Forge Adept – D&D 5e Artificer Subclass Guide (2014)

From Keith Baker’s 3rd party, Exploring Eberron supplement.

At a glance

Forge adept features

Tool proficiency – Lv3

You gain proficiency with smith’s tools.

Forge adept spells – Lv3

How it works

Gain the following as prepared spells at the appropriate levels:

Artificer Level	Forge adept Spells
3rd	Armor of Agathys, shield of faith
5th	Spiritual weapon, warding bond
9th	Beacon of hope, remove curse
13th	Death ward, fire shield
17th	Banishing smite, wall of force

Tactics

• There’s a surprisingly nice amount of synergy here with spells that can last a little while without consuming your concentration. In theory, you could have armor of Agathys, spiritual weapon, warding bond and death ward all active at the same time. And then have room for shield of faith or fire shield too.
• And it’s worth noting just how many protective spells this gives you. Many of which could be cast ahead of combat, easily giving you several buffs walking into a nasty encounter.
• It’s also handy that the forge adept isn’t bogged down with the same level of bonus action demands as other artificer subclasses, giving room for easily casting these spells in combat, or controlling your spiritual weapon for higher damage output.

Battle ready – Lv3

How it works

Gain proficiency with martial weapons and when wielding a magic weapon, you can use your intelligence modifier for attack and damage rolls.

Tactics

• This gives you access to higher damage weapons, which should get your weapon attack damage up a bit.
• It’s not hard for an artificer to get access to magic weapons, all you need to do is imbue your weapon with an infusion and it becomes magical (or find a real magic weapon).
• This means you should usually be able to make attack and damage rolls with intelligence. And this is definitely the way to go. It’ll allow you to focus your ability scores around intelligence, constitution and a bit of dexterity (14 will maximise AC in medium armor).

Ghall’Shaarat – Lv3

How it works

Goblin for “mighty blade”, this feature works like an infusion, but doesn’t count to your maximum limit of infusions known.

It adds +1 attack and damage rolls (more at higher levels) and returns to your hand if thrown.

Tactics

• This is a better combination of the enhanced weapon and returning weapon infusions. The boost to attack and damage rolls is the same until 8th level when it becomes higher while also having the returning property is a powerful option. You should always have this infused on your main weapon, especially as you can only have one infusion imbued in any item, which also makes this a fairly powerful infusion.
• The fact that it returns when thrown means you can use it this way in conjunction with extra attacks too.

Extra attack – Lv5

How it works

You make 2 attacks when you take the attack action.

Tactics

• Your damage from attacks will easily outperform your damage from cantrips at this stage. Something like firebolt will average 11 damage on a hit versus 2 attacks with a greatsword (with your ghall’shaarat in place) will average about 24 damage per turn if you hit. Or if you’re going sword and shield, a long sword will average 19 damage.
• Plus you have the benefit of getting 2 chances to hit instead of 1.
• You also have a scarcity of damage dealing, levelled spells. This means weapon attacks should be your primary form of damage output.

Runes of war – Lv9

How it works

Create a 30ft aura for a minute that adds 1d4 to weapon damage rolls of those you choose in the area.

Tactics

• Although 1d4 isn’t much, it quickly adds up over the course of a combat when used in coordination with other martials.
• It’s worth noting the damage cost here though. It requires an action to activate and consumes your concentration (so can also be ended on a failed concentration save and stops you concentrating on something else).
• A greatsword wielding forge adept will average 16.9 damage per attack action (when accounting for 65% chance of hitting). Runes of war will average an extra 2.5 damage per hit. This means you’ll need 7 weapon hits in the combat to make it more worthwhile than simply using your attack action and activating shield of faith.
• This may not make sense in a small party, but if you’ve got a couple of martial allies, you can quickly make this worthwhile in 2-3 rounds.

Perfect weapon – Lv15

How it works

You can transfer some or all of the damage bonus from your ghall’shaarat weapon, into your AC.

Also, each long rest, you can choose to either have psychic damage resistance and immunity to charmed and frightened, or gain an extra 1d6 damage to your ghaal’shaarat weapon.

Tactics

• Up to +3AC is a big boost, even if it does reduce damage output a bit.
• But you choose this at the beginning of the attack action, so you can adapt on the fly. Generally, surviving longer is better, but if you’re up against a spellcaster, they may just send saving throw spells against you anyway, for example, and the AC boost will be useless.
• Psychic damage isn’t overly common, but charmed and frightened do come up a fair bit. I’d still be tempted by the damage increase more often because it’s just going to be much more commonly beneficial.

How good is the forge adept subclass?

The forge adept has a lot of damage increasing features. We can see how its damage output compares to other artificer subclasses in the table below:

Level	Forge adept	Armorer	Artillerist	Battle Smith
3	12	10	18.5	14
5	32.5	18.5	24.5	22.5
9	37.5	20.5	29	32.5
15	46.5	20.5	48	48

It clearly performs well, especially at mid levels and is definitely up there with high damage subclasses like the artillerist and battle smith. This doesn’t even account for the damage bonus from runes of war.

On top of this, the forge adept has a lot going for them defensively, with lots of great defensive spells, many of which don’t require concentration or can be activated with a bonus action. This increases further at higher levels with perfect weapon.

Overall, I think this is a really strong subclass with some interesting features and is a unique approach to the artificer subclass. It’s also not brokenly in powerful meaning that I’d happily allow it to be used at my table.

5/5

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Building a forge adept

Forge adepts are martial specialists, and primarily melee specialists (though a thrown build can work). Fortunately, they have the protection through spells to make them a good option alongside more classic martials.

Below I’ve gone through how you can build an optimised forge adept artificer.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Intelligence: Your most important ability score by far. This will enhance your spellcasting, your capability with weapon attacks and give you more uses of runes of war.

Dexterity: You won’t have access to heavy armor so you’ll want this to be at least 14 to take full advantage of medium armor. You don’t need this for weapon attacks so you likely don’t need this any higher.

Constitution: Great for maintaining concentration on spells and your runes of war feature. You’ll also be grateful of the extra hit points too if you’re going for more of a melee build (which will be your highest damage approach).

Options to avoid

Strength: You can use intelligence for weapon attacks so have little use 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	10
Dexterity	14	13
Constitution	15	14
Intelligence	15	15
Wisdom	10	12
Charisma	8	8

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 decent burglar option when the party is absent of a rogue.

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 forge adept:

• Spellcasting: As natural spellcasters, any kind of spellcasting enhancements or innate spells are only going to help round out your capabilities and give you more options.
• 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.
• Safety: While your defensive spells will help you survive in combat, you remain less tough than most martials. Anything that can help your safety like extra hit points, resistances or even traits that let you use hit and run tactics can be quite valuable.

Recommended races

The races of D&D 5e have gone through various iterations. Below I’ve recommended races that work well with a forge adept using the most recently published version from D&D 5e (2014).

• Autognome – 2 extra tool proficiencies, easy healing outside of combat, lots of resilience features and built for success stacks nicely with flash of genius. Autognomes feel almost built for artificers (literally) and their abilities work nicely together.
• Eladrin – Fey step is very handy for teleporting away from danger (or into it) while trance gives you a couple of extra proficiencies which you can use to fashion yourself into more of a replacement rogue if needed. All very handy for a forge adept.
• High Elf – +2 to dexterity and +1 to intelligence suit a forge adept quite nicely. Proficiency in perception is always useful and a free cantrip from the wizard’s spell list is handy as you get minimal spell options.
• Goblin – Nimble escape is great for keeping a forge adept safe with disengage or hide as a bonus action. This makes hit and run tactics viable. 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). Goblins are also a great thematic fit for a forge adept.
• Goliath – The main appeal here is stone’s endurance as you can reduce damage you receive as a reaction by d12 + your constitution modifier. And forge adepts do need extra endurance!
• Shadar-Kai – Blessing of the Raven Queen lets you teleport out of trouble and gives you resistance to all damage for a turn. Great for getting out of trouble and even better for getting into trouble. Proficiency in perception and a different weapon or tool proficiency each day are handy too.
• Shifter – Choose Beasthide for your shifting form and get lots of extra temporary hit points and an increase to your AC which will be very helpful to complement your relatively low hit points for a martial subclass.
• Warforged – +1 AC is very helpful for forge adepts. You also get a free skill and tool proficiency and a few nice resistances. +2 to constitution and +1 to any ability score (which you’ll want to chuck at intelligence) are decent too.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are great for adding a bit of flavour to a character and providing some small skill perks, gear and minor abilities. Generally for a forge adept, you’ll want to focus on intelligence based skills and extra tool proficiencies (as the tool king). With that in mind, below are some of the better background options for you:

• Acolyte – Decent skill proficiencies in insights and religion, 2 languages and perks at temples (like free healing).
• Clan Crafter – History and insight are good skill options for an artificer. You’ll also get proficiency in a type of artisan’s tools and you get an extra language. Plus it’s very thematically appropriate.
• Faction Agent – Insight and the choice of another skill make a great choice of proficiencies. You also get 2 languages and affiliation with a powerful organisation.
• Far Traveler – Insight, perception and a language are decent for an artificer, though you’ll likely rarely use persuasion as artillerists are rarely the best option for a party spokesman. You get proficiency in an instrument too for what it’s worth.
• Sage – Arcana and history are good skill proficiencies for an artillerist and you get 2 languages too.

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.

Feats can add powerful options to a character, but it’s important you pick feats that will complement a forge adept’s skillset nicely. Below I’ve pulled out some of the best options for a forge adept:

• 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 forge adepts to get out of danger when things look dangerous (and isn’t on the artificer spell list).
• Fighting Initiate – Gain a fighting style to add to your weapon capabilities. Especially useful for a forge adept.
• Lucky – Making 3 rerolls a day is powerful for any 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.
• 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.
• Skilled – 3 more skills to be proficient in is also great.
• War caster – This will help a lot with your runes of war feature to maintain concentration and not waste the action used to initiate it.

Weapons

With weapon attacks using your intelligence modifier, once you hit level 3, these become the obvious option for a forge adept. Especially with your ghall’shaarat kicking in at that level.

Below are a few approaches you could take:

• Sword and shield: Forge adepts aren’t as resilient as most martials. If you plan on diving into melee combat, then you could grab a shield for that extra durability. A longsword is a good option for your weapon.
• Two-handed weapon: If you’d rather maximise damage output, then you can forego a shield and take a great sword (your highest damage option). You have a fair few defensive spells available so going heavier on damage can work for a forge adept.
• Thrown weapons: Ghall’shaarat only works on melee weapons, but it can be used on thrown weapons. This limits the forge adept’s range in combat, but thrown weapons can help compensate here if you’d rather stay out of close combat a bit. They also work with a shield, and as your ghall’shaarat weapon comes back to your hand, this easily works with extra attack too.

I would steer away from dual wielding. It uses up your bonus action which can often be employed with spiritual weapon. You can also only have one weapon enhanced by your ghall’shaarat. I’d also tend to avoid ranged weapons unless they’re as a backup (or have the thrown property) because they can’t benefit from your ghall’shaarat (which is quite strong).

Armor

As you have proficiency in medium armor, and you won’t want to invest so heavily in dexterity that light armor is worthwhile (because you don’t need dexterity for weapon attacks), you’ll likely want to go with medium armor. I’d start with scale mail and upgrade to half plate once you’re able to.

With your relative lack of hit points compared to other martials, a shield can be a good option. It’ll mean a little less damage, but the +2 AC is quite valuable.

Other class guides

Not sure a forge adept is for you. Why not check out one of our other class guides for more inspiration.