How would you Kenku Artificer?

[Spectrulus]

Hey all!

This combination popped into my head, and I'd love to see some of your ideas about it.

So Kenku have a lore background of having difficulty with being creative and Artificers of any subclass are inventors. This dichotomy sounds like a ripe ground for roleplaying. How do you think these would interact? What ideas would you have to make it work?

Which subclass in your average setting would a Kenku artificer take?

Also! Kenku have this awesome racial trait:
- Expert Forgery You can duplicate other creatures' handwriting and craftwork. You have advantage on all checks made to produce forgeries or duplicates of existing objects.

Now I'm lucky enough to play with cool DM's, so here is what I'm thinking: with the right skill selection, this may give a way to duplicate magical items found with decent success. Campaign dependant, but does this make sense?

[wahooker]

One of the best features in this combination is Magical Tinkering.

Read the text of the last bullet point. - A static visual effect appears on one of the object’s surfaces. This effect can be a picture, up to 25 words of text, lines and shapes, or a mixture of these elements, as you like.

This removes a huge disadvantage that Kenku normally have. I actually thought of a joke character that was a Kenku Artificer that could only respond by making images of Emojis, but text would work just fine for a more serious campaign.

Copying what other people do is exactly what Artificers do with magic items, so doing so with vocal mimicry makes a lot of sense.


With the possibility of Deception, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand as skills plus thieves tools and +2 stealth, you could have a good time replacing many features of a rogue.

[Desteplo]

A Kenku that found an abandoned lab filled with blueprints. After going through trying to replicate everything he blows up the lab accidentally but with a few blue prints in his pack.

[Spectrulus]

One of the best features in this combination is Magical Tinkering.

Read the text of the last bullet point. - A static visual effect appears on one of the object’s surfaces. This effect can be a picture, up to 25 words of text, lines and shapes, or a mixture of these elements, as you like...

That is exactly the kind of hook I was having trouble finding!

So, combined with what everyone else added, it would be a character that would browse magic item shops, not to buy but to learn. Later the Kenku would make copies of what it saw through infusions or crafting, (DM permitting).

On a second note, I wonder how an Alchemist would work with Kenku. I have the feeling it would only make the same Elixir every day, rather than a random one because of the pattern-following behaviours. That sort of changes the class but probably not terribly.