How does creating two Eldritch Cannons with one action work for an Artillerist artificer?

Question

The Artillerist Artificer's 15th-level Fortified Position feature (Eberron: Rising from the Last War, p. 60) states:

You can now have two cannons at the same time. You can create two with the same action (but not the same spell slot)

How would this same action creation work? Could you, for example, create one cannon then use your bonus action to cast misty step to a different location and then place the second cannon, with both summonings being considered 1 action?

Related (maybe duplicate-ish): "Can you break up your Attack action for a bonus action?" and somewhat "Can a player split up attacks like they can movement?" — Exempt-Medic, Dec 05 '19 at 03:13
Actually, the first question doesn't address the misty step question at all, though it is still definitely related (the top answer there does have a comment quoting an unofficial Crawford quote though). All that said, Hi! Welcome to the site, take the [tour] if you haven't already and visit the [help] if you've got further questions. — Exempt-Medic, Dec 05 '19 at 03:34
Out of curiosity, is the character getting misty step from multiclassing or a racial trait? It's not on the artificer spell list. — V2Blast, Dec 05 '19 at 08:59
It's not clear to me whether this question is about the expenditure of spell slots, or about whether you can 'break up' your action, something else. — Ruse, Dec 05 '19 at 13:15
Misty step would have to be from multiclassing, because if it were a racial trait it would not expend a spell slot — Joseph, Dec 06 '19 at 05:24

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 05 '19 at 11:28

This is a poorly worded effect, but according to this tweet from Jeremy Crawford,

Eldritch Cannon does let you spend a spell slot to create the cannon. That slot must be spent specifically on the cannon, not on something else.

So, according to this, the intended use of this ability is that when you make the second cannon, it counts as building a new one, so as described in their eldritch cannon ability,

Once you create a cannon, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest or until you expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher

So, with this and the tweet at our usage, it would seem that the ability is intended to instead say that when you create a second cannon you must expend a spell slot to do so, or take a long rest.

How does creating two Eldritch Cannons with one action work for an Artillerist artificer?

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