I'm running the Out of the Abyss campaign for my players, and I've hit an edge case for the Sorcerer with Quickened Spell metamagic. The character has a Spell Gem (from Out of the Abyss: you stuff a spell into it, and then spend an action later to have the Gem cast the spell at the Gem's level and save DC).
Can a sorcerer cast two leveled spells in a turn, if they use both Quickened Spell and a Spell Gem? Does this generalize to a sorcerer casting two spells in a turn as long as one of them is from activating an item?
(I GM by having a small number of hard/deadly encounters rather than a larger number of smaller encounters – because it makes each encounter have significant stakes, and because Out of the Abyss doesn't restrict resting terribly much in the first half of the campaign. So if the sorcerer can go nova with two leveled spells per round for 2-3 rounds, that does a lot of damage without really restricting his ability to cast spells at the next encounter.)
Best Answer
You can't cast a levelled spell from it if you already cast a bonus action spell
Spell Gem:
It does not use your spell DC, but you are still the caster.
Generally
It would depend on the wording, but all items I have seen so far makes you clearly the caster.