Artificial Flavor: Cartography Magic
Artificers produce wonders "using mundane items or outlandish inventions." Your particular artificer uses knowledge of geography and mapmaking to explore, understand, and gain both strategic and tactical advantage in battle.
The Artificial Flavor series provides ideas to inject more personality into your game, with the main emphasis on role-playing. While I've taken every care to keep new options balanced with official 5E rules, some could be game-breaking depending on the nature of your campaign.
Background
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Your Path to Adventure
Maps are natural entry points for adventure. What pulled your character into the story?
| d6 | Background |
|---|---|
| 1 | You’ve explored the world from the comfort of your guild, but your new boss has decreed that there’s no substitute for direct experience. |
| 2 | Your life as a rural tinkerer was turned upside-down when an ancient globe unfolded to reveal a surprising secret. |
| 3 | Lost in the wilderness, you found that your compass miraculously pointed to water, food, and eventual safety. |
| 4 | Tracking celestial movements, you realized that the stars and planets are aligning to a portentous moment. |
| 5 | After spilling liquid on an heirloom parchment, you discovered a hidden treasure map. |
| 6 | As a child, you threw a dart at a map and vowed someday to go wherever it landed. |
| d6 | Personality Quirks |
|---|---|
| 1 | I’m convinced there’s treasure everywhere, if only I look hard enough. |
| 2 | I use landscape and geographical metaphors to explain things, even feelings |
| 3 | I'm very territorial, especially when setting up camp |
| 4 | When no one's looking, I like to play with the tokens or figurines that I use for planning battles. |
| 5 | Whenever I'm figuring something out, I made sprawling, inscrutable maps of information, comprising bits of parchment, pins, and string. |
| 6 | I'm always estimating distances, then proving myself right by throwing an object or sending my homunculus. |
| d6 | Ideals |
|---|---|
| 1 | Abundance. Finding and trading resources helps us all prosper. (Good) |
| 2 | Boundaries. Good fences make good neighbors. (Lawful) |
| 3 | Frontier. The blank spaces are where the excitement is. (Chaotic) |
| 4 | Dominion. We survey the land to master it. (Evil) |
| 5 | Discovery. I want to learn all I can about this world -- or another. (Any) |
| 6 | Enlightenment. Maps connect knowledge in ways words cannot. (Any) |
| d4 | Bonds |
|---|---|
| 1 | I'm racing a rival to discover a specific place or route. |
| 2 | I've sworn to protect a secret location, erasing any mention of it wherever I go. |
| 3 | I resolved to find a place that my mentor failed to discover. |
| 4 | I was on the brink of a new realm when circumstances forced me back. I’m obsessed with returning. |
| d4 | Flaws |
|---|---|
| 1 | I prefer to follow the path of least resistance -- from my perspective. |
| 2 | I'm compelled to open every door and look behind every tree. |
| 3 | I approach life as a constant search for shortcuts. |
| 4 | I can see the forest but can't discern the trees. |
Variant Guild Artisan: Guild Logistician
Getting raw materials from there to here, and finished goods from here to there, is the lifeblood of any industry -- or army. Your artificer might have been a rank-and-file artisan who had a knack for mapping, or a cartography expert retained specifically for your skill.
Skill Proficiencies: Nature, Survival
Tool Proficiency: Cartographer’s Tools
Equipment: A set of cartographer’s tools, a map of trade routes and locations important to your guild, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a pouch containing 15 gp.
Map questing
At 1st level, you gain an additional magical tinkering option. Using your cartographer's tools, you touch a nonmagical sheet of paper or parchment as an action. When you traverse an area, the paper records a map of that area. If an ability check is required, use your own ability and skill bonuses. The resulting map is permanent and non-magical.
Spellcasting
You create spell effects through celestial divination, mystical pathfinding, and arcane geometry. You might describe a spell effect or infusion as a result of measuring distances, mapping patterns, or creating zones. The maps you create and use can be geographic or metaphorical ("the way to her heart"). The most powerful artificers in this discipline conjure spaces into being through the very act of defining them.
How do you cast spells?
| d6 | Spellcasting Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Calipers that function as a rangefinder to your target |
| 2 | Compass that points the way to what you seek |
| 3 | Quill of many colors that lets you map what you need to target, understand, or create |
| 4 | Globe that unfolds into a terrain map and emits arcane power |
| 5 | Clockwork device that projects a three-dimensional map of the stars; different constellations of stars produce different spell effects |
Cartographic Magic
Your understanding of maps and geography grants you access to certain spells. At 3rd, 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level you gain access to the spells listed for that level in the Cartographic Spells table. Once you gain access to one of these spells, you always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn’t appear on the artificer spell list, the spell is nonetheless an artificer spell for you.
Cartographic Spells
| Artificer level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | guiding bolt |
| 5 | locate object |
| 9 | clairvoyance |
| 13 | hallucinatory terrain |
| 17 | scrying |
Infusion options
Dafyre’s Living Map
Item: A large sheet of paper or parchment
This scroll depicts a top-down view of the user's surroundings to a distance of a 100x100 foot square centered on the user. The map cannot show interior spaces separated from the user by more than 1 foot of solid material. The map has charges equal to half your Artificer level, rounded down. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 of its charges to produce one of the following effects:
- Depict on the map the location all secret doors or traps that exist on the visible spaces depicted in the map. You gain advantage on efforts to detect the secret door or trap.
- Depict on the map the location of all creatures that would be visible or hidden by non-magical means (cover or natural darkness). You may make an Int(Perception) check for the map to depict creatures hidden by means of stealth or invisibility. Locating non-visible creatures provides advantage to detecting those creatures for purposes of attacking or targeting spells.
Homunculus Scout
Item: A crystal lens or cut gemstone worth at least 20gp
The homunculus scout has similar capabilities to the homunculus servant, with the following differences:
- The item you infuse serves as the creature’s eye, not heart.
- While the homunculus scout is within 100 feet of you, as an action, you can see through the creature’s eye until the start of your next turn. During this time, you are blind with regard to your own senses.
- The homunculus scout cannot manipulate its environment. In combat, you may command, using your bonus action, your homunculus scout to Dash, Disengage, or Search.
- The homunculus scout may explore 1 square mile per hour. If it encounters danger it will disengage and return to you, unless ordered to do otherwise.
Homunculus Spy
Prerequisite: 6th-level artificer
Item: A crystal lens or cut gemstone worth at least 50gp
The homunculus spy has similar capabilities to the homunculus servant, with the following differences:
- The item you infuse serves as the creature’s eye, not heart.
- While the homunculus scout is within 600 feet of you, as an action, you can see through the creature’s eye until the start of your next turn. During this time, you are blind with regard to your own senses.
- The homunculus scout may explore 1 square mile per hour. If it encounters danger it will disengage and return to you, unless ordered to do otherwise.
Homunculus Scout
Tiny construct, Neutral
- Armor Class 11
- Hit Points 1 (1d4 - 4)
- Speed fly 30 ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 3 (-4) 10 3 (-4) 10 10 3 (-4)
- Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 12
- Languages written (illustration)
Whirring wings Whatever its method of flight, the homunculus scout's movement is loud. It has disadvantage on stealth.
Actions
Photographic recall The homunculus scout can illustrate its observations on any flat surface. Topographic recall The homunculus scout can record its explorations on parchment to produce a non-magical map.
Homunculus Spy
Tiny construct, Neutral
- Armor Class 13 (natural armor)
- Hit Points 2 (1d4)
- Speed fly 30 ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 3 (-4) 15 (+2) 10 10 10 3 (-4)
- Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
- Languages telepathic
Actions
Force Strike. Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 30 ft., one target you can see. Hit: 1d4+2 force damage
Reactions
Channel Magic. The homunculus delivers a spell you cast that has a range of touch. The homunculus must be within 120 feet of you.
Artillerist options
An Artillerist with a cartography focus can unleash attacks from a great distance. You gain the following option for your arcane turret:
Force catapult
This Large turret has a movement of 0 and a range of 60-600 feet. Project a bright ball of force from the turret, arcing to a point within range that you can see. The ball then explodes with concussive force. Each creature in a 10-foot radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 2d8 force damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The giant went into his room with them, and they looked at his maps, but could find nothing: then he fetched other old maps, and they never left off searching until they found the golden castle of Stromberg, but it was many thousand miles away.
"The Raven," Grimm's fairy tales