The battlesmith is an old 3.5 class I wrote back in the day to fill the niche of “Artificer, but not a spellcaster”, which as I’m writing this now, I realize is something I come back to a lot. Theres something about a guy who swings a hammer, and makes stuff, that WoTC insists has to be a spellcaster, and I really just want to be a highly skilled martial. But hey, we know the policy. Martial’s can’t have nice things. Sometimes I don’t want to select spells, even if you call them infusions.
The Battlesmith fits in about Rogue power level, which is where I like to see a 3.5 game sit. If you try, you can probably find some super broken combo with infinite something or other, but you don’t accidentally stumble into it like a wizard, or always have it available when you go read a handbook between sessions and have your PC sleep for a night like CoDzilla. Rogue tier is just sort of always good, and even if you build it poorly, you won’t be laughed away from the table. The Battlesmith relies on its crafting, and the intent is that they can outfit their entire party with cool modified armor and weapons, and the power min/max potential comes in with the custom item crafting. It might shock some folks at the table when you start sundering stuff in the first fight (one of the deadly sins of 3e), but I think that will go away when you reforge it after the fight, and then mod it was even better than the start. My favorite thing I see them do, is use their Break power to just buzzsaw through dungeons, stepping into the trapfinder role in a roundabout way.
Last comment before I get on with it. This was pulled from a word doc I’ve got saved on my PC from 2011, and probably got posted to the WoTC forums around that time. In the intervening decade theres some design choices I would do a little different. I’d probably find a way to let them craft at level 1, use Warp Metal more frequently, Armor Block would give a lot more DR, and Spiritual Bond would scale to +5 by level 16. As is, it’s played competitively, but a little power bump probably wouldn’t hurt.
Battlesmith
Someone pointed out to me, apparently I copied this almost word for word from Eij and put it in the folder of my favorite 3e stuff and just used as is. Apparently I didn’t write it, but stole it 10 years ago and then assumed I wrote it.
https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Battlesmith_(3.5e_Class)
Use that
The TTRPG Factory 