Quote Originally Posted by Haldir View Post
Played a Battlesmith last night who for story reasons had his intelligence gimped, as I was looking over my spelllists trying to purge all the ones with Difficulty Checks, I noticed that Searing Smite is strictly worse than Arcane Weapon for soooo many reasons, not the least of which is that you can't cast them together because they're both concentration spells.

There is literally no reason an artificer would ever, ever use Searing Smite unless Arcane Weapon is not allowed and even then....

What is a good alternative I might convince my DM into reconsidering?
Well shield of faith isn't on their main spell list anymore, but it makes thematic sense for the battlesmith. It's concentration so you can't use it with arcane weapon either, but at least it isn't a straight-up inferior version of another spell you've already got.

If you could pick any first level spell, armor of agathys would be a strong choice.