So I have been playing vix for a while now with the class of artificer artillerist, artificers artillerist in DND are inventors of weapons and special gadgets that help them in combat,
I did some digging and artificers in wow do exist, they are basically warrior engineers who specialize in dreanei “tech” or crystal magic I guess that being the use of crystals in special ways either as weapons or as every day to day use technology, the class is most prominent with draenei obviously but there are artificers among other races, so my question is if it would make sense a vulpera will be able to use this npc exclusive class and if it would be lore friendly.
In theory, sure, possible. But in practice, it’s a very strange combination because artificers couldn’t be further removed from vulpera if they tried.
I suppose the question is, why a vulpera?
There’s not really any overlap between the race and the 'class, and it’s something that’s seen a lot with vulpera character concepts where they just rip another race’s culture entirely.
I have a struggle with rping different characters once I’ve connected myself with one already, it’s reeeeaaally sketchy but if it could make sense I’m definitely going to stick with it, also Im definitely not planning on becoming a draenei raised vulpera or some stupid idea like that, just the class itself which involves the use of engineering, magic and crystals.
I think it kind of fits with the general vibe vulpera are going for in some ways. They have this culture of making do with whatever hand they’re dealt, no matter if it’s a good find or a mediocre one, so I can fully imagine vulpera coming across some odd bits of engineering gone astray, discarded tomes and unknown ominous crystals and trying to find a way to make them work in their favour.
Eh. I’d be really careful when trying to bring something so heavily entrenched with a certain race’s lore into another race, especially one that isn’t even on the same faction.
You need to ask yourself ‘how’ first of all, as well as ‘why’. How does your character even begin grasping this stuff? Do they have help, if so what? There’s a lot to think about.
When it comes to questions about concepts or paths to take with your character I always try to encourage thinking about; What does it bring to your character? Will it make it more interesting/more engaging? Will it make you enjoy them more or make them more complicated?
I’m not saying a flat out ‘no’, by the way, just offering some advice is all.
Instead of copypasting the definition of artificer word for word, try and add a flavourful spin to it that fits the race you’re playing.
Vulpera are opportunistic scavengers. As Obahar stated, their entire culture revolves around collecting seemingly useless items and either trading them for survival or making use of them in unusual, but helpful ways. A good example of this would be an NPC in Vol’dun who turns filled soul-filled golem eyes into explosives.
Things like these add a unique distinction to your character while simultaneously being in line with their racial identity and culture, and it allows you to be much more creative than what the base class gives you.
Granted, I’ve little knowledge about artificers in the context of either D&D or WoW specifically, but with Vulpera, my mind usually jumps to “pick up whatever stuff you find in your travels and be creative in using it”.
There’s a lot of ways to turn seemingly unusable items into weirdly effective weapons, even without the use of actual engineering like goblins and gnomes tend to do.
Mm, kinda disagree. While they’ve got a pseudo-magitech bent due to their Eberron origins, at their core they’re just “magic item enchanters”. Alchemists Artificers do it on potions, Armourers do it on…armour. Battlesmiths do it on constructs. Artillerists do it on magic wands.
Be anything you think fits, but the more out there combos and RP styles will always generate friction the further you pull it. Like yeah technically the lore does support a vulpera being able to cobble together a grav craft with autocannons made out of discarded draenei crystals and yak droppings but the lore also supports Me’dan so you should probably prepare yourself for some negative feedback the whackier it gets.
I’d like to second Rykah’s suggestion with my own addition:
Maybe Vix finds a crystal - a shattered, broken remnant from some old burnt out Draenei construct and gets a bolt of inspiration. Maybe they take it and fashion it into an amulet, or find a friend or a fellow engineer and together they try and make something from it that could be useful for the caravan! It could be something simple, like they find that if they use the right tonal frequencies it starts glowing and it gets fixed onto a staff and used as a lamp or a helpful tool for exploring caves. Maybe it explodes in ten seconds after being plugged into a small goblin battery, and since there may be more where you found the first… you could end up making grenades! There’s a lot of room for potential with something like this, lemme tell you.
The biggest benefit of Warcraft as a setting is that you can justify a lot of ‘strange’ out there things if you find a way that feels convincing and right for the world.
the way i do use the artificer class in wow is that vix is specialized in the creation of weapons out of certain crystals powders and brews, she carves runes into the crystals that give them special properties you can activate these properties by tapping the crystal in a certain order and in certain places, the way i justify vix knowing this is because as a mercenary and someone who deals a lot with alliance my character does contracts for them and a few times when she has dealt with draenei she managed to get her hands on schematics and books explaining how the draenei perform artificer work, vix is very good at creating certain ammo types with special properties that help her fight a variety of enemies, for example a bullet that is tipped with a mana crystal is able to perform the hunters “arcane shot” a bullet that is hollowed out and filled with powder from light infused gems can do extreme damage to undead and even kill them if the shot is aimed correctly, the downside with the crystals is they need mana stored in them to perform these abilities so sometimes vix might ask a mage or paladin or priest to “charge” a crystal so it can be used.
now i don’t know if this is all lore friendly but i didn’t receive any judgmental criticism from it yet, and im very open to criticism.
Honestly this all sounds robust and logical to me - it’s not that there’s some inherent incapability for a Vulpera to do these things, and they have been shown to be fairly neutral in the past (see Freehold etc.). The fact that you’ve thought it out and made it make sense in a logical fashion is great!
I’d personally stick with ‘Artificer’ as a class and let people discover her backstory through RP.
Thank you, I actually had a sit down with myself to think of how I’d use this class, I even have concept art (not so good granted) of some of vix’s most commonly used munitions, though I do agree with rykah on this, instead of basically copying a DND class/draenei class I should think of ways to give it more vulperan taste if not tweaking with the concept at least giving it a name change I think vulpera gem shaper, crystaler, carver, crafter are vulperan sounding enough.