Replicate Magic Item 5e
Using this infusion, you replicate a particular magic item. You can learn this infusion multiple times; each time you do so, choose a magic item that you can make with it, picking from the Replicable Items tables. A table's title tells you the level you must be in the class to choose an item from the table. Alternatively, you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls.
In the tables, an item's entry tells you whether the item requires attunement. See the item's description in the Dungeon Master's Guide for more information about it, including the type of object required for its making.
If you have Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you can choose from among the common magic items in that book when you pick a magic item you can replicate with this infusion.
Review by Prince Phantom
Replicate Magic Item is a special infusion. Keep in mind that you can take an infusion more than once, you just can’t infuse a single item with multiple infusions. You’ll find that this infusion ends up taking up a lot of your known infusion slots, even if they aren’t one of your active infusions all the time.
You’ll also unlock the ability to create new and more powerful magic items as you level up, getting new options at 6th, 10th, and 14th level. This guide will review every single magic item you can create with this invocation, giving a rating out of 5 and denoting my pick for the best magic item for its level.
You can also create any common magic item from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, and while many of them are fun and flavorful, only a handful provide actual mechanical benefit and they are all pretty minor and often outclassed by our actual options or other infusions, so I won’t be covering them here. Also note that any items with charges can regain all of their charges on a long rest by reinfusing the item, so no need to roll to regain charges.
Level 2 Options
Alchemy Jug: 2/5
The ability to produce theoretically endless amounts of poison and acid can be used to great effect by a lot of characters, namely the Thief Rogue, and there are plenty of neat shenanigans you can get up to with a jar of mayonnaise. This one’s for the creative players.
Bag of Holding: 4/5 (Best of this level)
A classic, and it deserves every ounce of praise it gets. The ability to make infinite Bags of Holding can of course be used to make Bag of Holding bombs, instantly winning any encounter with a monster who lacks innate planar travel. Please do not do this and just use it for its intended purpose. I’d probably seek a real bag of holding ASAP so your infusion slot isn’t taken up by this, and only use this for when you absolutely need it until then.
Cap of Water Breathing: 1/5
You’ll know when you need this, but only being able to swap out our known infusions on level up make predicting when you’ll need this very difficult. Gets a higher rating if you know you’ll be playing in an aquatic campaign, but then you could just play a race with water breathing.
Goggles of Night: 1/5
Even if you don’t have darkvision already (and you probably do), this just isn’t a big enough impact for an infusion slot.
Rope of Climbing: 1/5
Just have your Homunculus Servant carry the rope up and tie it off.
Sending Stones: 1/5
The Message cantrip will suffice for inter-party communication, and if you need to talk to someone far away you need to give this to them first and also have this occupy one of your known infusions. There are better forms of long distance communication.
Wand of Magic Detection: 1/5
Detect Magic is a ritual spell available to every casting class, including Artificers.
Wand of Secrets: 1/5
This is a neat effect, but far too niche to take up an infusion slot. Not to mention the fact that we are actually pretty good at investigation checks, so we likely don’t need this anyway.
Level 6
Boots of Elvinkind: 1/5
Advantage on stealth checks is available through the infiltrator Armorer subclass, so if you really want to make a sneaky Artificer you probably already chose that. A whole infusion slot for advantage on one skill check is not worth it, even on dedicated stealth parties because advantage is kinda overkill when someone has Pass without Trace.
Cloak of Elvinkind: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Same as the Boots, except this requires attunement and gives others disadvantage on perception to spot us. Even worse than the boots actually.
Cloak of the Manta Ray: 1/5
It’s just too hard to predict when you’ll need this since we can only swap out for a different magic item on a level up.
Eyes of Charming: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
The save DC for this is just way to low for this level of play, and Charm Person isn’t even a very good spell anyway.
Gloves of Thievery: 2/5
If your DM loves locked doors and you as the Artificer are playing the roll of the Rogue in your party, this actually makes you really good at picking locks, especially because Artificers get tool expertise. It’s probably overkill though.
Lantern of Revealing: 1/5
This effect is just too niche unless your DM constantly uses invisible monsters. Also, by RAW, you still have disadvantage to hit them and they have advantage to hit you even if you can see them while they are invisible. Yes that is stupid, glad your brain is functioning.
Pipes of Haunting: 5/5
Could I interest you, a half caster, in 3 castings per day of a slightly worse Fear spell with a much better area of effect and no friendly fire? It’s also not a spell, so it can’t be counterspelled! This is an amazing area of effect control ability that any character would kill to have. Make sure you pick up wind instrument proficiency in all your Artificers, it’s worth it for this item alone.
Ring of Water Walking: 1/5
I love this stupid item for all the shenanigans of walking across liquid surfaces that aren’t water. Lava, mud now isn’t difficult terrain for you… ok yeah that’s about it. Oh also this isn’t very good, and definitely not worth an infusion slot.
Level 10
Boots of Striding and Springing: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
We can get a much better movement option at this level that completely outclasses this in every way, and no one plays with encumbrance anyway.
Boots of the Winterlands: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
This one is for all of you playing in Icewind Dale. Everyone else, ignore this.
Bracers of Archery: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
It’s a real shame that this only applies to short and long bows, because almost every optimized ranged weapon build is using a hand crossbow. Still, you may have someone in your party who would appreciate this.
Brooch of Shielding: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
There are a fair more monsters throwing out force damage ever since the latest Mordenkainen book, but still probably not enough to warrant this unless you notice your DM is using those monsters a ton. Even then, Resistant Armor is right there.
Cloak of Protection: 4/5 (Requires Attunement)
Simple and clean, if you want more AC and better saves, here you go. Great especially for melee Armorers who depend on their AC for survival while tanking.
Eyes of the Eagle: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Advantage on a skill check wasn’t worth an infusion slot at 2nd level, and it definitely isn’t worth it now, even if perception is one of the best skills.
Gauntlets of Ogre Strength: 3/5 (Requires Attunement)
This does a much better job of making you a macho man than Armor of Magical Strength does. Having a high strength is nice, but exactly how nice it is can be campaign dependent. If you already have a strong man on the team to lift heavy stuff, you probably don’t need this, but it can lead to interesting builds like an Armorer being able to make effective attacks with both their gauntlets and a polearm, giving them a bonus action attack.
Gloves of Missile Snaring: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Ranged weapon attacks are surprisingly uncommon (just ask any monk player), and our dexterity isn’t likely to be high enough to fully benefit from this. Not worth handing off either.
Gloves of Swimming and Climbing: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Climbing is irrelevant because we get a flight option at this level, and swimming comes up too rarely for us to be able to plan for when we can only switch our item selection out on level up.
Hat of Disguise: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
This is wonderfully silly, and I give my players this item all the time. Sadly it’s not all that effective at most tables, but if your table is the right fit, you’ll get lots of use out of this.
Headband of Intellect: 2/5* (Requires Attunement)
If you are starting your campaign at or above level 10, you can completely dump your intelligence and boost your other scores, selecting this to give you a 19 in intelligence, completely negating the dump. In that instance this is a 5/5, but in normal play your intelligence will probably already be this or higher. Could be good for an ally though.
Helm of Telepathy: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
The save DCs are just too low for this item, but you can get a lot out of Detect Thoughts without ever forcing a save, and this offers easy communication among your own party. Just not sure if it’s worth an infusion slot, especially if the Wizard is using Telepathic Bond at this level like they should be doing.
Medallion of Thoughts: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Strictly worse than the Helm of Telepathy in every way.
Necklace of Adaptation: 1/5
These are all very niche effects that don’t come up nearly often enough to warrant taking this.
Periapt of Wound Closure: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
Do you know what I really want when I am at 0 hit points? To recover hit points, which this does not do! The extra healing during short rests is the only reason to take this, and it’s only good if your table is doing enough encounters for you to be expending hit die consistently. Even then it isn’t that good.
Pipes of the Sewers: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Swarms of Rats just aren’t strong enough to warrant spending an infusion slot on this, and you won’t be seeing hostile giant rats at this tier of play.
Quiver of Ehlonna: 1/5
This is completely outclassed by the Bag of Holding and a normal quiver.
Ring of Jumping: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Outclassed because we get a flying option at this level.
Ring of Mind Shielding: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
These effects are just far too situational in most campaigns, and not even good in campaigns where mind reading is common, because they’ll just read the minds of your friends instead of you.
Slippers of Spider Climbing: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Outclassed by the flying option at this level.
Ventilating Lungs: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Far too situational, and Gust of Wind isn’t making up for that fact. Sounds painful too.
Winged Boots: 5/5 (Requires Attunement)
A hidden feature of the Artificer class is that they gain concentration free flight at level 10, because literally every Artificer should be taking this as soon as they can. Obviously this keeps ranged Artificers out of danger, but even melee attackers will find a ton of uses for flight. If you only ever take one magic item as an infusion, let it be this one. Heck, take this multiple times and make your whole party fly!
Level 14
Amulet of Health: 4/5 (Requires Attunement)
If you’ve got the spare attunement slot, setting your constitution to a 19 is pretty nice for a number of reasons. This probably gives us about as much extra max HP as the Tough feat, and really helps us maintain our concentration on spells. Probably the best of the score increasing items.
Arcane Propulsion Arm: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Outclassed by the Arcane Propulsion Armor, which I also gave a 1/5, so that should tell you all you need to know.
Belt of Hill Giant Strength: 3/5 (Requires Attunement)
This is a slight improvement over the Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, but doesn’t offer a higher modifier than is normally obtainable. By this point most party members who are using strength will have a 20, but this could be neat for you to have if no one else in the party is capable of lifting heavy objects and makes you decent with weapons.
Boots of Levitation: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
Outclassed by Winged Boots.
Boots of Speed: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
Flight from Winged Boots is generally better than this, but there are some specific builds like monks who would love to have this. Also note that you cannot stack this with Winged Boots as they are both boots.
Bracers of Defense: 3/5 (Requires Attunement)
This is obviously only good to hand to someone else, but your monk or a wizard or sorcerer who refused to take an armor dip might want this.
Cloak of the Bat: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
Love the flavor and the function, but the flight is much worse than the Winged Boots because it requires both our hands and only works in dim light or darkness. The other abilities might make up that difference for you, but not for me. Interesting for a Thri-Kreen though since they’d still have two available hands to do other stuff with.
Dimensional Shackles: 1/5
These aren’t that much better than normal manacles in most scenarios, so unless your party specifically bounty hunts magical creatures of large size or smaller and must capture your targets alive, you don’t need this.
Gem of Seeing: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
True sight is tough to come by, but it’s also not always necessary. This item will be useful, I just don’t think it will be useful enough to make it worth the slot.
Horn of Blasting: 1/5
There are so many problems with this item, the biggest being that it can blow up in your face for 10d6 damage every time you use it. Don’t ever take this.
Ring of Free Action: 2/5 (Requires Attunement)
The difficult terrain thing is pointless because we can fly, so only use this if your DM has an unhealthy obsession with Hold Person.
Ring of Protection: 4/5 (Requires Attunement)
This is the same as the Cloak of Protection, but can stack with it, so if you want yet another way to boost your defenses, this is your best option.
Ring of the Ram: 1/5 (Requires Attunement)
You can probably do more damage than this with a normal attack if you have extra attack, even if you expend all 3 charges, and this is not a suitable replacement for attacking for those without extra attack.
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