Character build help

[Aaron Underhand]

Artificer is a half-caster, you do need a full arcane caster. Here's a suggestion:

I played a vHuman Lore Bard, who started with the healer feat, and took a 1 level dip in Wizard at level 2 (character reasons)

1 Healer is a fantastic feat, even for gritty realism. Everybody gets up... even if only at 1 hp. PLUS - all the partty get to use spell slots on non-healing options

2 Bard song of rest adds to everyone's healing again

3 Wizard spells give you shield for defense and magic missile when you really must hit and damage

4 Familiar, and with luck most other 1st level rituals to eek out those spell slots

5 Lore Bard skills - face if you need to be, survival, scout, or knowlege

6 Take Moderately armoured at 4th for defense - leave STR or Dex odd for that (you could put 7 in STR)

Don't worry about damage output. at 7th level if you need to take Fireball (The other spell should always be counterspell) Thunderwave and Shatter are OK before then, and Hypnotic Pattern takes over at character level 6. Once you get 5th level spells Animate Objects pretty much solves damage output for good.

Basically this character gets the healing and the ritual spells as additional resource pools to spell slots, and the ability to pick more bard spells as the first level slots can be covered by wizard spells.