I have a sonic screwdriver-like focus, as some of you do. As part of the verbal component, I have to say "Alexa" (the name of the screwdriver), as in "Alexa, cast fire bolt".
I'm also thinking of having an infused crossbow be a focus, with magical ammunition for the spells. Maybe like different dust options for firearms in RWBY.
What subclass are you? Artillerist?
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
A Battle Smith. Just getting to 3rd level so designing my Defender at the moment.
Okay. That's cool. How do you use a wand?
Also, I've created a homebrew Doctor Who-like artificer subclass with a "sonic screwdriver". It's called a resonant focus, and can unlock doors, disable traps from a range, and cast time-spells, and stuff like that.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
So now that I actually have my arcane fire arm feature, my staff of adornment has rings and cuffs on it with special magical runes. When I charge it with the spell slot, the rings and cuffs rotate clicking into place the runes for the spell, and the wooshes down the staff (most spells I use are fired from the "ground end" holding the staff like a rifle). twice a tiny device flew from the end of my staff to float (we were underwater) among the enemies before emitting a deafening and pulverizing "Screech" (Level 2 Shatter spell. Should only do 3d8, but because of arcane fire arm, gets an auto upgrade to 4d8 for the same spell slot). I turn my staff over the shoulder to use the catapult spell (this is the staff with acid floating around the top).
I have a character who's about to multiclass into artificer, just beginning to work out how I'm going to approach these. His backstory involves researching magical artifacts so I'm trying not to lean too much into the steampunk side of things, however one I am looking forward to...
Guidance - sneak up and inject my allies with some focus-enhancing chemical.
My artificer is an alchemist, so all of his spells are flavored after chemicals.
Fire Bolt: fires an exothermic mixture from a flare gun-like apparatus Create Bonfire: a literal molotov cocktail Acid Splash: just a flask of acid Cure Wounds: stabs the heal target with a large syringe filled with a red healing potion Faerie Fire: a flask of chemoluminescent fluid
I'm currently playing an Artillerist artificer, who was originally mentored by an alchemist who loved plants. They have small mechanical bees that work a lot of the spell effects, some of which include:
Cure Wounds - a bee which creates a chemical 'honeycomb' to bind the wound
Fire bolt - A tiny slingshot shoots a bee that ignites with flame as it fires
Faerie fire - A group of bees encircle the affected creatures in range, glowing as they fly
Feather fall - a group of bees grab onto the target and fly, not hard enough to lift, but enough to slow the fall
Mending - the bees create a 'honeycomb' which melts to fix the item
Heat metal - a blowtorched bee shoots towards the target object and the heat disperses onto it
Outside the bees, I have:
Absorb elements - a necklace that has small coloured stones on the pendant, each stone temporarily stores a type of energy to be released
Detect magic - a short lasting chemical placed on their glasses (I used the pearl inlined glasses mentioned in an earlier comment for identify) that makes magic items seem to glow
Spider Climb - it's two mechanical spiders. they attach to the targets shoes. now they can climb like a spider
Plus, their arcane cannons look like a spider (for the protector), a wasp (for the force) and a firefly (for the flamethrower)
For alchemist artificer just have syringe launchers or crossbow bolt mounted syringes for your ranged heals, and syringes attached to a gauntlet for melee healing spells.
On the "making artificer's unique" thing, I think they should have really gone all in on the spell storing feature, as in, all of their magic focuses on that, their spells would be on a "uses per spell" basis and sort of function where they can make spell "scrolls" (which are actually trinkets) and those scrolls can be used X amount of times depending on, lets say half the spell level rounded down, minimum of one, or maybe just PB because then you get to use your spells more, then the downside is you prepare less spells, and yes, we would be keeping the prepared list method of standard Artificer,
another idea I had as I was typing this is you have spells equal to your INT mod + half your Artificer level (min of 1) and uses for each equal to your PB, and your PB also determines what level of spell you can go up to, so you'd go up to 6th level spells but stop there
so let's say you're level 1 and somehow have 20 INT, that's a +5, so that's 2 cantrips, and 6 1st level spells each with 2 uses, at level 20, that's x cantrips (cantrip progression is retained), and 15 Spells that can be any combination of 1st-6th level, and each spell would have 6 uses
this is probably completely busted but that spell storing mechanic seemed so interesting and would make Artificers much more unique in spell casting since they'd have more of each spell, but also still be stuck at a certain level rather than going all the way up to level 9 spells, or your spell tier could go up every 4 levels (1-4 is 1st, 5-8 is 2nd, 9-12 is 3rd, 13-16 is 4th, 17-20 is 5th), but yea, these are just spitballs
oh btw, I flavor spell slots as they are as magic batteries and I put them into devices, then verbal components are technobabble, somatic components are when you're tinkering about and trying to get it to work, and your arcane focus is tinker tools that let you mess with the tech (handling material)
I'm currently playing Nestor Mebblewibble an 283 years old gnome from Lantan who happened to be a war criminal and arms dealer in his "glorious" days. Since 90 years he owns an old shabby pawn shop in the Waterdeep docks and has forgotten most of his skills. He made some really bad business decisions so he's pretty much broke... he basically is the poor old wretch that other adventurers sell their loot to... all that trash no-one wants... for example in his shop there is a chest filled to the brim with rusty daggers that someone made because they thought they'd become a master blacksmith... Skyrim reference. Now he struggles along by scamming ppl and selling infused items that lose their magic abilities after they paid him. I have a small robot called Edgar (Homunculus) and a big robot called Winston (Steel Defender). I kinda ride Winston, while Edgar sits in a turret on his shoulder. I'm armed with a Exandria Blunderbuss that I turned into a steampunk Han Solo Blaster (Repeating Shot) and wear a Leathercoat that is plastered with its and bits (enhanced studded leather).
But to the spells: Mage Hand/Catapult/Levitate - Grav-Mode of my Blaster
Feary Fire - Flare Gun Mode
Offensive Spells - generally all are firing modes of my Blaster (and I have a few, due to 1lvl Wizard)
Detect Magic/Identify - special visor lense that pops out of my coat's collar
Disguise Self/Shield/Feather Fall/Absorb Elements/Blur/Invisibility and the like - a device at my belt that alters my closest surroundings
Prestidigitation/Alarm/Distort Value - an army of tiny robots that are built for a particular purpose "You pass butter!"
Shocking Grasp/Spare the Dying - cmon admit, we all have that special power gauntlet that works like a defibrillator.
Thorn Whip - Obvious... Grappling hook
Rope Trick - Portal Gun
False Life - additional studs on my studded leather
Sanctuary - a similar device to my belt matter altering field that kinda works like a lesser blur or invisibility. So the Wisdom check is like a check if a creature can see the target in the first place.
Snare - An electric trap... pretty obvious I guess
Enlarge/Reduce - Honey, I shrunk the kids... yea, gun
Web/Grease - My gun is plastered with buttons... But while riding Winston, he opens a valve instead
And last but certainly not least... Spellwrought Tattoos - Ladys and gentlemen, boys and girls! Come together and marvel at the most recent accomplishment of modern science and medical research. Try some of Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM! You have a bad leg or can't satisfy your wife? Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM will certainly help you to get right back on the horse. Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM will provide you with a better tomorrow already TODAY! Buy two and get one for free! NO REFUNDS!
Using an ear trumpet and a screw driver to revive the Steel Defender, listening again, cursing and banging it with a hammer. One more listen gives a grunt of satisfaction.
Thought about having an artillerist who uses a rod for his arcane firearm. Along the length of the rod are rings that turn and have arcane runes carved in them (kind of like a bike lock or briefcase lock that has the rings of numbers you turn) and by uttering a short one or two syllable word the appropriate rings glow and turn to the right combination and the spell goes off. If he can’t speak he can turn the rings manually (as long as the spell doesn’t have V component) to cast. Shatter could be the word Boom, and as the rings turn he thrusts the rod down onto the ground and the spell fires.
My Artificers are more of the "magical" sort (as they all seem to have some innate magical capabilities), and I never thought about doing this type of thing with my Artificers before in a full extent.
Ryon, my Human Artificer in one campaign, casts her spells through a ring she wears that she fashioned, with some verbal components not being the name of the spell (one spell has her shouting "Now wait a minute!", for instance), but I'm not very creative with this kind of thing, and I appreciate these ideas for future Artificers.
On the "making artificer's unique" thing, I think they should have really gone all in on the spell storing feature, as in, all of their magic focuses on that, their spells would be on a "uses per spell" basis and sort of function where they can make spell "scrolls" (which are actually trinkets) and those scrolls can be used X amount of times depending on, lets say half the spell level rounded down, minimum of one, or maybe just PB because then you get to use your spells more, then the downside is you prepare less spells, and yes, we would be keeping the prepared list method of standard Artificer,
another idea I had as I was typing this is you have spells equal to your INT mod + half your Artificer level (min of 1) and uses for each equal to your PB, and your PB also determines what level of spell you can go up to, so you'd go up to 6th level spells but stop there
so let's say you're level 1 and somehow have 20 INT, that's a +5, so that's 2 cantrips, and 6 1st level spells each with 2 uses, at level 20, that's x cantrips (cantrip progression is retained), and 15 Spells that can be any combination of 1st-6th level, and each spell would have 6 uses
this is probably completely busted but that spell storing mechanic seemed so interesting and would make Artificers much more unique in spell casting since they'd have more of each spell, but also still be stuck at a certain level rather than going all the way up to level 9 spells, or your spell tier could go up every 4 levels (1-4 is 1st, 5-8 is 2nd, 9-12 is 3rd, 13-16 is 4th, 17-20 is 5th), but yea, these are just spitballs
oh btw, I flavor spell slots as they are as magic batteries and I put them into devices, then verbal components are technobabble, somatic components are when you're tinkering about and trying to get it to work, and your arcane focus is tinker tools that let you mess with the tech (handling material)
You maybe should look into the Magic Tattoos from Tasha's Couldron of Everything. The Spellwrought Tattoo is the kind of thing you're looking for. You can produce them with Replicate Magic Item pretty easily at 2nd level... you want that bag of holding first tho. You should ask your DM for a 2 week downtime after reaching 3rd level so you can switch from Bag of holding to the tattoo. OR you create a magic tattoo artist from the start. Those tattoos work pretty much like spell scrolls, but even non-magic-users are able to activate them... I flavor them as a quack's tonics. It's a good idea imo to take a level as wizard bc you can imbue every prepared spell into the tattoos... soooo... familiars for everyone after reaching 2nd level artificer. Apart from those shenanigans it's basically a 1st level spell slot per day for free. If you fully embrace those tattoos you can have 6 1st level slots at 2nd level and you can give 4 to other party members.
Replicate Magic Item is maybe the best feature an artificer can come up with... because you can replicate EVERY common magic item that is not a scroll or a potion... besides that list of uncommon items of which bag of holding is the single most useful one. But honestly the Spellwrought Tattoo is even more useful.
And before you mention: "But an Artificer cannot replicate scrolls and potions!" Yes, but those tattoos are no scrolls or potions. And it's already proven that that's RAW and RAI, because you can choose "Replicate Magic Item(Spellwrought Tattoo (1st Level Spells))" as an infusion in DnD Beyond.
The Artificer is a huge tool box of usefully broken mechanics and if you miss something you probably didn't dig enough yet. But the downtimes is the time to really shine for the artificer. I talked to my DM and we decided that it's nonsense that I have to get schematics or do dungeon runs to create items I can already replicate. So with enough time and money, you can give everyone in the party a bag of holding. Or you can create magic items to make money. The Artificer really doesn't need more. Yes, in 3.5 it was nice to create all those items with infusions but those infusion points were somewhat strange and bulky. I like the infusion system in 5e much more. And in 5e you still store your spells in non-magical items, but it's all just flavor. It's more streamlined, but really feels the same or even better than the 3.5 Artificer. I understand the description in the class features as follows: For every spell you can prepare, you have some kind of device. So if you can prepare 6 spells, you have 6 wondrous items and your spell slots are the uses per long rest. A level in wizard comes in handy because it kinda doubles your number of prepared spells (or your number of wondrous devices), gives you 3 extra cantrips, arcane recovery AND a spell book (with 6 extra spells for free), with which you can diversify your inventions even further. An Artificer can be a utility monster that fills the party's gaps with useful devices and after a few downtimes with a huge pile of magical junk, that is either useful or can be sold to have some extra money. The Artificer imo is best in urban based campaigns, because his downtimes kinda rely on a steady supply of materials and potential customers.
Magic items in general got much more rarer in 5e (at least in comparison to 3.5 where you could find a +1 long sword in every second level of a dungeon). Crafting magic items is now an important mechanic that requires you to do special dungeon runs during your downtimes. If you give the Artificers his 3.5-abilities they'd just destroy that interesting mechanic.
And BTW Spell Storing Item is a class feature you get as an 11th level Artificer. You touch a weapon or a spellcasting focus and store a 1st or 2nd lvl spell in it that requires 1 action to cast. Everyone that obtains such an object can activate the spell's effect by using an action. Such an item has a number of charges equal to twice your intelligence mod... so 10 as a gnome that rolled an 18 for intelligence. At that time it's not a big deal bc you can create ie 4 Spellwrought Tattoos(1st) or 2 lvl 2 for 50g each day.
Get creative. But it'd just completely break the game if you could store spells like you mentioned. Spellwroughts are already borderline OP.
My Artificers are more of the "magical" sort (as they all seem to have some innate magical capabilities), and I never thought about doing this type of thing with my Artificers before in a full extent.
Ryon, my Human Artificer in one campaign, casts her spells through a ring she wears that she fashioned, with some verbal components not being the name of the spell (one spell has her shouting "Now wait a minute!", for instance), but I'm not very creative with this kind of thing, and I appreciate these ideas for future Artificers.
Ever thought about, just casting spells with a bag of holding as your spellcasting focus? ;) I mean, your focus can be ANY infused item. A good thing about the Artificer is, that you don't need to follow a strict path. You can really go bonkers with it because you can cast with any tool you can use or item you have infused. You could for example replicate a common magic tattoo put it onto your hand and cast with it. The masquerade tattoo for example gives you the ability to change its position and to cast disguise self once per day. It's not absolutely RAW because you're required to hold your focus in a free hand... but mechanically it just requires a free hand. With the Artificer you're encouraged to go bonkers, change direction and do whatever suits the moment. Last session I disguised myself as a Kenku and mimicked a voice by using the audio feature of magical tinkering. Or you can troll NPCs by paying your beer with screaming coins or let their clothes smell like ogre farts. And I highly recommend to do such stuff during your next session. It's fun. But don't make it become a running gag, that gets annoying very quick. That class is all about flavor. We are the true mad scientists of DnD. The crazier, the better.
"Wait a minute!" for ie. Hold Person is kinda funny, too. TBH I never thought about a non-technical Artificer. I can't help myself, but thinking of Steampunk if I look at the Artificer. What subclass do you use for yours?
I'm playing a Battle Smith and have been struggling on how to flavor the Catapult spell so last night at the table I had my Steel Defender essentially turn into a Mortar Tube and I loaded him with a vial of acid and had him launch it. I really liked that flavor. My DM said he would allow me to have my SD use his movement on my turn in order to either grab the object being lobbed or to get into position.
I'm playing a Battle Smith and have been struggling on how to flavor the Catapult spell so last night at the table I had my Steel Defender essentially turn into a Mortar Tube and I loaded him with a vial of acid and had him launch it. I really liked that flavor. My DM said he would allow me to have my SD use his movement on my turn in order to either grab the object being lobbed or to get into position.
I also needed some time to flavor Catapult. It's the Grav-Firing-Mode of my Blunderbuss-Blaster but it could be an alternate firing mode of your Crossbow-Blaster instead. If I switch into that mode I can use Mage Hand and Catapult. I reskinned the Hand of Mage Hand into a stream of flickering air that reaches from my gun to the point of effect and I can spend a spell slot to lob things around (Catapult).
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What subclass are you? Artillerist?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Identify- a digital camera to take a pic and it searches the magic net :)
Cure wounds- a mechanical spider that stitches wounds closed, ala Starship Troopers
A Battle Smith. Just getting to 3rd level so designing my Defender at the moment.
Okay. That's cool. How do you use a wand?
Also, I've created a homebrew Doctor Who-like artificer subclass with a "sonic screwdriver". It's called a resonant focus, and can unlock doors, disable traps from a range, and cast time-spells, and stuff like that.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
So now that I actually have my arcane fire arm feature, my staff of adornment has rings and cuffs on it with special magical runes. When I charge it with the spell slot, the rings and cuffs rotate clicking into place the runes for the spell, and the wooshes down the staff (most spells I use are fired from the "ground end" holding the staff like a rifle). twice a tiny device flew from the end of my staff to float (we were underwater) among the enemies before emitting a deafening and pulverizing "Screech" (Level 2 Shatter spell. Should only do 3d8, but because of arcane fire arm, gets an auto upgrade to 4d8 for the same spell slot). I turn my staff over the shoulder to use the catapult spell (this is the staff with acid floating around the top).
I have a character who's about to multiclass into artificer, just beginning to work out how I'm going to approach these.
His backstory involves researching magical artifacts so I'm trying not to lean too much into the steampunk side of things, however one I am looking forward to...
Guidance - sneak up and inject my allies with some focus-enhancing chemical.
for cure wounds, my friend is playing an artificer with a musket that he puts to the back of your head and point blank fires into you to heal
Sounds like someone mains Ana in Overwatch.
My artificer is an alchemist, so all of his spells are flavored after chemicals.
Fire Bolt: fires an exothermic mixture from a flare gun-like apparatus
Create Bonfire: a literal molotov cocktail
Acid Splash: just a flask of acid
Cure Wounds: stabs the heal target with a large syringe filled with a red healing potion
Faerie Fire: a flask of chemoluminescent fluid
I'm currently playing an Artillerist artificer, who was originally mentored by an alchemist who loved plants. They have small mechanical bees that work a lot of the spell effects, some of which include:
Outside the bees, I have:
Plus, their arcane cannons look like a spider (for the protector), a wasp (for the force) and a firefly (for the flamethrower)
For alchemist artificer just have syringe launchers or crossbow bolt mounted syringes for your ranged heals, and syringes attached to a gauntlet for melee healing spells.
On the "making artificer's unique" thing, I think they should have really gone all in on the spell storing feature, as in, all of their magic focuses on that, their spells would be on a "uses per spell" basis and sort of function where they can make spell "scrolls" (which are actually trinkets) and those scrolls can be used X amount of times depending on, lets say half the spell level rounded down, minimum of one, or maybe just PB because then you get to use your spells more, then the downside is you prepare less spells, and yes, we would be keeping the prepared list method of standard Artificer,
another idea I had as I was typing this is you have spells equal to your INT mod + half your Artificer level (min of 1) and uses for each equal to your PB, and your PB also determines what level of spell you can go up to, so you'd go up to 6th level spells but stop there
so let's say you're level 1 and somehow have 20 INT, that's a +5, so that's 2 cantrips, and 6 1st level spells each with 2 uses, at level 20, that's x cantrips (cantrip progression is retained), and 15 Spells that can be any combination of 1st-6th level, and each spell would have 6 uses
this is probably completely busted but that spell storing mechanic seemed so interesting and would make Artificers much more unique in spell casting since they'd have more of each spell, but also still be stuck at a certain level rather than going all the way up to level 9 spells, or your spell tier could go up every 4 levels (1-4 is 1st, 5-8 is 2nd, 9-12 is 3rd, 13-16 is 4th, 17-20 is 5th), but yea, these are just spitballs
oh btw, I flavor spell slots as they are as magic batteries and I put them into devices, then verbal components are technobabble, somatic components are when you're tinkering about and trying to get it to work, and your arcane focus is tinker tools that let you mess with the tech (handling material)
I'm currently playing Nestor Mebblewibble an 283 years old gnome from Lantan who happened to be a war criminal and arms dealer in his "glorious" days. Since 90 years he owns an old shabby pawn shop in the Waterdeep docks and has forgotten most of his skills.
He made some really bad business decisions so he's pretty much broke... he basically is the poor old wretch that other adventurers sell their loot to... all that trash no-one wants... for example in his shop there is a chest filled to the brim with rusty daggers that someone made because they thought they'd become a master blacksmith... Skyrim reference. Now he struggles along by scamming ppl and selling infused items that lose their magic abilities after they paid him.
I have a small robot called Edgar (Homunculus) and a big robot called Winston (Steel Defender). I kinda ride Winston, while Edgar sits in a turret on his shoulder. I'm armed with a Exandria Blunderbuss that I turned into a steampunk Han Solo Blaster (Repeating Shot) and wear a Leathercoat that is plastered with its and bits (enhanced studded leather).
But to the spells:
Mage Hand/Catapult/Levitate - Grav-Mode of my Blaster
Feary Fire - Flare Gun Mode
Offensive Spells - generally all are firing modes of my Blaster (and I have a few, due to 1lvl Wizard)
Detect Magic/Identify - special visor lense that pops out of my coat's collar
Disguise Self/Shield/Feather Fall/Absorb Elements/Blur/Invisibility and the like - a device at my belt that alters my closest surroundings
Prestidigitation/Alarm/Distort Value - an army of tiny robots that are built for a particular purpose "You pass butter!"
Shocking Grasp/Spare the Dying - cmon admit, we all have that special power gauntlet that works like a defibrillator.
Thorn Whip - Obvious... Grappling hook
Rope Trick - Portal Gun
False Life - additional studs on my studded leather
Sanctuary - a similar device to my belt matter altering field that kinda works like a lesser blur or invisibility. So the Wisdom check is like a check if a creature can see the target in the first place.
Snare - An electric trap... pretty obvious I guess
Enlarge/Reduce - Honey, I shrunk the kids... yea, gun
Web/Grease - My gun is plastered with buttons... But while riding Winston, he opens a valve instead
And last but certainly not least...
Spellwrought Tattoos - Ladys and gentlemen, boys and girls! Come together and marvel at the most recent accomplishment of modern science and medical research. Try some of Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM! You have a bad leg or can't satisfy your wife? Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM will certainly help you to get right back on the horse. Nifty Nestor's Wondrous Tonics TM will provide you with a better tomorrow already TODAY! Buy two and get one for free! NO REFUNDS!
Using an ear trumpet and a screw driver to revive the Steel Defender, listening again, cursing and banging it with a hammer. One more listen gives a grunt of satisfaction.
Thought about having an artillerist who uses a rod for his arcane firearm. Along the length of the rod are rings that turn and have arcane runes carved in them (kind of like a bike lock or briefcase lock that has the rings of numbers you turn) and by uttering a short one or two syllable word the appropriate rings glow and turn to the right combination and the spell goes off. If he can’t speak he can turn the rings manually (as long as the spell doesn’t have V component) to cast. Shatter could be the word Boom, and as the rings turn he thrusts the rod down onto the ground and the spell fires.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
My Artificers are more of the "magical" sort (as they all seem to have some innate magical capabilities), and I never thought about doing this type of thing with my Artificers before in a full extent.
Ryon, my Human Artificer in one campaign, casts her spells through a ring she wears that she fashioned, with some verbal components not being the name of the spell (one spell has her shouting "Now wait a minute!", for instance), but I'm not very creative with this kind of thing, and I appreciate these ideas for future Artificers.
You maybe should look into the Magic Tattoos from Tasha's Couldron of Everything. The Spellwrought Tattoo is the kind of thing you're looking for. You can produce them with Replicate Magic Item pretty easily at 2nd level... you want that bag of holding first tho. You should ask your DM for a 2 week downtime after reaching 3rd level so you can switch from Bag of holding to the tattoo. OR you create a magic tattoo artist from the start. Those tattoos work pretty much like spell scrolls, but even non-magic-users are able to activate them...
I flavor them as a quack's tonics. It's a good idea imo to take a level as wizard bc you can imbue every prepared spell into the tattoos... soooo... familiars for everyone after reaching 2nd level artificer. Apart from those shenanigans it's basically a 1st level spell slot per day for free. If you fully embrace those tattoos you can have 6 1st level slots at 2nd level and you can give 4 to other party members.
Replicate Magic Item is maybe the best feature an artificer can come up with... because you can replicate EVERY common magic item that is not a scroll or a potion... besides that list of uncommon items of which bag of holding is the single most useful one. But honestly the Spellwrought Tattoo is even more useful.
And before you mention: "But an Artificer cannot replicate scrolls and potions!"
Yes, but those tattoos are no scrolls or potions. And it's already proven that that's RAW and RAI, because you can choose "Replicate Magic Item(Spellwrought Tattoo (1st Level Spells))" as an infusion in DnD Beyond.
The Artificer is a huge tool box of usefully broken mechanics and if you miss something you probably didn't dig enough yet.
But the downtimes is the time to really shine for the artificer. I talked to my DM and we decided that it's nonsense that I have to get schematics or do dungeon runs to create items I can already replicate. So with enough time and money, you can give everyone in the party a bag of holding. Or you can create magic items to make money. The Artificer really doesn't need more. Yes, in 3.5 it was nice to create all those items with infusions but those infusion points were somewhat strange and bulky. I like the infusion system in 5e much more.
And in 5e you still store your spells in non-magical items, but it's all just flavor. It's more streamlined, but really feels the same or even better than the 3.5 Artificer.
I understand the description in the class features as follows: For every spell you can prepare, you have some kind of device. So if you can prepare 6 spells, you have 6 wondrous items and your spell slots are the uses per long rest. A level in wizard comes in handy because it kinda doubles your number of prepared spells (or your number of wondrous devices), gives you 3 extra cantrips, arcane recovery AND a spell book (with 6 extra spells for free), with which you can diversify your inventions even further. An Artificer can be a utility monster that fills the party's gaps with useful devices and after a few downtimes with a huge pile of magical junk, that is either useful or can be sold to have some extra money. The Artificer imo is best in urban based campaigns, because his downtimes kinda rely on a steady supply of materials and potential customers.
Magic items in general got much more rarer in 5e (at least in comparison to 3.5 where you could find a +1 long sword in every second level of a dungeon). Crafting magic items is now an important mechanic that requires you to do special dungeon runs during your downtimes. If you give the Artificers his 3.5-abilities they'd just destroy that interesting mechanic.
And BTW Spell Storing Item is a class feature you get as an 11th level Artificer. You touch a weapon or a spellcasting focus and store a 1st or 2nd lvl spell in it that requires 1 action to cast.
Everyone that obtains such an object can activate the spell's effect by using an action. Such an item has a number of charges equal to twice your intelligence mod... so 10 as a gnome that rolled an 18 for intelligence. At that time it's not a big deal bc you can create ie 4 Spellwrought Tattoos(1st) or 2 lvl 2 for 50g each day.
Get creative. But it'd just completely break the game if you could store spells like you mentioned. Spellwroughts are already borderline OP.
Ever thought about, just casting spells with a bag of holding as your spellcasting focus? ;)
I mean, your focus can be ANY infused item. A good thing about the Artificer is, that you don't need to follow a strict path. You can really go bonkers with it because you can cast with any tool you can use or item you have infused. You could for example replicate a common magic tattoo put it onto your hand and cast with it. The masquerade tattoo for example gives you the ability to change its position and to cast disguise self once per day. It's not absolutely RAW because you're required to hold your focus in a free hand... but mechanically it just requires a free hand.
With the Artificer you're encouraged to go bonkers, change direction and do whatever suits the moment. Last session I disguised myself as a Kenku and mimicked a voice by using the audio feature of magical tinkering. Or you can troll NPCs by paying your beer with screaming coins or let their clothes smell like ogre farts. And I highly recommend to do such stuff during your next session. It's fun. But don't make it become a running gag, that gets annoying very quick.
That class is all about flavor. We are the true mad scientists of DnD. The crazier, the better.
"Wait a minute!" for ie. Hold Person is kinda funny, too.
TBH I never thought about a non-technical Artificer. I can't help myself, but thinking of Steampunk if I look at the Artificer.
What subclass do you use for yours?
I'm playing a Battle Smith and have been struggling on how to flavor the Catapult spell so last night at the table I had my Steel Defender essentially turn into a Mortar Tube and I loaded him with a vial of acid and had him launch it. I really liked that flavor. My DM said he would allow me to have my SD use his movement on my turn in order to either grab the object being lobbed or to get into position.
I also needed some time to flavor Catapult. It's the Grav-Firing-Mode of my Blunderbuss-Blaster but it could be an alternate firing mode of your Crossbow-Blaster instead. If I switch into that mode I can use Mage Hand and Catapult. I reskinned the Hand of Mage Hand into a stream of flickering air that reaches from my gun to the point of effect and I can spend a spell slot to lob things around (Catapult).