Armorer – D&D 5e Artificer Subclass Guide (2014)

Become Iron Man with the armorer artificer

At a glance

Armorer features

Tools of the trade – Lv3

How it works

Gain proficiency in heavy armor and smith’s tools.

Tactics

• With proficiency in heavy armor, there’s potentially less need to invest in dexterity. However, much of this depends on your type of armor and your build (more on that soon).

Armorer spells – Lv3

How it works

Gain the following as prepared spells at the relevant levels:

Artificer Level	Armorer Spells
3rd	Magic Missile, Thunderwave
5th	Mirror Image, Shatter
9th	Hypnotic Pattern, Lightning Bolt
13th	Fire Shield, Greater Invisibility
17th	Pass Wall, Wall of Force

Tactics

• The armorer has a very strong set of spells. This includes damage dealing options that are severely lacking in the core artificer class.
• Use AoE spells like thunderwave and shatter to tackle crowds with damage. Alternatively, hypnotic pattern is a top AoE spell for nullifying multiple enemies simultaneously.
• Mirror image, fire shield and greater invisibility are all great protective spells and greater invisibility can easily grant advantage on your attacks.
• Magic missile and lightning bolt are both decent ranged spells that can hit multiple targets.
• Wall of force is great at separating enemies on the battlefield, allowing you to tackle a less of the enemies at a time. Passwall is a really interesting utility spell allowing you to create temporary passages helping you bypass segments of dungeons and similar things.

Arcane armor – Lv3

How it works

As an action, you can turn an ordinary suit of armor into arcane armor giving it the following benefits:

• No strength requirements for wearing it.
• It can be used as a spellcasting focus.
• It can’t be forcibly removed and expands to cover your whole body, even replacing limbs if necessary.
• It can be doffed or donned as an action.

Tactics

• You’ve got potential here to entirely remove the need to invest in strength and dexterity. Especially as other features allow you to use intelligence for weapon attacks.
• However, this may nullify your ability to be decent at stealth which is an option for armorers. And I’d assume the desire to switch between armor types for different circumstances is part of the appeal of playing an armorer.
• It also means that juggling weapons and spell focuses isn’t an issue making wielding a shield for instance, much easier.
• If you do fall in water and you’re wearing heavy armor, it can be taken off with an action which could be very circumstantially useful.

Armor model – Lv3

How it works

You can choose to make your arcane armor into more powerful armor with built in weapons. You can choose 1 of 2 models; guardian or infiltrator.

The guardian model is more about close combat damage and defence, including keeping allies safe by diverting attacks to yourself. The infiltrator model is more about ranged attacks, greater speed and stealth.

Tactics

• Guardian armor is obviously better for melee combat and being tougher. The infiltrator armor is better for stealth and ranged combat.
• Remember you can change your armor type each short or long rest. If you know you’re coming up to a stealth segment, then simply change to infiltrator armor. You could even carry some medium and heavy armor around with you to adapt to exactly these situations.
• The guardian armor causes the target of your attacks to have disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone but you. This can be a great way of distracting enemies from other targets, but you’re probably less durable than most martials. I’d employ some hit and run tactics to make this more problematic for enemies where you can. You could even force them into having to decide between worse attacks or incurring opportunity attacks from allies while they chase you down.
• You may also want to invest heavily in defence with things like a shield.

Extra attack – Lv5

How it works

You can now make a second attack when you take the attack action.

Tactics

• This helps keep up your power levels a little closer to other martials.
• It also means that your attacks should be outperforming your cantrips at this stage, especially with the extra effects of your built-in armor weapons. Attacks should often be your go to form of offense in combat, though you do have some decent offensive levelled spells too.

Armor modifications – Lv9

How it works

You can now infuse 4 parts of your arcane armor with different infusions and can infuse 2 additional items.

Tactics

• This makes your armor highly customisable and capable of gaining multiple enhancements (useful as it covers your whole person and includes your weapons).
• Some good options include enhanced arcane focus (for more powerful spells), enhanced defense for greater resilience, enhanced weapon (for more powerful attacks), radiant weapon (for blinding as a reaction) and resistant armor (for a damage resistance).

Perfected armor – Lv15

How it works

Your arcane armor is improved. The guardian armor can take a reaction to pull someone that ends their turn within 30ft of them up to 25ft and probably make a melee attack against them. The infiltrator armor will cause a creature to shed light, have disadvantage against attacks against you and advantage on the next attack against it which can also cause more damage.

Tactics

• The guardian armor enhancement is great for getting enemies near where you want them. It’s especially great against spellcasters and other ranged enemies with low strength that you’ll want in melee range.
• The infiltrator enhancement makes it good to spread your attacks around multiple enemies if you’re likely to be attacked by a few creatures. This will cause 2 creatures to have disadvantage against you and 2 potential instances of advantage on attacks.

How good is the armorer subclass?

Armorers are capable of switching between ranged support and partial tanks. This does require preparation though so switching can’t just be done mid combat. It’s a minor limitation though.

Armorers are capable of fairly decent damage output, but as a point of comparison, I’ve averaged out damage per round (DPR) for the armorer, artillerist and battle smith exclusive of spells to show how it stacks up (I’ve gone with the higher damage infiltrator armor for this). I’ve ignored the impact of infusions which are available to all subclasses and assumed a focus on upgrading intelligence. I’ve also not worried about chances of hitting as this should be similar across all the subclasses.

Level	Armorer	Artillerist	Battle Smith
3	10	18.5	14
5	18.5	24.5	22.5
9	20.5	29	32.5
15	20.5	48	48

As can be seen, the artillerist and battle smith both manage high average damage levels throughout their progression which remains considerably higher than the armorer. Especially once you hit level 9.

That’s not to say the armorer is bad. It simply performs other functions like stealth, absorbing more attacks, has better spells than the battle smith, more infusions and can do more to nullify enemies.

Part of the appeal of the armorer is as something of a disruptor and a utility subclass. In these areas, it performs quite well and remains a solid subclass, even if damage dealing isn’t its forte.

4/5

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Optimising an armorer

Armorers are a little awkward to optimise as you need to consider both their functions in their different armor types. While some players may choose to stick with a single armor type, I don’t think this is optimal and part of the appeal of the armorer is their versatility. As such, my recommendations below will take into account being optimised for both armor types.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Intelligence: Your most important ability score by far. It’s not only crucial for your spellcasting, but also your weapon attacks with your arcane armor too.
• Dexterity: You can use heavy armor if you want, but the infiltrator armor is good at stealth so you may want to use medium armor for this for the better stealth. This means investing a bit in dexterity (at least 14). If you’re using guardian armor, you might also want to use a ranged weapon (like a firearm) at which point, you may want a decent dexterity.
• Constitution: Great for maintaining concentration on spells and increasing your hit points. While intelligence is the priority, this will go a long way to ensuring you can survive a long time in battle.

Options to avoid

• Strength: You have no need for this.
• Wisdom: You have little need for this.
• Charisma: You’re not built for face skills, leave this for bards, paladins and other charisma-centric classes.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	8
Dexterity	14	14
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	15	15
Wisdom	10	12
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

• Arcana: Solid knowledge skill and as a rare, intelligence based class, one of the best options for specialising in this.
• History: Another decent knowledge skills to take advantage of your intelligence.
• Investigation: Investigating things will often come up and it’s also an intelligence based skill.
• Nature: Decent enough knowledge skill and uses intelligence which you’ll be strong in.
• Perception: Not a great ability score for an artificer, but perception is useful for everyone in the party.
• Sleight of hand: You should have a decent dexterity and with thieves’ tools proficiency, you can make a strong burglar option when the party is absent of a rogue, especially with your enhanced stealth in infiltrator armor.

Options to avoid

• Medicine: Just grab a healing potion, cure wounds or something like magic initiate to get healing word.

Races

I’d consider a race that enhances the following kinds of features for a battle smith:

• Durability: Armorers can function as something of a tank. In most ways, they’re capable of fulfilling this role other than in the hit point department. Increasing durability will help a lot here through increased hit points, resistances and other things. The capability to use hit and run tactics through teleportation or a Goblin’s nimble escape for example, could also be quite beneficial.
• Spellcasting: Spellcasting is less important to armorers than other artificers, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Knowing more spells and having free castings will remain useful.
• Intelligence-based: Some races will specify certain ability scores you increase. If that’s the case, you’ll want to prioritise an intelligence increase followed by dexterity and constitution.

Recommended options

• Bugbear – The ultimate combination of damage and stealth is perfect for an armorer that might go from guardian to infiltrator armor. You can enjoy the extra 5ft reach with your thunder gauntlets and an additional 2d6 damage when striking an enemy before they’ve had a turn. You also get proficiency in stealth and can combine this with the infiltrator armor’s advantage on stealth checks. Just make sure you bump up your dexterity a bit.
• High Elf – +2 to dexterity and +1 to intelligence suit an armorer quite nicely. Proficiency in perception is always useful and a free cantrip from the wizard’s spell list is very useful.
• Githzerai – The easiest way to get access to the shield spell as an armorer to make you even tougher to hit. Especially useful for this low hit dice tank. Resistance to psychic attacks can come in useful too as is advantage on saving throws against charmed and frightened conditions.
• Goblin – Nimble escape is great for keeping an armorer safe with disengage or hide as a bonus action, especially as you’ll be putting yourself in danger’s way a lot without a large number of hit dice. Hit and run tactics also work great with thunder gauntlets. Fury of the small is also great as you get extra damage on attacks or spells when attacking something of a size larger than yourself (which most creatures are), and you’ll likely be making quite a few attacks.
• Hobgoblin – Fey gift is great for melee combat with allies with some great perks to turn the tide of combat. Fortune from the many can turn near misses into hits when fighting with allies too. Armorers aren’t so tough that you’ll want to leave them completely isolated so working with your friends makes sense.
• Shadar-Kai – Blessing of the Raven Queen lets you teleport into the fray and gives you resistance to all damage for a turn. Proficiency in perception and a different weapon or tool proficiency each day are handy too.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are great for adding a bit of flavour to a character and providing some small skill perks, gear and minor abilities. For an armorer, I’d be tempted to transform yourself into a replacement rogue. You can already tackle lock picking, but grabbing a background that grants stealth proficiency is a good way to round out your capabilities.

With that in mind, below are some of the better background options for an armorer:

• Criminal – Stealth and deception proficiency are great (even if you’re likely not too charismatic).
• Urban bounty hunter – I’d pick insight and stealth of the 4 skill proficiencies here.
• Urchin – Grab stealth and sleight of hand proficiency, plus you’ll get disguise kit proficiency.

Feats

When taking an ability score increase or using a variant Human, you can gain access to feats, taking one instead of the ability score increase. Some DMs will also give you a feat when you create your character for added flavour. Just check with your DM that they allow feats.

Below are some options I’d suggest:

• Dual Wielder – Because your gauntlets aren’t light weapons, you can’t normally dual wield them unless you have this feat. Means you can use your bonus action to get an extra attack each turn, but will need to sacrifice the extra durability a shield provides.
• Fey Touched – Increase your intelligence by +1 and get misty step and another 1st level spell with a free use every long rest. Misty step is a great spell for armorers to get out of danger or combine with thunder gauntlets attacks to force enemies to chase you around (and isn’t on the artificer spell list).
• Fighting Initiate – Gain a fighting style to add to your weapon capabilities. Your choice of fighting style largely depends on your weapon choices. Options like archery, defense, dueling and two weapon fighting are all good choices to either help you dish out more damage or be more resilient.
• Lucky – Making 3 rerolls a day is powerful for any class!
• Magic Initiate – Get 2 cantrips and a 1st level spell from any spell list. Great for getting top cantrips from other classes like toll the dead.
• Metamagic Adept – Enhance your spells with the metamagic ability from the sorceror class.
• Medium Armor Master – +1 AC if you have at least 16 dexterity (when wearing medium armor) and no disadvantage on stealth checks when in medium armor. A great option for a class that relies heavily on medium armor to make sure they’re not too vulnerable. Especially as you might also want to play a stealthy character.
• Sentinel – Gives you more opportunities to use your opportunity attack and makes it more powerful (stopping your enemy’s movement). Combine it with a bugbear for extra reach. A great feat for armorers using guardian armor a lot.
• Shadow touched – Not quite as good as fey touched as you can get invisibility through your class list, but a couple of extra prepared spells and free castings remains useful for an artificer.
• Skill Expert – Better at even more skills is great, especially if you want to invest heavily in stealth or sleight of hand.
• Skilled – 3 more skills to be proficient in is also great if you don’t have enough skills to fill in as a backup rogue.
• War caster – If you intend on using plenty of concentration spells, you may want this available. It will also help to cast spells with full hands and making opportunity attacks with spells.

Weapons

Your armor comes with powerful built in weapons that are better than any other options generally available (unless you find a really powerful magic item). If you’re using the guardian armor and need some range, grab a firearm like a pistol or a musket. You can also use a cantrip if necessary but firearms with the repeating shot infusion will usually be more powerful than your cantrips.

Infiltrators will want to be using their lightning launcher in most cases but you may need a close combat weapon for the occasional bit of melee action. You’ll likely want to be wielding a shield, especially in this armor, so a single-handed weapon is probably best.

Armor

Your best option for the infiltrator armor is to take a breastplate (the best armor that won’t impose disadvantage on stealth checks). For the guardian armor, you want to go with all out protection so full plate is the way to go.

I’d usually opt to take a shield too as you’ll want all the protection you can get, unless you take the dual-wielder feat for double gauntlet attacks. I’d probably argue that you’ll need the extra protection of a shield more though.

These are expensive pieces of kit though, so initially, you might want to go with chain shirt for the infiltrator armor or splint armor for the guardian armor until you can afford something better. Especially as this may require having 2 sets of armor for your 2 types of arcane armor.

Other class guides

Not sure an armorer is for you. Why not check out one of our other class guides for more inspiration.