Does an artificer's teammate have to re-attune to their infused items every time the infusions change?

Question

Per the artificer rules...

If the item requires attunement, you can attune yourself to it the instant you infuse the item.

Okay. Nice. Great. Except... how does it work when the item is given to another character?

Let's picture these scenarios: Scenario one. My artificer has created an Resistant Armor, choosing poison. This armor has been given to our paladin, who attuned to it. Now, next long rest, I want to create an Resistant Armor, choosing force. The rules are silent on whether I can attempt to create an infusion I already have existing (as opposed to infusing random other infusions until that one de-infuses) or in fact use the item the previous copy of that infusion is already on. Let's assume I can.

... but I don't want to attune to the resulting infusion, so does that mean that, as soon as we finish the long rest, we must immediately do a short rest so the paladin can attune to the armor?

In fact, it doesn't even end there!

If you try to exceed your maximum number of infusions, the oldest infusion ends, and then the new infusion applies.

Notably, there doesn't seem to be a process to voluntarily end one of my infusions. Let's suppose my current infusions are Repeating Weapon, Replicate Magic Item: Alchemy Jug and the aforementioned Resistant Armor: Force. I want to replace the jug with a Mind Sharpener. The only process for this seems to be infusing my chosen item with the Mind Sharpener, causing the Repeating Weapon to end.... then reapply the Repeating Weapon.... which ends the Resistant Armor, requiring me to reapply that, and us to take another short rest to reattune to it!

Is all the above correct, or is there something I'm missing?

Answer 1

Your allies have to manually attune to any new items you create.

When an infusion ends, the item is no longer magical, even if you immediately re-infuse that item with a new infusion. Any attunement to it ends when that happens, and anyone other than yourself will have to take the time to re-attune to the updated item.

You are correct that there is no method to voluntarily end an infusion, but as you said, you can infuse a new item and go around the circle, breaking all your items and re-infusing them along the way. So functionally you can do this, provided all your infused items are with you, but yes, doing that does terminate attunement on all the items your allies were using.

Personally, as a DM, I allow my artificer to selectively end infusions as part of the post-long-rest infusion process, provided the item he's disenchanting is in his possession at the time. I don't think there's any benefit to making him go through the whole rigmarole, and there seems no particular harm to letting him end infusions directly.

However, I do enforce that allies have to take a short rest to attune to any new items he infuses -- if he wants to change a suit of Resistant Armor from Acid to Cold, that's functionally creating a new item that needs to be re-attuned. I feel there's a balance issue there. To some extent, it encourages the Artificer to benefit from his own items more than handing them out to the party, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.