Break... er, MAKE me an artificer!

[Duke of URL]

I'm wondering if a build like the following would work...

Artificer 5 (7) / Warlock 6 / Hellfire Warlock 3 / Warlock *

Five levels of Artificer gets you Retain Essence... basically, any otherwise "useless" magic item becomes your XP pool for crafting, and since you never level in Artificer after multiclassing out, that craft reserve never "resets", so you can really save up for a rainy day. You also get 5 item creation feats (Scroll, Potion, Wondrous Item, Homonculous, Arms & Armor) and one bonus feat (metamagic or efficient item creation). Going to seventh level gets you one more crafting feat (Wand) plus the eminently abusable Metamagic Spell Trigger ability.

Warlock 6 is needed to qualify for Hellfire Warlock. UMD is still a class skill (yea!) and you get Deceive Item at level 4 to take 10 on all UMD checks.

The Hellfire Warlock's key abilities are all keyed to taking CON damage. Well, you're now capable of repairing that easily by making your own wands of lesser restoration. The extra 6d6 damage on blasts more than compensates for the lost damage output from delaying Warlock levels. Hellfire Infusion is (in some ways) a weaker version of Metamagic Spell Trigger, but it doesn't require knowing the metamagic involved or use up extra charges.

Go back into Warlock after finishing this short PrC to continue gaining invocations and invocation power.

Edit: Hmmm... thinking about it, there is the problem that the effective caster level of created items tops out at Artificer level + 2...