Lately, my partner and I have been playing in a campaign running the Level-Up! Advanced 5th Edition ruleset. Myself as the surprisingly scrappy detective Half-Horned Kal, and her as the rage filled mechanical marvel and engineer, Ali. Over the course of our game, it's become increasingly clear what a sub-par option the Artificer class is, as written. It yo-yos dramatically in strength from day to day based on the luck of the dice, and also from level to level in comparison to traditional spell-casters. I'm gonna talk a bit about the math we've done to show the issues, and propose a relatively simple tweak, that, we feel, can be a big improvement to game balance, as well as making the class more fun to play and better at fulfilling the fantasy of being a cool genius tinker with a trick up their sleeve for every occasion.