One of the reasons I wanted to make this blog was to fill in the gap of the optimization community’s lack of solid Artificer builds. The folks at Tabletop Builds have a solid straight-classed Artillerist build, which I’ll take a bit of advice from, and I hope to complement that with a straight-classed Battle Smith build.
I’ve talked about the Battle Smith in my own Artificer guide, but I’ll give a basic overview here. The Battle Smith gives the Artificer enough worthwhile martial abilities to become competent enough at using Martial Weapons to complement the base Artificer playstyle. Because of the limited resources of the Artificer half-casting spell slot growth, the Battle Smith smooths out the basic Artificer playstyle by giving them a good at-will action so they’ll never have to awkwardly stand around between slinging spells.
We are still a Spellcaster and Battlefield controller first, but we’ll have decent to sometimes good damage to supplement this.
However, there’s a bit of a challenge to make sure their damage per round stays consistently okay. As stated in the Artificer guide, we don’t need to do the damage expected from a Fighter with the Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter feats, but ideally, we still should be above a Warlock spamming Hex and Eldritch Blast with the Agonizing Blast Invocation. To do that, we’ll rely on the Kobold as printed in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.
| Tech |
| DnD 5e is an awkwardly written game. There are plenty of things that work as written, but are likely not intended and won’t fly at most tables. Such rules interactions are dubbed as “Tech” within the optimization community. Tech will be mentioned in boxes such as these. This build doesn’t rely on any of the Tech I will mention being effective, but making use of any Tech in this article will naturally lead to a more effective character. If you really want to make use of any of these interpretations of the game’s rules and believe they won’t negatively impact your table, work with your DM to see if they’ll allow these interactions or any compromises that need to be made to make use of them. |
RACE: KOBOLD (VOLO’S)
Ability Score Increase: We’ll be using Tasha’s Custom Origin rules to change the +2 Dexterity to a +2 Intelligence instead.
Size: Small. This allows us to use the Steel Defender as a mount if we want to.
Speed: 30 Feet. Our walking speed isn’t hindered by being small like the Halflings and Gnomes are.
Darkvision: 60 Feet. Standard, but useful.
Grovel Cower and Beg: This is a situational ability but has its moments. If your Druid has summoned a lot of monsters that are against high AC opponents, this could help them land more attacks.
Pack Tactics: This is what we’re here for! When an ally is within 5 feet of an enemy we are attacking, we get advantage! Great synergy with the Steel Defender!
Sunlight Sensitivity: An overexaggerated weakness, but still one nonetheless. I hate saying this for abilities, but do work with your DM to make sure you aren’t always out in the sun. Ideally, I would expect Dungeons in my Dungeons and Dragons game, but maybe DMs try to branch out into other things. I suggest watching Pack Tactic’s video on Kobolds on how to best make use of their strengths and weaknesses. One such suggestion is making sure your party travels exclusively at night. Given how many races have darkvision in DnD 5e, this is entirely possible. And if you happen to have a lone human in the party, it may be worth infusing a Goggles of Night to give to them. There are many ways to work around Sunlight Sensitivity.
Languages: Common and Draconic.
BACKGROUND: INVESTIGATOR (VAN RITCHEN’S GUIDE TO RAVENLOFT)
Feature: Inheritor. Page 31 of VRGtR allows us to use a replacement background feature out of the given list. We will take the inheritor feature. This allows us to inherit a signet ring, a piece of clothing, or a “notable weapon” from our inheritor. We will use this to start with a pistol.
If… your DM doesn’t allow you to start with a 250 gold Weapon at Level 1, or simply doesn’t allow firearms in their campaign. We’ll need to get a Hand Crossbow ASAP instead. Which is simple enough.
The Investigator background provides you with a Magnifying Glass, an item worth 100 gold. Use selling rules, you should easily get 50 gold from this. Add that to selling two Light Crossbows you’ll be able to get from the Artificer starting equipment and the starting gold from your background, and you’ll easily have enough gold to afford a Hand Crossbow at Level 1.
| Tech: Even more gold at Level 1 |
| Good god, we haven’t even started the build yet and I’m already using Tech boxes. On top of the Magnifying glass, the Investigator background provides you with a trinket from the “Horror Trinket” table that is found within VRGtR. Item #13 on the list provides us with a cursed Spyglass. If it’s worth anywhere close to an actual Spyglass in DnD 5e (1000 gold!), then we shouldn’t have to worry about being strapped for cash for the rest of our adventure. |
Regardless if you use the Tech or not above, I’ll give a shout-out to Form of Dread for using this starting equipment strategy in his Plafond Pupil Build.
Skill Proficiencies: Customizing Backgrounds is RAW per the PHB. We’ll switch our background proficiencies to Acrobatics and Stealth.
Tool Proficiencies: We want any kind of wind instrument (Bagpipes, Flutes, Pan Flutes, Viol, etc.) so we can make use of the Pipes of Haunting. We’ll also take proficiency in Poisoner’s Kit, so we can possibly extract poison from defeated enemies and apply poison to some ammunition.
Equipment: As stated, sell the magnifying glass and take whatever other equipment we get depending on the background chosen.
STATING STATS
I will generate stats using Point Buy.
Strength: 9
Dexterity: 14
Constitution: 14
Intelligence: 15 + 2
Wisdom: 11
Charisma: 8
LEVEL 1 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Magic Stone (If no Pistol) or Mending, Guidance |
| 1st Level | Cure Wounds, Detect Magic, Faire Fire |
Saving Throws: Constitution, which helps our concentration on spells, and Intelligence.
Skills: Arcana and Perception. Arcana allows us to scribe spell scrolls, which you should defiantly learn more about here.
Tools: Thieves Tools, Tinkerer’s Tools, and Smith’s Tools. Smith’s Tools will allow us to repair weapons, which should allow us to sell them at a better price.
Equipment: We probably sold our Light Crossbows, but we get Scale Mail. We don’t start with a shield through Artificer for some reason, so be sure to buy that.
Spellcasting: We can prepare spells on the Artificer Spell list, and all spells we get from the Artificer Spell list effectively have an “M” or material component needed to cast them. This material component has to be Thieves Tools, a set of Artisans Tools, or one of our Infusions we’ll pick up starting next level.
Magical Tinkering: Similar to how must use the Prestidigitation spell, some fun utility, but nothing build-defining.
Level 1 Strategy
Most of our spell slots will go to Faire Fire. When we’re not doing that, we’ll either use our Bonus Action + Action to throw a magic stone or shoot things with our Glock.
LEVEL 2 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Magic Stone (If no Pistol) or Mending, Guidance |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Cure Wounds, Detect Magic, Faire Fire |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot (If Pistol) or Enhance Defense, Homunculus Servant |
Infusions: We can pick four infusions, and have two of them active at any given time dedicated at the end of a long rest. I’ll mostly focus on the primary ‘active’ infusions I think are worth having, take whatever “backups” you like.
Repeating Shot: This allows us to ignore the loading property of our weapons, and technically the ammunition property as well (at least that’s what the game designers say). So we’re capable of wielding a one-handed ranged weapon like a Pistol (or Hand Crossbow starting next level) alongside a shield. So on top of being a +1 to Attack and Damage rolls, this is also a +2 to our defense.
Homunculus Servant: An extra action we can use on the battlefield.
| Tech: Grapple Flight |
| We will command the Homunculus to grapple us, and it’s capable of dragging up with half its fly speed, or 15 feet. It’s a slow flight speed, but any flight is powerful in DnD 5e. The rules of grappling have nothing to do with weight either, so the Homunculus’s low strength doesn’t prevent it from grappling and dragging you. Just keep in mind you can’t “Move” until after your turn is over, as the Homunculus can only move and make actions after your own. |
Level 2 Strategy
If we’re using a pistol, we can hold a shield now. We can also technically fly if the tech is allowed.
LEVEL 3 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Detect Magic, |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot |
The Right Tool for the Job: Minor ability, but some tools are expensive or hard to come by if away from civilization for an extended period of time. So making sure you have a set of tools you might need is helpful.
Tool Proficiency: We already have Smith Tools, so let’s pick Mason Tool proficiency here which should help us find hidden passageways in dungeons.
Battle Smith Spells: Heroism is alright when the frighten condition comes up, but Shield is great. One of the best, if not THE best, 1st Level Spell in the game.
Battle Ready: Hand Crossbow users can start using that weapon now. Infuse it with Repeating Shot. Regardless, we now use Intelligence for our attack roles.
Steel Defender: One of the big draws of this subclass. We decide its appearance and whether it has two or four legs. We can use our Bonus Action to command it to attack, which is something we can safely do at these earlier levels. It’s fairly sturdy and healing it is virtually free. We can also use it as a moving “node” of sorts to reliably activate our Pack Tactics. If we have Melee party members already, we can choose to ride a four-legged Steel Defender as a controlled mount, which gives us additional mobility.
It’s cheap to revive with a single spell slot, but we don’t get many of them as an Artificer so still try to avoid that.
| Tech: Steel Defender Armor |
| The Steel Defender has decent AC for the current level of play we get it, but it’ll feel pretty low very soon and it doesn’t get an AC upgrade until Level 15. Thankfully, we can fix this. Without really any tech, it’s very reasonable to assume a four-legged Steel Defender can wear barding. Giving it Plate Mail barding can give it 18 AC for 6000 gold… but what if I told you that you can get more for less? Not having proficiency in Armor enforces disadvantage on ability checks, saving throws, attacks that use Strength of Dexterity, and prevents the wearer from casting spells… but you still receive the AC benefits. And most of these drawbacks are not things we expect our Steel Defender to do. So you can give a two-legged Steel Defender a normal set of Splint Mail and a Shield for 19 AC for only 210 gold. |
| Tech: Robot Uprising |
| The wording for the Steel Defender states “At the end of a long rest, you can create a new steel defender if you have smith’s tools with you. If you already have a defender from this feature, the first one immediately perishes.” The ability also states “If it has died within the last hour, you can use your smith’s tools as an action to revive it, provided you are within 5 feet of it and you expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher.” “Perish” is an interesting choice of words, as it still implies the body is still around. Create a second Steel Defender, and then use a spell slot to revive your “First” Steel Defender, and now you have two. After the next long rest, create a third Steel Defender, and only the “First” one perishes again. Use a spell slot to revive it, and now you have three Steel Defenders. You can only use a Bonus Action to command a single Steel Defender, but they’re still capable of moving and dodging without your command. You can use this ability to have a moving wall of Steel Defenders that can halt enemies at choke points. You can also just have Steel Defenders to act as controlled mounts for yourself and all your small party members. But if you really want to get silly, the Steel Defenders can act on their own if you are incapacitated. Knock yourself out, and the Robot Uprising can begin. |
Level 3 Strategy
We can now attack with our Intelligence and have a Steel Defender that we can use for offensive, defensive, or mobility purposes.
LEVEL 4 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Detect Magic, Faire Fire, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Homunculus Servant (If not mounted on the Steel Defender) or Enhance Defense |
Feat: Sharpshooter. With this, our range extends to 90 feet with a Pistol, or 120 feet with a Hand Crossbow and gives us the option to subtract 5 from an attack roll to increase our weapons damage by 10.
Level 4 Strategy
We should stay further back than we were before thanks to our increased range and also want to use the -5/+10 feature of sharpshooter as often as possible, and basically all the time when we have advantage on attack rolls, which should also be quite often.
LEVEL 5 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, |
| 2nd Level | Branding Smite, Magic Mouth, Warding Bond, Web |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Homunculus Servant (If not mounted on the Steel Defender) or Enhance Defense |
Battle Smith Spells: Frankly nothing quite spectacular here. Warding Bond is OKAY, but stay very clear of Branding Smite. Ideally, all of our Second Level spells should be going to Web.
Extra Attack: An additional attack.
Level 5 Strategy
Between Extra Attack, Sharpshooter, and potentially our Steel Defender, our DPR should be doing fairly well now as long as we consistently activate Pack Tactics.
H. Crossbow DPR w/out Advantage: 0.4(2(3.5+14)) + 0.05(3.5+3.5) = 14.35
H. Crossbow DPR with Advantage: (1-(0.6*0.6))(2(3.5+14)) + 0.0975(3.5+3.5) = 23.08
Pistol DPR w/out Advantage: 0.4(2(5.5+14)) + 0.05(5.5+5.5) = 16.15
Pistol DPR with Advantage: (1-(0.6*0.6))(2(5.5+14)) + 0.0975(5.5+5.5) = 26.03
Steel Defender DPR: 0.6(4.5+3) + 0.05(4.5) = 4.725
Warlock Baseline: 17.8
Even when we don’t have advantage, say due to Sunlight Sensitivity, then the Steel Defender provides enough damage to make sure we out-damage that Warlock baseline. But in the right game, we should have advantage most of the time.
On top of all of this, we get Web. We should try casting Web during big fights, and occasionally still cast Faire Fire in smaller fights.
LEVEL 6 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Faire Fire, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Branding Smite, Magic Mouth, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Infusions: Take Pipes of Haunting. Also, don’t forget Pipes of Haunting.
Tool Expertise: We have expertise in our tools now, great for Thieves Tools, Mason Tools, and especially our Poisoner’s Kit.
Level 6 Strategy
We should use Pipes of Haunting sometimes. Like every combat encounter. The effects of getting caught in both the Web spell and getting subjected to the Pipes of Haunting is a particularly nasty combo. Once we have our control effects set up, we can then start shooting.
LEVEL 7 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Faire Fire, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Branding Smite, Warding Bond, Web, Magic Mouth, Rope Trick |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Flash of Genius: A reaction that can add our Intelligence to an ability checks or saving throws our Intelligence times a day. Save this for the big saving throws.
LEVEL 8 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Faire Fire, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Feat: Fey Touched. Bless is a reliable first-level spell that is great at any level. Misty Step is also pretty good. We also get a +1 to our Intelligence, rounding out our main stat to an 18. If Gift of Alacrity is available for you to take with this spell, that’s also a great choice.
LEVEL 9 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Revivify |
| Infusions | Repeating Shot, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Battle Smith Spells: Aura of Vitality is a decent out-of-combat healing spell. It’s an average of 70 HP you can split fairly freely across your party over the course of a minute. Conjure Barrage is not very good, however. Honestly, we should mostly be using our 3rd Level Spell Slots for more Webs.
Arcane Jolt: A Mini-Divine Smite that can even be added to ranged attacks or our Steel Defender attacks. It’s a little bit of Nova damage when needed, but over the course of a full adventuring day, it adds less than 1 DPR to our damage, maybe a little more if we mostly save it for critical hits.
Level 9 Strategy
Despite getting 3rd Level Spell Slots, we should still use them for Web most of the time.
LEVEL 10 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, |
Infusions: Remove the shield and your Pistol or Hand Crossbow and grab yourself a Shortbow. This will give us a decent boost to our DPR alone but also makes casting Tiny Stone significantly easier.
Magic Item Adept: More attunements. Magic item crafting is vague in 5e so the rest of the ability is highly dependent on your campaign and DM.
Level 10 Strategy
We are changing our strategy quite a bit. Our Steel Defenders attack isn’t adding much to our DPR anymore, if at all. So we are going to create a better use for our Bonus Action.
First, at the start of each adventuring day, use both of your 3rd Level Spell Slots on casting Tiny Servant. Use your Bonus Action to give them a general command: “Throw Magic Stones when I cast it”.
These guys have a size of tiny, and can reasonably hide in your pocket as you do your main action. As our bonus action each turn we didn’t cast a Level Spell, we’ll cast Magic Stone, and have our Tiny Servant throw the stone as part of their own action.
We can even give our Tiny Servants Light Crossbows so they can still attack when we didn’t cast Magic Stone. They don’t have proficiency in the attack, but their Dex is decent high enough to add a handful of damage when we otherwise wouldn’t.
I’ll go over the DPR for all of this next level when we can cast Tiny Servant 3 times with our spell slots.
Our Steel Defender now should still be an effective dodging node to activate our Pack Tactics. Remember it can still dodge and move even when we don’t command it.
LEVEL 11 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Spell-Storing Item: Allows us to store a 1st or 2nd level spell that can be casted twice our Intelligence per day. At the moment that is 8, which is a lot. We’ll likely use this on Web.
We have two solid candidates to gift this psedo-infusion to.
First is our Steel Defender, provided they aren’t wearing Armor (or A Steel Defender, depending on what Tech is available to you). This allows you to cast Web with just a Bonus Action, freeing up your main action to attack or use the Pipes of Haunting. The Steel Defender also has a good Constitution Saving throw, it’s the same as yours in fact, so they can maintain the concentration on the spell very well.
Second is one of our Tiny Servants, give them the general command: “At the start of a combat, use the Spell Storing item. After casted, throw Magic Stones after I cast it”. This frees up all of our actions, making the only opportunity cost simply one toss of a Magic Stone. Despite having poor a constitution saving throw by itself, it will still be fairly easy to protect its concentration provided it’s out of sight whenever it’s not taking its turn.
I think the Tiny Servant is the better option but mentioned the Steel Defender in case your DM deems a command like that to be too complicated to still qualify as “Simple”.
Level 11 Strategy
As promised, I’ll break up and show the current calculations for our current DPR.
Shortbow w/out Advantage + Arcane Jolt on Crits: 0.45(2(3.5+18) + 0.05(2(3.5)+4(3.5)) = 19.82
Shortbow with Advantage + Arcane Jolt on Crits: (1-(0.55*0.55))(2(3.5+18) + 0.0975(2(3.5)+4(3.5)) = 31.42
Tiny Servant + Magic Stone: 0.5(3(3.5+4)) + 0.05(3(3.5)) = 11.77
Tiny Servant + Light Crossbow: 0.4(3(4.5+3)) + 0.05(3(4.5)) = 9.67
Warlock Baseline: 28.65
As long as we can activate Pack Tactics as frequently as possible, then we should be well above the Warlock Baseline. The Level 11 Baseline is often a killing point for builds due to the lack of damage-boosting abilities Martials actually get at Level 11. No seriously, it’s just the Fighter who gets one.
Even if we don’t have Pack Tactics, it’s not the end of the world. Tiny Servants still squeezes our DPR to be just over the baseline. We also have Webs and Pipes, so we can make a significant contribution to battles without even attacking once.
On top of our Battlefield Control, we should be in good shape for the rest of our career.
LEVEL 12 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Feat: Resilient Wisdom. Spells and Abilities that force a Wisdom saving through can be quite deadly at this level. Literally, some of them can straight up kill you. This also rounds out our Wisdom score, giving us a bonus to our Perception.
LEVEL 13 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Battle Smith Spells: Fire Shield is pretty cool. But we won’t use it much yet.
Level 13 Strategy
Use your newly acquired 4th Level Spell Slot to uncast Tiny Servant now. This frees up our 3rd Level Spell Slots for our other goodies.
LEVEL 14 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Infusions: More Pipes of Haunting. The wording states that when a creature makes the saving throw it becomes immune to “these pipes”, which suggests they are still vulnerable to a separate set of pipes. This allows us to sometimes use the pipes multiple times within a combat encounter.
Magic Item Savant: More attunements. Also, the ability to ignore magic item restrictions is nice and opens the door to a lot of amazing magic items exclusive to just Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock… assuming you come across them.
LEVEL 15 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Improved Defender: Your defender is a bit better now. It gets the +2 AC on top of any armor it might be wearing, which is great. Arcane Jolt doubles in damage, making Critical Hits all the more fun. And enemies take a little bit of damage when deflect attack is used, no save or attack roll needed, it’s barely any damage to be noticeable by this level but can be pretty funny with the multiple Steel Defender Tech.
Overall, it’s a good ability, but a little underwhelming for a subclass capstone.
LEVEL 16 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Arcane Eye, Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate, Otiluke’s resilient sphere |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Ability Score Improvement: +2 Intelligence to cap out that stat. Same benefits as last time, but also gets us 2 additional uses of Web through the Spell Storing Item.
LEVEL 17 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | |
| 5th Level | Banishing Smite, Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds, Wall of Stone |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting |
Level 17 Strategy
Wall of Stone is the big spell we cast for the biggest fights. Might be worth checking to see if you can get enemies trapped in a Web beforehand so they don’t get the chance to escape.
I’ll do an update on the expected DPR calculations since we got a couple of things since Level 11.
Shortbow w/out Advantage + Arcane Jolt on Crits: 0.5(2(3.5+19) + 0.05(2(3.5)+8(3.5)) = 23.37
Shortbow with Advantage + Arcane Jolt on Crits: (1-(0.5*0.5))(2(3.5+19) + 0.0975(2(3.5)+8(3.5)) = 36.3
Tiny Servant + Magic Stone: 0.45(3(3.5+5)) + 0.05(3(3.5)) = 12
Tiny Servant + Light Crossbow: 0.25(3(4.5+3)) + 0.05(3(4.5)) = 6.3
Warlock Baseline: 38.2
Tiny Servant Damage slipped a little without magic stone due to not having a scaling to-hit bonus while the expected AC of enemies continues to rise. Keep in mind, you can have well over three Tiny Servants if you want. Spend two of your 4th Level Spell Slots and add the DPR of the Tiny Servants with Magic Stone with the DPR of the Tiny Servants without Magic Stone.
Overall, we are past our prime at this point. It’s really hard to take anything but a full caster into the highest levels of play, but for conclusion’s sake I’ll finish up the build.
LEVEL 18 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate |
| 5th Level | Banishing Smite, Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds, Transmute Rock, Wall of Stone |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Ring of Protection |
Infusions: It really doesn’t matter what you take at this point.
Magic Item Master: Yet another attunement slot.
LEVEL 19 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate |
| 5th Level | Banishing Smite, Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds, Transmute Rock, Wall of Stone |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Ring of Protection |
Ability Score Improvement: Lucky, or whatever else you really want.
LEVEL 20 ARTIFICER
| Cantrips | Guidance, Magic Stone, Mending, Thorn Whip |
| 1st Level | Absorb Elements, Bless, Grease, Heroism, Shield |
| 2nd Level | Aid, Branding Smite, Lesser Restoration, Magic Mouth, Misty Step, Rope Trick, Warding Bond, Web |
| 3rd Level | Aura of Vitality, Conjure Barrage, Fly, Revivify, Tiny Servant |
| 4th Level | Aura of Purity, Fire Shield, Fabricate, Stone Shape |
| 5th Level | Banishing Smite, Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds, Transmute Rock, Wall of Stone |
| Infusions | Enhance Weapon +2, Bracers of Archery, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Haunting, Ring of Protection |
Soul of Artifice: This can potentially be a +6 to all saving throws, assuming you have enough magic items to attune to. With your current infusions alone, it’s just a +2.
CONCLUSION
And that concludes the Sharpshooting Operator! There is now finally a full Battle Smith build publicly available online that is actually competent at what it’s built to do!
This build performs quite well between Levels 5-16, but the lack of high-level martial features makes the build hard to stand out when compared against a full casting class.
I have an Artificer Build that will perform much better at higher levels thanks to Multiclassing, and show how Artificer can work as a framework for another class. Check it out here!
Pipes of Haunting 
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