Spell-Storing Item got a lot better with the update to Artificers. Now capable of storing 3rd-level spells, they have become a great vessel to repeatedly unleash a big, powerful damage spell. The one problem with that is that the Artificer spell list now contains not a single non-cantrip spell that does damage. The good news, though, is that subclass spells do add back in some damage-dealing options. The bad news, if you wanted to play an Alchemist or Cartographer, is that your options aren't great for 3rd level spells (Cartographers do have a damage spell, but it's one that lasts a whole combat and constantly asks you to use your action, which makes the ten-a-day benefit less exciting).
But while the Armorer is my favorite and I have a sentimental attachment to the Artillerist because of my player in the Ravnica game, I think the general consensus is that the Battle Smith is the highest-damage-potential of the Artificer subclasses. Its 3rd level damage spell, is also very good (though the other two have great, nay, classic ones as well, with Fireball and Lightning Bolt). Conjure Barrage got a big glow-up in 2024, now dealing 5d8 Force damage in a 60-foot cone, and also, crucially, only hitting your enemies. So you can now blast this into a group of friendlies with spell-sclupting/careful spell baked into the spell itself.
5d8 is an average of 22.5, which is less than Fireball or Lightning Bolt, but the 60-foot cone is pretty enormous, and the friendly fire protection I think makes up for, maybe more than makes up for, the loss of 5.5 damage in comparison (oh, and Force is the most reliable damage type in the game).
Now, there's a hack here that may or may not have been intended, but I think we can logically justify it:
The spell Homunculus Servant creates a tiny flying robot buddy that can attack foes with a somewhat weak little blast at a 30-foot range. Like Find Familiar or Find Steed, once summoned, the homunculus will stick around indefinitely. It also doesn't require any action on your part to command, so it won't interfere with your Steel Defender. Its attack is fine - kind of just free extra damage. But it's also a creature, and a creature can potentially use an item.
Now, you could argue that with a 4 in Strength and Tiny size, maybe this thing can't carry the item we imbue with Conjure Barrage. But 4 Strength means the ability to carry 60 pounds (while being larger than medium increases your carrying capacity, I don't believe that being smaller reduces it. But we could still halve and then halve it again and we would be ok). You can store a spell in an item that is either a simple or martial weapon, or something you could use as a spellcasting focus. A Dart weighs just 1/4 of a pound, meaning that this is absolutely light enough for a Homunculus to carry. Even if the capacity is 15 pounds because of size (though obviously Small creatures don't have a penalty, given that Halflings and Gnomes exist) only the Pike and Heavy Crossbow outweigh that among all weapons in the PHB.
Thus, ten times a day, we're going to be getting Conjure Barrage more or less for free. On a fairly arduous adventuring day, you might have four fights, and if they each last 3 rounds (which would be very arduous indeed) you still be able to use this all but two rounds the entire day.
The other really big benefit for Battle Smiths is that, because they are the only class (well, actually technically not, as Artillerists have a somewhat narrow option here) that fights with weapons that can interact with the various powerful damage-enhancing feats.
So, let's make some assumptions:
Using Point Buy, we're going to have our Intelligence at 17 at level 1, and probably spread other stats to ensure we have a 14 Dex, 13 Strength (for a feat) and decent Con (we might need to go with 14).
We're going to be fighting with a Greatsword or Maul. Because we're doing a straight-class build here, weapon mastery is going to be hard to come by, so the Maul is fairly interchangeable with the Greatsword at least for now.
We'll take Great Weapon Master at level 4. While the boost to Strength is kind of useless for us here (there's a world where I build a Strength-based Battle Smith, but I think there are so many benefits to high Intelligence that I think it's likely preferable, even if that's not strictly true for the raw damage output) we're going to get the best martial damage-boost feat in the game, which I believe will make up for delaying capping our Intelligence.
At 8, we'll take War Caster to get our Int to 18 and to help maintain concentration on the various spells that might require that.
By level 10, we can make ourselves a +2 weapon.
So:
If we assume a kind of meat-and-potatoes turn, just striking foes with our melee attacks, our Steel Defender, and letting our Homunculus blast them with Conjure Barrage, how much DPR are we looking at?
First off, let's figure out how many foes we're fighting and what their stats are.
At level 11, an easy encounter has a budget of 1,900 xp per player. On a non-boss fight, having a number of enemies equal to the party members is pretty reasonable, so 1,900 xp would be something like an Umber Hulk (CR 5 is 1,800 xp). Let's say we're a party of five players, so we have 5 Umber Hulks we're facing. These guys have an AC of 18, and their Dex save bonus is just +1.
Our attack bonus at this level for our +2 Maul is +10 (4 from Int, 4 from PB, and 2 from the weapon) and just +8 for our Steel Defender. So, we have a 65% hit chance, and our Steel Defender has a 55% hit chance. Our spell save DC is 16. The chance for an Umber Hulk to dodge Conjure Barrage is thus 30%.
Maul damage:
Our hits are going to land for 2d6+10 (4 from Int, 4 from PB via Great Weapon Master, and 2 from the weapon) or 17. Our bonus crit damage is 7 - however, we might also do some extra stuff on a smite like Arcane Jolt and/or Shining Smite. If we save these only for smites, there's a good chance we won't run out of either option. To keep things simple, though, I'm going to only use Arcane Jolt and assume that we have some other concentration spell up like Heroism that we wouldn't want to drop for Shining Smit. Thus, our crit damage is actually 14, as it's now 6d6 (2d6 from the weapon, and the doubled arcane jolt doing 4d6) or 21.
Actually, hold on, we should do Arcane Jolt separately, as it can only happen once per turn. So just 7.
So, per attack we have 17x65%, or 11.05, plus 7x5%, or .35, giving us 11.4 damage per attack, and with two attacks, 22.8.
Arcane Jolt:
We're going to save this only for crits, as we only have four uses per day. With two attacks, each turn we have a 9.75% chance to land a crit on one or the other (much like we would if we had advantage). The damage here would be 4d6, or 14, so that's an extra 1.365.
Ah, but we can also use this with the Steel Defender, so we actually have three chances to crit. With three attacks, the chance for one to be a crit is roughly 14% (It's technically 14.2625, but perhaps we don't have to be so granular). So, 14x14% is basically 2 (1.99675, I couldn't resist).
Steel Defender:
The Steel Defender deals 1d8+6 on a hit (2 from itself, 4 from our Int) or 10.5 on average, with an extra 4.5 on a crit. As we established, they have a 55% chance to hit.
10.5x55% is 5.775, and 4.5x5% is .225, for a total of 6 precisely (well, that lined up well)
Summing it Up So Far:
Before we get to the Conjure Barrage, let's figure out what our single-target damage is, just by summing up the 22.8 from our maul, the 2 from our Arcane Jolt, and the 6 from our Steel Defender, giving us 30.8
Conjure Barrage:
Thanks to the IFF built into this spell, and its wide cone, I think that it's pretty reasonable against a group of 5 foes to be able to hit 4 of them each time. It very much depends on the battlefield. Another factor to consider is that even if it won't hit your allies, they still might be providing half cover to the Umber Hulks (and the Hulks might provide cover to them too. Now, you might fix this by having your Homunculus fly way up high and shoot down, which could hit a 30-foot radius circle on the ground, though its speed might make it take a while to get into this position.
Let's just treat it like half of the Hulks have half-cover. So two hulks are going to have a 30% chance to save, and two are going to have a 40% chance to save (they still take half on a success). On a failure, a creature takes 22.5 damage, and on a success, they take 11.25.
Uncovered Hulks:
22.5x70% is 15.75, and 11.25x30% is 3.375, so 19.125 each turn. Between two hulks, that's 38.25
Covered Hulks:
22.5x60% is 13.5, and 11.25x40% is 4.5, so 18 each turn. Between the two covered hulks, that's 36 damage.
So, all together, Conjure Barrage is dealing 74.25.
All Together:
That means that we can deal 105.05 damage per turn. Against just one Hulk, assuming it's not covered, we're doing 49.925 damage.
I will say that we did pick some targets with poor Dex saves, but they also have high ACs. These numbers will shift to reflect that, and other factors, like narrow hallways and full cover, and even just fewer targets can really reduce the power of Conjure Barrage (though even with a single target, we got about 2/3s of our single target damage from it).
The Battle Smith really does come out ahead here, I think, because while an Armorer can pretty easily avoid hitting allies, they might struggle to get more targets into the area of a lightning bolt (though the Homunculus can be all about positioning to maximize that chance). The Artillerist has the opposite problem - it's often very easy to get lots of targets in a Fireball, but much harder to avoid friendly fire.
I'm not sure that around 50 damage per round actually makes this a top-tier damage build (a Bladesinger with Conjure Minor Elementals upcast to 6th level is probably going to beat it, but I'm not going to do that math right now) but I think what makes this really impressive is that it's kind of "default." You're not blowing any super precious resources, and beyond casting Homunculus Servant and putting the spell in the item, you don't need much to prepare it. This is, truly, something you'll be able to do all the time.
While you could eventually run out of uses of the spell-storing item, your fights are going to go faster if you can blast a big AoE spell every single turn. In other words, the power of the spell-storing item might actually help it conserve its own charges.
Now, the Homunculus can get killed. But it's also a ritual spell, and I think it's not a terrible idea to keep it prepared so that if you have an hour of calm and quiet, you can get it back. The gem to cast it is not consumed, so it's pretty trivial to get the homunculus back.
And best of all, this all feels like the Artificer doing something that will wow the rest of the party, something that no other class can really do.
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