- 5e

Building an Artificer

We're looking at either doing Battle Smith or Artillerist.

Conditions:

The Artillerist multiclassing with an Arcane Archer looks like it could be fun.

Using the Steel Defender as a Mount https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/dzkbl2/looking_for_clarification_on_using_steel_defender/ https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/160150/does-a-steel-defender-mounted-by-an-artificer-still-get-its-actions-if-commande https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/dz5u3j/iron_defender_as_a_mount/?st=k397gblq&sh=b0745638

https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1207428655401488384?lang=en

Infusions

What about a Returning Weapon build instead of Repeating Shot? One of my favorite builds to date was a level 4 character with 2 Artificer / 2 Wizard (Abjuration) with access to Gauntlets of Ogre Strength for a one-shot; he threw a Spear for combat.

Repeating Shot in a pistol or crossbow:

Repeating Shot. This magic weapon grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it when it's used to make a ranged attack, and it ignores the loading property if it has it.

If the weapon lacks ammunition, it produces its own, automatically creating one piece of magic ammunition when the wielder makes a ranged attack with it. The ammunition created by the weapon vanishes the instant after it hits or misses a target.

Does Repeating Shot work with a Shield?

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/150572/does-a-hand-crossbow-with-the-repeating-shot-infusion-still-require-a-free-hand

The Ammunition errata (emphasis on the errata) and Loading:

Ammunition. You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon. Each time you attack with the weapon, you expend one piece of ammunition. Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack (you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon). At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.

Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.

Strictly RAW, removing the Loading aspect has nothing to with the specific rules with Ammunition so you'd still technically need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon. It's strange because the clarification errata should have probably applied to Loading instead of Ammunition but it's seems intentional once you realize bows do not have the Loading property, only the Ammunition property.

Jeremy Crawford chimed in on this topic during the Dragon+ Q&A on 06/05/2019:

It says you need to have a free hand to reload a one-handed weapon. Well, it stands to reason that if you don't need to load ammunition, you don't need that free hand to load the nonexistent ammunition. So the short answer is, you do not need to keep your hand free to load ammunition that you don't have to load. [...] Do whatever you want with that other hand.

-Jeremy Crawford

His answer isn't official and while I agree with his logic 100%, D&D's rules only apply when they are mentioned (see: spell casting rules and focuses, it's ugly); to stay consistent with how the rules are supposed to work, the errata implies you still need a free hand to load the weapon -- but with what? It's important to consider the second paragraph in Repeating Shot, you do not use ammunition with a repeating shot weapon.

So, a Repeating Shot weapon with a Shield works only because the weapon isn't loaded. Loading ammunition into a weapon requires a free hand, so it implies any special/magical ammunition you have needs to be loaded when you have a free hand (e.g. out of combat) and could be fired once until the Repeating Shot property applies.