Best Feats for Alchemist Artificer 5e
by Prince Phantom
The Artificer is a personal favorite class of mine, so it pains me greatly to have to state that the Alchemist is one of the weakest subclasses ever to be printed in 5e, and easily the weakest Artificer. It’s a real shame too, as the flavor is absolutely wonderful, but none of our mechanics fulfill the potion throwing, explosion causing fantasy in my head. Our potions we can create have fairly insignificant uses and all require an action to consume, a minor damage bump to a few of our spells (which sucks for a half caster, we don’t even get this damage bump to alchemical items like acid vials), a slight healing bump to our elixirs, and a few damage resistances plus a free cast of some decent spells once per day.
The thing is, all of these abilities sound just fine on paper, none of them are objectively bad or useless. The problem is that the Artificer relies very heavily on their subclass to inform their general turn-by-turn strategy, with two of the 4 subclasses giving extra attack and the other one giving powerful enough abilities to make up for not having extra attack. The Alchemist has no clear role in combat. Being a half caster is not enough, we run out of slots quickly and our spells aren’t as effective as a normal caster. That being said, the Alchemist can still provide a character who does have some effective things to do in combat, we just have to get creative, and our feats are going to need to do some heavy lifting.
Best Feats for Alchemist Artificer 5e
War Caster (Lv 4): Artificers already start with proficiency in Constitution saves, but right now that’s only a +2, which isn’t nearly enough to guarantee our concentration. Artificers do have some standout concentration spells that we can take advantage of like Faerie Fire, Web, Fly, and Resilient Sphere, which we can use to support our party even with the limitations of being a half caster. The ability to deal Green Flame Blade attacks as opportunity attacks is a nice helping of gravy on top.
Fey Touched (Lv 8): I find that the Alchemist works best as a support for the rest of the party. Yes, we can deal somewhat respectable damage with a well placed Green Flame Blade, but that’s not our main role. Misty Step doesn’t necessarily make us a better supporter, but it does give us extra battlefield mobility and the ability to escape an unfavorable position. An easy example of how Misty Step works in support is using it to close the final distance between us and our downed ally to pour an elixir in their mouth and heal them. All this to say that the real reason we’re taking this is Silvery Barbs, and the first part of this entry has just been my trying desperately to rationalize why Misty Step fits into the archetype of a support character.
Telekinetic (Lv 8): Our subclass lacks any bonus action options, so we’ll look to feats to fill that void. I hesitate to recommend the traditional Polearm Master or Crossbow Expert bonus action attacks because they require us to make a normal attack with our action, and the damage is only a marginal upgrade over just using Green Flame Blade. Telekinetic has no such restriction, and works quite well with both our own spells like Web and our allies’ spells as well. It even fulfills a support role, allowing us to yank allies out of grapples and restraints and remove them from damaging AOEs or environmental hazards.
Poisoner (Lv 8): If you want to be a bit more directly offensive with your bonus action, this might not be a horrible idea, especially if you’re in a campaign where you aren’t facing a ton of poison-immune enemies (rare as that may be in higher tiers of play). There are a ton of great poisons that have a myriad of debilitating effects, and I’d work with your DM about crafting some of these as that’s kinda your flavor. Also note that this poison is not buffed by your 5th level ability, and really it should be, especially if you were the one who crafted it. Talk to your DM about it, as this subclass could definitely use the buff. If they do allow it (which they should), you could swing something as simple as a dagger to deal a d4+Dex plus 2d8+Int poison, plus 1d8+Int fire, and maybe some extra damage if something is standing next to your target. Not a bad chunk of damage, but with a ton of asterisks. They need to no be immune to poison and fail a DC 14 Con save (monsters are very likely to pass this on average), or that poison damage does nothing. Again talk to your DM about brewing your own poison, otherwise I don’t think I’d recommend this.
Resilient Wisdom (Lv 12): This artificer is probably splitting its scores between Intelligence, Constitution, and either Strength or Dexterity, leaving little room to put much in Wisdom. Wisdom is also the most debilitating save to fail on average, frequently equating to loosing entire turns in combat, maybe even the entire fight. Try to set your Wisdom to an odd score at character creation so this rounds it up to a new modifier.
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