A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Oh, so now you're tattooing the familiars created with tattoos? Is this Tattooception now?
And how is bless going to help a critter with one (1) HP survive an AoE?
it might only survive if there was a ruling for a safe pocket or if the 30 foot range of bless kept it beyond the 20 foot radius of, say, fireball. or if the familiar wasn't in the direction of a cone attack.
If an enemy needs to modify an attack just because of a familiar, that's also a win.
There is no reason to homebrew/houserule anything. RAW, each Artificer can only learn the Replicate Spellwrought Tattoo Infusion once, and can only use it once per day. This thread’s entire line of thought is predicated on an Artificer being able to do something they cannot do RAW. Ergo, the problem being discussed does not exist.
In regard to the multiple tattoos part of my scenario i conjectured that, "Locations like the Yawning Portal might rapidly become sites for tattoo parlours to spring up with artificers popping in to trade their lightning-fast inkworks." This was based on the idea that there might be money to be made in providing spellwought tattoos among infusions offered,
I understand that, but what you seem to not understand is that it doesn’t work like that.
An Artificer can only infuse an item at the end of a long rest. So the “customer” would have to basically be waiting for the Artificer to get up; shit, shower, shave and shine, and then IMMEDIATELY get inked. Then, that customer would have to cast the spell within the next 24 hours before the Artificer finishes their next long rest and inks someone else again.
A cantrip/1st-level spell in a magic item makes it common, or valued at 1d6×10gp according to Xanathar's Guide, ÷2 for a consumable item. That means an Artificer could make a maximum of 30gp/day selling their one, single tattoo per day…. And they have to deal with waking up every morning knowing there’s gonna be a creeper lurking outside the bathroom waiting for them to come out. After a week of creepers, they put between 70-210gp in their pocket….
An adventuring Artificer can make thousands of gp and find all tons of other cool swag to boot. To an adventurer, 70-210gp is asswipe money. That infusion slot would be better spent on a Homunculus Servant for themselves to help them go get some real cash.
On top of all that ☝️, an Artificer who sits around all week servicing creepers who lurk outside the bathroom is not out adventuring, which means no XP. That character will die as an unremembered, moderately wealthy 2nd level Artificer with a lifetime if creepy, boring memories. The one that stops the nonsense and sets out on the road to adventure will likely be remembered forever as a hero of legend having died as a ridiculously rich, fairly high-level Artificer with a lifetime of exciting experiences. (At least if I’m their DM the will. 😜)
If a player wants their PC to be an ink master as their downtime job, go ‘head. But their income won’t be calculated by the infusion, nosir. They get wages just like everyone else.^1,2&3
Remember, “D&D” stands for “Dungeons & Dragons,” not “Dayjobs & Downtime.”
A busy section of an artificer's day can surely start at any stage. Or are you saying, for instance, that an artificer, say, can't have breakfast etc. before starting on the work of infusions? And I can't see why an artificer couldn't prepare needles or other items ready for trade.
Whatever time the wake up is irrelevant, they can only create infusions at the end of a long rest. Period. Not “after a long rest,” not “a number of times per long rest,” no. Specifically at the very end of their long rest. As soon as they stop “resting” and start doing anything else they have missed their window and need to wait another day to try again. (I would say breakfast would be part of the rest, but I personally don’t eat breakfast so my long rest ends as soon as I put on pants and go downstairs.)
Dude,* the thing is wort 30gp max. If a player wants to waste one of their PC’s very limited and exceedingly precious daily infusions to whip up trinket they can hock for 30gp, my concern as DM is not the spare change they’re putting in the piggy bank. My concern is whether or not they realize they are wasting their class feature, and what their mindset is as to why. If they know and are doing it for their personal enjoyment of their PC, but they are savvy and considerate enough to not be doing it in spite of the party, cool. If they know their doing it as a lolmeme and either don’t care if it’s disruptive to the party, or worse yet to deliberately be disruptive… booted. (Sposta don’t play dat.) If however they legitimately think they’re being clever and beating the system or something then I would start to question how well they understand the game and if I gotta deal with that or not. As DM I have to deal with encounter balance, which means I also need to consider intra-party balance. If the party is itself balanced then my life is easy because I just need to balance the encounters and make sure they run realisticly. (Remember, the monsters and bad people don’t know they’re a statblock in a game, they like living and want to win just as much as the PCs do.)
However, if the party is too unbalanced in power level then I need to try to help them rebalance again. A little variance is normal, but if one PC is 1337, most of the rest are more “typical strong characters,” and the last one is off in the bushes trying to catch fish with with a spork then I got a problem. See, if I throw an encounter at them hard enough to challenge the the bulk of the party backed up by the ringer, that one off in the weeds will end up coming across as underperforming compared to the others which the player will likely feel bad about but probably doesn’t understand why it’s happening. And the other PCs will have to constantly be helping and then their players start to get frustrated which makes the first one feel worse, which makes the others feel bad… no bueno.
Nudging things to help rebalance the PCs if one of them is an outlier is not hard. If the outlier is more powerful than the others, a boon here, a magic item there, stuff that’ll appeal to the individuals so they end up where they’re sposta go…. Do it right and it isn’t even particularly obvious to the players. If the outlier is less powerful than the others, those players will also want to help their friend and will start to give their PC a little extra so it doesn’t even look like I did anything at all. But trying to get ⅗ of the party up a notch or two closer to 1337 while simultaneously trying to get Tiny Tim up four or five notches…. That situation is always either a headache to do right; ends up looking so incredibly ham handed that it breaks verisimilitude for the players; or else requires one or more OOC conversations which is always unfortunate, often awkward, and sometimes goes poorly.
An Artificer can literally be, have, or do exactly whatever the party needs when managed intelligently and with forethought. An Artificer can also be pile of hot mess if someone just does a bunch of wacky stuff, which they can do. Or an Artificer can be that PC I have to nudge the rest of the party up to meet if they are really optimized, like S-Tier all day.* So the question then becomes: “Why is this PC capable of blowing the bell curve for the whole class running a bush-league, penny-ante, back-alley side hustle selling hot familiars in counterfeit tattoos for a paltry 30gp a pop?” 🤨 Ya dig?
*(I use "dude" as a gender neutral form of address.) *(If the player is frittering their PC’s infusion for a measly 30gp because they recognize that their PC is far stronger than the others so they’re bringing it down a little to get closer to everyone else, then I also wanna know that so I’m not tryin’a do the opposite so we’re not rowing in different directions.)
Maybe this has been covered or maybe I’m just thinking of it wrong but if an artificer infused a needle for a tattoo and sells it, the needle becomes the ink which then becomes the tattoo. So the infusion transfers from one state to the next and ends up as a tattoo. So an adventurer can go off adventuring and either
1. the adventurer doesn’t use the tattoo right away and the artificer is unable to use the infusion again until the adventurer uses it (which could be weeks/months) so that infusion slot is wasted all that time as the infusion is still on the tattoo. Or
2. the artificer infuses another needle the next day and the adventurer’s tattoo disappears unused and a useless waste of money.
as far as familiars go I know people really like familiars but I really don’t see the issue as they can be dispatched easily by the enemy if they become a problem during combat.
One Area of Effect spell will usually flatten all the Familiars in the party if the bad guys go first.
A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Maybe this has been covered or maybe I’m just thinking of it wrong but if an artificer infused a needle for a tattoo and sells it, the needle becomes the ink which then becomes the tattoo. So the infusion transfers from one state to the next and ends up as a tattoo. So an adventurer can go off adventuring and either
1. the adventurer doesn’t use the tattoo right away and the artificer is unable to use the infusion again until the adventurer uses it (which could be weeks/months) so that infusion slot is wasted all that time as the infusion is still on the tattoo. Or
2. the artificer infuses another needle the next day and the adventurer’s tattoo disappears unused and a useless waste of money.
as far as familiars go I know people really like familiars but I really don’t see the issue as they can be dispatched easily by the enemy if they become a problem during combat.
One Area of Effect spell will usually flatten all the Familiars in the party if the bad guys go first.
A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Good catch. Thanks. I guess somatic components are also out for spells like catapult while that owl's flying! :D
Maybe this has been covered or maybe I’m just thinking of it wrong but if an artificer infused a needle for a tattoo and sells it, the needle becomes the ink which then becomes the tattoo. So the infusion transfers from one state to the next and ends up as a tattoo. So an adventurer can go off adventuring and either
1. the adventurer doesn’t use the tattoo right away and the artificer is unable to use the infusion again until the adventurer uses it (which could be weeks/months) so that infusion slot is wasted all that time as the infusion is still on the tattoo. Or
2. the artificer infuses another needle the next day and the adventurer’s tattoo disappears unused and a useless waste of money.
as far as familiars go I know people really like familiars but I really don’t see the issue as they can be dispatched easily by the enemy if they become a problem during combat.
One Area of Effect spell will usually flatten all the Familiars in the party if the bad guys go first.
A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Wonder if it would work with a raven taught to mimic the command word...
Maybe this has been covered or maybe I’m just thinking of it wrong but if an artificer infused a needle for a tattoo and sells it, the needle becomes the ink which then becomes the tattoo. So the infusion transfers from one state to the next and ends up as a tattoo. So an adventurer can go off adventuring and either
1. the adventurer doesn’t use the tattoo right away and the artificer is unable to use the infusion again until the adventurer uses it (which could be weeks/months) so that infusion slot is wasted all that time as the infusion is still on the tattoo. Or
2. the artificer infuses another needle the next day and the adventurer’s tattoo disappears unused and a useless waste of money.
as far as familiars go I know people really like familiars but I really don’t see the issue as they can be dispatched easily by the enemy if they become a problem during combat.
One Area of Effect spell will usually flatten all the Familiars in the party if the bad guys go first.
A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Wonder if it would work with a raven taught to mimic the command word...
Bless also has somatic components which a raven might have difficulties with, especially while flying.
I was getting confused with the 11th level artificer ability: Spell-Storing Item ... While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier.
I think spellwrought tattoos only negate the need for material components.
Theoretically, a raven might be enabled to cast spells with a purely verbal component and candidates might include Cause Fear, Command, Compelled Duel, Dissonant Whispers, Faerie Fire, Hail of Thorns, and (that potential lifesaver) Healing Word. RAW I don't know if there is anything explicit to say this wouldn't work though a DM might houserule and call in similarities to wild shaped druids not being able to spell cast.
Maybe this has been covered or maybe I’m just thinking of it wrong but if an artificer infused a needle for a tattoo and sells it, the needle becomes the ink which then becomes the tattoo. So the infusion transfers from one state to the next and ends up as a tattoo. So an adventurer can go off adventuring and either
1. the adventurer doesn’t use the tattoo right away and the artificer is unable to use the infusion again until the adventurer uses it (which could be weeks/months) so that infusion slot is wasted all that time as the infusion is still on the tattoo. Or
2. the artificer infuses another needle the next day and the adventurer’s tattoo disappears unused and a useless waste of money.
as far as familiars go I know people really like familiars but I really don’t see the issue as they can be dispatched easily by the enemy if they become a problem during combat.
One Area of Effect spell will usually flatten all the Familiars in the party if the bad guys go first.
A familiar that has been inked with a spellwrought tattoo could happily maintain a spell like bless while sitting in a pocket or similar.
Bless, for instance, has a range of 30 feet which could keep a familiar well away from an aoe epicentre.
Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Wonder if it would work with a raven taught to mimic the command word...
Bless also has somatic components which a raven might have difficulties with, especially while flying.
I was getting confused with the 11th level artificer ability: Spell-Storing Item ... While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier.
I think spellwrought tattoos only negate the need for material components.
Theoretically, a raven might be enabled to cast spells with a purely verbal component and candidates might include Cause Fear, Command, Compelled Duel, Dissonant Whispers, Faerie Fire, Hail of Thorns, and (that potential lifesaver) Healing Word. RAW I don't know if there is anything explicit to say this wouldn't work though a DM might houserule and call in similarities to wild shaped druids not being able to spell cast.
lol, i was originally joking... but now i need to chat with my dm about getting healing word to tattoo on my homunculus ....
Edit: I am also one who would houserule infusion to not allow consumable items (originally thought it did but it specifically calls out scrolls and potions, learn something new every day). that said with discounted production cost at lvl 10 on scrolls and magic items an artificer could probably still make bank on these
There is no reason to homebrew/houserule anything. RAW, each Artificer can only learn the Replicate Spellwrought Tattoo Infusion once, and can only use it once per day. This thread’s entire line of thought is predicated on an Artificer being able to do something they cannot do RAW. Ergo, the problem being discussed does not exist.
In regard to the multiple tattoos part of my scenario i conjectured that, "Locations like the Yawning Portal might rapidly become sites for tattoo parlours to spring up with artificers popping in to trade their lightning-fast inkworks." This was based on the idea that there might be money to be made in providing spellwought tattoos among infusions offered,
I understand that, but what you seem to not understand is that it doesn’t work like that.
An Artificer can only infuse an item at the end of a long rest. So the “customer” would have to basically be waiting for the Artificer to get up; shit, shower, shave and shine, and then IMMEDIATELY get inked. Then, that customer would have to cast the spell within the next 24 hours before the Artificer finishes their next long rest and inks someone else again.
A cantrip/1st-level spell in a magic item makes it common, or valued at 1d6×10gp according to Xanathar's Guide, ÷2 for a consumable item. That means an Artificer could make a maximum of 30gp/day selling their one, single tattoo per day…. And they have to deal with waking up every morning knowing there’s gonna be a creeper lurking outside the bathroom waiting for them to come out. After a week of creepers, they put between 70-210gp in their pocket….
An adventuring Artificer can make thousands of gp and find all tons of other cool swag to boot. To an adventurer, 70-210gp is asswipe money. That infusion slot would be better spent on a Homunculus Servant for themselves to help them go get some real cash.
On top of all that ☝️, an Artificer who sits around all week servicing creepers who lurk outside the bathroom is not out adventuring, which means no XP. That character will die as an unremembered, moderately wealthy 2nd level Artificer with a lifetime if creepy, boring memories. The one that stops the nonsense and sets out on the road to adventure will likely be remembered forever as a hero of legend having died as a ridiculously rich, fairly high-level Artificer with a lifetime of exciting experiences. (At least if I’m their DM the will. 😜)
If a player wants their PC to be an ink master as their downtime job, go ‘head. But their income won’t be calculated by the infusion, nosir. They get wages just like everyone else.^1,2&3
Remember, “D&D” stands for “Dungeons & Dragons,” not “Dayjobs & Downtime.”
A busy section of an artificer's day can surely start at any stage. Or are you saying, for instance, that an artificer, say, can't have breakfast etc. before starting on the work of infusions? And I can't see why an artificer couldn't prepare needles or other items ready for trade.
Whatever time the wake up is irrelevant, they can only create infusions at the end of a long rest. Period. Not “after a long rest,” not “a number of times per long rest,” no. Specifically at the very end of their long rest. As soon as they stop “resting” and start doing anything else they have missed their window and need to wait another day to try again. (I would say breakfast would be part of the rest, but I personally don’t eat breakfast so my long rest ends as soon as I put on pants and go downstairs.)
Dude,* the thing is wort 30gp max. If a player wants to waste one of their PC’s very limited and exceedingly precious daily infusions to whip up trinket they can hock for 30gp, my concern as DM is not the spare change they’re putting in the piggy bank. My concern is whether or not they realize they are wasting their class feature, and what their mindset is as to why. If they know and are doing it for their personal enjoyment of their PC, but they are savvy and considerate enough to not be doing it in spite of the party, cool. If they know their doing it as a lolmeme and either don’t care if it’s disruptive to the party, or worse yet to deliberately be disruptive… booted. (Sposta don’t play dat.) If however they legitimately think they’re being clever and beating the system or something then I would start to question how well they understand the game and if I gotta deal with that or not. As DM I have to deal with encounter balance, which means I also need to consider intra-party balance. If the party is itself balanced then my life is easy because I just need to balance the encounters and make sure they run realisticly. (Remember, the monsters and bad people don’t know they’re a statblock in a game, they like living and want to win just as much as the PCs do.)
However, if the party is too unbalanced in power level then I need to try to help them rebalance again. A little variance is normal, but if one PC is 1337, most of the rest are more “typical strong characters,” and the last one is off in the bushes trying to catch fish with with a spork then I got a problem. See, if I throw an encounter at them hard enough to challenge the the bulk of the party backed up by the ringer, that one off in the weeds will end up coming across as underperforming compared to the others which the player will likely feel bad about but probably doesn’t understand why it’s happening. And the other PCs will have to constantly be helping and then their players start to get frustrated which makes the first one feel worse, which makes the others feel bad… no bueno.
Nudging things to help rebalance the PCs if one of them is an outlier is not hard. If the outlier is more powerful than the others, a boon here, a magic item there, stuff that’ll appeal to the individuals so they end up where they’re sposta go…. Do it right and it isn’t even particularly obvious to the players. If the outlier is less powerful than the others, those players will also want to help their friend and will start to give their PC a little extra so it doesn’t even look like I did anything at all. But trying to get ⅗ of the party up a notch or two closer to 1337 while simultaneously trying to get Tiny Tim up four or five notches…. That situation is always either a headache to do right; ends up looking so incredibly ham handed that it breaks verisimilitude for the players; or else requires one or more OOC conversations which is always unfortunate, often awkward, and sometimes goes poorly.
An Artificer can literally be, have, or do exactly whatever the party needs when managed intelligently and with forethought. An Artificer can also be pile of hot mess if someone just does a bunch of wacky stuff, which they can do. Or an Artificer can be that PC I have to nudge the rest of the party up to meet if they are really optimized, like S-Tier all day.* So the question then becomes: “Why is this PC capable of blowing the bell curve for the whole class running a bush-league, penny-ante, back-alley side hustle selling hot familiars in counterfeit tattoos for a paltry 30gp a pop?” 🤨 Ya dig?
*(I use "dude" as a gender neutral form of address.) *(If the player is frittering their PC’s infusion for a measly 30gp because they recognize that their PC is far stronger than the others so they’re bringing it down a little to get closer to everyone else, then I also wanna know that so I’m not tryin’a do the opposite so we’re not rowing in different directions.)
Right??? My Artificer and Barbarian have been rolling up to every encounter with +1 scale mail, total of 19 AC EACH. The party familiar has been killed by blindsight monsters THREE times in seven levels, and killed in combat five more times. Because every time he does something, he gets shot down. Helping the party is so much more useful since the Warlock can just make a new familiar the next time he sits down in a house.
And as so many people have pointed out, the tattoos disappear when they switch the infusion.
A funny solution is that any tat the artificer produces for Find Familiar is always just the same familiar. If he tat's someone to cast Find Familiar that new caster steals this same one familiar from the previous owner.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Also in case i missed this point. DMG downtime The creation of a magic item is a lengthy, expensive task. To start, a character must have a formula that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item’s rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items table. For example, a 3rd-level character could create a wand of magic missiles (an uncommon item), as long as the character has spell slots and can cast magic missile. That same character could make a +1 weapon (another uncommon item), no particular spell required.
Artificers cannot cast FF hence cannot make a scroll or a tattoo of it. Spell scrolls and spellwrought tattoos you still need to know the spell to make it. SO even if you want to say get around that with items ok. But they still cant cast that spell you put it in a scroll or tattoo
Second point From spellwrought tattoo
Produced by a special needle, this magic tattoo contains a single spell of up to 5th level, wrought on your skin by a magic needle. To use the tattoo, you must hold the needle against your skin and speak the command word. The needle turns into ink that becomes the tattoo, which appears on the skin in whatever design you like. Once the tattoo is there, you can cast its spell, requiring no material components. The tattoo glows faintly while you cast the spell and for the spell’s duration. Once the spell ends, the tattoo vanishes from your skin.
Find familiar is permanent so that tattoo would never go away as per say. SO now if the artificer makes a new infusion that tattoo would vanish as per RAW
Artificer class features You can infuse more than one nonmagical object at the end of a long rest; the maximum number of objects appears in the Infused Items column of the Artificer table. You must touch each of the objects, and each of your infusions can be in only one object at a time. Moreover, no object can bear more than one of your infusions at a time. If you try to exceed your maximum number of infusions, the oldest infusion immediately ends, and then the new infusion applies.
Also 24 hours past when it was made it goes Poof too the artificer isnt there to repower the tattoo.
Also in case i missed this point. DMG downtime The creation of a magic item is a lengthy, expensive task. To start, a character must have a formula that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item’s rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items table. For example, a 3rd-level character could create a wand of magic missiles (an uncommon item), as long as the character has spell slots and can cast magic missile. That same character could make a +1 weapon (another uncommon item), no particular spell required.
Artificers cannot cast FF hence cannot make a scroll or a tattoo of it. Spell scrolls and spellwrought tattoos you still need to know the spell to make it. SO even if you want to say get around that with items ok. But they still cant cast that spell you put it in a scroll or tattoo
Second point From spellwrought tattoo
Produced by a special needle, this magic tattoo contains a single spell of up to 5th level, wrought on your skin by a magic needle. To use the tattoo, you must hold the needle against your skin and speak the command word. The needle turns into ink that becomes the tattoo, which appears on the skin in whatever design you like. Once the tattoo is there, you can cast its spell, requiring no material components. The tattoo glows faintly while you cast the spell and for the spell’s duration. Once the spell ends, the tattoo vanishes from your skin.
Find familiar is permanent so that tattoo would never go away as per say. SO now if the artificer makes a new infusion that tattoo would vanish as per RAW
Artificer class features You can infuse more than one nonmagical object at the end of a long rest; the maximum number of objects appears in the Infused Items column of the Artificer table. You must touch each of the objects, and each of your infusions can be in only one object at a time. Moreover, no object can bear more than one of your infusions at a time. If you try to exceed your maximum number of infusions, the oldest infusion immediately ends, and then the new infusion applies.
Also 24 hours past when it was made it goes Poof too the artificer isnt there to repower the tattoo.
Just my two cents.
Valuable thoughts and the kind of things that I would go for.
Using this infusion, you replicate a particular magic item..., you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls.
This, for instance, can enable the replication of a hat of wizardry potentially enabling the casting of any cantrip on the wizard's list even though many of the spells aren't specifically available on the artificer's list.
The spellcasting of find familiar takes one hour but the duration of the spell is instantaneous. The spell instantaneously ends with the result that you then have a familiar. If the existence of the familiar was dependent on an ongoing duration of the spell then dispel magic would be able to get rid of a familiar which is not the case. Familiars are a permanent product of a spell that has been cast.
DMG downtime The creation of a magic item is a lengthy, expensive task. To start, a character must have a formula that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item’s rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items table. For example, a 3rd-level character could create a wand of magic missiles (an uncommon item), as long as the character has spell slots and can cast magic missile. That same character could make a +1 weapon (another uncommon item), no particular spell required.
Artificers cannot cast FF hence cannot make a scroll or a tattoo of it. Spell scrolls and spellwrought tattoos you still need to know the spell to make it. SO even if you want to say get around that with items ok. But they still cant cast that spell you put it in a scroll or tattoo
Infusions are a class feature, not a downtime activity so that is completely irrelevant.
Produced by a special needle, this magic tattoo contains a single spell of up to 5th level, wrought on your skin by a magic needle. To use the tattoo, you must hold the needle against your skin and speak the command word. The needle turns into ink that becomes the tattoo, which appears on the skin in whatever design you like. Once the tattoo is there, you can cast its spell, requiring no material components. The tattoo glows faintly while you cast the spell and for the spell’s duration. Once the spell ends, the tattoo vanishes from your skin.
Find familiar is permanent so that tattoo would never go away as per say. SO now if the artificer makes a new infusion that tattoo would vanish as per RAW
Yea that is incorrect. As Gerg said, Find Familiar has an instantaneous duration.
:::Nods::: I guess he only other things I would say to this is the fact a artificer cannot make consumable items with this and a spellwrought would be considered a consumable item and not a permanent item.
Also one edit from artificer that I found too.
At 2nd level, you gain the ability to imbue mundane items with certain magical infusions. The magic items you create with this feature are effectively prototypes of permanent items.
Alternatively, you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls
I am a year late, and thus I don't know if you noticed in between, but you might have missed something with your math there: each in infusion you know can only be active once at a time. so 1 familiar per day is only 364 familars per year. You can't make 2 find familiar needles per day.
If you think a Find Familiar tattoo is "game-breaking" then, like, don't allow it. There are two completely viable arguments for saying no to the attempt:
- you can't create consumables with Replicate Magic Item (no potions or scrolls). Spellwrought Tattoos are just another consumable.
- nothing in the Replicate Magic Item or Spellwrought Tattoo descriptions explicitly allows, or even suggests, an artificer could create one to store a spell that isn't on the artificer spell list. Meanwhile, their 11th-level feature (Spell-Storing Item) expressly forbids doing it. It's a logical enough ruling to restrict artificer tattoos to artificer spells, which rules out Find Familiar (and a lot of the other spells you seem worried about). If you port in the 'casting time of 1 action' restriction from Spell-Storing Item on top of that (because why would a 2nd-level feature be better/more flexible than an 11th-level feature?), you're down to catapult, cure wounds, detect magic, disguise self, faerie fire, false life, grease, jump, longstrider, purify food and drink or tasha's caustic brew -- some useful stuff in there to be sure, but hardly game-breaking. Even if you don't, a feather fall or expeditious retreat tattoo doesn't seem like that big a deal, just handy in a pinch.
This is the most sensible interpretation.
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it might only survive if there was a ruling for a safe pocket or if the 30 foot range of bless kept it beyond the 20 foot radius of, say, fireball. or if the familiar wasn't in the direction of a cone attack.
If an enemy needs to modify an attack just because of a familiar, that's also a win.
Whatever time the wake up is irrelevant, they can only create infusions at the end of a long rest. Period. Not “after a long rest,” not “a number of times per long rest,” no. Specifically at the very end of their long rest. As soon as they stop “resting” and start doing anything else they have missed their window and need to wait another day to try again. (I would say breakfast would be part of the rest, but I personally don’t eat breakfast so my long rest ends as soon as I put on pants and go downstairs.)
Dude,* the thing is wort 30gp max. If a player wants to waste one of their PC’s very limited and exceedingly precious daily infusions to whip up trinket they can hock for 30gp, my concern as DM is not the spare change they’re putting in the piggy bank. My concern is whether or not they realize they are wasting their class feature, and what their mindset is as to why. If they know and are doing it for their personal enjoyment of their PC, but they are savvy and considerate enough to not be doing it in spite of the party, cool. If they know their doing it as a lolmeme and either don’t care if it’s disruptive to the party, or worse yet to deliberately be disruptive… booted. (Sposta don’t play dat.) If however they legitimately think they’re being clever and beating the system or something then I would start to question how well they understand the game and if I gotta deal with that or not. As DM I have to deal with encounter balance, which means I also need to consider intra-party balance. If the party is itself balanced then my life is easy because I just need to balance the encounters and make sure they run realisticly. (Remember, the monsters and bad people don’t know they’re a statblock in a game, they like living and want to win just as much as the PCs do.)
However, if the party is too unbalanced in power level then I need to try to help them rebalance again. A little variance is normal, but if one PC is 1337, most of the rest are more “typical strong characters,” and the last one is off in the bushes trying to catch fish with with a spork then I got a problem. See, if I throw an encounter at them hard enough to challenge the the bulk of the party backed up by the ringer, that one off in the weeds will end up coming across as underperforming compared to the others which the player will likely feel bad about but probably doesn’t understand why it’s happening. And the other PCs will have to constantly be helping and then their players start to get frustrated which makes the first one feel worse, which makes the others feel bad… no bueno.
Nudging things to help rebalance the PCs if one of them is an outlier is not hard. If the outlier is more powerful than the others, a boon here, a magic item there, stuff that’ll appeal to the individuals so they end up where they’re sposta go…. Do it right and it isn’t even particularly obvious to the players. If the outlier is less powerful than the others, those players will also want to help their friend and will start to give their PC a little extra so it doesn’t even look like I did anything at all. But trying to get ⅗ of the party up a notch or two closer to 1337 while simultaneously trying to get Tiny Tim up four or five notches…. That situation is always either a headache to do right; ends up looking so incredibly ham handed that it breaks verisimilitude for the players; or else requires one or more OOC conversations which is always unfortunate, often awkward, and sometimes goes poorly.
An Artificer can literally be, have, or do exactly whatever the party needs when managed intelligently and with forethought. An Artificer can also be pile of hot mess if someone just does a bunch of wacky stuff, which they can do. Or an Artificer can be that PC I have to nudge the rest of the party up to meet if they are really optimized, like S-Tier all day.* So the question then becomes: “Why is this PC capable of blowing the bell curve for the whole class running a bush-league, penny-ante, back-alley side hustle selling hot familiars in counterfeit tattoos for a paltry 30gp a pop?” 🤨 Ya dig?
*(I use "dude" as a gender neutral form of address.)
*(If the player is frittering their PC’s infusion for a measly 30gp because they recognize that their PC is far stronger than the others so they’re bringing it down a little to get closer to everyone else, then I also wanna know that so I’m not tryin’a do the opposite so we’re not rowing in different directions.)
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Generally impossible, as a spellwrought tattoo requires a spoken command by the tattooed to activate. You could do it with an imp, but you can't hand out Pact of the Chain with the tat, so that's of very niche use (although it does let your imp familiar have an owl familiar).
Good catch. Thanks. I guess somatic components are also out for spells like catapult while that owl's flying! :D
Wonder if it would work with a raven taught to mimic the command word...
Bless also has somatic components which a raven might have difficulties with, especially while flying.
I was getting confused with the 11th level artificer ability:
Spell-Storing Item
... While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier.
I think spellwrought tattoos only negate the need for material components.
Theoretically, a raven might be enabled to cast spells with a purely verbal component and candidates might include Cause Fear, Command, Compelled Duel, Dissonant Whispers, Faerie Fire, Hail of Thorns, and (that potential lifesaver) Healing Word. RAW I don't know if there is anything explicit to say this wouldn't work though a DM might houserule and call in similarities to wild shaped druids not being able to spell cast.
lol, i was originally joking... but now i need to chat with my dm about getting healing word to tattoo on my homunculus ....
Edit: I am also one who would houserule infusion to not allow consumable items (originally thought it did but it specifically calls out scrolls and potions, learn something new every day). that said with discounted production cost at lvl 10 on scrolls and magic items an artificer could probably still make bank on these
Right??? My Artificer and Barbarian have been rolling up to every encounter with +1 scale mail, total of 19 AC EACH. The party familiar has been killed by blindsight monsters THREE times in seven levels, and killed in combat five more times. Because every time he does something, he gets shot down. Helping the party is so much more useful since the Warlock can just make a new familiar the next time he sits down in a house.
And as so many people have pointed out, the tattoos disappear when they switch the infusion.
A funny solution is that any tat the artificer produces for Find Familiar is always just the same familiar. If he tat's someone to cast Find Familiar that new caster steals this same one familiar from the previous owner.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Also in case i missed this point.
DMG downtime
The creation of a magic item is a lengthy, expensive task. To start, a character must have a formula that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item’s rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items table. For example, a 3rd-level character could create a wand of magic missiles (an uncommon item), as long as the character has spell slots and can cast magic missile. That same character could make a +1 weapon (another uncommon item), no particular spell required.
Artificers cannot cast FF hence cannot make a scroll or a tattoo of it. Spell scrolls and spellwrought tattoos you still need to know the spell to make it. SO even if you want to say get around that with items ok. But they still cant cast that spell you put it in a scroll or tattoo
Second point From spellwrought tattoo
Produced by a special needle, this magic tattoo contains a single spell of up to 5th level, wrought on your skin by a magic needle. To use the tattoo, you must hold the needle against your skin and speak the command word. The needle turns into ink that becomes the tattoo, which appears on the skin in whatever design you like. Once the tattoo is there, you can cast its spell, requiring no material components. The tattoo glows faintly while you cast the spell and for the spell’s duration. Once the spell ends, the tattoo vanishes from your skin.
Find familiar is permanent so that tattoo would never go away as per say. SO now if the artificer makes a new infusion that tattoo would vanish as per RAW
Artificer class features
You can infuse more than one nonmagical object at the end of a long rest; the maximum number of objects appears in the Infused Items column of the Artificer table. You must touch each of the objects, and each of your infusions can be in only one object at a time. Moreover, no object can bear more than one of your infusions at a time. If you try to exceed your maximum number of infusions, the oldest infusion immediately ends, and then the new infusion applies.
Also 24 hours past when it was made it goes Poof too the artificer isnt there to repower the tattoo.
Just my two cents.
Valuable thoughts and the kind of things that I would go for.
RAW, an artificer can infuse to:
Replicate Magic Item
Using this infusion, you replicate a particular magic item..., you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls.
This, for instance, can enable the replication of a hat of wizardry potentially enabling the casting of any cantrip on the wizard's list even though many of the spells aren't specifically available on the artificer's list.
The spellcasting of find familiar takes one hour but the duration of the spell is instantaneous. The spell instantaneously ends with the result that you then have a familiar. If the existence of the familiar was dependent on an ongoing duration of the spell then dispel magic would be able to get rid of a familiar which is not the case. Familiars are a permanent product of a spell that has been cast.
Infusions are a class feature, not a downtime activity so that is completely irrelevant.
Yea that is incorrect. As Gerg said, Find Familiar has an instantaneous duration.
:::Nods::: I guess he only other things I would say to this is the fact a artificer cannot make consumable items with this and a spellwrought would be considered a consumable item and not a permanent item.
Also one edit from artificer that I found too.
At 2nd level, you gain the ability to imbue mundane items with certain magical infusions. The magic items you create with this feature are effectively prototypes of permanent items.
Alternatively, you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls
I am a year late, and thus I don't know if you noticed in between, but you might have missed something with your math there: each in infusion you know can only be active once at a time. so 1 familiar per day is only 364 familars per year. You can't make 2 find familiar needles per day.
This is the most sensible interpretation.