Liquid Steel: An Armorer Artificer Build for 5e
The Armorer is hands down my favorite subclass in 5e for many reasons. The flavor is perfection, the mechanics are rad as they come, and the defender armor (my favorite choice) has a unique tanking mechanic only replicated by the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, but the Armorer does it better because we aren’t limited to marking one creature per turn. The only problem with the defender armor is damage, in that we don’t have good ways to boost it. Thunder damage has no real synergies with anything, and unless you can convince your DM that your thunder gauntlets count as heavy weapons since you’re wearing heavy armor, they don’t work with Great Weapon Master. I wracked my brain for so long trying to find a way for the defender to both deal good damage and also not sacrifice defense, and I feel I have finally come up with a respectable answer. It’s wonderfully weird, delightfully silly, surprisingly powerful, and so much fun to play. Let’s get into the build.
Race: Plasmoid
I love that we take this race not just because it’s fun and silly, but also because it is the actual best option. We have a problem. I want to eventually be wielding a two handed polearm to increase our damage, but I also can’t afford to not hold a shield because that +2 AC is vital to our role as a tank. The Plasmoid’s pseudopod is the answer to this problem. The pseudopod cannot attack, activate magic items, or lift anything weighing over 10 pounds, but a shield only weighs 6 pounds, meaning we can totally hold and benefit from a shield by holding it with our pseudopod. All the other abilities are just gravy, but the resistance to acid and poison damage is some really tasty gravy.
Background
I don’t normally bother to mention backgrounds in these builds, but this (and all artificers) are an exception. I don’t care what you pick up, so long as you get wind instrument proficiency. Just trust me on this one, it’s a surprise tool that will help us later.
Starting Ability Scores
8/12/16/17/13/8 (+1 Con, +2 Int from race)
Dump Strength, 12 Dex just so we don’t suck at initiative, 16 Con because we need as much HP as possible, 17 Int as it is our main stat, 13 Wis for saves, dump Charisma.
Levels 1-4: Artificer 4 (Armorer)
Spells:
Guidance, Magic Stone (cantrips)
Absorb Elements, Cure Wounds, Faerie Fire, Feather Fall, Sanctuary, Disguise Self
Guidance is arguably the best utility cantrip, and Magic Stone will be used at these early levels to give us the best possible damage while using our intelligence, and we can hand them off to our homunculus.
Cure Wounds is a bad spell but Artificers don’t get Healing Word so we’ll pick it up for emergencies when an ally goes down and no one else can pick them up. Absorb Elements protects us from elemental attacks like fireballs that get around our AC, Feather Fall is for emergencies at these low levels where a bad fall can kill you, and Faerie Fire is a great spell to cast on a group of enemies at the start of combat to give all our party advantage on attacks against them. Sanctuary is a fun spell for us, we can attack and give our target disadvantage to hit anyone but us, then cast sanctuary and make them waste their attacks on us! This will burn through slots at low levels, but it’s a great idea if we are running low on HP and can’t afford to take another unlucky hit. Disguise Self is here just because it’s fun and I like the shenanigans it causes.
Infusions:
Enhanced Defense (Active), Homunculus Servant (Active), Replicate Magic Item: Bag of Holding, Enhanced Weapon
Enhanced Defense plus Plate Mail and a Shield gives us an AC of 21, plenty at low levels to keep us safe. Homunculus Servant gives us a use for our bonus action every turn, allowing us give them Magic Stones throw them at enemies for big damage. The Bag of Holding is for when we have a treasure hoard too big to carry out of the dungeon, and Enhanced Weapon is for if our DM is throwing a lot of enemies resistant to non magical attacks and our martial friend doesn’t have a magic weapon yet.
Feat:
I want a feat that boosts our Intelligence, and it came down to this and Gift of the Gem Dragon. Gift is good and does support the tank concept, but Misty Step is such a versatile and useful spell, and Silvery Barbs does so much to support the full casters on our team. Having these spells castable for free once also helps a ton since as a half caster we could use more spell slots. This gives us a ton of extra options and raises our intelligence to 18, though if your table bans Silvery Barbs I’d probably take Gift of the Gem Dragon instead.
Summary:
In these levels our damage isn’t amazing, but it’s good enough and we are bringing a ton of support to our party. We are imposing disadvantage to our enemies attacks against anyone but us, and we are making ourself as tough of a target as possible. At these low levels a 21 AC is very unlikely to be hit by most enemies, and we can layer Sanctuary over top of that when needed. Our job is to harass and debuff our enemies while buffing and supporting our allies. Our Homunculus Servant is providing extra damage and support if we give them potions of healing to bring allies up who drop to 0. You can also give your Homunculus any magic items that you want, which could potentially skyrocket their usefulness.
Levels 5-8: Artificer 8
New Spells:
Web (replacing Faerie Fire), Vortex Warp, Rope Trick
New Infusions:
Repulsion Shield (Replacing Enhanced Defense, active), Replicate Magic Item: Pipes of Haunting (active), Resistant Armor
Feat:
We won’t see any use out of this until level 10, but it’s important that we take it now because we’ll also need to grab Great Weapon Master at level 12. Right now though, we have a strength of 8, so just take this as an investment for our future.
Summary:
Our strategy doesn’t change a ton with these levels, it just gets better in every way. We’ve got extra attack now to disable two enemies in one round, we’ve got Flash of Genius to help with saving throws (especially wisdom saves), and our control spell of choice is now Web instead of Faerie Fire. Web restrains enemies, also giving us and allies advantage to hit them but also majorly debuffing them at the same time, all while being very difficult to get out of. Vortex Warp is a great way to get our friends out of dangerous spots, or put enemies back in the Web, and Rope Trick is massively abusable.
Punch an enemy, give them disadvantage to hit anyone but us, then climb into another dimension where enemies can’t hit us. Great for when you go against an enemy who is still able to hit your high AC consistently. We need to take a fairly pointless feat at this level so our damage can be good in high tier play, where high damage matters most. The Pipes of Haunting are why we took wind instrument proficiency. How would you like to have a mass fear effect without friendly fire in a huge area 3 times a day? Also it isn’t a spell and can’t be counterspelled, and doesn’t require concentration so we can use other spells on top of it. This is an amazing tool in every fight where our enemies aren’t immune to fear. If we know we are going into an area with a lot of non-physical damage, swap Repulsion Shield for Resistant Armor.
Levels 9-10: Artificer 10
New spells:
New Infusions:
Enhanced Defense (active on our armor), Gauntlets of Ogre Power (active on our gauntlets), Winged Boots (active on our boots), Cloak of Protection (replacing Homunculus Servant, active)
So much happens in these two levels. Our subclass lets us have 2 extra infusions active as long as they are on our armor pieces, and that’s how we have so many active infusions at once. Winged Boots give us basically unlimited flight, which is so incredibly powerful I don’t know how you could justify not picking this up. The Gauntlets of Ogre Power set our strength to 19, meaning we can finally use a Polearm effectively. I’d choose either a halberd or glaive. It’s not a big bump in damage yet, we’ll need to grab Great Weapon Master before that’s true, but now we can at least make effective opportunity attacks with the polearm when someone comes within range.
We can also still hold our shield even while attacking with a two handed weapon thanks to our pseudopod. With Enhanced Defense on our armor, Repulsion Shield on our Shield, and a Cloak of Protection, we have an AC of 24. Thanks to our level 10 Artificer feature, we’ve got an extra attunement slot and can fit all these items on our build. Our subclass also gives us Hypnotic Pattern at this level, an amazing control spell in any combat where our foes aren’t immune to charm.
Level 11-12: Artificer 12
New spells:
Feat:
Summary:
We get our spell storing item at these levels, which is great to throw a bunch of castings of Web into and hand to our Tiny Servant! Picking up GWM means we are finally pretty good at dealing damage. As we get to higher levels, you’ll find that you occasionally encounter enemies that don’t care if they have disadvantage on attacks, because they are casting spells or doing other actions. This means we are better just attacking with our weapon for maximum damage. We can still debuff enemies when we want, but now we have options. We can even do the debuff on one attack, then swap to our polearm to do our other attacks to both debuff and deal good damage in the same turn. This is especially effective in a combat where only one enemy is rolling attacks consistently. This allows us to continue scaling into high tier play and not become irrelevant.
Level 13: Artificer 12, Wizard 1
New spells:
Anything you want, just make sure you pick up Shield.
Summary:
The funny thing is, even a 23 AC isn’t enough at high tier play. We need to go even further beyond. That’s where Shield comes in, boosting our AC to 28 whenever we need it. That’s more like it! We can also pick up some good ritual spells and can now recover one 1st level spell on a short rest.
Level 14-20: Artificer 19, Wizard 1
New Spells:
Pick your favorites, we’ve already got everything we absolutely need between Web, Hypnotic Pattern and the Pipes of Haunting.
New Infusions:
Replicate Magic Item: Belt of Hill Giant’s Strength (replacing Gauntlets of Ogre Power, active), Ring of Protection (active), pick your favorite for the last one.
Feats:
The last remaining levels are all general improvements to our current strategy. I’m fine with waiting until now to take Resilient Wisdom thanks to Flash of Genius, but at this point the DCs are getting too high to rely on that. Tough at level 20 gives us 40 extra max HP which is great for surviving Meteor Swarms.
Final Summary:
This build is so cool, we get to be a support for our team, a hassle for our enemies, and then transition into a great damage dealer at high levels, all while being so hard to hit that our enemies will be celebrating every hit they manage to land like they just won the lottery. We’ve got a ton of options for what to do on every turn of combat, and we can cover a huge variety of encounters. There are definitely some knobs you could tune on this build to better fit your campaign, like taking the Wizard level for the Shield spell earlier, but this roadmap should serve you well at most tables. Also, we are a flying suit of armor with a sick cape all powered by living ooze. D&D is such a cool game you guys.
Check out Prince Phantom on Twitch!
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
