All the Cool Violence is Premeditated - the Saboteur Artificer

    Last week we released the trap laying artificer archetype known as the Saboteur. Saboteur gives a savvy player features that allows them to prepare the battlefield to tilt a combat’s odds in their favor, should they find the opportunity to do so before the fighting breaks out. Moreover, they get battlefield control options they can pull out in the heat of battle, allowing the player a great amount of control over how the battle plays out. This archetype is one of the first I’ve created where the mechanical conceit came before the flavor.

    For about as long as I’ve been homebrewing for DnD, I’ve felt a conspicuous lack of preparation based combat. To specify what I mean by this, I’m referring to builds and build options that offer a variety of ways to allow for premeditated gameplay, where a character’s utility comes largely from what they can do in preparation for a fight. I feel as though there are plenty of potential characters, both in and out of media, that would feel the most at home in DnD using such features. Moreover, it’s a very satisfying feeling to have your ‘just as planned’ moments pay off. While there are certainly a plethora of spells and features already present in DnD that allow for premeditated gameplay, such as glyph of warding and cordon of arrows (in theory…), I feel as though it is hard to coalesce them into what feels like a cohesive preparation based character. So I decided I’d try my hand at making such a build.

    I figured that an archetype was probably the best route for this project; not only is a class a lot of work, but I wasn’t particularly sure the concept was inspired enough on its own to have a comprehensive class spine and multiple fleshed out archetypes. And then I realized; artificer is explicitly intended to be a class that allows for and rewards premeditated gameplay. It felt like the perfect fit to make an archetype that emphasizes this particular facet of being an artificer. An artificer that prepares and manipulates the battlefield with an array of deadly traps. With this concept in mind, I started getting to work.

    That being said, this archetype has gone through quite a bit of development. The initial build of it had a much different idea on traps that informed the rest of what the archetype was, so I will start with what was changed. The archetype used to provide 3 specific traps that the player could make their Intelligence modifier of per short rest. They took varying amounts of time to set up and had differing effects. In addition, the ability to remote activate the traps was a 9th level feature in this iteration. The spell list additionally looked quite different; the emphasis of this spell list was battlefield control, allowing the player to manipulate the battlefield to force enemies into traps and disadvantageous positions.

    I don’t think there was anything necessarily wrong with this version. It was straightforward, to the point. But a member of the team had a great idea as to how to make this archetype much more interesting. They suggested that the archetype should allow players to place spells in traps; like miniature glyphs of warding. Not only did this spare the player of learning about how the different traps worked, but it offered the player a wide variety of options for traps. After a bit of discussion, we ultimately decided that this was a very interesting and diverse direction for the archetype to go in.

    That being said, the wording was a bit of a nightmare. Putting spells into locations and allowing them to trigger from a point that isn’t the caster while also not making the wording too restrictive was a lot to manage. Thankfully, the member who suggested the change, James the Snickering Ghoul, is also our resident rules and words wizard, so he helped me a lot with hashing out the nitty gritty of how these traps would work. While the Guerilla Caster feature is rather lengthy by this point, it allows for a wide variety of options for these traps while ensuring that they have appropriate limitations, all while making it as precisely and simply worded as possible. We made sure to include the limitation that only the character’s Intelligence modifier of traps can be out at once. While the player should be rewarded for preparation time, they should not be able to plant a hallway of death on the BBEG and one shot him just because they had a minute of preparation. Otherwise, it would become the DM’s job to heavily monitor the Saboteur’s shenanigans, which causes friction at the table and is overall less enjoyable than just making sure things don’t get out of hand right out the gate.

    With this new direction came additional changes. For one, the spell list now had to be overhauled. We decided to emphasize spells that Artificer didn’t already get and spells that would function in interesting ways when placed in traps, such as inflict wounds, while also keeping a few control spells, like gust of wind and the choice of thorn whip or lightning lure. Remote Activation was also moved down to 3rd level; we realized that playing an archetype that was entirely reliant on setting up traps and luring enemies into was one-note and unreliable. I mean, look at the nonsense Artillerist is pulling. So we decided that they deserved the bump in reliability that Remote Activation offers at level 3 as opposed to 9.

    Beyond this, most of the features actually stayed the same, just receiving some moderate revisions both to accommodate the new arcane traps, and also to generally the archetype’s polish. A few iterations of Exploitation, which was to serve as the level 5 damage and consistency buff that all Artificer archetypes get, should do. Originally, the feature was intended to either do additional damage or make traps more consistent. However, we once again took a look at what the other archetypes were giving at level 5. Said features ranged from Extra Attack to bonus damage on nearly all cantrips. Taking that into consideration, we realized that with the limitation of only the character’s Intelligence modifier of traps being out at a time, both additional damage and consistency were realized. With this version, thoughtful players who prepare for a battlefield ahead of time and manage to lure enemies into traps are rewarded with the greater probability of their traps being successful, which feels appropriate. And beyond this, Saboteur’s damage was buffed on a more consistent level to make sure this archetype never feels bad.

    The Bonus Proficiencies were untouched by the changes. The archetype getting stealth to allow players to lay in wait with traps felt necessary, and poisoner's kit was too on theme and useful to not give them. Battlefield Adaptation was also largely unchanged. The greater amount of control that ranged trap making gives you felt like an appropriate and satisfying buff. In addition to this, you get the ability to plant traps in plain sight and potentially get away with it. Having your traps be hidden seemed like a default, hence why it is; but most people should be able to spot somebody laying down an arcane trap. That's the kind of nonsense that should be reserved for a level 9 artificer! All that was needed was a brief rules pass; namely, we didn't want moving traps to be a thing. We're aware that plantable spells is already playing with fire, we did not want to add to the shenanigans.

    Finally, we get to the capstone; also largely the same! In the original iteration, there were also 3 traps, though only 1 of them, being the flesh to stone trap, were left unchanged. The other two were original traps that were not based on class. We liked the concept of giving this archetype spells higher than 5th level to use specifically on a single trap a day, so we reappropriated this feature and added the two other traps that are now in the capstone.

    And with that, Saboteur was completed. I learned quite a lot from this project on the importance of teamwork. I didn't want to get into specifics with how long the wording process took, but believe me when I say it was an hours long discussion. It makes me very grateful that I have a team of smart and creative people who are so eager and willing to work on my projects and make them into the best product for you guys to get your hands on. That's all from me today, hope your future Saboteur build has big brain plays ahead!

—Julie the Woozy Flumph