Save a few specific situations, I will always run Eldritch Cannon in its handheld form, along with an Enhanced Focus/Firearm in the other hand.
I've already talked to my DM about making a Quickdraw feat, allowing me to stow my Firearm and draw, say, Wand of Magic Missle or Fireball in one bonus action. That was my original vision for my artillerist. Swapping out wands on the go that had different spells and cantrips pre-loaded.
Why an extra feat?
Purely on rules, you only need one Wand, your arcane Focus, to cast All your prepared spells.
Flavouring, that you use different wands for every spell shouldn't take an extra feat.
And all the "Real" wands just take you a little longer to switch, because you have your favorite ones.
If you give up your +1 Infusion for your Wand, you can even use a fireball Wand, if you have one and make it you arcane firearm. Your arcane firearm Feature makes a Wand also to an arcane Focus.
he was specifically looking to Mystogan it and have multiple regular magical wands, such as the aforementioned Magic Missile and Fireball, in addition to his arcane firearm and/or his eldritch cannon. The idea was to quick-swap to whichever wand has the spell he needs for a given turn and use that, because the idea is cool. Casting regular artificer spells can be fluffed however, yes, but if you want to use multiple regular spell wands, you'd need a way of swapping between them without dropping every wand you're switching away from.
Yurei has the right of it. Quick swapping wands if I need to change spells. Why waste the precious few spell slots to lob a magic missle, if I've already crafted a Wand of Magic Missle to throw em from. As a half caster, spell slots are a premium, and anything I can do to save spell slots will be done.
Also, magic missle isn't an artificer spell, so the wand of becomes necessary.
he was specifically looking to Mystogan it and have multiple regular magical wands, such as the aforementioned Magic Missile and Fireball, in addition to his arcane firearm and/or his eldritch cannon. The idea was to quick-swap to whichever wand has the spell he needs for a given turn and use that, because the idea is cool. Casting regular artificer spells can be fluffed however, yes, but if you want to use multiple regular spell wands, you'd need a way of swapping between them without dropping every wand you're switching away from.
I'm semi new to 5E. based mostly out of other systems. Are bandoliers, or leather strings not a thing?
I was assuming yo ucould have a bandolier, with laynards on wands, and use the 1 free item interaction a round to grab the one you want. Then free action drop it and it would hang off your bandolier (not on the ground). which you could slot in witht later item actions etc.
By RAW, no...but that sounds like something an artificer could invent. Wands attached to a thin wire, automatically retracts. Which honestly, is similar to how I will be "summoning" the wands that serves as my turret variations. Wrist sheath shoots it into my hand, then retracts when I'm done with it.
It's time intensive, but cheap, for an Artificer to infuse a clay pot as a Pot of Awakening and you can have your very own Awakened Shrub minion. Rinse and repeat for an army of shrubs!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I like/love so many of them! But at my level with only four infusion slots and the fact that our DM just dropped us into the Demonwebb Pits and we had no choice but to escape into Sigil, Im restricted in my choices haha. I've gone with Enhanced Armour (Breastplate), Cloak of Protection, Bag of Holding and Periphat of Health. I miss my Winged Boots
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired) Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
If your are allowed UA I love Armor of magical strength and mind sharpener.
While you can use the mind sharpener yourself it is probab;y best given to a full caster to keep their high level concentration spells up.
Thematically I love Armor of magical strength, my strength 8 gnome while in his power armor and it is almost like driving a tank as the powerful magical motors powering the armor making him as strong as the barbarian.
It's time intensive, but cheap, for an Artificer to infuse a clay pot as a Pot of Awakening and you can have your very own Awakened Shrub minion. Rinse and repeat for an army of shrubs!
I love this one. This is probably the best option if you have a lot of downtime.
I use one that gives me advantage in History / Insight checks. This very much depends on your DM if you can do it (although its rules compliant it just requires a lot of influence on the world) I am playing a character that is the "Pirate King" and I have a network of ships and informants in the world. I use Replicate Magic Item to create Sending Stones to create a telecommunication network, it requires NPC's to play along though. I wrote up a spec for my DM to see how he felt about it and he approved it. All of the sudden my character knows a lot about what's going on in the world. It gives ways for my DM to get my character information and I've left some weaknesses in the network that he can exploit if he wants to mess with us.
The Pirate Informant Network Protocol
Summary:
Across the Realm of Allenia the Pirate King has set up a vast communications network between his pirate allies and his informants. This network is built using Sending Stones Switchboards Switchboards; these are referred to as the ThreeS. All Pirate Sending Stones look like Earrings and so the ThreeS operate out of the back of Jewelry Shops. .
The Pirates send in daily updates in a cipher/plain text combination that at the minimum include their Location and heading and message priority, but if there is information that should be shared it can be shared as well. Informants only broadcast an update when needed. At their local sunset each switchboard combines all of the public messages from the previous day into a single message and relays it across the network, the pirates reply with their daily updates. If there are any private messages those are appended to the public message for the intended destination.
Limitations and mitigations
Sending Stones can only be used once per day and so the reports are only done at given times only the Pirate king can send out an urgent message that is delivered immediately by the Threes
Sending Stones can only send a 25 word message and so if the combined messages are more than 25 words then the lowest priority messages are dropped and sent when there is available bandwidth on subsequent days if multiple messages are queued up then messages will be delivered based on priority and time in queue. On Normal Reports Routing information may be removed to save bandwidth if the routing information was transmitted the previous day.
Sometimes Pirates don’t want to share their exact location: When this happens they still send which direction they are headed by obsfucating either their X coordinate or Y coordinate with a hyphen (-)
The ThreeS will have knowledge of ALL activity that passes through their switchboard and so they must be trustworthy.
The ThreeS each need to be artificers to be able to create their own sending stones, Each has a stone to communicate with the other ThreeS if needed and one to the Pirate King.
If a ThreeS is incapacitated a third of the network goes down, The Pirate King has a Sending Stone for each Network.
Pirates can only send directed or broadcast (EN) messages to pirates on their sub network.
If the Pirate King decides that a broadcast message from one subnet should be broadcast to the others there will be an additional day delay, The ThreeS will automatically Recalculate any time period that is included in the message to be accurate for the day that the delivery is made.
The First rule of the PIN is to not tell anyone about the PIN (including other captains) If you do then you lose access.
Each Ship must have a Lvl2 Artificer to be able to create a Sending Stone, if that artificer dies or deinfuses the stone the ship is cut off from the network.
If a Captain loses their Earring then the Data Leak could be large. After 4 days without a report the ThreeS disables their sending stone.
Sending Stones are also hidden in plain sight by being fashioned as earrings. All Pirate Crew are required to wear earrings to make them plain, commonplace and unremarkable. Pirate Earrings are used to signify rank. This allows them to be more easily hidden in plain sight and makes it not weird that the Pirate King wears 4 at all times.
Routing Codes (must be strictly alpha characters. Adding numeric could confuse it for location codes):
SP - ThreeS 1 (Primary) SS - ThreeS 2 (Secondary) ST - ThreeS 3 (Tertiary) EN - Entire Network PK - Pirate King MH - Maiden’s Honor AS - Arline Soren CS - Circle of Six
Report Information:
CurrentLocation + Location they are headed to + Message Type + Message Priority (A1A2NR0) Located at A1 headed to A2 Normal Report priority of 0.
Report Codes: RE - Reply FW - Forward DR - Daily Report with Information NR - Daily Report without Information IN - Informational WA - Warning UR - Urgent
Location Information: It will be grid based probably based on the existing Map grid, but maybe something more precise. I haven’t decided that one yet.
Message Body Cipher Text:
Wauab - We Are Under Attack By Tita(Location) - The Treasure is at Muwua(Location) - Meet Up with us at Tiant - There is a new threat posed by Ilfu - Is looking for you Anfa - add new phrase abbreviation IOI - Item of Interest #W - Number of Weeks #M - Number of Months #D = Number of Days
Example Messages
ASS1MH A1A2DR3 Ioi muwuaA5
From Arline Soren sent to the Maiden’s Honor via ThreeS1 currently located at A1 with a heading to A2, I have that item that you were interested in meet up with us at A5
PKS3EN A-D-WA2 tiant ghost ship MUWUAC4 15D
From the Pirate King to the Entire Network currently heading South somewhere along the A Row to D Row. There is a new threat of a ghost ship and so you should register it as an enemy if you see it in the future. meetup with us at C4 in 15 Days because something big is happening.
MHS1EN C4A5NR0
Maiden’s Honor is telling everyone that they are traveling from C4 to A5 in a straight line and there is not any other info and it's not important at all that people know this information if there are higher priority messages to send.
My DM is letting me research, plan and craft my own infusions so long as they are similar to the standard ones, this includes magic item replication as well.
Okay this one is a bit cheeky, but looking back at how we used it in my campaign: Bag of Holding. HEAR ME OUT
I picked this as one of my first infusions, and kind of regretted it. My first crafting project as an Artificer was to make a proper permenant Bag of Holding, because otherwise I had to keep one infusion as bag of holding to store everything.
BUT here's the thing; I, and I beleive a lot of artificers, am a gnome artificer. Why is this important? Well, we only have a movement speed of 25 ft. and in my scale male armor I am not very stealthy. But, if I hand my bag of holding to say... my monk, and hop into the bag. I'm good for 10 minutes before I need to get out. and If I hand it to my gloomstaker ranger who is essentially invisible if he isn't in light, my stealth check doesn't really matter.
So Bag of Holding as bag of Gnome-transport: Useful infusion.
What infusions would you take as a 13th level artificer doing the dungeon of the Mad Mage without spoilers please
Wand of Secrets, Cloak of Protection, Boots of Elvenkind, Goggles of Night/+2 Armour (if have darkvision already).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired) Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
The thing about the infusions is that they can combo up in amazing ways - and there are a few that just do what they do with no way to stop them. Being inventive is core to the class concept, go ahead and be inventive.
Your DM will stop putting super-dangerous features like acid pits anywhere after the first time you combo the Repulsion Shield and any teleport ability like Misty Step. If the arch-baddy hits you they dissolve in their own pool of acid. There is no save and no roll to hit, you just throw them 15' if they hit you. Realistically unless they have had a chance to cast Identify they have no way to know its coming either. Just generally this is a fantastic item at higher levels where things have lots of melee attacks, after the first one hits you throw them outside melee range and they are done - it makes the artificer surprisingly tanky by mitigating the incoming damage.
You can safely carry all sorts of dangerous things in a Bag of Holding and you can tip the whole lot out on a single action. How much oil fits in a bag of holding? Just add a single Alchemist Fire to ignite. Also big heavy rocks are astonishing if dropped from high enough.
With homunculus being available from level 2+ now I think it may be the new swiss-army-knife of infusions replacing the Bag of Holding. Imagination is your only limit here.
Why an extra feat?
Purely on rules, you only need one Wand, your arcane Focus, to cast All your prepared spells.
Flavouring, that you use different wands for every spell shouldn't take an extra feat.
And all the "Real" wands just take you a little longer to switch, because you have your favorite ones.
If you give up your +1 Infusion for your Wand, you can even use a fireball Wand, if you have one and make it you arcane firearm. Your arcane firearm Feature makes a Wand also to an arcane Focus.
he was specifically looking to Mystogan it and have multiple regular magical wands, such as the aforementioned Magic Missile and Fireball, in addition to his arcane firearm and/or his eldritch cannon. The idea was to quick-swap to whichever wand has the spell he needs for a given turn and use that, because the idea is cool. Casting regular artificer spells can be fluffed however, yes, but if you want to use multiple regular spell wands, you'd need a way of swapping between them without dropping every wand you're switching away from.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yurei has the right of it. Quick swapping wands if I need to change spells. Why waste the precious few spell slots to lob a magic missle, if I've already crafted a Wand of Magic Missle to throw em from. As a half caster, spell slots are a premium, and anything I can do to save spell slots will be done.
Also, magic missle isn't an artificer spell, so the wand of becomes necessary.
I'm semi new to 5E. based mostly out of other systems.
Are bandoliers, or leather strings not a thing?
I was assuming yo ucould have a bandolier, with laynards on wands, and use the 1 free item interaction a round to grab the one you want. Then free action drop it and it would hang off your bandolier (not on the ground). which you could slot in witht later item actions etc.
By RAW, no...but that sounds like something an artificer could invent. Wands attached to a thin wire, automatically retracts. Which honestly, is similar to how I will be "summoning" the wands that serves as my turret variations. Wrist sheath shoots it into my hand, then retracts when I'm done with it.
Spell storing item only works on casting time of 1 action spells
It's time intensive, but cheap, for an Artificer to infuse a clay pot as a Pot of Awakening and you can have your very own Awakened Shrub minion. Rinse and repeat for an army of shrubs!
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I like/love so many of them! But at my level with only four infusion slots and the fact that our DM just dropped us into the Demonwebb Pits and we had no choice but to escape into Sigil, Im restricted in my choices haha. I've gone with Enhanced Armour (Breastplate), Cloak of Protection, Bag of Holding and Periphat of Health. I miss my Winged Boots
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired)
Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer
Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden
DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
If your are allowed UA I love Armor of magical strength and mind sharpener.
While you can use the mind sharpener yourself it is probab;y best given to a full caster to keep their high level concentration spells up.
Thematically I love Armor of magical strength, my strength 8 gnome while in his power armor and it is almost like driving a tank as the powerful magical motors powering the armor making him as strong as the barbarian.
I love this one. This is probably the best option if you have a lot of downtime.
When players get creative.
I use one that gives me advantage in History / Insight checks. This very much depends on your DM if you can do it (although its rules compliant it just requires a lot of influence on the world) I am playing a character that is the "Pirate King" and I have a network of ships and informants in the world. I use Replicate Magic Item to create Sending Stones to create a telecommunication network, it requires NPC's to play along though. I wrote up a spec for my DM to see how he felt about it and he approved it. All of the sudden my character knows a lot about what's going on in the world. It gives ways for my DM to get my character information and I've left some weaknesses in the network that he can exploit if he wants to mess with us.
The Pirate Informant Network Protocol
Summary:
Across the Realm of Allenia the Pirate King has set up a vast communications network between his pirate allies and his informants. This network is built using Sending Stones Switchboards Switchboards; these are referred to as the ThreeS. All Pirate Sending Stones look like Earrings and so the ThreeS operate out of the back of Jewelry Shops. .
The Pirates send in daily updates in a cipher/plain text combination that at the minimum include their Location and heading and message priority, but if there is information that should be shared it can be shared as well. Informants only broadcast an update when needed. At their local sunset each switchboard combines all of the public messages from the previous day into a single message and relays it across the network, the pirates reply with their daily updates. If there are any private messages those are appended to the public message for the intended destination.
Limitations and mitigations
Communications Protocol:
Routing Information: Sender Code + Switchboard Code + Destination Code (PKSPMH) Pirate King + Switchboard 1 + Maiden’s Honor
Routing Codes (must be strictly alpha characters. Adding numeric could confuse it for location codes):
SP - ThreeS 1 (Primary)
SS - ThreeS 2 (Secondary)
ST - ThreeS 3 (Tertiary)
EN - Entire Network
PK - Pirate King
MH - Maiden’s Honor
AS - Arline Soren
CS - Circle of Six
Report Information:
CurrentLocation + Location they are headed to + Message Type + Message Priority (A1A2NR0) Located at A1 headed to A2 Normal Report priority of 0.
Report Codes:
RE - Reply
FW - Forward
DR - Daily Report with Information
NR - Daily Report without Information
IN - Informational
WA - Warning
UR - Urgent
Location Information:
It will be grid based probably based on the existing Map grid, but maybe something more precise. I haven’t decided that one yet.
Message Body Cipher Text:
Wauab - We Are Under Attack By
Tita(Location) - The Treasure is at
Muwua(Location) - Meet Up with us at
Tiant - There is a new threat posed by
Ilfu - Is looking for you
Anfa - add new phrase abbreviation
IOI - Item of Interest
#W - Number of Weeks
#M - Number of Months
#D = Number of Days
Example Messages
ASS1MH A1A2DR3 Ioi muwuaA5
From Arline Soren sent to the Maiden’s Honor via ThreeS1 currently located at A1 with a heading to A2, I have that item that you were interested in meet up with us at A5
PKS3EN A-D-WA2 tiant ghost ship MUWUAC4 15D
From the Pirate King to the Entire Network currently heading South somewhere along the A Row to D Row. There is a new threat of a ghost ship and so you should register it as an enemy if you see it in the future. meetup with us at C4 in 15 Days because something big is happening.
MHS1EN C4A5NR0
Maiden’s Honor is telling everyone that they are traveling from C4 to A5 in a straight line and there is not any other info and it's not important at all that people know this information if there are higher priority messages to send.
My DM is letting me research, plan and craft my own infusions so long as they are similar to the standard ones, this includes magic item replication as well.
Okay this one is a bit cheeky, but looking back at how we used it in my campaign: Bag of Holding.
HEAR ME OUT
I picked this as one of my first infusions, and kind of regretted it. My first crafting project as an Artificer was to make a proper permenant Bag of Holding, because otherwise I had to keep one infusion as bag of holding to store everything.
BUT here's the thing; I, and I beleive a lot of artificers, am a gnome artificer. Why is this important? Well, we only have a movement speed of 25 ft. and in my scale male armor I am not very stealthy. But, if I hand my bag of holding to say... my monk, and hop into the bag. I'm good for 10 minutes before I need to get out. and If I hand it to my gloomstaker ranger who is essentially invisible if he isn't in light, my stealth check doesn't really matter.
So Bag of Holding as bag of Gnome-transport: Useful infusion.
What infusions would you take as a 13th level artificer doing the dungeon of the Mad Mage without spoilers please
Wand of Secrets, Cloak of Protection, Boots of Elvenkind, Goggles of Night/+2 Armour (if have darkvision already).
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired)
Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer
Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden
DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
The thing about the infusions is that they can combo up in amazing ways - and there are a few that just do what they do with no way to stop them. Being inventive is core to the class concept, go ahead and be inventive.
Your DM will stop putting super-dangerous features like acid pits anywhere after the first time you combo the Repulsion Shield and any teleport ability like Misty Step. If the arch-baddy hits you they dissolve in their own pool of acid. There is no save and no roll to hit, you just throw them 15' if they hit you. Realistically unless they have had a chance to cast Identify they have no way to know its coming either. Just generally this is a fantastic item at higher levels where things have lots of melee attacks, after the first one hits you throw them outside melee range and they are done - it makes the artificer surprisingly tanky by mitigating the incoming damage.
You can safely carry all sorts of dangerous things in a Bag of Holding and you can tip the whole lot out on a single action. How much oil fits in a bag of holding? Just add a single Alchemist Fire to ignite. Also big heavy rocks are astonishing if dropped from high enough.
With homunculus being available from level 2+ now I think it may be the new swiss-army-knife of infusions replacing the Bag of Holding. Imagination is your only limit here.
Every morning, poison goes from the alchemy jug into a water skin for future use.
I am an auto-generated signature. Aren't I wonderful?