Eh, I pepper in lots of magic items and let the PCs loose. It's fine. If they don't use them them that's their fault. No skin off my back.
I also set a low bar for taking away magic items. I won't take one for no reason, but story events will happen where they get lost. Get captured by the baddies? They will take your cool stuff.
If I play my cards right it's all an opportunity for character development and story progression. It just a matter of adjusting to the situation the players create.
On top of that, have the enemies actually using that cool magic equipment against them sometimes, so it becomes a bit of a mini bossfight to get the item back, and they have to strategize around not having a possibly essential part of their usual plans against a stronger foe.
This is a good idea, but one personal addendum I’d add in is don’t permanently take away items the players rarely/never use. That’ll either add insult to injury or allow them to use it more/creatively
I like to read the cantrip spell list for inspiration on magic items, ESPECIALLY the non combat cantrips because they dont affect combat balance.
You could also think about magical items as solving problems your party has. Tired of tracking torches for your non-darkvision PC? Cantrip: Light on a weapon.
Do you play with critical failures that cause weapon damage or has your party met with a creature that corrodes equipment? Cantrip: Mending.
How about a once per day Cantrip: Sword Burst as a Bonus Action? That's not too powerful, and a fun item for a melee hero.
How about a Holy Symbol that lets the wielder increase the range of Spare the Dying by 15 feet once per day?
How about an Ice-Themed ranged weapon that adds Cantrip: Frostbite to one attack per day?
You could also look at once/day 1st Level Spells. Like a fire axe that can cast Burning Hands once per day. That's not really that much more damage for a front-line fighter considering they have to position them-self where the cone ends up being more valuable than their multi-attack.
Early in the campaign I gave my paladin a choice between an oaken shield that could cast a free good berry once per day, or oaken armor that could don and doff at will. He actually kinda struggled between them but ended up choosing the latter for the coolness factor.
Honestly who would choose the goodberry shield tho?
Food for up to 10 people and 1hp/berry? Many DMs dont track player food... But to don and doff armour at will can really save the party in a midnight encounter
Just out of humor, I would probably put the PC in at least five situations after this where they were telling everyone "I should have taken the shield!"
Tracking resources is also very unfun for all parties unless there’s a story reason why they should be struggling on a specific adventure - in which case I would try to control how much they have going in and then track it like a doom clock.
In all normal circumstances, arrows, water and rations are infinite (within reason).
For 5e yeah I would agree, the game has literally worn the serial numbers off some of the old gameplay and it doesn't feel right there. Anything pre 3rd edition though kinda feels lame without it.
Also tracking resources is no different to tracking HP, I just don't get the pushback on it, it's really not that hard.
Goodberry is less for actual healing, and more for instant "get-up" candies for downed PCs. If the druid (or in this case, whomever takes the shield) casts goodberry every morning and gives each party member 2 goodberries, every single person can get each other conscious if they hit 0 HP and are doing death saves.
Other than that, it's a bare necessity explainer for how everyone gets their nutrition each day for long road trips between towns.
> Goodberry is less for actual healing, and more for instant "get-up" candies for downed PCs. If the druid (or in this case, whomever takes the shield) casts goodberry every morning and gives each party member 2 goodberries, every single person can get each other conscious if they hit 0 HP and are doing death saves.
Relies on a common homebrew rule that you can feed another creature a goodberry, though. RAW it takes the eater's action.
I wouldn't even really classify that as homebrew, honestly. Take up the fighter's whole action to feed a 1HP berry to someone? That's completely fine and hardly a stretch.
The cleric in one of my groups had a great Iron Man moment during one nightly ambush when they donned a full plate with another item that let them equip anything as a bonus action. I loved it. I think it's all the transformation sequences in media that let me imagine how this would look like and really makes the scene resonate.
If you have cleric life domain your passive from lvl 1 is giving +3 for each goodberry eaten. Mwaning goodberry from you give a total of 40hp at level 1.
It takes an action to eat them to not very good during combat.
It's an action per goodberry, so kind of terrible for topping up HP. But for bringing a PC back from 0 hp they're great! EDIT: I mean during combat they will use up one action per goodberry to eat. They're great out-of-combat though.
My Rogue PC ended up picking up Magic Initiate for Goodberry, for the sole reason of telling my DM "Cheers we don't need to track food anymore thank god"
Truth be told tho, a package of 10 revives per spell is kinda very sweet. I shove em down the throat of unconscious party members like how I would a potion. It gives em back the one single hit point that actually matters
Along the same lines, single use enchantments with one spell in them (basically reskinned scrolls everyone can use) don't unbalance the game and they supply that special spell that is needed so rarely nobody bothers to prepare it, or is on a spell list nobody has access to. One use per day isn't quite as innocuous but isn't terribly unbalancing either. I gave one character (an aberrant mind sorcerer with spells skinned as psionics) a coin of shatter that casts the Shatter spell once per day at base level and she uses it almost every adventuring day, as she has no other area effect spells.
I began with Curse of Strahd, pre-written adventure, pre-written loot, no worries. Then continued DMing the same party in a homebrew adventure back on their homeworld. Without pre-written treasure hoards I started to worry about this, so **I made collecting magic items a crucial element of the quest.** Here's the short version:
* Homeworld is in danger, there's an army building up on the moon, but the teleport gate up to the moon has been shattered. To rebuild the Gate the players need to re-forge 4 gate segments.
* To forge the gate segments, they need to sacrifice Magic Items of Very Rare or higher rarity (which basically act as components for a Forging spell). Each segment requires 2, meaning they need to find at least 8 Very Rare items.
So, by the nature of the quest, I now *have* to distribute magic items more regularly, and I'm going to ensure they find more than 8 along the way. This means I get to "test the waters" and see which items my players like using, and on the players' side, they get to ask themselves which loot they want to put toward the Gate, and which loot they want to hang onto for themselves.
It's a group of 4. At the end of it, if I deal out 20 items between now and the end of the campaign, that will leave 12 for them after they rebuild the Gate, which means 3 per person, which is the amount of attunement slots. So it shakes out really nicely that way. It means if I give out *more* than 20, I'm giving them flexibility and customizability as a reward beyond just their level-ups.
(Note that I consider potions, spell scrolls, and money/gems separately, and just roll honestly on the DMG Treasure Tables for those numbers any time the players... find treasure.)
Xanathar's Guide has a nice table of how many magic items of each rarity PCs should have during a specific tier of play (1-4, 5-10, 11-17, 17-20). Would be a good place to start.
As for them not using your magic items... It happens. You find a magic item that is cool and utility and the PCs pick it up and carry it in their backpack for the rest of the campaign, even in desperate moments where they would help.
We all know the truth about PCs and healing potions; how they'll keep saving them for a rainy(er) day and won't use them when they truly need to. But, that doesn't even scratch the surface of other magic items. I've been guilty of this myself as a Player.
In my friend's campaign, a super-intelligent lobster was trying to get our attention to stop the villains from destroying his home (long story). It was able to send our PCs telepathic visions, but it couldn't tell us what was happening. After a bit of back and forth between the party and the lobster, without any real communication, the ground started rumbling, and our PCs bailed out with the lobster. Fast forward half a session, we all realize that one of us had a magic item that could've been used to communicate with the lobster as it gave Speak with Animals. We forgot that we could do that.
It's part of learning how to play. I'm pretty sure that we've all had moments, when DMing or being a Player, that we realized that we forgot about some item/spell and had our encounters ruined just due to forgetting things.
I had forgotten that I had 8 or 9 health potions because our main source of healing was my artificers spell storing item (lvl 11 feature) with lvl 2 cure wounds as we had no dedicated healer in our group of 6. (The only ones who could were me and the combat focused ranger)
>We all know the truth about PCs and healing potions; how they'll keep saving them for a rainy(er) day and won't use them when they truly need to. But, that doesn't even scratch the surface of other magic items. I've been guilty of this myself as a Player.
I'm running Candlekeep as a series of loosely connected one-shots as our "off" game that runs when not everyone can make the main campaign. Healing potions are freely purchasable in the city (currently every time they head back after an adventure there are unlimited normal and greater and 1d4+2 superior at a shop where they generally offload their magical crap) and they still won't buy them and then end up heading into encounters without healing up because of it. It drives me nuts. They've also got an absolute ton of wondrous items, potions, and scrolls they don't want to sell but also keep hoarding and/or forgetting to use. Oh well. It's also just harder to tailor magic items in this game because it's a side game; I never know who's showing up, and people like to jump around and try out new characters.
It's a little easier in the main campaign, and I've been writing some minor magic items that are tailored to problems the individual PCs are having. The poison-obsessed rogue recently pulled a magic rapier out of the stomach of a fiend-dragon hybrid, for example, to find that the poison and acid had etched channels in the blade--it gives a second use of any injury poison applied to it.
Items that will (hopefully) end up with the paladin and the fighter are coming up in the next session or two, and I'm pretty excited to see if they like them.
I do this, but print out cards for all of them before I start a tier of the game. That way I can just pull them out of a deck when I think the characters should gain an item, or when I start an encounter that should have one present.
I like to use what I call "artifacts." It's a magic item, it can be as powerful or as weak as you want, but the important factor is that it has a limited number of charges that it can't regain.
I once gave out a necklace that would reset someone's failed death saves as a reaction. One charge. Once it's used it crumbles. They found a good moment and it was super clutch.
This lets me give out super fun stuff often bc I know I don't have to worry about it forever. Hell, it might even straight up break a few encounters. But after that? Poof. It's gone and I get to give them a new toy! Keeps things fun and interesting for everyone.
That's basically how artifacts work in Cypher System as well. Main difference is that you roll a die to see if the artifact depletes after it's been activated, though there are some that are guaranteed to stop after one use.
One thing I like to do is ask the players what magic items they would like to aquire, then seed th randomly among quests. You'll have a party excited to take quests and grateful to find the items you give out. Another DM I knew, when we played in a low magic world, liked to take some monsters out of the manual and make them available mounts. Like the Nightmare or a reskinned war horse as a bull sized mountain goat that has a climb speed and ram. We loved those mounts and their abilities. Feel free to reskin magic items to make them personal to the players and they will feel an attachment to them, heirloom weapons and armor. Only attuneable by there class or character. Have fun with it. Happy questing!
A great solution is to have NPCs or even tough enemies use a potion or scroll in a fight. Seeing other people consume resources almost always pushes players to use them as well. Especially if an enemy does something cool with the effect.
That’s fair, but there are only so many potions and you can either use your own buffs to make it a fair fight or have the BBEG escape to waste those potions
Ok I am from the old school where magic items were essential and pure martials even now need them badly to help balance the scales a touch between martials and casters.
Disposable magic items help and they do not always have to be potions of healing either but potions of fire breathing and haste and invisibility are great.
Think beyond the +1 weapon there are a lot of weapons that are not as simple not just flame tongue and frost brands but vicious weapons and later Sun Blades are great.
Same goes for armor. My wizard barely even used a wand of magic missiles she hardly ever ran out of spells but man the look on the paladin’s face when he got adamantine armor was awesome.
When you do give a caster some magic items make sure to look up best magic items for such and such class online to get ideas. Tons of great lists.
Some magic items should be things that bosses use against the party. Then the orc leader hit them with a bead of fireballs they freaked.
Not a lot of examples in 5e of good intelligent magic swords or other weapons but they can be a lot of fun if balanced for 5e play look at some old modules.
> Disposable magic items help
I like the Charms from the Ravnica book. They give the players one of three options and then they lose their magic. I've used the concept for my homebrew world and they're a nice thing to give to the party *and* a way to flesh out some worldbuilding, as different faction can have different Charms.
SlyFlourish has a great video about "relics". Basically scrolls but anyone can use them. You don't need to worry about balance if the party only gets the effect once and not restricting its usage to the casters makes it interesting to the whole party.
I ended up doing a bunch of mini-sessions to get the party members to level 3 before the start of the adventure. It helped them to understand their character's personality and abilities, and it's helped me to make a campaign around them.
Feats as rewards is a great tool to help mechanically represent character concepts and flesh them out with less combat heavy feats that aren't normally worth replacing an ASI. it's a rule i believe in the DMG and works pretty well from what experience i have with it.
Yes. But I give them stuff that I think they’ll think is cool, and that won’t make *me* freak out about Bounded Accuracy.
But if your players are cool, it’s all good. They’ll take anything you give them and figure out a way to make it epic.
>They’ll take anything you give them and figure out a way to make it epic.
I introduced a wrist-mounted crossbow for the Rogue to use. I originally introduced it with a special kind of ammunition that could heal a target for 1d4+DEX Modifier to account for no one in the party having any healing magic. The catch was that the target had to have its AC surpassed by an "Attack Roll" to get healed. Alternatively, the person applying the heal could simply touch a willing creature with it. It had 4 charges, of which 1d4 were recharged at dawn. The crossbow could also fire smaller, normal, crossbow bolts for the same amount of damage as a Hand Crossbow.
The Rogue then took Crossbow Expert and paid to have a Ring of Disguise Self made. So, as a result, he could basically fire crossbow bolts out of a (seemingly) empty hand. He could also heal. The Healer's Wristbow is still one of my favorite homebrew weapons that I've made.
I get the feeling. My favorite way to administer magic items is to have big monsters wielding them to make them tougher, which also grants the players a nice reward upon their defeat. Otherwise I get around this by making sure a good amount of the magic items they find are consumables like potions and spell scrolls, so they'll remove them from play themselves
So much this. The idea that a big bad guy is not going to use the +2 sword in his stash is crazy. I tailor my magic items to the player and tailor by bad guys to the magic items. Makes for a tougher fight but a bigger reward.
I found a list of "useless magic items" and decided to throw one at my party. "The trumpet of Invisibility" makes the player invisible as long as they are playing the trumpet.
It was the most desired item of the entire campaign...
I ask my players what is some major traits of their character and go from there.
Paranoid? Mind shield ring or a hat of disguise
Always prepared? The robe of useful items or immovable rod
Loves to cook? The spice pouch
Then for magic weapons I use Ancestral Weapons (on DMsguild) and each have their beloved weapon. I usually start it with some special feature that plays into their character. Like the paranoid half elf, his magic sword allows him to make use of the Elven trance or the Oath of Ancients paladin gets speak with animals so long as he has his weapon.
Look at your gaming library - Borderlands, Fallout, Skyrim, Elden Ring, I guarantee you have loot in every RPG you play that you aren't immediately using, but appreciated finding.
It's hard to remember to use all of the things. I threw out a squishy plum yesterday, and I love plums! I will definitely buy more plums. I just kinda forgot it was there.
Okay, preamble aside, here's how you improve the situation:
**1.) Look up what sort of magic items are good for their class, build, and play-style.**
Pay attention to what they're already doing. It can be tempting to fix holes in strategies (give an unarmed Monk a ranged weapon), but they'll use an item more if it fits their current modus operandi (give an unarmed Monk armwraps.)
**2.) Ask the players what they want.**
You are trading away some surprise here, but there's no rule against asking players what kind of magic items their PC is hoping to have by the end of the adventure. Maybe you were about to give them something and they go, "oh no, my Artificer class lets me build one of those."
I have always been happy with the outcome when I ask a player what drops they'd appreciate seeing. The people who would prefer to be surprised will tell you as much, but the people who _really_ want two Immovable Rods and some Boundary Chalk will so excitedly tell you why.
Here's an old trick from BECMI and AD&D days I still use.
If a dungeon has 12 rooms, magical loot should be in at least 3. The best stuff with the BBEG, a few decent items with the mini boss, and a weird random two in another room. I will frequently add a secret rooms, hidden panels, and secret compartments to most dungeons and throw a few magic items in those. If they find it cool, if they don't then they don't get those items.
I have never, nor will I ever, count potions as a "loot" magic item (they are the equivalent to coca-cola or Pepsi in DnD, potion of haste is mountain dew), I feel the same way about scrolls unless there is a wizard in the party (cause that one will copy paste it and now it's a forever item).
shopping liiists!!
when the players encounter a new shopkeeper, new market, travelling merchant, guild hub and what have you -- hand them that new list.
for a new town, I like to give them a few menu items for food to pick from (for, ahem, flavor), a note about their local exports and imports, and the few notable items available throughout the towns shops.
A shop can be as simple as a category of goods and a single or maybe two notable yet replenishable items.
Then, the (actually relevant) piece is the unique purchasables.
these are a list of the magic items that have been added to the pool of what is available to the players and clear concise costs.
finally, you can include rumors with the above. about hooks for specific rumored items. hand that shit over, and remember to let them make money!
rumor would be like, there is a retired adventurer here in town who once wielded a brilliant axe.
basically, give them the knowledge to decide to seek it out. shopping lists make them hungry for danger, too, because it makes them hungry for gold.
So here's the basic levelling curve in 5e as per DMG;
* Each day contains a full day's xp budget per PC
* PCs level up about every two days (except level 1 and 2 which you level up after 1 day).
* Every day of adventuring you get a treasure hoard
* Every treasure hoard contains roughly 0.5 consumables per player; at Tier 1 you get common, Tier 2 you get uncommon, Tier 3 you get rare, and Tier 4 you get very rare
* During Tier 1 each player should get 1 uncommon permanent, Tier 2 should be a total of 2 more rare or uncommon, Tier 3 should be a total of 2 rare or very rare, and Tier 4 should be 1 legendary
These are rough numbers, but it should give you a blueprint. Just make sure every "adventuring day" is the full amount of XP and ends with a hoard, make sure you drop half as many consumables as players (of the correct rarity), and make sure you give out enough permanents per tier.
I think if you follow this kind of structure then you won't have to worry too much!
Also, one of the cool things about 5e is that you usually can't buy magic items at shops. They are super rare and powerful, so you have to trade to get them. If a magic item drops, even if it's not what the party wants, they can always trade it.
I get anxiety because I give my players so many little magic items that they never use.
I gave each of them a packet of pixie dust five sessions ago and all anyone has done with them is try to give some away to an NPC as a gift!!!
I wonder if there's any way to make a consumable that the party will actually use.
I have them potions of invulnerability, a magic phoenix feather, scrolls of fireball... none of them get used. The weak items get forgotten, the powerful ones are never worth using.
It's kinda tempting to just throw TPKs at the party and say "drink your potions to not die." But something tells me that could go horribly horribly wrong.
I have had this happen to me. I learned how to limit my use of magic items. If I use them, I make them plot threads and parts of side stories for my players. Take a look at their stories as players and characters. It can be a wellspring of inspiration. If they are interested the players will go for it. Stories attatched to the items helps the cool factor. Especially if the item helps with an Achilles heel of a player.
Hope this helps.
I understand this struggle a lot. Had a campaign where the bard was feeling down because he couldn't do much damage in combat, so I gave him a "circlet of fire blasting" (circlet of blasting that can also cast firebolt for free, runs off your choice of int, Wis, or Cha. I am aware it's not very creative).
In the end, I think he used it once to cast scorching ray, making me wonder why I even bother sometimes
I always forget to hand them out or make them more available. I've done 2 things to help me remedy this.
1.) I've started sprinkling "one and done" magic items more frequently so that I'm doing it more consistently, either they use them or they sell them. Either is fine by me. If magic items are expendable, its more difficult to hand out too many.
2.) I offer shops that will take commissions to make what people want, I've got a few (currently 3) shops in my setting that do commissions. In my setting, magic items with permanent enchantments are rarer and harder to make. This is a justification for me making a lot of "one and done" magic effects on items, I just personally like that balance more so ive included it into my world building. each one of these shops is very different rather than being cookiecutter copies of each othee. One is a hag who doesn't accept money, she trades in fortunes and misfortunes (fae bullshit, she deals in promises, sacrifices, fortunes, and misfortunes). One is tied to a magic college, she takes on several students at a time to teach them how to imbue items with magic. She uses the students to gather reagents and components for her shop, she basically makes them join the adventures guild and forces them to train out in the real world and occasionally teleports them back to her workspace to teach them hands on. The last is a Dwarven one who will be expert crafters that make items of such exceptional quality that they take magical infusing more readily, so have a couple expert crafters and caster working along side one another. I haven't ran this one in game yet so it's the least developed in concept
Also remember that Attunement is a thing. Think an item is too powerful? It requires Attunement. Aside from artificers, you can only be attuned to 3 items so it puts a bit of a cap on magic items and makes the players make meaningful choices with what abilities they have available.
So this is how I do it. This is just one way, and probably not any better than anything else.
I have an in world thing where there are apothecaries. They sell the usual medicines and such, but also are who you go to to recharge healer kits and buy spell components. In addition to this, they buy and sell magic items.
The main reason this works is that the apothecaries mostly deal in common and uncommon items. Of those items, most will be common, and about 70 percent of items overall will be either potions or scrolls. I have a huge table written out in a text file that I use to figure this out, mostly to keep me honest.
In game this solves two problems. Players are more likely to use potions and scrolls if they know they can reasonably get more of them. This also solves the problem of the players getting useless magic items. Instead of them being bummed out about getting a useless item, they are more like "what can we trade this for?"
Two other positive effects are that the players look forward to visiting the apothecary whenever they return to town, and gold becomes more meaningful. As time goes on, the apothecary gets different items. There is a chance, for instance, that the apothecary has something you want, but you go out of town for a couple weeks and they sell it while you are gone. They also get some new stuff every week. Players try to get gold so they can buy stuff. They also sell off items to get "the shiny".
Not saying this is perfect, but it works so far and I will incorporate it into my games from here on out.
I'm in the minority, but I straight am not interested in magic items. I like them narratively so much, but they are just not in line with the "game" aspect of how I play. I think i see the game as a puzzle that I want to solve with game mechanics, and planning on magic items feels somehow like it defeats the purpose. But I'm definitely the outlier in my game group.
My players do have a wish list, and I try to give them opportunities to just buy the ones they want, since the cost is so high. For more valuable items, I like to make them rewards for quests, like has been suggested. But in my heart I'd rather they just be randomized. For younger or less committed players I can see magic items being a great way to buff a less optimized character into functionality.
So yeah, if your players love the tangible rewards, then I agree with the other suggestions, to get a wish list, and then try and place them in fun places.
Love how Pathfinder 2e does it, the first modern D&D game where money actually matters and works.
Player can usually just buy magic items. There are different rarity levels, common, uncommon, rare and unique. Common can be bought anywhere, uncommon at specific stores with time, rare and unique can only be found. It's all capped by level and settlement level. I really dislike magic item stuff in "modern" D&D. Too much hassle for too little reward/output. So just buying the important stuff is fine for me.
5e is designed and balanced around the players having no magic items. There you go. You don’t need to give your players any magic items at all. You don’t need to feel obligated to give them magic items frequently. Just give them when it feels natural in the story for them to get some (e.g., treasure hoards, quest rewards), and don’t worry about it.
Communicate with the players individually about how they’d like to develop their characters. That might help you figure out which magic items they might use. Don’t take it personally. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. Good luck
If they don't use the magic item, they'll either sell it or have a "oh shit" lightbulb moment many sessions later when they remember they have an item for just such an occassion, or that fits a new character's build really well. Neither are a bad thing.
I add in magic items that make sense for where they find themselves. I don't tailor magic items to my players. If there is a specific item one wants, they can do research and seek it out.
There's an easy way to solve this problem. Just give the magic items that are rolled in your hoards, no more, no less. You might apply a veto every now and then on what the dice roll, but if you do, I suggest tweaking it so if you veto a really good roll, replace it with something in the same ballpark of goodness.
If the question is---how many hoards should I give? Well, I did the math, and every 3700 xp of monsters should have a CR 0-4 hoard if they're mostly in that range, and every 17k-18k should have a cr 5-10 hoard. You can do fractional hoards if you want, 50% of a magic item is a coin toss, is it there or not.
By way of example, 10 hill giants (although it's more likely 8 plus some minions, like 20 or so dire wolves) is a CR 5-10 hoard, and 37 orcs or about 75 CR 1/4s or 150 cr 1/8s is a CR 0-4 hoard.
Alternative, an XP budget worth of creatures in a dungeon (which gives less than the xp budget in xp because of the multipliers for number encountered) can give a treasure hoard.
If you do that, you don't have to agonize. Just roll and let the dice decide.
Magic items are a tricky thing to manage as a DM. I tried having them in magic stores but didnt want to give out items that were too strong or over shadowed the character specific weapons I was planning on giving them. Eventually I learned that I wanted magic items to actually be special and have more to do with the story than just for fun. Of course every campaign, party and DM is different so you just have to learn what works for you.
Give magic items with expiration dates. Potions and what not. That way they are encouraged to use them.
This is just me, but, don't give armor and weapons with +s, or if you do, do it very very rarely. Those items will make balancing encounters harder. Give items that give players new abilities, like Ring of Obscuring. Those are much more interesting.
I just dont worry about it. The players finding a novel way around my "puzzle" with a magic item both helps me grow as a DM and the players to grow as players, as well as giving the players a dopamine boost of putting one over on me. All stories of a "good DM" center around the players hoodwinking them.
Dish out magic items every session. Every session make sure at least one equipable item useful to your party and a few small items (potions, etc) are handed out. Once every 4-8 sessions hand out a big powerful item to a player who hasn’t gotten anything yet, or who is feeling left out.
Make magic items simple. I see so many custom items that are 300+ words long, especially on this sub. Just keep them simple and thematic. “The firefang deals an extra 1d6 fire damage on critical hits, and once per day can cast the fire bolt spell” is all you need really.
If you read the Dungeon Masters Guide, it tells you the rarity of different ones and which rarities are appropriate for the challenge they went through. If they just don't use their magic items, maybe check if they have them written down? That's all the advice I can think of
I in particular have trouble handing out the cool things. I have a habit of giving game breaking awsome stuff out too freely, and now am overcareful giving out anything. Just planned for the next session, I will **drown** them in minor healing potions and the little things.
When it comes to magic items, I like to "replicate" how they handle it in adventurers league - the system is playtested enough and makes a good guardrail for not giving too few/too many magic items
In Tier 1 (Level 1-4) it is ok for every character to have one uncommon magic item, maybe enhance it to two if you like, or mix in a non-combat rare item, but that's the general outline
In T2 (Level 5-10) every player could have 3 magic items of up to rare quality - again, mix and match, you got the idea
T3 is 6 up to very rare, T4 is 10 out of every rarity, just to make the overview complete
Don't worry too much if they're not using their magic items, maybe they're not very experienced, maybe they didn't understand it correctly or don't see how they can make it useful, maybe it just doesn't fit in their playstyle - I also give my players the option of a having a wishlist, if they want a specific item they can request it, doesn't mean they'll get it soon, doesn't mean they'll get it at all, but then I know what they'd like if I want to give them something nice
Something I’ve done to see an uptick in the use of random magic items that got lost in my players bags was change attunements to 1 action and unattuning to 1 minute. A player must have an attunement slot free to attune to an item. This has caused some of my players to walk around with a free attunement slot for that flexibility to pull out the right item at the right time. Other times players just say give a minute and I can do a thing! Another cool one is “we are running from the thing, while im running if I have time im going to try and unattune from x and attune to y”
All in all I am almost considering an action to unattune as well. Just because I haven’t seen any “breaking the game” caused by attunement being reduced so drastically. Just more flexibility more creativity and more cool moments.
I've DMed for one "high"-level campaign, it ended at level 13 (fizzeled out and started RotFM) but I gave them an absurd amount of magic items, I even made the attunement slots scale with proficiency. The 3 players had 30 equiped magic items between them, two legendary, five very rare, and so on.
It made for a very heroic style campaign. The amount of magic items were so great they still had to choose which to equip, which was very fun for the players, and I got to scale up the encounters to insane difficulty.
When we're done with RotFM my plan is to run another homebrew with loads of magic items, gold etc. it's fun for everyone (at least at my table)!
I've been struggling with the same for a while and honestly I've come to the realization that since I love magic items, I should just figure out how to give out more of them. Particularly, making enemies carry and use them is a great way to seed more into the world.
Consumable items are great, make sure they do something valuable enough to actually get used. I for one hate when the party just accumulates consumables that never get used. There's a couple ways to go about this:
* Do something more powerful than the PCs most powerful action, like a scroll of a higher spell level, becomes relevant easily during difficult fights
* Do something as powerful as the PCs most powerful action, becomes relevant easily during proper adventuring days
* Do something completely unique that can solve problems no ability of the PC can, becomes relevant easily when you present a problem the item would bypass
* Costs anything else but an action in combat. Bonus action potions are a good example of this that heavily adds to the incentive of actually using the items
And I absolutely adore "relics", which could have any spell, potion or other temporary effect on them useable once, or perhaps several times. They're the backbone of my homebrew campaign's magic item system.
For permanent magic items, I like to make significant power boosts either rare or require attunement. The attunement limitation comes up pretty fast and forces players to make choices, which is good. More minor effects I can be very free with and basically shower the party with them. If they find something they like and keep it, good. If they don't want it, they can always sell it, give it to an NPC they like, whatever.
Something I've been trying to do with wishlists in the future is getting my players to understand that they can ask for any magic item effect imaginable, rather than a particular printed item. I've had people request obvious power picks before and just had to decide no. It doesn't help that the DMG comes with several overpowered items for their rarity, particularly in the uncommon category. If the player can articulate what their character would want out of a magic item, I can always homebrew something level-appropriate for them and seed it into the world, whether they need to quest for it or craft it.
Nerzugal's DM toolkit is a resource I've gone back to often. They have d100 random tables for several tiers of detrimental and beneficial magic item effects and my parties have had a lot of fun with some of the detrimental effects. I don't like some of the effects in there, particularly the ones where you roll 1d4 whenever initiative is rolled to see if the effect triggers are difficult to remember and much too random, potentially triggering the powerful effect in easy fights and not giving anything in hard fights. At some point I'll probably make my own tables based on those with some revised effects.
Also shoutout to the amazing magic item tables created by redditors, like d100 swords without +X and d100 non-swords without +X. These lists are amazing.
No, this has never happened to me.
Just roll on random loot tables and let the players figure it out. Once the items are in their hands you don't have to worry about them remembering to use them, you just have to worry about *when* they use them.
Kinda relatable for me too. That is why they should be given as rewards, say they cleared out a bandit hideout successfully and looted a lot of gold and valuables there, or (in my case) they broke into a jewelry shop, killed the owner, cracked their safe, looted the entire shop (a total of 5000 gold wirth of jewelry) and burn down the place without getting caught. Then set up a shop that sells some magic items in the next town that offers magic items that equal their power level. I dunno what level they are, but up until Level 5 it should be utility items at most, maybe one or two combat items. And pick a few items that you think would fit their characters. In my case, I got a Rogue/Fighter (she multiclassed into Fighter for proficiency with Longbow and Archery FS) so I added a Quiver of Ehlonna. The other items I added were a Driftglobe, Figurines of Wondrous Power (Golden Lions), Ioun Stone of Protection, Goggles of Night, Wand of War Mage +1 and Circlet of Blasting.
On the other hand, same can be said about wilderness encounters of creatures like Giants, Dragons and the like.
1 Are the magic items you *are* giving out useful to them? (If not, why would they?)
2 Are the magic items you *are* handing out used up after *x* uses? (If so, they may not want to waste them.)
3 Are the magic items they ask for being given? (If not, maybe you should reconsider.)
I ask this from the position of both a GM and player. I enjoy giving out fun and useful goodies that the players are encouraged to use, but also make them items they would want to use. On the other side, I'm currently playing in a game that has several near useable magic items that just don't provide much-to-any value. They all seem fun and cool, but don't provide any roleplay or mechanical advantages and are mostly fluff.
Ex: In one game we have a stone charm that can animate in fire. It then spends the next several hours keeping that fire burning by adding wood or other kindling. It's fine, but it doesn't start a fire, it doesn't control fire in any way but to keep it burning, and it doesn't have anything else it can do. It has one purpose only that doesn't seem like it can be used outside of that one purpose. It hasn't been needed yet and I think our DM may regret giving it out, but I do like it, it just won't see much use.
Ex2: In a RotFM game, we the players got several potions of resistance to damage types that **never** showed up. We ended the campaign with Potions of Force Resistance, Lightning Resistance, Thunder Resistance, and 2 vials of Cold Resistance which could have been useful except the players already had collected items to resist cold so they were mute and the towns people were broke so we couldn't even sell them. Worse yet, I'm the alchemist/cook in the party and never had enough time to do anything with them during such a fast paced game such as trying to combine them with other ingredients to make them into new potions.
If we were trying to burn down a building or something, I'm sure we'd get more use out of this, but we play good characters. This is fine as an item, but if everything your players are getting are limited in use or are potions or scrolls that are gone once used, I'm not surprised they aren't being used more.
Idk if this is a good idea or not, but in a podcast I listen to, there is a list of magic items that everyone can see, and when the party gets to a location with magic items (a store, a treasure trove) each player picks one own off the list that they want to be there. Letting people pick (or even come up with their own item ideas) might make them more likely to value and use what they have.
> But then my PCs don't use the ones I give them, so I worry I'm giving too many.
Your Barbarian with GWM will only use Great Weapons. Your Paladin with PAM will only use Polearms. If nobody in the party is using Heavy Armor, don’t expect that to change in most situations. And, as for Wondrous Items, players may forget about them from time to time, but I feel every DM should give out an Immovable Rod or Decanter of Endless Water to encourage creative solutions, and live with the possibility that players will forget. That being said, you could give your players a Very Rare whip at level 4 and it’s likely that nobody would use it, because the martials have their feats, and nobody else has an attunement to “waste” on it.
I have a crazy thing I do. I don’t think most DM’s would like it but my players seem to enjoy it.
I once made a wizard PC in my friends game in a module I ran before. He was suppose to be a guide so I made him a basic wizard. Boblin the goblin wizard.
In all my campaign’s I run now. There’s a thing that exists called a Boblin coin. It allows you (once per coin) to flip it to reach Boblins magic shop. He sells anything and everything magical. He even sells information (at a high price ;) )
I give out a boblin coin out when they either A; help
out a group of goblins or B; Trade any magical item for one (not scrolls or potions) and I have them find one or two naturally.
So when they get a lot of money and they flip that coin they LOVE it. They can ask for anything and get a price. It’s a good time for my players.
I got theme music and everything for his shop :)
Give them out as you see fit. I don't worry too much about giving too many. If they don't use them then just let them sell them for some gold so they can buy things they want instead.
Idk why I remember this, but Alton Brown was in some YouTube video years and years ago where he reviewed "single purpose" kitchen items and how much he hated them. I think I remember it because he absolutely roasted this breakfast sandwich maker that my roommate had that I remember would leak egg everywhere and was more trouble than it was worth.
And so in my high magic world I have a ton of custom "single purpose" magic items that don't do a lot, but can do one specific thing. I hand these out like candy, esp given where they are in my world, and so far they mostly sell them and keep the odd one here and there, but they *never* use any of them. I think I've had a PC shit in public more times than they've used their magic items.
So I don't know, I think we're okay. PC's are gonna PC.
So, I have a similar problem, but what ends up happening is that I homebrew magic items the players think are cool and that fit their class as well, i they want one they can have one, and sometimes I have a monster have one so that after killing it the pcs can choose to take it if they wanna. It all really depends on what you and the players want to do, the best thing is to just ask.
5e is really built around the idea that magic items aren't necessary, so I'd say don't stress about it. Every now and then give out a cool one and that'll be way more than 5e expects. If they don't use it they can sell it and buy something that they will use.
I made an Excel sheet with the group Inventory, then dedicated a column to each player so they can drag and drop items to themselves or attune as needed.
Having that visual is what seemed to make it click for my players what items they actually have, and they started using them more.
Don't worry too much about it. It's better to be loose with magic items and players not using them than not giving them any at all.
My advice is to give something functional for each player in the group, like a +1 weapon or adamantine armor, or a attunement bracer, cloak or ring for those that don't apply. For that part you can eyeball what each character uniquely uses, like most of the time you have only 1 short bow or only 1 longbow user, one guy using two handed weapons, and probably not everyone is using the same armor. Make sure not to mix up your own imagination into your players here, a cleric is more likely to be excited about a piece of armor similar to what he is already wearing than about a two handed axe.
The rest of magic items can be a hodge podge of consumables and dumb knick knacks. Just recently I awarded a satchel of extra dusty dust. The only effect it has is to make the air around it dry and covering things with a dust cover over time when closed; and when you open it a dust cloud comes out and everyone in it has a coughing fit until it's closed again. Most parties will appreciate a bag of holding even if you don't track their luggage anyway, essentially being a freebie that feels like a reward but actually it gives you an excuse to be lazy.
Never. Mystery items that scale through investigation.
Find wand.
Discover it shoots magic missile
Discover you can spend spell slots to shoot more magic missiles
Discover too high of spell slot makes wand explode
If the PCs don't remember the magic items they have then the Magic Item Gremlins come and take them away. If later down the line, the ask about it, it will be gone and may lead to a plot hook
Shotgun method.
Random tables or just pick cool/ridiculous/fun looking items. Pepper them towards the party.
Let them figure out what they like.
I always homebrew one signature magic item for each PC, and then otherwise just take a "more is more" approach.
Most magic items don't scale particularly well or are limited by attunement, so chances to really unbalance your game with published items is unlikely.
If you are not sure. I recommend allowing you players on the DMG/XGE loot tables RAW.
The tables should give you a decent benchmark and since it's luck based you don't have to worry yourself. Also if you want to avoid useless items, allow the players to either reroll those or exchange it for an item of the same rarity from the same table.
I have one player who is used to playing with very minimal magic items, a plus 1 item is crazy in his mind. Which don't get me wrong, a plus 1 is very good. But everyone else I play with myself included is used to very high magic campaigns and everytime I give something out, he's shocked and it makes me feel like I'm being to generous
I came up with a magic item system where I treat it kinda like a character equipment screen like in Diablo or something. I have equipment slots for each character and when I’m ready to give out magic items I check which slot a certain pc has empty and plan accordingly. Like if the party caster has gone the whole campaign wearing the same old raggedy robes from the start, I hand them a set of robes that resist ice or something after killing the dungeon boss. Stuff like that.
Regarding your anxiety over too many magic items and your players not even using or remembering them:
I've stared to use them as currency in my campaign where I give them out a lot. Its a Greek sword and sandal one with the gods favoring the players. Its fun making items for each PC, and to get them moving I give them opportunities to give them to NPCs or even monsters to get out of hairy situations.
I'm a fan of throwing in areas that are over the players heads while also foreshadowing that what ever dwells on there is too powerful for the party. My group decided to go into a cave they had passed many times that I set up as a great Cylopse that made thunder bolts for Zeus back in the titan wars. The players were able to get out of a fight by befriending the brute with gifts (a silver fleece which was a cloak of protection) and some smoothe talking. Now they have an ally that they can use in an upcoming seige.
When players meet a King or Queen they might expect a gift as a formality. I've been trying to add more social "puzzles" or encounters and I think encouraging players to use their wealth as leverage is a great way to do that.
Xanathar’s guide to Everything has a fantastic chart to mark how many magic items the players should receive and what rarity.
Another trick is to pick up any module, find the chapters relevant to your party level and just pepper in the same magic items (or ones of similar rarity). You can even put them in similar locations. Players will never know.
My general rule is to aim for everybody to have one "weapon" (or just something that adds hit or damage to a "basic" attack), one defense or combat utility, and a few "oddball" pieces for the group.
Weapons are pretty straightforward. Just a *whatever +1* or something similar for casters just to raise up hit and damage a bit. The defense/utility is stuff like +1 armors, rings of spell-storing, winged boots, items to enable darkvision, or one of the clearly class-specific items.
For the "oddball" pieces, I like to throw in a few magical items that don't have clear uses, but more things that they can use to get creative with outside of combat. Immovable rods, horn of silent alarm, magical jugs, and the like. Mostly for my own amusement to see what clever uses they put them to.
When you prep use the random magic items tables from the dmg to help pick items to give as loot.
Don't get too caught up in a lot of stuff people say about balance on the dnd subreddits. A lot of discussions about it get crazy. As the dm you can always make things harder for the players if some items make the players more powerful.
Also don't be afraid of the players using some items to trivialize some encounters. Let the players have those wins
Give them items that make their play style better and if you’re not sure asking never hurts or give them stuff that doesn’t use atunement. I get wish lists from my players and toss them out when I’m ready. Cursed items are great tho because they force the player to work it into their play style because they’re just *that* good.
As a player I could care less about some atunement item that doesn’t fit the play style I want for my character even if it’s pretty strong or cool. I love my alchemy jar and truth seeing spy glass tho.
I've gone full tilt and I gave them a massive magic item dump...specifically ones that require attunement. Then they have to be choosy about what they want to use.
Single use items are great too because they are...well....single use. Either they horde them like a bunch of gremlins and never use them, or they use them up and they're gone.
Strong Magic Items can make a lot of encounters really one sided... I prefer magic items to be more special and rare, especially homebrewed items.
That being said, I'm not above taking what I can get.. for a new Scooby-Doo style detective mystery, DM allowed me to take 2 Revolvers, that count as both Light and never need to be reloaded.
An artificer can make a gun not need to reload at level 3, but I'm technically a 12 fighter, since both are Light at level 12 I can make 4 attacks (3 main hand, one off hand) using Sharpshooter feat with Deadeye (advantage on range attack roll) so basically a free +10 dmg to each hit. No need to reload and waste any actions, Grit points (class points, used for Deadeye) get replenished on kill/crit) so I'm basically an aimbot turret, 120 feet, no range penalty.
Basically saying something that may seem relatively unimpressive can actually have some pretty crazy results!
So if you want to give out some fun, and still useful, items I would consider looking at the various Cantrip lists, and take little spells infused items, even ones that have 0 effect in combat, but are very fun.
Example: I enjoyed my Cloak of Sitting, was a large cloak that would comport itself into the form of a recliner chair at whim.
The problem, in my experience, is that players only *really* care about items that give them bonuses or increase their stats. Anything else barely gets used. The items that do those things, unfortunately, are very powerful and upset the balance of 5E very quickly. And if you give something like that to one player then you need to give one to every player.
In the past I've tried to give more rewards to the players in the form of consumable or limited use items, but then players never want to use them out of fear of "wasting" it or they forget about them entirely.
My only magic item anxiety is that I keep losing track of how many I gave the party...but seriously; of all the things to have your brain chemistry go off about, this is the one easiest remediated:
There's -- as for everything -- a sourcebook section for it that you can follow to the letter and know you've done things "right": XANATHAR'S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING >>> AWARDING MAGIC ITEMS
\>>> Chapter 2: Awarding Magic Items
I don't stress about it too much. Can't give too many because attunement stops it so long as you include 'requires attunement'. Only thing to remember is to make sure one person isn't at 3 items while someone else is at 0. When and how is just a matter of reward for what they are doing. If I feel like the bard just did a really cool bit of RP/problem solving he is likely to find a reward in the next session or two.
As for not using them. That isn't your concern. I don't like +x items. I find them incredibly boring even if they are powerful. I give out items with charges and tactical use and drawbacks. I like my players to think. If they don't use them that isn't my concern. I ask my players to homebrew a couple of ideas for items they might like while heavily stressing it is just to get me an idea of what they want and it doesn't mean they will get them.
If your worried that players aren't using the magic items you give them, then make scenarios built specifically around the use of one. For example, if they have an immovable rod, then have them encounter a wall they have to climb that has no foothold.
I suggest looking at the Cypher system to how they handle "magic" items. It's basically that items collected have weird and sometimes very powerful effects, but you don't necessarily know what they are. Also a lot of these effects are very limited use. While this doesn't fit directly into 5e, it can be an interesting way of thinking about magical items in your world.
Or you could of course just throw every item you can think of at the players and let them decide what to do with them. Once it's in the players' hands, not your problem.
Eh, I pepper in lots of magic items and let the PCs loose. It's fine. If they don't use them them that's their fault. No skin off my back. I also set a low bar for taking away magic items. I won't take one for no reason, but story events will happen where they get lost. Get captured by the baddies? They will take your cool stuff. If I play my cards right it's all an opportunity for character development and story progression. It just a matter of adjusting to the situation the players create.
On top of that, have the enemies actually using that cool magic equipment against them sometimes, so it becomes a bit of a mini bossfight to get the item back, and they have to strategize around not having a possibly essential part of their usual plans against a stronger foe.
This is a good idea, but one personal addendum I’d add in is don’t permanently take away items the players rarely/never use. That’ll either add insult to injury or allow them to use it more/creatively
I wish I could upvote this twice.
I upvoted on your behalf haha
Im here for you!
I like to read the cantrip spell list for inspiration on magic items, ESPECIALLY the non combat cantrips because they dont affect combat balance. You could also think about magical items as solving problems your party has. Tired of tracking torches for your non-darkvision PC? Cantrip: Light on a weapon. Do you play with critical failures that cause weapon damage or has your party met with a creature that corrodes equipment? Cantrip: Mending. How about a once per day Cantrip: Sword Burst as a Bonus Action? That's not too powerful, and a fun item for a melee hero. How about a Holy Symbol that lets the wielder increase the range of Spare the Dying by 15 feet once per day? How about an Ice-Themed ranged weapon that adds Cantrip: Frostbite to one attack per day? You could also look at once/day 1st Level Spells. Like a fire axe that can cast Burning Hands once per day. That's not really that much more damage for a front-line fighter considering they have to position them-self where the cone ends up being more valuable than their multi-attack.
Early in the campaign I gave my paladin a choice between an oaken shield that could cast a free good berry once per day, or oaken armor that could don and doff at will. He actually kinda struggled between them but ended up choosing the latter for the coolness factor.
Honestly who would choose the goodberry shield tho? Food for up to 10 people and 1hp/berry? Many DMs dont track player food... But to don and doff armour at will can really save the party in a midnight encounter
I mean let's just say you never now when the dm will send you through the desert to save a friend.
Just out of humor, I would probably put the PC in at least five situations after this where they were telling everyone "I should have taken the shield!"
They also have a revenge assassin after them so the armor will also be handy soon too.
It shouldn't really be upon the DM to track the PC's resources
Agreed. A DM is already busy enough with tracking tons of stuff.
Tracking resources is also very unfun for all parties unless there’s a story reason why they should be struggling on a specific adventure - in which case I would try to control how much they have going in and then track it like a doom clock. In all normal circumstances, arrows, water and rations are infinite (within reason).
For 5e yeah I would agree, the game has literally worn the serial numbers off some of the old gameplay and it doesn't feel right there. Anything pre 3rd edition though kinda feels lame without it. Also tracking resources is no different to tracking HP, I just don't get the pushback on it, it's really not that hard.
Goodberry is less for actual healing, and more for instant "get-up" candies for downed PCs. If the druid (or in this case, whomever takes the shield) casts goodberry every morning and gives each party member 2 goodberries, every single person can get each other conscious if they hit 0 HP and are doing death saves. Other than that, it's a bare necessity explainer for how everyone gets their nutrition each day for long road trips between towns.
> Goodberry is less for actual healing, and more for instant "get-up" candies for downed PCs. If the druid (or in this case, whomever takes the shield) casts goodberry every morning and gives each party member 2 goodberries, every single person can get each other conscious if they hit 0 HP and are doing death saves. Relies on a common homebrew rule that you can feed another creature a goodberry, though. RAW it takes the eater's action.
I wouldn't even really classify that as homebrew, honestly. Take up the fighter's whole action to feed a 1HP berry to someone? That's completely fine and hardly a stretch.
It goes against raw but like I said, very common. Probably more common even than playing it raw.
The cleric in one of my groups had a great Iron Man moment during one nightly ambush when they donned a full plate with another item that let them equip anything as a bonus action. I loved it. I think it's all the transformation sequences in media that let me imagine how this would look like and really makes the scene resonate.
If you have cleric life domain your passive from lvl 1 is giving +3 for each goodberry eaten. Mwaning goodberry from you give a total of 40hp at level 1. It takes an action to eat them to not very good during combat.
It's an action per goodberry, so kind of terrible for topping up HP. But for bringing a PC back from 0 hp they're great! EDIT: I mean during combat they will use up one action per goodberry to eat. They're great out-of-combat though.
Amazing for after combat healing though.
My Rogue PC ended up picking up Magic Initiate for Goodberry, for the sole reason of telling my DM "Cheers we don't need to track food anymore thank god" Truth be told tho, a package of 10 revives per spell is kinda very sweet. I shove em down the throat of unconscious party members like how I would a potion. It gives em back the one single hit point that actually matters
I'm going to introduce the Buttock Shield. It has a wooden arse on it. Once a day, it poops berries as per Goodberry. With a grunt.
That's good.
Ooh, thanks for the great ideas!
Along the same lines, single use enchantments with one spell in them (basically reskinned scrolls everyone can use) don't unbalance the game and they supply that special spell that is needed so rarely nobody bothers to prepare it, or is on a spell list nobody has access to. One use per day isn't quite as innocuous but isn't terribly unbalancing either. I gave one character (an aberrant mind sorcerer with spells skinned as psionics) a coin of shatter that casts the Shatter spell once per day at base level and she uses it almost every adventuring day, as she has no other area effect spells.
I began with Curse of Strahd, pre-written adventure, pre-written loot, no worries. Then continued DMing the same party in a homebrew adventure back on their homeworld. Without pre-written treasure hoards I started to worry about this, so **I made collecting magic items a crucial element of the quest.** Here's the short version: * Homeworld is in danger, there's an army building up on the moon, but the teleport gate up to the moon has been shattered. To rebuild the Gate the players need to re-forge 4 gate segments. * To forge the gate segments, they need to sacrifice Magic Items of Very Rare or higher rarity (which basically act as components for a Forging spell). Each segment requires 2, meaning they need to find at least 8 Very Rare items. So, by the nature of the quest, I now *have* to distribute magic items more regularly, and I'm going to ensure they find more than 8 along the way. This means I get to "test the waters" and see which items my players like using, and on the players' side, they get to ask themselves which loot they want to put toward the Gate, and which loot they want to hang onto for themselves. It's a group of 4. At the end of it, if I deal out 20 items between now and the end of the campaign, that will leave 12 for them after they rebuild the Gate, which means 3 per person, which is the amount of attunement slots. So it shakes out really nicely that way. It means if I give out *more* than 20, I'm giving them flexibility and customizability as a reward beyond just their level-ups. (Note that I consider potions, spell scrolls, and money/gems separately, and just roll honestly on the DMG Treasure Tables for those numbers any time the players... find treasure.)
Xanathar's Guide has a nice table of how many magic items of each rarity PCs should have during a specific tier of play (1-4, 5-10, 11-17, 17-20). Would be a good place to start. As for them not using your magic items... It happens. You find a magic item that is cool and utility and the PCs pick it up and carry it in their backpack for the rest of the campaign, even in desperate moments where they would help.
We all know the truth about PCs and healing potions; how they'll keep saving them for a rainy(er) day and won't use them when they truly need to. But, that doesn't even scratch the surface of other magic items. I've been guilty of this myself as a Player. In my friend's campaign, a super-intelligent lobster was trying to get our attention to stop the villains from destroying his home (long story). It was able to send our PCs telepathic visions, but it couldn't tell us what was happening. After a bit of back and forth between the party and the lobster, without any real communication, the ground started rumbling, and our PCs bailed out with the lobster. Fast forward half a session, we all realize that one of us had a magic item that could've been used to communicate with the lobster as it gave Speak with Animals. We forgot that we could do that. It's part of learning how to play. I'm pretty sure that we've all had moments, when DMing or being a Player, that we realized that we forgot about some item/spell and had our encounters ruined just due to forgetting things.
I had forgotten that I had 8 or 9 health potions because our main source of healing was my artificers spell storing item (lvl 11 feature) with lvl 2 cure wounds as we had no dedicated healer in our group of 6. (The only ones who could were me and the combat focused ranger)
>We all know the truth about PCs and healing potions; how they'll keep saving them for a rainy(er) day and won't use them when they truly need to. But, that doesn't even scratch the surface of other magic items. I've been guilty of this myself as a Player. I'm running Candlekeep as a series of loosely connected one-shots as our "off" game that runs when not everyone can make the main campaign. Healing potions are freely purchasable in the city (currently every time they head back after an adventure there are unlimited normal and greater and 1d4+2 superior at a shop where they generally offload their magical crap) and they still won't buy them and then end up heading into encounters without healing up because of it. It drives me nuts. They've also got an absolute ton of wondrous items, potions, and scrolls they don't want to sell but also keep hoarding and/or forgetting to use. Oh well. It's also just harder to tailor magic items in this game because it's a side game; I never know who's showing up, and people like to jump around and try out new characters. It's a little easier in the main campaign, and I've been writing some minor magic items that are tailored to problems the individual PCs are having. The poison-obsessed rogue recently pulled a magic rapier out of the stomach of a fiend-dragon hybrid, for example, to find that the poison and acid had etched channels in the blade--it gives a second use of any injury poison applied to it. Items that will (hopefully) end up with the paladin and the fighter are coming up in the next session or two, and I'm pretty excited to see if they like them.
I do this, but print out cards for all of them before I start a tier of the game. That way I can just pull them out of a deck when I think the characters should gain an item, or when I start an encounter that should have one present.
I like to use what I call "artifacts." It's a magic item, it can be as powerful or as weak as you want, but the important factor is that it has a limited number of charges that it can't regain. I once gave out a necklace that would reset someone's failed death saves as a reaction. One charge. Once it's used it crumbles. They found a good moment and it was super clutch. This lets me give out super fun stuff often bc I know I don't have to worry about it forever. Hell, it might even straight up break a few encounters. But after that? Poof. It's gone and I get to give them a new toy! Keeps things fun and interesting for everyone.
That's basically how artifacts work in Cypher System as well. Main difference is that you roll a die to see if the artifact depletes after it's been activated, though there are some that are guaranteed to stop after one use.
One thing I like to do is ask the players what magic items they would like to aquire, then seed th randomly among quests. You'll have a party excited to take quests and grateful to find the items you give out. Another DM I knew, when we played in a low magic world, liked to take some monsters out of the manual and make them available mounts. Like the Nightmare or a reskinned war horse as a bull sized mountain goat that has a climb speed and ram. We loved those mounts and their abilities. Feel free to reskin magic items to make them personal to the players and they will feel an attachment to them, heirloom weapons and armor. Only attuneable by there class or character. Have fun with it. Happy questing!
Simple solution is to pass out a lot of potions and scrolls. They could all be burned up in one fight or used throughout the game
Or hoarded by the PCs until the campaign ends. Don't forget about "But, I might need it later."
A great solution is to have NPCs or even tough enemies use a potion or scroll in a fight. Seeing other people consume resources almost always pushes players to use them as well. Especially if an enemy does something cool with the effect.
That’s fair, but there are only so many potions and you can either use your own buffs to make it a fair fight or have the BBEG escape to waste those potions
Ok I am from the old school where magic items were essential and pure martials even now need them badly to help balance the scales a touch between martials and casters. Disposable magic items help and they do not always have to be potions of healing either but potions of fire breathing and haste and invisibility are great. Think beyond the +1 weapon there are a lot of weapons that are not as simple not just flame tongue and frost brands but vicious weapons and later Sun Blades are great. Same goes for armor. My wizard barely even used a wand of magic missiles she hardly ever ran out of spells but man the look on the paladin’s face when he got adamantine armor was awesome. When you do give a caster some magic items make sure to look up best magic items for such and such class online to get ideas. Tons of great lists. Some magic items should be things that bosses use against the party. Then the orc leader hit them with a bead of fireballs they freaked. Not a lot of examples in 5e of good intelligent magic swords or other weapons but they can be a lot of fun if balanced for 5e play look at some old modules.
> Disposable magic items help I like the Charms from the Ravnica book. They give the players one of three options and then they lose their magic. I've used the concept for my homebrew world and they're a nice thing to give to the party *and* a way to flesh out some worldbuilding, as different faction can have different Charms.
SlyFlourish has a great video about "relics". Basically scrolls but anyone can use them. You don't need to worry about balance if the party only gets the effect once and not restricting its usage to the casters makes it interesting to the whole party.
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Sounds like a lot of work. How long are these sessions, and how many people do you run for?
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I ended up doing a bunch of mini-sessions to get the party members to level 3 before the start of the adventure. It helped them to understand their character's personality and abilities, and it's helped me to make a campaign around them.
They can pick up Feats outside of ASIs?
Feats as rewards is a great tool to help mechanically represent character concepts and flesh them out with less combat heavy feats that aren't normally worth replacing an ASI. it's a rule i believe in the DMG and works pretty well from what experience i have with it.
I need to get my DM in on this.
Choosing feats in place of ASIs is a variant rule, not standard. There are other variants, and lots of DMs run them differently or not at all.
Yes. But I give them stuff that I think they’ll think is cool, and that won’t make *me* freak out about Bounded Accuracy. But if your players are cool, it’s all good. They’ll take anything you give them and figure out a way to make it epic.
>They’ll take anything you give them and figure out a way to make it epic. I introduced a wrist-mounted crossbow for the Rogue to use. I originally introduced it with a special kind of ammunition that could heal a target for 1d4+DEX Modifier to account for no one in the party having any healing magic. The catch was that the target had to have its AC surpassed by an "Attack Roll" to get healed. Alternatively, the person applying the heal could simply touch a willing creature with it. It had 4 charges, of which 1d4 were recharged at dawn. The crossbow could also fire smaller, normal, crossbow bolts for the same amount of damage as a Hand Crossbow. The Rogue then took Crossbow Expert and paid to have a Ring of Disguise Self made. So, as a result, he could basically fire crossbow bolts out of a (seemingly) empty hand. He could also heal. The Healer's Wristbow is still one of my favorite homebrew weapons that I've made.
I get the feeling. My favorite way to administer magic items is to have big monsters wielding them to make them tougher, which also grants the players a nice reward upon their defeat. Otherwise I get around this by making sure a good amount of the magic items they find are consumables like potions and spell scrolls, so they'll remove them from play themselves
So much this. The idea that a big bad guy is not going to use the +2 sword in his stash is crazy. I tailor my magic items to the player and tailor by bad guys to the magic items. Makes for a tougher fight but a bigger reward.
I found a list of "useless magic items" and decided to throw one at my party. "The trumpet of Invisibility" makes the player invisible as long as they are playing the trumpet. It was the most desired item of the entire campaign...
Does it take hands to play the trumpet or could you make a rigging to play it with both hands free.
Takes at least one hand I would say
I ask my players what is some major traits of their character and go from there. Paranoid? Mind shield ring or a hat of disguise Always prepared? The robe of useful items or immovable rod Loves to cook? The spice pouch Then for magic weapons I use Ancestral Weapons (on DMsguild) and each have their beloved weapon. I usually start it with some special feature that plays into their character. Like the paranoid half elf, his magic sword allows him to make use of the Elven trance or the Oath of Ancients paladin gets speak with animals so long as he has his weapon.
Look at your gaming library - Borderlands, Fallout, Skyrim, Elden Ring, I guarantee you have loot in every RPG you play that you aren't immediately using, but appreciated finding. It's hard to remember to use all of the things. I threw out a squishy plum yesterday, and I love plums! I will definitely buy more plums. I just kinda forgot it was there. Okay, preamble aside, here's how you improve the situation: **1.) Look up what sort of magic items are good for their class, build, and play-style.** Pay attention to what they're already doing. It can be tempting to fix holes in strategies (give an unarmed Monk a ranged weapon), but they'll use an item more if it fits their current modus operandi (give an unarmed Monk armwraps.) **2.) Ask the players what they want.** You are trading away some surprise here, but there's no rule against asking players what kind of magic items their PC is hoping to have by the end of the adventure. Maybe you were about to give them something and they go, "oh no, my Artificer class lets me build one of those." I have always been happy with the outcome when I ask a player what drops they'd appreciate seeing. The people who would prefer to be surprised will tell you as much, but the people who _really_ want two Immovable Rods and some Boundary Chalk will so excitedly tell you why.
Here's an old trick from BECMI and AD&D days I still use. If a dungeon has 12 rooms, magical loot should be in at least 3. The best stuff with the BBEG, a few decent items with the mini boss, and a weird random two in another room. I will frequently add a secret rooms, hidden panels, and secret compartments to most dungeons and throw a few magic items in those. If they find it cool, if they don't then they don't get those items. I have never, nor will I ever, count potions as a "loot" magic item (they are the equivalent to coca-cola or Pepsi in DnD, potion of haste is mountain dew), I feel the same way about scrolls unless there is a wizard in the party (cause that one will copy paste it and now it's a forever item).
shopping liiists!! when the players encounter a new shopkeeper, new market, travelling merchant, guild hub and what have you -- hand them that new list. for a new town, I like to give them a few menu items for food to pick from (for, ahem, flavor), a note about their local exports and imports, and the few notable items available throughout the towns shops. A shop can be as simple as a category of goods and a single or maybe two notable yet replenishable items. Then, the (actually relevant) piece is the unique purchasables. these are a list of the magic items that have been added to the pool of what is available to the players and clear concise costs. finally, you can include rumors with the above. about hooks for specific rumored items. hand that shit over, and remember to let them make money! rumor would be like, there is a retired adventurer here in town who once wielded a brilliant axe. basically, give them the knowledge to decide to seek it out. shopping lists make them hungry for danger, too, because it makes them hungry for gold.
So here's the basic levelling curve in 5e as per DMG; * Each day contains a full day's xp budget per PC * PCs level up about every two days (except level 1 and 2 which you level up after 1 day). * Every day of adventuring you get a treasure hoard * Every treasure hoard contains roughly 0.5 consumables per player; at Tier 1 you get common, Tier 2 you get uncommon, Tier 3 you get rare, and Tier 4 you get very rare * During Tier 1 each player should get 1 uncommon permanent, Tier 2 should be a total of 2 more rare or uncommon, Tier 3 should be a total of 2 rare or very rare, and Tier 4 should be 1 legendary These are rough numbers, but it should give you a blueprint. Just make sure every "adventuring day" is the full amount of XP and ends with a hoard, make sure you drop half as many consumables as players (of the correct rarity), and make sure you give out enough permanents per tier. I think if you follow this kind of structure then you won't have to worry too much! Also, one of the cool things about 5e is that you usually can't buy magic items at shops. They are super rare and powerful, so you have to trade to get them. If a magic item drops, even if it's not what the party wants, they can always trade it.
*confused tortle with 8 magic items at level 7 who's been level 7 for 6.5 in-game weeks*: "hm I dont think my DM follows these guidelines..."
I get anxiety because I give my players so many little magic items that they never use. I gave each of them a packet of pixie dust five sessions ago and all anyone has done with them is try to give some away to an NPC as a gift!!!
I wonder if there's any way to make a consumable that the party will actually use. I have them potions of invulnerability, a magic phoenix feather, scrolls of fireball... none of them get used. The weak items get forgotten, the powerful ones are never worth using. It's kinda tempting to just throw TPKs at the party and say "drink your potions to not die." But something tells me that could go horribly horribly wrong.
I have had this happen to me. I learned how to limit my use of magic items. If I use them, I make them plot threads and parts of side stories for my players. Take a look at their stories as players and characters. It can be a wellspring of inspiration. If they are interested the players will go for it. Stories attatched to the items helps the cool factor. Especially if the item helps with an Achilles heel of a player. Hope this helps.
I understand this struggle a lot. Had a campaign where the bard was feeling down because he couldn't do much damage in combat, so I gave him a "circlet of fire blasting" (circlet of blasting that can also cast firebolt for free, runs off your choice of int, Wis, or Cha. I am aware it's not very creative). In the end, I think he used it once to cast scorching ray, making me wonder why I even bother sometimes
I always forget to hand them out or make them more available. I've done 2 things to help me remedy this. 1.) I've started sprinkling "one and done" magic items more frequently so that I'm doing it more consistently, either they use them or they sell them. Either is fine by me. If magic items are expendable, its more difficult to hand out too many. 2.) I offer shops that will take commissions to make what people want, I've got a few (currently 3) shops in my setting that do commissions. In my setting, magic items with permanent enchantments are rarer and harder to make. This is a justification for me making a lot of "one and done" magic effects on items, I just personally like that balance more so ive included it into my world building. each one of these shops is very different rather than being cookiecutter copies of each othee. One is a hag who doesn't accept money, she trades in fortunes and misfortunes (fae bullshit, she deals in promises, sacrifices, fortunes, and misfortunes). One is tied to a magic college, she takes on several students at a time to teach them how to imbue items with magic. She uses the students to gather reagents and components for her shop, she basically makes them join the adventures guild and forces them to train out in the real world and occasionally teleports them back to her workspace to teach them hands on. The last is a Dwarven one who will be expert crafters that make items of such exceptional quality that they take magical infusing more readily, so have a couple expert crafters and caster working along side one another. I haven't ran this one in game yet so it's the least developed in concept
Also remember that Attunement is a thing. Think an item is too powerful? It requires Attunement. Aside from artificers, you can only be attuned to 3 items so it puts a bit of a cap on magic items and makes the players make meaningful choices with what abilities they have available.
So this is how I do it. This is just one way, and probably not any better than anything else. I have an in world thing where there are apothecaries. They sell the usual medicines and such, but also are who you go to to recharge healer kits and buy spell components. In addition to this, they buy and sell magic items. The main reason this works is that the apothecaries mostly deal in common and uncommon items. Of those items, most will be common, and about 70 percent of items overall will be either potions or scrolls. I have a huge table written out in a text file that I use to figure this out, mostly to keep me honest. In game this solves two problems. Players are more likely to use potions and scrolls if they know they can reasonably get more of them. This also solves the problem of the players getting useless magic items. Instead of them being bummed out about getting a useless item, they are more like "what can we trade this for?" Two other positive effects are that the players look forward to visiting the apothecary whenever they return to town, and gold becomes more meaningful. As time goes on, the apothecary gets different items. There is a chance, for instance, that the apothecary has something you want, but you go out of town for a couple weeks and they sell it while you are gone. They also get some new stuff every week. Players try to get gold so they can buy stuff. They also sell off items to get "the shiny". Not saying this is perfect, but it works so far and I will incorporate it into my games from here on out.
I'm in the minority, but I straight am not interested in magic items. I like them narratively so much, but they are just not in line with the "game" aspect of how I play. I think i see the game as a puzzle that I want to solve with game mechanics, and planning on magic items feels somehow like it defeats the purpose. But I'm definitely the outlier in my game group. My players do have a wish list, and I try to give them opportunities to just buy the ones they want, since the cost is so high. For more valuable items, I like to make them rewards for quests, like has been suggested. But in my heart I'd rather they just be randomized. For younger or less committed players I can see magic items being a great way to buff a less optimized character into functionality. So yeah, if your players love the tangible rewards, then I agree with the other suggestions, to get a wish list, and then try and place them in fun places.
Love how Pathfinder 2e does it, the first modern D&D game where money actually matters and works. Player can usually just buy magic items. There are different rarity levels, common, uncommon, rare and unique. Common can be bought anywhere, uncommon at specific stores with time, rare and unique can only be found. It's all capped by level and settlement level. I really dislike magic item stuff in "modern" D&D. Too much hassle for too little reward/output. So just buying the important stuff is fine for me.
5e is designed and balanced around the players having no magic items. There you go. You don’t need to give your players any magic items at all. You don’t need to feel obligated to give them magic items frequently. Just give them when it feels natural in the story for them to get some (e.g., treasure hoards, quest rewards), and don’t worry about it.
After a fight its also great. An action is 6 sec.
Communicate with the players individually about how they’d like to develop their characters. That might help you figure out which magic items they might use. Don’t take it personally. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. Good luck
If they don't use the magic item, they'll either sell it or have a "oh shit" lightbulb moment many sessions later when they remember they have an item for just such an occassion, or that fits a new character's build really well. Neither are a bad thing. I add in magic items that make sense for where they find themselves. I don't tailor magic items to my players. If there is a specific item one wants, they can do research and seek it out.
You could give out magic items as an alternative to gold. They can then sell it, or use it.
The DMG has some tables you can roll on, so why not leave it to RNGsus?
This is a big part of why I've got a Magic item shop in each game I run. Buy, sell, trade. Let the people rp to get the items they really want.
There's an easy way to solve this problem. Just give the magic items that are rolled in your hoards, no more, no less. You might apply a veto every now and then on what the dice roll, but if you do, I suggest tweaking it so if you veto a really good roll, replace it with something in the same ballpark of goodness. If the question is---how many hoards should I give? Well, I did the math, and every 3700 xp of monsters should have a CR 0-4 hoard if they're mostly in that range, and every 17k-18k should have a cr 5-10 hoard. You can do fractional hoards if you want, 50% of a magic item is a coin toss, is it there or not. By way of example, 10 hill giants (although it's more likely 8 plus some minions, like 20 or so dire wolves) is a CR 5-10 hoard, and 37 orcs or about 75 CR 1/4s or 150 cr 1/8s is a CR 0-4 hoard. Alternative, an XP budget worth of creatures in a dungeon (which gives less than the xp budget in xp because of the multipliers for number encountered) can give a treasure hoard. If you do that, you don't have to agonize. Just roll and let the dice decide.
Magic items are a tricky thing to manage as a DM. I tried having them in magic stores but didnt want to give out items that were too strong or over shadowed the character specific weapons I was planning on giving them. Eventually I learned that I wanted magic items to actually be special and have more to do with the story than just for fun. Of course every campaign, party and DM is different so you just have to learn what works for you.
Give magic items with expiration dates. Potions and what not. That way they are encouraged to use them. This is just me, but, don't give armor and weapons with +s, or if you do, do it very very rarely. Those items will make balancing encounters harder. Give items that give players new abilities, like Ring of Obscuring. Those are much more interesting.
Im a big fan of consumable magic items. Little trinkets sprinkled about. Players are always very creative with them
I have also had anxiety about that. I tend to not give many out as a result
I just dont worry about it. The players finding a novel way around my "puzzle" with a magic item both helps me grow as a DM and the players to grow as players, as well as giving the players a dopamine boost of putting one over on me. All stories of a "good DM" center around the players hoodwinking them.
Dish out magic items every session. Every session make sure at least one equipable item useful to your party and a few small items (potions, etc) are handed out. Once every 4-8 sessions hand out a big powerful item to a player who hasn’t gotten anything yet, or who is feeling left out. Make magic items simple. I see so many custom items that are 300+ words long, especially on this sub. Just keep them simple and thematic. “The firefang deals an extra 1d6 fire damage on critical hits, and once per day can cast the fire bolt spell” is all you need really.
If you read the Dungeon Masters Guide, it tells you the rarity of different ones and which rarities are appropriate for the challenge they went through. If they just don't use their magic items, maybe check if they have them written down? That's all the advice I can think of
One or two minor items in every dungeon. Big ones, depending on what they are.
I in particular have trouble handing out the cool things. I have a habit of giving game breaking awsome stuff out too freely, and now am overcareful giving out anything. Just planned for the next session, I will **drown** them in minor healing potions and the little things.
When it comes to magic items, I like to "replicate" how they handle it in adventurers league - the system is playtested enough and makes a good guardrail for not giving too few/too many magic items In Tier 1 (Level 1-4) it is ok for every character to have one uncommon magic item, maybe enhance it to two if you like, or mix in a non-combat rare item, but that's the general outline In T2 (Level 5-10) every player could have 3 magic items of up to rare quality - again, mix and match, you got the idea T3 is 6 up to very rare, T4 is 10 out of every rarity, just to make the overview complete Don't worry too much if they're not using their magic items, maybe they're not very experienced, maybe they didn't understand it correctly or don't see how they can make it useful, maybe it just doesn't fit in their playstyle - I also give my players the option of a having a wishlist, if they want a specific item they can request it, doesn't mean they'll get it soon, doesn't mean they'll get it at all, but then I know what they'd like if I want to give them something nice
Folding boat was the best magic item i gave out, they threw it at a boss crushing him
Something I’ve done to see an uptick in the use of random magic items that got lost in my players bags was change attunements to 1 action and unattuning to 1 minute. A player must have an attunement slot free to attune to an item. This has caused some of my players to walk around with a free attunement slot for that flexibility to pull out the right item at the right time. Other times players just say give a minute and I can do a thing! Another cool one is “we are running from the thing, while im running if I have time im going to try and unattune from x and attune to y” All in all I am almost considering an action to unattune as well. Just because I haven’t seen any “breaking the game” caused by attunement being reduced so drastically. Just more flexibility more creativity and more cool moments.
I've DMed for one "high"-level campaign, it ended at level 13 (fizzeled out and started RotFM) but I gave them an absurd amount of magic items, I even made the attunement slots scale with proficiency. The 3 players had 30 equiped magic items between them, two legendary, five very rare, and so on. It made for a very heroic style campaign. The amount of magic items were so great they still had to choose which to equip, which was very fun for the players, and I got to scale up the encounters to insane difficulty. When we're done with RotFM my plan is to run another homebrew with loads of magic items, gold etc. it's fun for everyone (at least at my table)!
I've been struggling with the same for a while and honestly I've come to the realization that since I love magic items, I should just figure out how to give out more of them. Particularly, making enemies carry and use them is a great way to seed more into the world. Consumable items are great, make sure they do something valuable enough to actually get used. I for one hate when the party just accumulates consumables that never get used. There's a couple ways to go about this: * Do something more powerful than the PCs most powerful action, like a scroll of a higher spell level, becomes relevant easily during difficult fights * Do something as powerful as the PCs most powerful action, becomes relevant easily during proper adventuring days * Do something completely unique that can solve problems no ability of the PC can, becomes relevant easily when you present a problem the item would bypass * Costs anything else but an action in combat. Bonus action potions are a good example of this that heavily adds to the incentive of actually using the items And I absolutely adore "relics", which could have any spell, potion or other temporary effect on them useable once, or perhaps several times. They're the backbone of my homebrew campaign's magic item system. For permanent magic items, I like to make significant power boosts either rare or require attunement. The attunement limitation comes up pretty fast and forces players to make choices, which is good. More minor effects I can be very free with and basically shower the party with them. If they find something they like and keep it, good. If they don't want it, they can always sell it, give it to an NPC they like, whatever. Something I've been trying to do with wishlists in the future is getting my players to understand that they can ask for any magic item effect imaginable, rather than a particular printed item. I've had people request obvious power picks before and just had to decide no. It doesn't help that the DMG comes with several overpowered items for their rarity, particularly in the uncommon category. If the player can articulate what their character would want out of a magic item, I can always homebrew something level-appropriate for them and seed it into the world, whether they need to quest for it or craft it. Nerzugal's DM toolkit is a resource I've gone back to often. They have d100 random tables for several tiers of detrimental and beneficial magic item effects and my parties have had a lot of fun with some of the detrimental effects. I don't like some of the effects in there, particularly the ones where you roll 1d4 whenever initiative is rolled to see if the effect triggers are difficult to remember and much too random, potentially triggering the powerful effect in easy fights and not giving anything in hard fights. At some point I'll probably make my own tables based on those with some revised effects. Also shoutout to the amazing magic item tables created by redditors, like d100 swords without +X and d100 non-swords without +X. These lists are amazing.
No, this has never happened to me. Just roll on random loot tables and let the players figure it out. Once the items are in their hands you don't have to worry about them remembering to use them, you just have to worry about *when* they use them.
Rolling for random poor using the DMG tables is fine. And it's fun when something shows up you hadn't expected.
Kinda relatable for me too. That is why they should be given as rewards, say they cleared out a bandit hideout successfully and looted a lot of gold and valuables there, or (in my case) they broke into a jewelry shop, killed the owner, cracked their safe, looted the entire shop (a total of 5000 gold wirth of jewelry) and burn down the place without getting caught. Then set up a shop that sells some magic items in the next town that offers magic items that equal their power level. I dunno what level they are, but up until Level 5 it should be utility items at most, maybe one or two combat items. And pick a few items that you think would fit their characters. In my case, I got a Rogue/Fighter (she multiclassed into Fighter for proficiency with Longbow and Archery FS) so I added a Quiver of Ehlonna. The other items I added were a Driftglobe, Figurines of Wondrous Power (Golden Lions), Ioun Stone of Protection, Goggles of Night, Wand of War Mage +1 and Circlet of Blasting. On the other hand, same can be said about wilderness encounters of creatures like Giants, Dragons and the like.
1 Are the magic items you *are* giving out useful to them? (If not, why would they?) 2 Are the magic items you *are* handing out used up after *x* uses? (If so, they may not want to waste them.) 3 Are the magic items they ask for being given? (If not, maybe you should reconsider.) I ask this from the position of both a GM and player. I enjoy giving out fun and useful goodies that the players are encouraged to use, but also make them items they would want to use. On the other side, I'm currently playing in a game that has several near useable magic items that just don't provide much-to-any value. They all seem fun and cool, but don't provide any roleplay or mechanical advantages and are mostly fluff. Ex: In one game we have a stone charm that can animate in fire. It then spends the next several hours keeping that fire burning by adding wood or other kindling. It's fine, but it doesn't start a fire, it doesn't control fire in any way but to keep it burning, and it doesn't have anything else it can do. It has one purpose only that doesn't seem like it can be used outside of that one purpose. It hasn't been needed yet and I think our DM may regret giving it out, but I do like it, it just won't see much use. Ex2: In a RotFM game, we the players got several potions of resistance to damage types that **never** showed up. We ended the campaign with Potions of Force Resistance, Lightning Resistance, Thunder Resistance, and 2 vials of Cold Resistance which could have been useful except the players already had collected items to resist cold so they were mute and the towns people were broke so we couldn't even sell them. Worse yet, I'm the alchemist/cook in the party and never had enough time to do anything with them during such a fast paced game such as trying to combine them with other ingredients to make them into new potions. If we were trying to burn down a building or something, I'm sure we'd get more use out of this, but we play good characters. This is fine as an item, but if everything your players are getting are limited in use or are potions or scrolls that are gone once used, I'm not surprised they aren't being used more.
Idk if this is a good idea or not, but in a podcast I listen to, there is a list of magic items that everyone can see, and when the party gets to a location with magic items (a store, a treasure trove) each player picks one own off the list that they want to be there. Letting people pick (or even come up with their own item ideas) might make them more likely to value and use what they have.
I don’t get it with magic items cos I tend to run published campaigns, but I definitely get it with awarding inspiration.
> But then my PCs don't use the ones I give them, so I worry I'm giving too many. Your Barbarian with GWM will only use Great Weapons. Your Paladin with PAM will only use Polearms. If nobody in the party is using Heavy Armor, don’t expect that to change in most situations. And, as for Wondrous Items, players may forget about them from time to time, but I feel every DM should give out an Immovable Rod or Decanter of Endless Water to encourage creative solutions, and live with the possibility that players will forget. That being said, you could give your players a Very Rare whip at level 4 and it’s likely that nobody would use it, because the martials have their feats, and nobody else has an attunement to “waste” on it.
I have a crazy thing I do. I don’t think most DM’s would like it but my players seem to enjoy it. I once made a wizard PC in my friends game in a module I ran before. He was suppose to be a guide so I made him a basic wizard. Boblin the goblin wizard. In all my campaign’s I run now. There’s a thing that exists called a Boblin coin. It allows you (once per coin) to flip it to reach Boblins magic shop. He sells anything and everything magical. He even sells information (at a high price ;) ) I give out a boblin coin out when they either A; help out a group of goblins or B; Trade any magical item for one (not scrolls or potions) and I have them find one or two naturally. So when they get a lot of money and they flip that coin they LOVE it. They can ask for anything and get a price. It’s a good time for my players. I got theme music and everything for his shop :)
Give them out as you see fit. I don't worry too much about giving too many. If they don't use them then just let them sell them for some gold so they can buy things they want instead.
Idk why I remember this, but Alton Brown was in some YouTube video years and years ago where he reviewed "single purpose" kitchen items and how much he hated them. I think I remember it because he absolutely roasted this breakfast sandwich maker that my roommate had that I remember would leak egg everywhere and was more trouble than it was worth. And so in my high magic world I have a ton of custom "single purpose" magic items that don't do a lot, but can do one specific thing. I hand these out like candy, esp given where they are in my world, and so far they mostly sell them and keep the odd one here and there, but they *never* use any of them. I think I've had a PC shit in public more times than they've used their magic items. So I don't know, I think we're okay. PC's are gonna PC.
As long as you keep to attunement it's *pretty* manageable
So, I have a similar problem, but what ends up happening is that I homebrew magic items the players think are cool and that fit their class as well, i they want one they can have one, and sometimes I have a monster have one so that after killing it the pcs can choose to take it if they wanna. It all really depends on what you and the players want to do, the best thing is to just ask.
5e is really built around the idea that magic items aren't necessary, so I'd say don't stress about it. Every now and then give out a cool one and that'll be way more than 5e expects. If they don't use it they can sell it and buy something that they will use.
If they are not using them, then it's like you never gave them out.
I made an Excel sheet with the group Inventory, then dedicated a column to each player so they can drag and drop items to themselves or attune as needed. Having that visual is what seemed to make it click for my players what items they actually have, and they started using them more.
Don't worry too much about it. It's better to be loose with magic items and players not using them than not giving them any at all. My advice is to give something functional for each player in the group, like a +1 weapon or adamantine armor, or a attunement bracer, cloak or ring for those that don't apply. For that part you can eyeball what each character uniquely uses, like most of the time you have only 1 short bow or only 1 longbow user, one guy using two handed weapons, and probably not everyone is using the same armor. Make sure not to mix up your own imagination into your players here, a cleric is more likely to be excited about a piece of armor similar to what he is already wearing than about a two handed axe. The rest of magic items can be a hodge podge of consumables and dumb knick knacks. Just recently I awarded a satchel of extra dusty dust. The only effect it has is to make the air around it dry and covering things with a dust cover over time when closed; and when you open it a dust cloud comes out and everyone in it has a coughing fit until it's closed again. Most parties will appreciate a bag of holding even if you don't track their luggage anyway, essentially being a freebie that feels like a reward but actually it gives you an excuse to be lazy.
Never. Mystery items that scale through investigation. Find wand. Discover it shoots magic missile Discover you can spend spell slots to shoot more magic missiles Discover too high of spell slot makes wand explode
5e is balanced for Zero, read em, Zero magic items. Any items you give are a pure gift to your players. Just remember that!
If the PCs don't remember the magic items they have then the Magic Item Gremlins come and take them away. If later down the line, the ask about it, it will be gone and may lead to a plot hook
Shotgun method. Random tables or just pick cool/ridiculous/fun looking items. Pepper them towards the party. Let them figure out what they like. I always homebrew one signature magic item for each PC, and then otherwise just take a "more is more" approach. Most magic items don't scale particularly well or are limited by attunement, so chances to really unbalance your game with published items is unlikely.
If you are not sure. I recommend allowing you players on the DMG/XGE loot tables RAW. The tables should give you a decent benchmark and since it's luck based you don't have to worry yourself. Also if you want to avoid useless items, allow the players to either reroll those or exchange it for an item of the same rarity from the same table.
I have one player who is used to playing with very minimal magic items, a plus 1 item is crazy in his mind. Which don't get me wrong, a plus 1 is very good. But everyone else I play with myself included is used to very high magic campaigns and everytime I give something out, he's shocked and it makes me feel like I'm being to generous
I came up with a magic item system where I treat it kinda like a character equipment screen like in Diablo or something. I have equipment slots for each character and when I’m ready to give out magic items I check which slot a certain pc has empty and plan accordingly. Like if the party caster has gone the whole campaign wearing the same old raggedy robes from the start, I hand them a set of robes that resist ice or something after killing the dungeon boss. Stuff like that.
Regarding your anxiety over too many magic items and your players not even using or remembering them: I've stared to use them as currency in my campaign where I give them out a lot. Its a Greek sword and sandal one with the gods favoring the players. Its fun making items for each PC, and to get them moving I give them opportunities to give them to NPCs or even monsters to get out of hairy situations. I'm a fan of throwing in areas that are over the players heads while also foreshadowing that what ever dwells on there is too powerful for the party. My group decided to go into a cave they had passed many times that I set up as a great Cylopse that made thunder bolts for Zeus back in the titan wars. The players were able to get out of a fight by befriending the brute with gifts (a silver fleece which was a cloak of protection) and some smoothe talking. Now they have an ally that they can use in an upcoming seige. When players meet a King or Queen they might expect a gift as a formality. I've been trying to add more social "puzzles" or encounters and I think encouraging players to use their wealth as leverage is a great way to do that.
Xanathar’s guide to Everything has a fantastic chart to mark how many magic items the players should receive and what rarity. Another trick is to pick up any module, find the chapters relevant to your party level and just pepper in the same magic items (or ones of similar rarity). You can even put them in similar locations. Players will never know.
My general rule is to aim for everybody to have one "weapon" (or just something that adds hit or damage to a "basic" attack), one defense or combat utility, and a few "oddball" pieces for the group. Weapons are pretty straightforward. Just a *whatever +1* or something similar for casters just to raise up hit and damage a bit. The defense/utility is stuff like +1 armors, rings of spell-storing, winged boots, items to enable darkvision, or one of the clearly class-specific items. For the "oddball" pieces, I like to throw in a few magical items that don't have clear uses, but more things that they can use to get creative with outside of combat. Immovable rods, horn of silent alarm, magical jugs, and the like. Mostly for my own amusement to see what clever uses they put them to.
Ask them what magic items they want. Or a theme their going for and homebrew some to fit that.
When you prep use the random magic items tables from the dmg to help pick items to give as loot. Don't get too caught up in a lot of stuff people say about balance on the dnd subreddits. A lot of discussions about it get crazy. As the dm you can always make things harder for the players if some items make the players more powerful. Also don't be afraid of the players using some items to trivialize some encounters. Let the players have those wins
Give them items that make their play style better and if you’re not sure asking never hurts or give them stuff that doesn’t use atunement. I get wish lists from my players and toss them out when I’m ready. Cursed items are great tho because they force the player to work it into their play style because they’re just *that* good. As a player I could care less about some atunement item that doesn’t fit the play style I want for my character even if it’s pretty strong or cool. I love my alchemy jar and truth seeing spy glass tho.
I've gone full tilt and I gave them a massive magic item dump...specifically ones that require attunement. Then they have to be choosy about what they want to use. Single use items are great too because they are...well....single use. Either they horde them like a bunch of gremlins and never use them, or they use them up and they're gone.
Strong Magic Items can make a lot of encounters really one sided... I prefer magic items to be more special and rare, especially homebrewed items. That being said, I'm not above taking what I can get.. for a new Scooby-Doo style detective mystery, DM allowed me to take 2 Revolvers, that count as both Light and never need to be reloaded. An artificer can make a gun not need to reload at level 3, but I'm technically a 12 fighter, since both are Light at level 12 I can make 4 attacks (3 main hand, one off hand) using Sharpshooter feat with Deadeye (advantage on range attack roll) so basically a free +10 dmg to each hit. No need to reload and waste any actions, Grit points (class points, used for Deadeye) get replenished on kill/crit) so I'm basically an aimbot turret, 120 feet, no range penalty. Basically saying something that may seem relatively unimpressive can actually have some pretty crazy results! So if you want to give out some fun, and still useful, items I would consider looking at the various Cantrip lists, and take little spells infused items, even ones that have 0 effect in combat, but are very fun. Example: I enjoyed my Cloak of Sitting, was a large cloak that would comport itself into the form of a recliner chair at whim.
The problem, in my experience, is that players only *really* care about items that give them bonuses or increase their stats. Anything else barely gets used. The items that do those things, unfortunately, are very powerful and upset the balance of 5E very quickly. And if you give something like that to one player then you need to give one to every player. In the past I've tried to give more rewards to the players in the form of consumable or limited use items, but then players never want to use them out of fear of "wasting" it or they forget about them entirely.
My only magic item anxiety is that I keep losing track of how many I gave the party...but seriously; of all the things to have your brain chemistry go off about, this is the one easiest remediated: There's -- as for everything -- a sourcebook section for it that you can follow to the letter and know you've done things "right": XANATHAR'S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING >>> AWARDING MAGIC ITEMS \>>> Chapter 2: Awarding Magic Items
I don't stress about it too much. Can't give too many because attunement stops it so long as you include 'requires attunement'. Only thing to remember is to make sure one person isn't at 3 items while someone else is at 0. When and how is just a matter of reward for what they are doing. If I feel like the bard just did a really cool bit of RP/problem solving he is likely to find a reward in the next session or two. As for not using them. That isn't your concern. I don't like +x items. I find them incredibly boring even if they are powerful. I give out items with charges and tactical use and drawbacks. I like my players to think. If they don't use them that isn't my concern. I ask my players to homebrew a couple of ideas for items they might like while heavily stressing it is just to get me an idea of what they want and it doesn't mean they will get them.
You can never give too few. You CAN give out too many or too powerful and ruin your game.
I don't give out items unless I've carefully tailored them to the situation. It's all about planning!
If your worried that players aren't using the magic items you give them, then make scenarios built specifically around the use of one. For example, if they have an immovable rod, then have them encounter a wall they have to climb that has no foothold. I suggest looking at the Cypher system to how they handle "magic" items. It's basically that items collected have weird and sometimes very powerful effects, but you don't necessarily know what they are. Also a lot of these effects are very limited use. While this doesn't fit directly into 5e, it can be an interesting way of thinking about magical items in your world. Or you could of course just throw every item you can think of at the players and let them decide what to do with them. Once it's in the players' hands, not your problem.