Artificer Intelligence

I built an entire class for Old-School Essentials around the concept of the infusion mechanism detailed in my previous post. Since I cribbed the name "infusion" from the 5e Artificer anyway, I call it the Artificer here, though I also considered Enchanter or Mage-Wright.

The Artificer class for Old-School Essentials

I started with the Magic-User "chassis." It uses the same hit dice, level progression, saving throws, and base attack bonus.

The biggest drawbacks compared to the M-U: the Artificer's reliance on finding spell scrolls and then successfully crafting once they do. They have to jump through far more hoops to even have their first spell effect.

Because of those drawbacks, I give them a bit more up front:

• The ability to wear leather armor and use shields. Since they don't have to perform an incantation like the Magic-User, they don't have the same limitations.
• Access to a few extra weapons: the crossbow and the warhammer. For a class concept built around using tools to craft, proficiency with a big hammer felt right. Crossbows, being more like contraptions than other ranged weapons, are also at home here. If your campaign uses the new Black Powder Firearms rules from Carcass Crawler # 1, consider giving the Artificer access to the semi-martial firearms as well.
• Since they depend on understanding spell scrolls to even gain access to magical effects, I give them the ability to spend a turn to decipher magical scripts. Essentially, they can Read Magic without casting the spell. Otherwise, they'd rely on a casting class to even get started tinkering.

Additionally, the mechanism itself has the same benefits that I outlined in my previous post: the potential to get more uses out of a spell scroll and opening up access to spell effects to other classes through your infusions.

For those of you familiar with Numenera, this class essentially creates cyphers: limited use arcane contraptions. You could even consider stealing that game's rule that restricts the number of contraptions any character can carry: carry too many, and they start malfunctioning and blowing up in your face.

A few more insights into my design choices:

• The Level 11 class feature states that your apprentices arrive with spell scrolls of their own. This could insinuate that Artificers start with a spell scroll. If you choose to do this, I suggest randomly determining the scroll as if it had been acquired by chance.
• Artificers can use spell scrolls normally, like other arcane casters, but they always have the Thief's 10% chance of error. They aren't quite the experts at casting that Magic-Users are.
• The section on infusions does not explicitly prohibit infusing the same item multiple times. For instance, an Artificer 3 could infuse the same armor with Shield three times, thus giving it three charges. I find this to be an entirely viable interpretation!
• Note that when the Artificer attempts to recharge an infusion, the original spell scroll is not required.

There you are: an Artificer for OSE. Steal it, mine it for ideas, use it for inspiration ...  it's yours to do with as you please!