing overlap and the interesting overlap, and build that out into a better model.

When?????????????????????????????????????

Probably late next month.

There will be an expanded Toolbox update probably by the end of this month with some of the ideas I'm playing around with in upgrades and spells.

I should also mention that until it releases, everything is subject to change, but I wanted to give you guys an update, and of course give a chance to sound off your opinions.