Helm of Awareness 5e
Prerequisite: 10th-level artificer
Item: A helmet (requires attunement)
While wearing this helmet, a creature has advantage on initiative rolls. In addition, the wearer can’t be surprised, provided it isn’t incapacitated.
This infusion is most easily compared to the Alert feat. Personally, I’m a big fan of Alert, especially on casters, and while Artificers aren’t full casters, they still have plenty of benefits to going early in initiative order. Being able to lay down a Web or use our Pipes of Haunting before our opponents have a chance to act can be a powerful shutdown that wins combat on the spot.
This is providing advantage on our initiative check, which averages to about +4.5 to the roll, while Alert adds +5, so functionally these benefits are identical, though notably, they do stack if you take both of them. Granted, I think that’s going overboard as winning initiative by 1 or by 30 has the same result, but I can’t stop you from having fun. This also provides the “can’t be surprised” clause of Alert, so the only bullet point of Alert we are missing is the negation of advantage on attacks against us from unseen attackers. That last point does come up, but it’s not such a loss that I feel this infusion is outclassed by Alert.
Infusion slots are competitive, as are attunement slots, but not nearly as competitive as feats and ability score increases. This means that I actually would rather take this infusion over Alert on most of my Artificers, assuming I’m willing to wait until level 10 and am assured that the campaign will actually go that long. Speaking of which, I’m really not sure why this is gated behind 10th level, as its effect is useful for sure but not necessarily overpowered even for low levels. Either way, this is a fine selection for higher tier play and you will be satisfied with its performance even if it isn’t the absolute best effect you can get from an infusion.
Final Rating: 4/5
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