I'm assuming Edge of the Empire's Technicians are the odd man out simply because Master Artisan was added to the game for Age of Rebellion's Engineers, and stuck around for Force and Destiny's Artisan Specialization.

Has anyone tried hacking the Talent into Edge of the Empire so Technicians don't have to grab a Spec from one of the other lines to get it, and if so, how?

No, it doesn't really seem necessary. It's not hard for a Technician to succeed at difficult Mechanics checks in other ways, not every talent needs to be mirrored across every similar archetype (note how Droid Tech gets Improved/Supreme Speaks Binary and Droid Specialist doesn't), and cross-speccing isn't that onerous in this system. If I were playing a Technician at the moment, I would consider a cross spec into Shipwright well worth it for a variety of reasons before I even got to Master Artisan. Or I could just grab Unmatched Calibration and reroll/downgrade/upgrade that difficult Mechanics check into submission.

Also, Artisan got the talent first, and Special Modifications came out several months later, so this can't simply be written off as "they hadn't come up with the talent yet."

Can Master Artisan be used to suffer 4 strain and reduce it by 2 or is it strictly as written?

22 minutes ago, Georgevons said:

Can Master Artisan be used to suffer 4 strain and reduce it by 2 or is it strictly as written?

Strictly as written.

22 minutes ago, Georgevons said:

Can Master Artisan be used to suffer 4 strain and reduce it by 2 or is it strictly as written?

It says that once per round, the PC may perform a Master Artisan incidental. Then it describes the incidental.