Best Feats for Artillerist Artificer 5e
by Prince Phantom
The Artillerist would be a very bad subclass, on par with the Alchemist, if not for one thing: the Protecter Eldritch Cannon. The ability to start every combat with your party having about 11-12 temporary hit points that refresh every single round is such an insane buff to your party’s durability that it is only outmatched by the infamously overpowered Twilight Cleric.
Every party who doesn’t have a Twilight Cleric will love to have this feature, but you as the player need to understand that outside of this ability, you are never committing much in combat. Yeah we get Fireball, but not until level 9, when Fireball has lost a lot of its luster. We get abilities to buff blast spells, but we’re a half caster, so we get our blast spells way to late for them to be effective. Cone of Cold is a fine spell when you get it at level 9, but is basically uncastable at level 17. If you are fine with playing a support role first and foremost, then here are some feats that can help you excel in that, and hopefully some other areas as well. Just don’t expect any of these to suddenly turn you into a real blaster.
Best Feats for Artillerist Artificer 5e
Fey Touched (Lv 4): This Artificer is definitely trying to lean into spellcasting, and while it will always be limited heavily by being a half caster, we can at least make it a little better by expanding our casting ability with feats like this. This bumps our intelligence and gives us access to two spells we can’t normally cast, Misty Step and Silvery Barbs. We won’t have the best spells to capitalize on Barbs, but our friends probably will, allowing us to be a big help in getting their spells to stick. This character also has no business in melee, and Misty Step helps us get out of bad situations like that.
War Caster (Lv 4): Since this Artificer doesn’t get extra infusions like the Armorer does, you’re likely to have a hard time fitting Mind Sharpener on your sheet. If that’s the case, this feat will serve you just as well, if not a little better than that infusion. The other benefits are nice as well, but the best benefit is definitely the concentration protection.
Lucky (Lv 8): I’ve got to level with you guys here, there are basically no feats that really, impactfully synergize with this subclass. Your big power increases are going to come from your infusions rather than feats, so once you get your intelligence to 20, just start taking generically good feats like Lucky and you’ll be just fine.
Ritual Caster (Lv 8): Yes, Artificers are already ritual casters, but there aren’t that many rituals on their spell list, and we gain them super slowly because we are a half caster. Picking Wizard here will both unlock a myriad more rituals and let us gain them much earlier in our progression.
Resilient Wisdom (Lv 12): As always, wisdom saves are very debilitating, especially in these higher levels. We do have Flash of Genius to help with these saves, but this feat will ensure that we save against the important ones.
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