The science of magic is the domain of the Artificer, with Artillerists being the true siege masters ofDungeons & Dragons5th edition. Creating their signature Eldritch Cannon, the Artillerist can supply excesses of force damage, fire damage, or protection to their allies.
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Picking feats for any class is no easy feat, but it is an important one. Granting extra features to assist you in being more successful and specialised in the skills you have, as well as granting all new powers to give you more niche and unique abilities expanding your ability to aid your allies.
5Healer
What do you do when you’re out of spell slots and cannot heal your allies? This conundrum confounds many characters in Dungeons & Dragons, but those that take the Healer feat have an option. So long as you have a healer’s kit, you can use an action to heal your ally for a moderate amount of hit points.
This feat is absolutely fantastic in early levels, as the health provided by this feat will more than likely heal any ally a significant amount, if not all of, their health.
Though its efficacy does peter off at higher levels, it is always useful to have another source of healing. You never know when you’ll need that clutch healing to revive a fallen ally.
4Gift Of The Gem Dragon
A treasure found in Fizzban’s Treasury of Dragons, the Gift of the Gem Dragon grants a truly unique series of useful abilities.
Initially granting a permanent bonus to either your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, Gift of the Gem Dragon can increase your most crucial attribute increasing your spell save DCs, spell damage, and Intelligence-based skills.
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As if that wasn’t enough, the ability granted by the Gift of the Gem Dragon is a fantastic defensive ability.that allows you to punish enemies that hit you. Telekinetic Reprisal does a considerable amount of force damage as a reaction when you are hit by an attack, making the opponent make a Strength saving throw or be thrown directly away from you. To be able to use an ability like this, especially one that isn’t a spell, once is a powerful enough tool, but you may use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, allowing you to use it a minimum or twice which scales as you level.
3Medium Armor Master
The armour mastery feats are some of the most widely used feats for armour-wearing characters in general. With their ability to wear medium armour, the Artillerist can make incredible use of the benefits of this feat.
With your main damage, outside of spells, being ranged weapons being able to add more of your Dexterity Modifier to your armour class is an incredible boon. Even with an AC increase of one, you become that much harder to hit.
This means that you can spend your attribute points on character creation and through levelling on making you more likely to hit with your ranged attacks and increase your AC without having to give up the defensive nature of medium armour.
Additionally, the ability to not be disadvantaged in stealth checks whilst wearing heavy armour is an incredible thing. This feat does not lock off the stealthier play-styles to you and instead allows you to make the most of any potential plan your group comes up with to overcome obstacles, essentially giving you more options without the dangers of having loiwer AC.
2Elemental Adept
With access to both spells that deal elemental damage, the Artillerist can gain a huge amount of benefit from the Elemental Adept feat. Granting the ability to overcome damage resistance for a single elemental damage type.
With the feat additionally adding the ability to treat rolls of one, on spells that deal the chosen damage type, as twos, Elemental Adept becomes a truly phenomenal choice of feat.
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With common elemental damage resistances being the bane of the Artillerist’s spells, this feat overcomes one of the major weaknesses of having such a limited spell pool. Whether acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder, Elemental Adept allows you to ensure that, whichever you choose, your damaging spells deal their full rolled damage.
1Fighting Initiate
Artillerists' power comes from their Eldritch Cannon, which allows you to spend feats to become more powerful in other ways. Seeing as the Artificer class has access to simple weapons, shields, and medium armour they already have access to significant amounts of equipment.
With Fighting Initiate you gain access to one of the fighting styles available to the Fighter class which can allow you to have far more presence in combat.
Whether you decide to choose to do more damage using an option like dueling, or whether you choose to have more defensive utility with protection, gaining a significant additional benefit in combat allows the Artillerist to focus on the effectiveness of their actions, as their bonus action fires their Eldritch Cannon.
The flexibility of this feat makes Fighting Initiate a great option no matter which form your Eldritch Cannon is built in, as you can choose a fighting style that truly works for your play style.
