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Best Feats for Artificers in D&D 5e ⚙🛠⚙ Inventive Subclass-Specific and Broad Recommendations
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Oct 3, 2022
Follow along and explore #DND5e feats that fit various Artificer concepts: https://www.flutesloot.com/best-artificer-feats-dnd-5e/?utm_source=youtube Welcome to the inventor’s guide to the best feats for #Artificers in D&D 5e! I’ll reveal fun, useful feats to graduate your #Artificer through stringent TTRPG scenarios. Feats are powerful customizations when coupled wisely with class abilities. Some feats are better than others, so I’ll direct you to Artificer feats that are worth your character’s time to learn. Feats are published in various books, so settling on 5e’s best Artificer feats is challenging. I’m guiding your Artificer to the best feats and weeding out the worst. My feat recommendations come from officially published sources, such as the PHB, TCoE, XGtE, etc. ⏰Time Stamps: 00:00 Intro and article link 00:31 Method of 4 feats per subclass 00:55 Quick top 4 for a generic Artificer 01:15 Experimental Support Alchemist 02:19 Mad Scientist 04:22 Armorer subclass 04:50 Guardian Armorer 06:41 Infiltrator Armorer 07:56 Artillerist 08:24 Generic Artillerist 09:11 Pyromaniac Artillerist
View Video Transcript
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Hey looters, Flutes here. Today I'm going to talk about what I believe are the best
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for artificers to really compliment what they are best at. Today on FlutesLute
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If you want to read this information instead of listening to the video, or if you want both
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bookmark the article for yourself later if you're building an artificer, so you can reference it there
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In other words, I already took the notes for you. So this video will be a little bit different from my other feats articles because I find the artifice are already to be a very self-contained
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and versatile class, and so it doesn't necessarily need feats even, but feats can help
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but have some fun. I'm going to actually go by Artifice or Subclass to give kind of a few builds
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of feats that I think would be helpful for you. I'll go through the Artifist or Subclasses in
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alphabetical order, starting with the Alchemist. I'm only going to recommend four feats because I find
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you're probably going to want some stat boosts from at least one of your ASIs. And beyond these
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feats, there's going to be some split down the middle where you could pick one or the other
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which you could pick both if you have enough feet slots, obviously. And if you're going to have more
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feats somehow. Maybe you're a variant of human. You can just pick something else that makes sense to you
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Sounds fun. But yeah, my recommendations will just be four per subclass. The alchemist is notorious for
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being supposedly the weakest artificer subclass, but it has some cool concepts, and there are some
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feats that can complement what it does. The first concept I invented for the alchemist is the experimental
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support alchemist. With this, you're going to take the fay-touched feat and learn the bless spell
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with that. Next, you're going to take shadow-touched, pick a spell of your choice, honestly. Then get
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magic initiate. Again, spell of your choice. Maybe get something you don't normally get as an artificer
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from the wizard spell list, since it'll use your intelligence like you already do as an artificer. Or if
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you are of a lineage race that has a racial feat that could give you some spells too, maybe go with that one
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The goal is to just learn lots of spells with this feat build. And then lastly, healer, because alchemists
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are good at dealing damage with alchemical damage types like fire and acid, poison. But they also
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can heal. And so you want to be a healer support character. Your experimental elixir that you get as an
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alchemist already has a semi-bless effect that you could get from it. So stacking that with the bless spell
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since it's technically two different things and it wouldn't be an overlap of the same effect
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you could be adding 2D4 to help an ally. I've got a few other notes on this if you want in my article
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if you want to check that out and see what you can come up with. The second alchemist theme I came up with
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and I'm sorry about this one, is the mad scientist. You'll see why I apologize. First, again
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you get fay touched as a feat. You can choose either bless, gift of alacrity, or Tasha's hideous
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laughter. And I say Tasha's hideous laughter specifically for this one, because what is a mad
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scientist without some mad laughter going on? Next, take MetaMagic Adept, and choose careful spell
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or distant spell. Then the elemental adept feet with the acid option, and then the poisoner
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feet. Your goal with this feat build is to create poisons and acids to help your allies. You're going
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to coat not your own weapons in poison, but your allies, which the poisoner feet will allow you to do
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very quickly and efficiently. And then the main spell I want to concentrate on with this build is Tasha's Costic Brew
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I'm not saying this is optimal, but it sounds fun. Maybe I'm a little biased because I did play the Unearthed Rana artificer years ago, and one of the
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main things it did was just throw acid at people, so I guess I want to relive that with the official artificer
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Keep in mind that Toss's Costic Brew does take concentrations, those spells like Bles or Tosh's
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this hideous laughter you might have them but you need to be careful when you want to use them From Faytouched I mean if you remember me mentioning that Your alchemical savant feature is going to boost the damage output of Tasha caustic brew
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once per casting, at least. You can potentially rack up a lot of damage if enemies don't pass their deck save
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or they don't take an action later to cleanse themselves. Again, not an optimal option, I would say, but if you've been playing D&D a long time like me
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you might be hungry for some less than meta options, let's say
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And again, use Poisoner as a bonus action. to poison your allies weapons so they just deal more damage and then cast your support
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spells and whatever else you want to do. I think a lot of people think of the poisoner feet as you poisoning your own weapons so they say oh well as a rogue your bonus action's already busy or whatever
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or you're an archer and so you already want crossbow expert so that you can do a bonus action
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attack but if you're bonus actioning to poison other people's stuff I'm sure they don't mind. The next
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subclass is the armorer which is admittedly a kind of weird subclass in d and d fifth edition. You get heavy armor
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and you can ignore the strength requirements, and so you can kind of be this armored juggernaut on the battlefield
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who's very smart and not beefy. You're also still an artificer, so you're only getting d-8s of hit points
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and so be careful. Here's the feats. This first one is for if you want to focus on the guardian armor features
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and then I'll do the infiltrator armor next. Sentinel, warcaster, dual-wielder, reserve judgment, I have a reason
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I know it's a bad feat. And then either lucky or resilient, choosing dexterity wisdom
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So the hit point issue is semi-solved by your subclass defensive field feature
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So that's at least something, giving you some more survivability. The Sentinel feat is so you can use your thunder gauntlets to distract someone while they have
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disadvantage to hit you, but they also can't get away from you because you're going to
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Sentinel stop them in their tracks. You might say, oh, they're going to attack me then. I was like, yeah, they'll have disadvantage and you have some temporary hit points, so it's not
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the end of the world, and I think it'll be okay. Warcaster enables you to cast Green Flame Blade as an opportunity
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attack? Why not Booming Blade? Because Sentinel's going to stop them from moving, and so it won't
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get all the extra damage it does, so might as well just switch it up. Lucky and resilient are just
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there to help you survive, you little D8 juggernaut. Now, dual wielder. Usually, a horrible
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choice, one of the worst feats, I think, not because it's the actual worst feat, but because it's
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also a trap that people choose, not knowing that it's very suboptimal. So why? Why flutes are you
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recommending it? I noticed something with the subclass that intrigued me. It seems that you could
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potentially wield a shield while still effectively wielding two weapons because your gauntlets count
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as simple melee weapons. I know you're not technically holding them, so it is some DM discretion
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whether they're going to allow dual wielding to be used with those. But if they're okay with it
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you'll get a plus one to your armor class from dual wielder and the other dual wielder bonuses
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and you can still wield a shield, so that's a plus three you can get. You might already be
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wielding a shield, so it's really just like a plus one to your armor class and some versatility to
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use your thunder gauntlets more. But then you also have to ask if it's okay while you're wielding
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the shield, wearing the shield, to attack with your gauntlets like your dual wielding. You know
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that's kind of the thing. And so, like I said, DM discretion, big time, but it could be fun
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So the infiltrator armorer, what recommended feats do I have? Sharpshooter, crossbow expert
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fighting initiate for archery fighting style, and again for your survivability, lucky, or resilient
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Dex Wisdom. You basically become a lightning sniper with a hand crossbow and head
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heavy armor in this case. You honestly might want to be a battle smith instead with this concept
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but let see what we have here anyway if you want the armor instead Sharp Shooter allows you to do extra damage with your range attacks with your infiltrator armor and you don have disadvantage on attacks for up to 300 feet so it a pretty big range
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You can also cast fly as an artificer, so you could rain lightning down from the sky like your Zeus himself
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Crossbow expert is debatable here. It gives you a bonus action to attack with your hand crossbow
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but you're not using your intelligence modifier for your hand crossbow in this case, like a battlesmith could
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The archery fighting style from Fighting Initiate is obviously helpful for a shrew. sharpshooter, and that's about it. So Inflictrator, you can have some fun as a lightning sniper, basically
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I know that you could technically say it's best to get some of the feats that I recommended for the alchemist to get, like, more spells from fate touched or shadow touched, and then you can boost your initiative or bless people and all that stuff
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Absolutely, but I wanted to go over subclass specific ones and have some fun and see what they're capable of
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Next is the Artillerist subclass. I'm going to go over a general Artillerist and then a Pyromaniac Artillerist
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The Artillerist is, again, a pretty self-sustained subclass. I'd say it's second to the Battlesmith, debatably better, just based on your play style
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So my feat recommendations are going to supplement what the Artillerist already does well
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And the Artillerist does synergize with the base artificer in that it helps with healing or damage
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which the artificer can definitely use some synergy for. So the general Artillerist
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Fay touched to get Gift of Alacrity, resilient, Dex and Wisdom again. Maybe that's the best one
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Alert, another boost to your initiative. And Lucky or Warcaster. You want to get your cannons in position in the right places as soon as battle starts
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So we're trying to boost your initiative up with Gift of Alacrity from Faye touched and alert
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Between the two, you're probably going to be getting like a plus 9 plus 10 to your initiative bonuses before your dexterity
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You'll also be able to boost your intelligence and get Misty Step, which is always handy to have
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Resilient can help you round out a stat and help your defenses. It can help you with your dexterity or wisdom saving throws
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While if you want Lucky or Warcaster, then they can kind of buff your
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for concentration, constitution, saving throws. Because you don't want to lose concentration
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you have some good spells as an artillerist, artificer, so don't lose concentration
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And then the pyromaniac artillerist, they're going to choose elemental adept for fire
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flames of flagathos for fire again. So I'm actually going to recommend you be a teafling
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for this type of character. So you can pick flames of flogethos. Fay touched, to learn hex
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and then lucky or alert as your fourth one. So elemental adept and flames of phlegathos
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are obviously meant to augment your fire damage and allow you to overcome fire damage resistances from monsters
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They'll get a constitution or intelligence boost, which is also nice. They don't help your cannons these feats, but they do help your spell casting
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so it's important to understand that. Unless your DM is okay with boosting your cannons too, that would be pretty cool
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One of your spells that's going to be your bread and butter is scorching ray, and you're able to combo that with hex
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because each scorching ray is its own attack roll, so it's kind of like your warlock to an Eldridge Blast
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both scorching ray and using a second-level spell slot. Won't always be the best use of your concentration
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Won't always be your best damage output. But again, I just kind of want to do a bunch of fire damage like you're a mad pyro
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And I know hex will compete with the bonus action that you need to activate your cannons
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So I'd only use hex if you're going up against like a single bad guy that you're not going to have to switch your hex to different enemies throughout the battle
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Or if you're not using your cannons or something like that, just keep that in mind. In a tight spot, you can have lucky to make sure that your scorching rays do hit
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when you're trying to really dish out damage and it's like a clutch moment, do or die
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otherwise maybe save the lucky feet for something more defensive. Or if you don't want lucky, take alert
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Again you want to get your cannons in a good spot and you want to do your pyro stuff before others can act Lastly is the Battlesmith Artifcer This subclass makes waves because it allows you to use intelligence for attack roles with all
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your martial weapons and everything. You're basically able to do what fighters can do
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So you're able to do what some low-level martial classes can do. You get extra attack, but you don't have to invest in strength or decks if you don't want
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to because you can just do intelligence. As long as you're attacking with a magic weapon, I should clarify that
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But you have artificer infusions, so you can make weapons. magic. So first, if you want to build a ranged attacking battlesmith, crossbow expert and
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sharpshooter, of course, fighting initiate archery, and alert, or lucky, resilient if you want some
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more defensive options. This is pretty straightforward. You can deal a lot of damage with
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crossbow expert and sharpshooter, and it's ranged, so it's better than melee, as you don't
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have to run after people. If enemies get close, you can use your reaction to deflect attacks
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and your steel defender can help you out. So you also have this little steel defender
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and you mentioned that, big hulking metal pet of yours that is getting in the way of anyone trying to rush you as an archer that you are
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The other type of battlesmith is a melee one. This goes with the other tried and true combo of Great Weapon Master and Pull Arm Master
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so you get, again, a bonus action attack that is compatible with Great Weapon Master to boost your damage
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similar to sharpshooter on the ranged option. Then you take Sentinel, keep enemies close, and you and your still defender can rip into shreds
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And then pick Warcaster or resilient, lucky, whatever works for you. But Warcaster will help you because you're in the thick of battle
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and maybe sometimes it's better to make an opportunity attack that is a spell. That's up to you. Plus you pad your concentration saving throws
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Your constitution has advantage in those saves. Additionally, you're going to have the potential for a reach weapon with Pullarm Master
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which means you could be keeping your distance while your still defender stays next to whoever you're going after
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kind of keeping them in place. You can attack with your pull arm reach and then back up so that they have to choose to go for your still defender
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or move past the still defender for an opportunity attack to get to you. Don't forget, you can cast things like Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade as a reaction with Warcaster
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Just make sure that it's going to be compatible with your pull arm and the range that you're doing
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That can get a little dicey. No pun intended. And again, you might take Green Flame Blade because you are taking Essential
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You might not actually allow people to move away from you. So there you go. So those are my top choices for some subclass-specific feats for artificers
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And there's a lot of redundancies, basically. A lot of feats have really risen to the top
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If you're going Marshall, it's often best to go for a build that uses Great Weapon Master, Pull Arm Master, or a ranged option of crossbow expert and sharpshooter, and the raged option is typically better. Dungeons and Dragons, things fly around, and melee can't always get to them
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And then a lot of spellcasting feats and initiative-based feats or padding your saving throws and concentration-type feats
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Those are really the lessons to learn when you're picking feats in D&D 5th edition
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Is there some niche ones that you could pick? But those ones I just kind of listed off just now are often the best ones to consider with
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whether you're a spellcaster or a martial class, just keep that in mind. It'll help you sort through your own feet selections in the future
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All you are, if it's out there while you're tinkering, make sure that you take time to subscribe on our channel
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so you always know when we have a video coming out, me and Opel, my wife
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And please make sure to comment down below if you like these feat recommendations
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or if you would twist them a little bit. I won't take anything personally. It's a very subjective topic
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and so I'm just open to inspire someone or help them narrow down their choices
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Y'all have a good adventure this weekend, and I will see you in the next. next video. Bye
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