The Cartographer is the first new Artificer subclass in 5.5E. Built for recon, armed with a lot of teleports, it will literally let you make a map.
Of all the Artificer subclasses featured in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, the new Cartographer subclass is probably the weirdest one. Not that it’s bad, necessarily. But the gulf between what the mechanics suggest it does and what you can do with it is much wider than it is with, say, the Armorer’s.
Here’s what I mean. In the text, Cratographers are made out as “premier navigators and reconnaissance agents”. Already, we have a challenge here. A reconnaissance agent is pretty easy to conceptualize in D&D – you get good at stealth, to stay hidden, and scout out hidden enemies. Navigation is about finding a path through areas where you might get lost and getting through hazards safely.
But what the mechanics of the Cartographer do instead is make you good at supporting your party and casting the Faerie Fire spell to mark enemies and the occasional limited teleport. So there’s at least one part of the recon agent down. As for the rest? Let’s take a look.
The Artificer Cartographer – Mapping Out Your Class Features
The Cartographer leans into the Artificer theme of “you make a cool magic piece of gear.” Alchemists make their elixirs, Armorers have arcane power armor, Artillerists make magical guns, and Battle Smiths make steel defenders. So it is that Cartographers make magical maps known as an Adventurer’s Atlas. And also scrolls. The Tools of the Trade at level 3 feature gives you the ability to scribe a spell scroll in half the normal time. Which is super handy for an Artificer.
But the core of the subclass comes from the Adventurer’s Atlas feature. This is the eponymous magical map that Cartographers are all about. You can create a set of magical maps for creatures totaling your Intelligence modifier + 1. These magical maps don’t necessarily reveal any new information about the area you’re in.
Instead they’re more like locator beacons. Each magical map “constantly updates to show the relative position of all the map holders but is illegible to all others.” This results in three benefits: any map holder adds 1d4 to Initiative rolls, they also know the location of all other map holders and can target one another with spells or abilities regardless of sight or cover, and they can be of use to you, the Cartographer for some of your other features.
Because we’re still not done. There are two more level 3 features that help round out what a Cartographer can do – which is good, because from where I’m sitting, an extra 1d4 Initiative and the ability to target without line of sight doesn’t seem to match the the power of “magical cannon that can set people on fire”. So you’ll gain Mapping Magic which lets you cast Faerie Fire without spending a spell slot (up to your Intelligence modifier times per day, anyway). It also lets you spend half your movement to teleport either 10 feet to anywhere you can see, or up to 30 feet if you would arrive at a square within 5 feet of someone holding one of your Adventurer’s Atlases. It’s potentially a resource free Misty Step, which is cool. And the right party will get a ton of use out of it.
Finally, the Cartographer Spells feature gives you a list of bonus spells that’s a weird mix. You get Faerie Fire, because that’s partly what the subclass is all about. But you also get Healing Word and Guiding Bolt – there are a lot of “recon” spells like Mind Spike and Clairvoyance and Locate Creature and Scrying but then that’s mixed in with stuff like Call Lightning and Banishment for a strange mix of purposes. It’s not a bad list by any means, just the flavor is unusual.
Charting A Course To Higher Levels
At higher levels, you get a bit more of an idea of what the Cartographer can do. At level 5, you get the Artificer damage increase feature. In this case it’s Guided Precision, which lets you add your Intelligence modifier to a spell or attack but only when casting a spell from your Cartographer Spells list or whenever you hit a creature affected by your Faerie Fire. It seems needlessly narrow, considering other Artificers get a bonus to their Artificer spells or just flat out Extra Attack. I dunno what WotC was thinking here.
But at level 9 you get Ingenious Movement which makes your Flash of Genius so much cooler. Whenever you use your Reaction to give someone a bonus to an otherwise failed saving throw, you can also teleport you or a willing creature that you can see within 30 feet of you can Misty Step, basically. This is the party support I’m here for.
Finally at level 15, the Adventurer’s Atlas gets an upgrade. It lets any map holder stay alive when they would be reduced to 0 hit points (but not killed outright). If you would drop to 0 hit points, you can instead destroy the map (not as a reaction, either). Then you change your hit points to twice your Artificer level and teleport to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of a map holder. Not a bad get out of jail free card.
All in all, these are good features. I like what the Cartographer can do. I just wish they could do a little more of it. It would have been interesting to see what an Artificer recon agent looked like if their focus was on a cool set of stealth gear, like a magical cloaking device and goggles that let you see through illusions. But as it stands, the magical maps can make the right party feel super strong.
Check out the Cartographer and four other Artificer subclasses in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer!
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