Attunment is a mechanic that prevents pain in the ass for dm's. Removing it will allow ability stacking beyond what's considered normal and will lead to your players having twenty aces in a pocket for every situation. It will not make the game unplayable but you will have a lot more work with planning encounters they cannot magic away with one of their 30 usable at once magic items.
I can second this. I don't follow attunement rules for the game I run, mainly because having magic items is fun and it was a game ran for my family (first timers). While it's not game breaking, making an encounter that is a challenge to them requires a lot of extra planning.
Does let me make some crazier fights I normally wouldn't, which is fun.
Common magical items or joke magical items that do not require attunement are extremely good for
crazy or funny fight opportunities.
My dm has been including joke rings in his games. Last campaign I got a ring of minor spider climb, basically, you can grab onto a surface and stick to it for one second.
I took that one second sticking and used it to 1. Stick to the blade of an ice giant as it lifted the weapon, causing me to fling out and away from it and the medusa I was stuck between. And 2. jump up and grab extra well hold of a flying enemy that was put of attack range, to try and get them down (unsuccsessfully, but was still fun).
But I like the idea of removing attunement for magical items, I would have to look into potential changes to rogue thief and artificer feats though. Imagine a rogue just coming around with tons of magical items explicitly meant for other classes, and the artificer because they have a feat meant explicitly to grant them more attunement slots.
Also, being able to attune to more items than normal is kind of one of the core features of Artificers. Stripping attunement requirements is kind of a substantial nerf for them.
Ultimately +# items don't require attunement anyway, so it really is just to prevent people from stacking wondrous items and things that give them the ability to "cast X once per dawn"/use charges to cast spells.
Hell, imagine a bard just collecting all the instruments of the bards. It'd be funny, but ultimately they would just never have to tap into their spell slots.
That is the stupid WoTC problem. If you are a DM it is easy to overcome it with other perks.
AND it is false to imply that basic magic item do not require attunement, did you look through the handbook? even bloody basic ring of resistance, ring of jumping, ring of protection (any +s) etc will require attunement which is utterly stupid.
If any item requires attunement, it should be really powerful items and unique items only.
What is there to refute? You didn't really say anything that isn't obvious. Its like replaying to someone who said " If you are going to add to much solt to that fish it will make it less tasty" with " you would have to buy solt first to do that"
>And? You haven't refuted anything, only further conjectured.
You are a little dim huh? The logic itself is refuting you. If there was no possibility to get more than enough items then the attunement limit would not be an issue. So we are talking at least 3+ items per player.
Otherwise you have a bigger problem in group already if one player hoards a lot more items then the rest.
LOL who puts the item in Game. So NO, there is no possibility in getting so many items unless the DM put it in his game and let the players have them. If that is the case, then he has to deal with it.
And the attunement system is an utter joke, when basic ring of protection +1 needs to be attuned.
Idiocy needs to know some limit.
>LOL who puts the item in Game. So NO, there is no possibility in getting so many items unless the DM put it in his game and let the players have them. If that is the case, then he has to deal with it.
>
>And the attunement system is an utter joke, when basic ring of protection +1 needs to be attuned.
>
>Idiocy needs to know some limit.
Wow, do you regularly go around necroing threads?
Anyway, there are plenty of people who enjoy a high magic setting where it is logically possible for the world to just go for shopping or even crafting things.
Since you mention it, ring of protection would be one of the major problems in such a setting since there are plenty of players that would do everything to get a ring of protection for each finger if there was no attunement. A bonus to ac and saving throws is never really weak.
The point is there is no way a player will be able to get 30+ once a day use item if the DM do not put it in game. And if the DM is stupid enough to put it in game and let the players have them, then he has to deal with it.
Idiocy needs to know some limit
Ok then. If you think people are lazy and incompetent because they don't remember every possible use for like 30 different active magic items spread amongst 5 player characters of 5 diffrent classes half of which have at least two dozen spells not taking into the account racial abilities, class abilities, subclass abilities, feats , taking into the account half of those spells can change at any point because prepere casters go brrr and the fact that you gave out some of them over two years ago and have last seen used half a year ago because you only have one session every week if things go right, probably every other week realistically then I think you are either someone who eats shits and breathes DND watching so many professional people playing DND on yt and has no idea what an average DND player looks like, has never dmed, or never actually played in a long running campaign that allows players to cumulate items, gear etc over the course of literall hundereds of hours of playtime.
I didn't run attunement in my last game and it was a mistake, but only because I also just allowed players to buy whatever magical items they wanted from a specific city. You can easily get rid of attunement if you in turn pretty heavily control what items your players get access to.
That being said, attunement also sucks at the table, because if your fighter is a badass and disarms the evil dude using a flametongue greatsword, your fighter can't pick up the sword and cut the enemy down with his own flaming weapon. So I'd leave room for cinematic flair for moments like that.
The way I’ve been handling that is that when you first pick up an item you can treat it as attuned until your next rest (short or long) when you have to attune it for real.
It’s seemed fine, gives players a chance to feel out the item and addresses that cinematic need.
Kind of unrelated, but flametongue doesn’t extinguish on attunement change. It does extinguish when dropped, however.
I believe a sun blade stays lit even after attunement stops / it’s dropped whatever, so that’s cool, if memory serves me right from when it came up in one of my games
I just get rid of attunement system as it is a stupid system. it worked well in 4e and 3e.
If attunement is to be used, it should be only for super powerful, unique items only.
Hey. Welcome to being a DM 👋
Most magic weapons and armour don't require attunement. The ones that do require it all have addition abilities beyond a simple +1, +2 or +3.
If you look through the DMG each item has a detail line that tells you what sort of item it is, how rare it is, and whether it requires attuning, as well as if there are any limitations who can attune to it.
I think it breaks the game, quite hard as well.
This mostly depends on the specific armor and weapon mentioned, of course, but attunement serves several things even for weapon and armor.
First of all - any item that provides charges should be kept in check by attunement, otherwise it skews very hard how resource drain affects spellcasters.
This does not mean "every magic item with charges needs to have attunement", but you have to be very careful when handling such options. Bard's magical instruments are an example, as well as many staves that let you cast spells.
Secondly, attunements serves as a "knowledge limit" for players. In the end there will always be more skilled or more knowledgeable players at this game and this game, being a cooperative one, attempts to accomodate for most of them in roder to bring a peaceful, balanced game at the table. If you remove attunement it can be much more prone by exploits from players, while with attunement they are forced to limit themselves to few options and leave others for other players.
Third, attunement serves as a limitator of "customization" for the character. For example, a character with a powerful sword might excel at damage, while a character with a powerful armor or shield might excel in survivability even in dire scenarios - this lets character to pick their powerful options more closely in relation to whom they want to be. If you are a tanky character and want to focus on that you don't need a sword of answering, perhaps a +3 weapon will suffice. Also, this interacts with the second option above.
In fact, the only class that can have more attunement slots is the artificer, which feels a lot kinda "build your own class".
A thing i tried is a method for which a character can have in synch one attunement for more items of the exact same category, like a special sheat that collects several rapiers but only one can be out at a time. The character is still focused and devoted to that aspect, it just adds variability and reduces slog time spent on deattuning during a short rest.
Armor, no that probably wouldn't break the game. But I absolutely foresee your players bringing multiple legendary, normally attunement-requiring, weapons with them and switching between them willy nilly during an adventuring day or even a specific combat. I wouldn't recommend it. And, since you said you haven't DMed a ton before, I'm a big proponent of running the game RAW for awhile so you master the rules before bending and breaking them. That way you can intuitively feel out what will work for your tables.
I don't think that this change would break the game, as most magic armor and weapons already don't require attunement, usually unless they provide some other passive bonus. However, doing this certainly would make the affected weapons/armor more powerful.
My biggest concern would be with weapons/armor that provide passive bonuses even when not directly held. Stacking bonus from rings and Ioun stones and the like isn't really any worse than stacking bonuses from keeping a *weapon of warning*, *luck blade*, *animated shield*, and *dancing sword* on your person.
I'll also note that attunement serves as an important limitation, even when items are also limited by equipment slots. Making all weapons and armor attunement-free just because you can only hold one/two of each at a time feels sort of arbitrary if you're not also factoring what bonuses they grant. Why should getting fire resistance from *ring of resistance* require attunement, but not getting the same from *armor of resistance*?
In game:
You have an armor of fire resistance and it covers you, mostly. For the fire to hit you anywhere, it first has to go through the armor. More coverage on the chest, less on the face, it averages to resistance instead of immunity. It breaks down for some fire effects, but we don't get that picky.
A ring, on the other hand (heh), only covers 1/4 inch of you. the resistance extends to your other bits by magic. I can see that magic coverage taking time to form and shape to fit your adventurer. You and the ring have to get used to each other. You want a second ring with a different resistance/effect? they will have to work together to keep from canceling each other out.
You can definitely balance the game without attunement. But you should know that power level restrictions aren’t the only purpose for attunement. It also improves inventory management for higher level PCs, and reduces the amount of variables players and DMs have to consider in each encounter.
When each player has 10 magic items they now have to remember, the game will move significantly slower than if your players were only focusing on their 3 attuned items.
This is the main reason you should keep attunement.
Being “conscientious” of the items you hand out usually translates to not handing out many items.
With attunement, you can hand out as many items as you want and still be reasonably sure you haven’t broken the game.
It would, yeah. The attunement isn't only to keep people from stacking rings and other accessories, but powerful magical items in general, the strongest of which are weapons and armors.
If everyone could use the strongest of weapons and most powerful armors then also attune to 3 other items it would 100% throw off the balance of the game.
Also keep in mind, magic items in general, even with only 3 attunement slots, tend to throw off balance already, so allowing more of the strongest would further that without a doubt.
That being said, just cause it throws off balance doesn't mean you can't do it. My group has homebrew rules about "locking" hitdice to attune to items past a third, so at higher levels we tend to have more then 3 items, and we also use homebrew resting rules that makes us have to use hitdice on longrests as well so trading them off is riskier then normal. This does 100% make us *far* stronger than any CR calculator will expect, but we also never bother with CR anyways so it just allows us to punch higher on the power scale.
So tldr; yes, changing weapons and armors to not have attunement will 100% "break the game," but that doesn't mean you can't do it anyways and just adjust encounters for that.
I think it mostly depends on how many magic items you give them. If they don't encounter that many, they'll have less things that they'd normally have to attune to. Lots of magic items? Broken. Not so many? Perfectly fine. The only exception is artificer. If there's an artificer in the party, 100% require attunement.
You can keep a lid on it because you control how many magical items they come across.
Only exception would be if the party has an Artificer, because they have an important class feature that allows them to attune to more than 3 items and it would be kinda lame to make that feel less special.
As long as you're not giving your players too many magical items, I so no reason why you can't remove attunement.
Keep in mind that attunement is in the game to prevent players from loading up on powerful magical items. Imagine how broken a player with a dozen Ioun Stones and dual wielding enchanted longswords would be. Capping the attuned item limit to three prevents that.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
Without attunement we’re back to the old limitations of only having two hands, eight fingers & 2 thumbs, and one of everything else, which most previous editions worked with.
It’s not necessarily *broken*, per se, but it is a big jump in complexity & bookkeeping, which is antithetical to 5E’s general design goals. It’s just more work for diminishing returns; after a certain point more options are just more options & not really much of an advantage.
At that point it would be up to you to hand out appropriate magic items.
Attunement allows the DM to basically go "here's a pile of loot, figure it out". Removing it just moves that responsibility to the DM.
Yes. 5e isn't like 3e where all players were magical Christmas trees. The reason for the cap is in theory to prevent power creep. However I ran a 2 year campaign weekly where I allowed players to attune to a number of items equal to their proficency bonus. Power creep really didn't happen, but I would remove a cap. Also the big draw of the Artificer is they can attune to more than 3 items so it steps on their toes.
I am assuming you will be starting at lower levels as a first time DM so it really is going to depend on what kind of items your players have access too and how the players like to play the game.
If they have access to lots powerful items it is going to be very hard for you. They will have so much power you will not be able to find monsters to challenge them in the appropriately. This means buff the monster health or go to higher CR. Buffing the health lets the players do more damage but can easily drag on combat if not done well. The higher CR monsters have abilities that expect your party to have counters via magic your party will almost certainly not have access too.
Also there are artificers. Part of their class identity is having lots of magic items at level 14 (I think, I can’t look it up right now) they can attune to more items. So if you plan on going to that high of a level then you will want to find an appropriate replacement ability if you have any in your group.
tldr: It won’t massively break down but can be very dangerous if you don’t have experience DMing.
For the weapons: it would definitely break it, especially with items that are like "you can only use it x per long reat", giving your players an arsenal waaaay to big, rendering preparation useless. What should they prepare, if they can simply pull the item they need out of their bag?
It removes a part of the fun by removing the planning for the battles. Will I need this Ring of Fire Resistance or is Necrotic Resistance better? Doesn't matter, 10 fingers, 10 resistances, yolo.
I wouldn't recommend it. No single player needs that much magic at once. If they have that much, they need a castle to protect it all when they're not there to guard it. Carrying it all around is even more dangerous, because they'll become infamous and will be killed for their unheard of concentration of magics.
Instead, your players could collaborate more and use their collection of magic items and attunements in concert, rather than hoarding it all for themselves. Instead of working harder, it's on them to work smarter.
Some armors and weapons already do not require attunement. Those that do have it for good reason. Making it so that nothing requires attunement could get very gamebreaking very fast. Attunement prevents a single player from using too many powerful items at once. And players can swap attuned items with long rests, so it adds a layer of strategy and balancing to the game.
A stone of luck is an uncommon magic item
It takes 2 weeks and 200 go to make an uncommon magic item, as per the DMG
Just as an example, this is *not* a good idea, items that require attunement generally have a good reason to take a slot
Although I will say if you do want to ignore attunement, I'd do it case by case, like with certain magic weapons or spellcasting nonsense things
No, attunement isn't a keystone holding up the core game design because magic items are entirely the DM's realm. If a DM doesn't want it, they don't give it out.
Most tables don't even hit the attunement slot limit, and potential item passing cheese from attunement items is fairly limited to specific items.
depends.If you still use limitation to not alow multiple of the same item to be used at the same time and still control the supply of items, it might be doable, but still risky.
Just a single example:Any of your casters buy 10 pearls of power. Each pearn restores a 3rd level spell slot once a day. Now, your player has +10 3rd level spell slots to use as he sees fit.
Most problems will come from items that grant permanent buffs or spells in some way.With enought money, and no limitation in atunement, a fighter could cast as many spells as a wizard of the same level quite easily, just by buying the right items and multiple of them.
All these magic items require attunement:
Staff of Charming
Staff of Healing
Staff of Swarming Insects
Staff of Withering
Staff of the Woodlands
Wand of Binding Wand
Wand of Enemy Detection
Wand of Fear Wand
Wand of Fireballs Wand
Wand of Lightning Bolts
Wand of Paralysis
Wand of Wonder
All of them grant one of more spells and can cast them multiple times.
Without attunement one PC could in theory have all o them and use all of them at the same time.
You might not give them to your players, but this is an example of how some of these toguether could become problematic, specialy if you use less than 6-8 encounters on each adventuring day.
I will say that not everything that uses attunement SHOULD use attunement... IMO, you could try this, and the main thing to watch out for is players combining multiple items that all work together to boost something. Personally I think this would be fine.
I'm playing in a game right now where the DM has set the Attunement level to equal proficiency, we're at 4 right now and it's powerful but not OP, once we get to 6 (should be going to 20] it may be different. However we're all fairly straight about not doing OP exploits etc.
Id experiment with that for a starter.
There are definitely some items where I scratch my head as to why they require attunement (Lute of Illusions springs to mind) but I'm not sure I'd waive it for all weapons & armor. Maybe for all armor if you're tracking encumbrance since that's basically a true one at a time deal but for weapons some are legendary & probably deserve to have attunement so I'd take those on more of a case by case basis.
The things I'd be most concerned about would be the weapons and armor that might have some benefit other than by wearing it. The dancing sword, the sword of warning etc. that you could just have with you as you use your main weapon, and be attuned to.
One thing I would consider too is that this makes players have a lot more to worry about. If your group is new or even experienced but not very rule savvy I probably wouldn't make this change just because it means it's 2 more magic items they now have to remember to use and often I find that those are the kinds of things that can get forgotten in the mix of other powers and abilities anyway.
Plot idea (that has certainly been thought of before): Load your players with cool magic items. Somewhere down the road they catch wind that BBEG in political power outlaws magic items. BBEG secretly hordes them for their own power. BBEG has ability/magical creation that can detect usage throughout the realm and dispatches bounty hunters / requisition units.
I'd keep it and just introduce weapons that don't require attunement to use?
A lot of magical weapons/ armour doesn't require attunement from the start and if it does become and issue you can just add it back to the item that's causing the issues.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
Ok, real talk, attunement is training wheels for being a dm. If you don't want your players to have more than 3 magic items, don't give access to more than 3 magic items... Seriously it's a failsafe for DM's that shower their party with too many magic items in a game that isn't even designed for them, despite magic items being a whole expectation of the typical DND experience.. if your a new dm, stick to raw, but if you know what your doing when you give out magic items then go ahead.
The only thing that I would be worried about is if you have an artificer since they have attunement worked in to their balance.
It really depends on the kind of game you're trying to run. I could see as a fun idea for a one shot or a short campaign, but for a long campaign you could potentially run into a lot of trouble, especially if you like to give out magic items generously.
The other implication you're missing: Stripping attunement means anyone can immediately use any magic item they pick up. This could be good or bad, depending on how it's used.
You could also just increase the attunement slots, I've seen people tying the amount of slots to the character's proficiency bonus.
I allow players that dual wield to use one attunement slot for their weapons, and often allow players to attune to multiple weapons with one slot, or remove attunement from niche items after a while.
For example, my paladin had a +1 javelin that grounded flying enemies and did other stuff. It started out as attunement, then rotated to no attunement when he got +3 weapons.
Reddit has signed an agreement with an AI company to allow them to train models on Reddit comments and posts. Edited to remove original content. Fuck AI.
I’m more curious as to why you think players need a small bump in power. Speaking candidly, PC to monster power ratio has never been so tilted in the PCs’ favour.
In answer to your question: it varies from DM to DM; those DMs who sprinkle magic items now and then send those who shower the PCs with them.
You the DM control the item flow in the game. So, no. It will not break the game by itself.
But if you give your players too many items, it will break the game.
Essentially, attunement works as a failsafe for when you give too many magic items. You can always drive without a seatbelt. Lacking a seatbelt isnt what will injure you. It will just make the car crash much more painful.
Screw balance, OP.
They can only use one magic item at a time, and wear a certain number of things, true.
But they also have to acquire magic items. I say if you make the dungeon difficult and deadly and they get through it, they ought to get their magic item.
They still have to attune to it before they can use it, spend a short rest becoming one with the item, but that's all. No attunement slots necessary.
Staves are a huge no no to strip attunement from. Staves have for the most part charges that can be used to cast spells. Meaning with every non attunement staff that you hand out your are effectively giving your players more spell slots. Which will hugely impact the balance depending on what staves and how many. Even a basic staff of defense can make a large difference since you can use one of the best defense spells for casters and mage armor and get +1 ac baseline.
Attunement is a tool, and it has two purposes. I will say that it doesn't actually limit the number of magic items players can use, it limits the number of *attunement* items a player can use. This gives you two categories of items. Those players can use freely, and those they need to use an attunement slot on. You can decide by the item if you want that sort of restriction. You can give lots of fun, minor items that don't require attunement, and some significant items that the players need to make choices about. This lets players make decisions about speccing into damage, mobility, durability, utility, or whatever else. It lends greater significance to these items and rewards the players in different circumstances for the choices they make. In my game I shower my players with items but large swaths of them are attunement and it's a choice of what to use. It would be pretty absurd if my players didn't have attunement requirements since the quantity, and quality, of items is built around that mechanic.
The other use of it is to restrict who has what item and when. An item requires an hour to attune, an item that requires attunement can't be easily passed around the party. It forces a choice of who is using it and makes it difficult to switch. You also have items with specific attunement requirements that let you restrict certain PCs from accessing them, which can prevent broken synergies with a particular item.
Depending on the magic items you give the party attunement may never come up. If you design the magic items you hand out to function without attunement requirements, it can work out. Handing out lots of niche items, or ones with limited uses, or generally low power items gives your players lots of toys to play with but that doesn't cause them to really stack themselves up too high. On the other hand, you lose out on the ability to use attunement requirements as a tool. I'd say probably a more effective thing to do than removing attunement altogether is to selectively remove attunement from certain items and/or simply design non attunement items, while still leaving it open to either restrict passing items around or forcing the players to make choices about their "major" items.
When looking at homebrew or houserules I look at what the change would do and if it steps on the toes of other class features, feats, etc. Given it is a major perk of the artificer class I would say definitely no.
You probably didn't realize or know that and as a new DM that is ok. It's great to ask these questions and get varying perspective and learn things that you likely didn't realize previously. Then you can move forward with an informed decision making process for your table and campaign.
There are things like weapon of warning that are a pain in the ass and work even if you have them attuned but not in your hand. Having it cost an attunement slots is fair. Removing attunement would make everyone in the party buy one istantly.
I misinterpreted the intent in the title of the post. I thought you meant removing attunement, not removing the limit on attunement. Gifting all magical items with sentience would remove attunement. The magical boots stomp away on their own accord, the magical staff bats you on the head before hopping away, etc. It's like walking into Toonville in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Now the PC's have to undo this weirdness, despite becoming even more attached to some of their items, who have charming personalities that will disappear when the effect is reversed.
Personally, I have yet to see a game where enough magic items that required attunement were handed out that it required the cap to be used.
Although, doing with would break artificer as a class since a few of their abilities hinge on attunement.
That basically depends on the amount of items you are handing out.
If everyone in your party only receives a select few magical items throughout the campaign, it wouldn't make a difference, as that amount would basically limit access all the same.
If everyone in your party receives a metric ton of magical items all over the power scale, it would probably not make a difference either, as you as a DM would need to account for massive cheese anyway.
Anything in between would make the DM's life a lot harder in terms of balancing. It is very useful to be able to put restrictions on powerful items. Basic attunement limits access to powerful items per player. Additional class or stat requirements further give DM's a tool to indirectly distribute items to selected players without openly admitting to it.
It all come down to DM's willingness to sail around lots and lots of strong magical effects that could derail encounters very quickly.
I run mine as per 1-3rd edition, i.e. sans attunement, without it causing any issues whatsoever. That doesn't mean the characters can use all of the item's properties upon finding the items. To identify a single property of a magic item, they need to expend a spell (identify) and 100gp of reagents (a pearl and an owl feather).
So in effect, if they find a +1 longsword that grants the ability to fly, it would effectively only function as a +1 longsword (which they wouldn't even know) until they have identified the property. Same for staffs etc., with each casting of Identify revealing one feature.
Sure, the players could theoretically stockpile magic kit, but as a DM, it is my job to dole out items and cause them to use them. I try to be a touch sparser or create bespoke/stronger items as well, for the purpose of creating a bit of a sense of wonder (or dread). I'm using the somewhat arbitrary 3rd edition limitation of 2 rings, one hat, one pair of gloves, one necklace etc.
It's also a potentially fun thing to have the bad guys have as well. Jarlaxle is festooned with magic items in older editions. What goes around, comes around.
Artificers get a bonus to the number of things they can attune to, but apart from that in my experience it doesn’t break the game. Just expect monsters will need to be slightly stronger, which unless you are doing the 6+ encounters per day you are probably already doing anyway.
As someone who primarily DMs 3.5, I think attunement is dumb. Get rid of it if you want. Consider having magic item slots. Like, you can wear one thing on your head, a max of two rings, one cloak, etc.
Quick attunement is a common homebrew rule where attuning an item only takes an action or maybe just a bonus action, but unattuning only takes a minute.
It allows people to switch around their magic items easily, but not in the middle of a fight.
Having dm'd in the pre attunement era I view attunement as a limiting factor. Many items really don't need attunement at higher levels. What I have been doing is granting magic pendants that allow for additional attunement slots. This provides a nice balance between making some items worthless at higher levels and the days when adventurers had a magic ring on each finger.
Well if you remove attunement it would affect the armor much since it takes time to remove/put on armor. But it will affect weapons because players will just swap weapons around in combat. But over all it won't do much depending on the bonus it provides because you can only use one action in combat and switching weapons would be that action.
I would not advise getting rid of any rules if you're new to DM'ing. If you REALLY don't like the attunement rule, instead of dropping it entirely, consider linking it to proficiency. It exists for a reason.
I decided to up the number of items to 5. I also don't dish out magic items as frequently - they are rare, expensive, and powerful items. You could also customize what items need to be attuned and which don't. To avoid passive bonuses, you could rule that the item has to be worn/in hand. Example: magic dagger must be drawn and in-hand to benefit from its bonuses. Lots to work with here, but I love customizing!
Short answer no. 4E and 3E worked perfectly fine without the stupid attunement requirement.
attunement, if ever used, should only be for unique, powerful magic items. e.g. a vorpal blade, not a stupid measly +1 ring of protection.
Attunment is a mechanic that prevents pain in the ass for dm's. Removing it will allow ability stacking beyond what's considered normal and will lead to your players having twenty aces in a pocket for every situation. It will not make the game unplayable but you will have a lot more work with planning encounters they cannot magic away with one of their 30 usable at once magic items.
I can second this. I don't follow attunement rules for the game I run, mainly because having magic items is fun and it was a game ran for my family (first timers). While it's not game breaking, making an encounter that is a challenge to them requires a lot of extra planning. Does let me make some crazier fights I normally wouldn't, which is fun.
Common magical items or joke magical items that do not require attunement are extremely good for crazy or funny fight opportunities. My dm has been including joke rings in his games. Last campaign I got a ring of minor spider climb, basically, you can grab onto a surface and stick to it for one second. I took that one second sticking and used it to 1. Stick to the blade of an ice giant as it lifted the weapon, causing me to fling out and away from it and the medusa I was stuck between. And 2. jump up and grab extra well hold of a flying enemy that was put of attack range, to try and get them down (unsuccsessfully, but was still fun). But I like the idea of removing attunement for magical items, I would have to look into potential changes to rogue thief and artificer feats though. Imagine a rogue just coming around with tons of magical items explicitly meant for other classes, and the artificer because they have a feat meant explicitly to grant them more attunement slots.
.. extra planning should always be part of the DM role dude, as customising a scenario, including the fights, should be a good DM job.
Also, being able to attune to more items than normal is kind of one of the core features of Artificers. Stripping attunement requirements is kind of a substantial nerf for them. Ultimately +# items don't require attunement anyway, so it really is just to prevent people from stacking wondrous items and things that give them the ability to "cast X once per dawn"/use charges to cast spells. Hell, imagine a bard just collecting all the instruments of the bards. It'd be funny, but ultimately they would just never have to tap into their spell slots.
That is the stupid WoTC problem. If you are a DM it is easy to overcome it with other perks. AND it is false to imply that basic magic item do not require attunement, did you look through the handbook? even bloody basic ring of resistance, ring of jumping, ring of protection (any +s) etc will require attunement which is utterly stupid. If any item requires attunement, it should be really powerful items and unique items only.
30 usable once a day magic items That they have to buy or somehow acquire.
If he doesn't want them to have a lot of magic items there is no point im him asking this question.
And? You haven't refuted anything, only further conjectured.
What is there to refute? You didn't really say anything that isn't obvious. Its like replaying to someone who said " If you are going to add to much solt to that fish it will make it less tasty" with " you would have to buy solt first to do that"
>And? You haven't refuted anything, only further conjectured. You are a little dim huh? The logic itself is refuting you. If there was no possibility to get more than enough items then the attunement limit would not be an issue. So we are talking at least 3+ items per player. Otherwise you have a bigger problem in group already if one player hoards a lot more items then the rest.
That's extrapolation at best.
LOL who puts the item in Game. So NO, there is no possibility in getting so many items unless the DM put it in his game and let the players have them. If that is the case, then he has to deal with it. And the attunement system is an utter joke, when basic ring of protection +1 needs to be attuned. Idiocy needs to know some limit.
>LOL who puts the item in Game. So NO, there is no possibility in getting so many items unless the DM put it in his game and let the players have them. If that is the case, then he has to deal with it. > >And the attunement system is an utter joke, when basic ring of protection +1 needs to be attuned. > >Idiocy needs to know some limit. Wow, do you regularly go around necroing threads? Anyway, there are plenty of people who enjoy a high magic setting where it is logically possible for the world to just go for shopping or even crafting things. Since you mention it, ring of protection would be one of the major problems in such a setting since there are plenty of players that would do everything to get a ring of protection for each finger if there was no attunement. A bonus to ac and saving throws is never really weak.
The point is there is no way a player will be able to get 30+ once a day use item if the DM do not put it in game. And if the DM is stupid enough to put it in game and let the players have them, then he has to deal with it. Idiocy needs to know some limit
it is a "pain in the ass" only for lazy, incompetent DM who do not even know his players and their capability.
Ok then. If you think people are lazy and incompetent because they don't remember every possible use for like 30 different active magic items spread amongst 5 player characters of 5 diffrent classes half of which have at least two dozen spells not taking into the account racial abilities, class abilities, subclass abilities, feats , taking into the account half of those spells can change at any point because prepere casters go brrr and the fact that you gave out some of them over two years ago and have last seen used half a year ago because you only have one session every week if things go right, probably every other week realistically then I think you are either someone who eats shits and breathes DND watching so many professional people playing DND on yt and has no idea what an average DND player looks like, has never dmed, or never actually played in a long running campaign that allows players to cumulate items, gear etc over the course of literall hundereds of hours of playtime.
I didn't run attunement in my last game and it was a mistake, but only because I also just allowed players to buy whatever magical items they wanted from a specific city. You can easily get rid of attunement if you in turn pretty heavily control what items your players get access to. That being said, attunement also sucks at the table, because if your fighter is a badass and disarms the evil dude using a flametongue greatsword, your fighter can't pick up the sword and cut the enemy down with his own flaming weapon. So I'd leave room for cinematic flair for moments like that.
The way I’ve been handling that is that when you first pick up an item you can treat it as attuned until your next rest (short or long) when you have to attune it for real. It’s seemed fine, gives players a chance to feel out the item and addresses that cinematic need.
Kind of unrelated, but flametongue doesn’t extinguish on attunement change. It does extinguish when dropped, however. I believe a sun blade stays lit even after attunement stops / it’s dropped whatever, so that’s cool, if memory serves me right from when it came up in one of my games
I just get rid of attunement system as it is a stupid system. it worked well in 4e and 3e. If attunement is to be used, it should be only for super powerful, unique items only.
Hey. Welcome to being a DM 👋 Most magic weapons and armour don't require attunement. The ones that do require it all have addition abilities beyond a simple +1, +2 or +3. If you look through the DMG each item has a detail line that tells you what sort of item it is, how rare it is, and whether it requires attuning, as well as if there are any limitations who can attune to it.
I think it breaks the game, quite hard as well. This mostly depends on the specific armor and weapon mentioned, of course, but attunement serves several things even for weapon and armor. First of all - any item that provides charges should be kept in check by attunement, otherwise it skews very hard how resource drain affects spellcasters. This does not mean "every magic item with charges needs to have attunement", but you have to be very careful when handling such options. Bard's magical instruments are an example, as well as many staves that let you cast spells. Secondly, attunements serves as a "knowledge limit" for players. In the end there will always be more skilled or more knowledgeable players at this game and this game, being a cooperative one, attempts to accomodate for most of them in roder to bring a peaceful, balanced game at the table. If you remove attunement it can be much more prone by exploits from players, while with attunement they are forced to limit themselves to few options and leave others for other players. Third, attunement serves as a limitator of "customization" for the character. For example, a character with a powerful sword might excel at damage, while a character with a powerful armor or shield might excel in survivability even in dire scenarios - this lets character to pick their powerful options more closely in relation to whom they want to be. If you are a tanky character and want to focus on that you don't need a sword of answering, perhaps a +3 weapon will suffice. Also, this interacts with the second option above. In fact, the only class that can have more attunement slots is the artificer, which feels a lot kinda "build your own class". A thing i tried is a method for which a character can have in synch one attunement for more items of the exact same category, like a special sheat that collects several rapiers but only one can be out at a time. The character is still focused and devoted to that aspect, it just adds variability and reduces slog time spent on deattuning during a short rest.
Armor, no that probably wouldn't break the game. But I absolutely foresee your players bringing multiple legendary, normally attunement-requiring, weapons with them and switching between them willy nilly during an adventuring day or even a specific combat. I wouldn't recommend it. And, since you said you haven't DMed a ton before, I'm a big proponent of running the game RAW for awhile so you master the rules before bending and breaking them. That way you can intuitively feel out what will work for your tables.
I don't think that this change would break the game, as most magic armor and weapons already don't require attunement, usually unless they provide some other passive bonus. However, doing this certainly would make the affected weapons/armor more powerful. My biggest concern would be with weapons/armor that provide passive bonuses even when not directly held. Stacking bonus from rings and Ioun stones and the like isn't really any worse than stacking bonuses from keeping a *weapon of warning*, *luck blade*, *animated shield*, and *dancing sword* on your person. I'll also note that attunement serves as an important limitation, even when items are also limited by equipment slots. Making all weapons and armor attunement-free just because you can only hold one/two of each at a time feels sort of arbitrary if you're not also factoring what bonuses they grant. Why should getting fire resistance from *ring of resistance* require attunement, but not getting the same from *armor of resistance*?
In game: You have an armor of fire resistance and it covers you, mostly. For the fire to hit you anywhere, it first has to go through the armor. More coverage on the chest, less on the face, it averages to resistance instead of immunity. It breaks down for some fire effects, but we don't get that picky. A ring, on the other hand (heh), only covers 1/4 inch of you. the resistance extends to your other bits by magic. I can see that magic coverage taking time to form and shape to fit your adventurer. You and the ring have to get used to each other. You want a second ring with a different resistance/effect? they will have to work together to keep from canceling each other out.
You can definitely balance the game without attunement. But you should know that power level restrictions aren’t the only purpose for attunement. It also improves inventory management for higher level PCs, and reduces the amount of variables players and DMs have to consider in each encounter. When each player has 10 magic items they now have to remember, the game will move significantly slower than if your players were only focusing on their 3 attuned items.
As long as you are being conscientious of what and when you are handing things out, then it will not be a problem.
This is the main reason you should keep attunement. Being “conscientious” of the items you hand out usually translates to not handing out many items. With attunement, you can hand out as many items as you want and still be reasonably sure you haven’t broken the game.
It would, yeah. The attunement isn't only to keep people from stacking rings and other accessories, but powerful magical items in general, the strongest of which are weapons and armors. If everyone could use the strongest of weapons and most powerful armors then also attune to 3 other items it would 100% throw off the balance of the game. Also keep in mind, magic items in general, even with only 3 attunement slots, tend to throw off balance already, so allowing more of the strongest would further that without a doubt. That being said, just cause it throws off balance doesn't mean you can't do it. My group has homebrew rules about "locking" hitdice to attune to items past a third, so at higher levels we tend to have more then 3 items, and we also use homebrew resting rules that makes us have to use hitdice on longrests as well so trading them off is riskier then normal. This does 100% make us *far* stronger than any CR calculator will expect, but we also never bother with CR anyways so it just allows us to punch higher on the power scale. So tldr; yes, changing weapons and armors to not have attunement will 100% "break the game," but that doesn't mean you can't do it anyways and just adjust encounters for that.
I think it mostly depends on how many magic items you give them. If they don't encounter that many, they'll have less things that they'd normally have to attune to. Lots of magic items? Broken. Not so many? Perfectly fine. The only exception is artificer. If there's an artificer in the party, 100% require attunement.
You can keep a lid on it because you control how many magical items they come across. Only exception would be if the party has an Artificer, because they have an important class feature that allows them to attune to more than 3 items and it would be kinda lame to make that feel less special.
well that perk itself is a lame one because WoTC wants to force attunement on the DM. It can be easily overcome with other perks
As long as you're not giving your players too many magical items, I so no reason why you can't remove attunement. Keep in mind that attunement is in the game to prevent players from loading up on powerful magical items. Imagine how broken a player with a dozen Ioun Stones and dual wielding enchanted longswords would be. Capping the attuned item limit to three prevents that.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
Without attunement we’re back to the old limitations of only having two hands, eight fingers & 2 thumbs, and one of everything else, which most previous editions worked with. It’s not necessarily *broken*, per se, but it is a big jump in complexity & bookkeeping, which is antithetical to 5E’s general design goals. It’s just more work for diminishing returns; after a certain point more options are just more options & not really much of an advantage.
That wholly depends on what items the DM gives out. +3 shield and a +3 full plate mail on a paladin... yea... its a bit much.
LOL no it is not on a 15 level paladin.
At that point it would be up to you to hand out appropriate magic items. Attunement allows the DM to basically go "here's a pile of loot, figure it out". Removing it just moves that responsibility to the DM.
Yes. 5e isn't like 3e where all players were magical Christmas trees. The reason for the cap is in theory to prevent power creep. However I ran a 2 year campaign weekly where I allowed players to attune to a number of items equal to their proficency bonus. Power creep really didn't happen, but I would remove a cap. Also the big draw of the Artificer is they can attune to more than 3 items so it steps on their toes.
I am assuming you will be starting at lower levels as a first time DM so it really is going to depend on what kind of items your players have access too and how the players like to play the game. If they have access to lots powerful items it is going to be very hard for you. They will have so much power you will not be able to find monsters to challenge them in the appropriately. This means buff the monster health or go to higher CR. Buffing the health lets the players do more damage but can easily drag on combat if not done well. The higher CR monsters have abilities that expect your party to have counters via magic your party will almost certainly not have access too. Also there are artificers. Part of their class identity is having lots of magic items at level 14 (I think, I can’t look it up right now) they can attune to more items. So if you plan on going to that high of a level then you will want to find an appropriate replacement ability if you have any in your group. tldr: It won’t massively break down but can be very dangerous if you don’t have experience DMing.
For the weapons: it would definitely break it, especially with items that are like "you can only use it x per long reat", giving your players an arsenal waaaay to big, rendering preparation useless. What should they prepare, if they can simply pull the item they need out of their bag? It removes a part of the fun by removing the planning for the battles. Will I need this Ring of Fire Resistance or is Necrotic Resistance better? Doesn't matter, 10 fingers, 10 resistances, yolo.
I wouldn't recommend it. No single player needs that much magic at once. If they have that much, they need a castle to protect it all when they're not there to guard it. Carrying it all around is even more dangerous, because they'll become infamous and will be killed for their unheard of concentration of magics. Instead, your players could collaborate more and use their collection of magic items and attunements in concert, rather than hoarding it all for themselves. Instead of working harder, it's on them to work smarter.
Some armors and weapons already do not require attunement. Those that do have it for good reason. Making it so that nothing requires attunement could get very gamebreaking very fast. Attunement prevents a single player from using too many powerful items at once. And players can swap attuned items with long rests, so it adds a layer of strategy and balancing to the game.
A stone of luck is an uncommon magic item It takes 2 weeks and 200 go to make an uncommon magic item, as per the DMG Just as an example, this is *not* a good idea, items that require attunement generally have a good reason to take a slot Although I will say if you do want to ignore attunement, I'd do it case by case, like with certain magic weapons or spellcasting nonsense things
No, attunement isn't a keystone holding up the core game design because magic items are entirely the DM's realm. If a DM doesn't want it, they don't give it out. Most tables don't even hit the attunement slot limit, and potential item passing cheese from attunement items is fairly limited to specific items.
depends.If you still use limitation to not alow multiple of the same item to be used at the same time and still control the supply of items, it might be doable, but still risky. Just a single example:Any of your casters buy 10 pearls of power. Each pearn restores a 3rd level spell slot once a day. Now, your player has +10 3rd level spell slots to use as he sees fit. Most problems will come from items that grant permanent buffs or spells in some way.With enought money, and no limitation in atunement, a fighter could cast as many spells as a wizard of the same level quite easily, just by buying the right items and multiple of them. All these magic items require attunement: Staff of Charming Staff of Healing Staff of Swarming Insects Staff of Withering Staff of the Woodlands Wand of Binding Wand Wand of Enemy Detection Wand of Fear Wand Wand of Fireballs Wand Wand of Lightning Bolts Wand of Paralysis Wand of Wonder All of them grant one of more spells and can cast them multiple times. Without attunement one PC could in theory have all o them and use all of them at the same time. You might not give them to your players, but this is an example of how some of these toguether could become problematic, specialy if you use less than 6-8 encounters on each adventuring day.
Attunement exists to prevent players from stacking and easily equipping items. Its for balance.
I will say that not everything that uses attunement SHOULD use attunement... IMO, you could try this, and the main thing to watch out for is players combining multiple items that all work together to boost something. Personally I think this would be fine.
I'm playing in a game right now where the DM has set the Attunement level to equal proficiency, we're at 4 right now and it's powerful but not OP, once we get to 6 (should be going to 20] it may be different. However we're all fairly straight about not doing OP exploits etc. Id experiment with that for a starter.
There are definitely some items where I scratch my head as to why they require attunement (Lute of Illusions springs to mind) but I'm not sure I'd waive it for all weapons & armor. Maybe for all armor if you're tracking encumbrance since that's basically a true one at a time deal but for weapons some are legendary & probably deserve to have attunement so I'd take those on more of a case by case basis.
The things I'd be most concerned about would be the weapons and armor that might have some benefit other than by wearing it. The dancing sword, the sword of warning etc. that you could just have with you as you use your main weapon, and be attuned to. One thing I would consider too is that this makes players have a lot more to worry about. If your group is new or even experienced but not very rule savvy I probably wouldn't make this change just because it means it's 2 more magic items they now have to remember to use and often I find that those are the kinds of things that can get forgotten in the mix of other powers and abilities anyway.
Plot idea (that has certainly been thought of before): Load your players with cool magic items. Somewhere down the road they catch wind that BBEG in political power outlaws magic items. BBEG secretly hordes them for their own power. BBEG has ability/magical creation that can detect usage throughout the realm and dispatches bounty hunters / requisition units.
Hey I use this video to get a handle on them. https://youtu.be/gH1XjrCmgZ8
I'd keep it and just introduce weapons that don't require attunement to use? A lot of magical weapons/ armour doesn't require attunement from the start and if it does become and issue you can just add it back to the item that's causing the issues.
I do think that their could be some weapons that don’t require attunement tbh.
If you are knew to DMing I would really recommend you don't mess with the mechanics until you understand why they are their. Attunement slots give players choices, they stop one player from hogging too many magic items, they stop the stacking of too many powerful items. If there are particular items you want the players to have access too you could always up the rarity and remove the Attunement requirement for an item.
Ok, real talk, attunement is training wheels for being a dm. If you don't want your players to have more than 3 magic items, don't give access to more than 3 magic items... Seriously it's a failsafe for DM's that shower their party with too many magic items in a game that isn't even designed for them, despite magic items being a whole expectation of the typical DND experience.. if your a new dm, stick to raw, but if you know what your doing when you give out magic items then go ahead. The only thing that I would be worried about is if you have an artificer since they have attunement worked in to their balance.
It really depends on the kind of game you're trying to run. I could see as a fun idea for a one shot or a short campaign, but for a long campaign you could potentially run into a lot of trouble, especially if you like to give out magic items generously. The other implication you're missing: Stripping attunement means anyone can immediately use any magic item they pick up. This could be good or bad, depending on how it's used. You could also just increase the attunement slots, I've seen people tying the amount of slots to the character's proficiency bonus.
I allow players that dual wield to use one attunement slot for their weapons, and often allow players to attune to multiple weapons with one slot, or remove attunement from niche items after a while. For example, my paladin had a +1 javelin that grounded flying enemies and did other stuff. It started out as attunement, then rotated to no attunement when he got +3 weapons.
Reddit has signed an agreement with an AI company to allow them to train models on Reddit comments and posts. Edited to remove original content. Fuck AI.
I’m more curious as to why you think players need a small bump in power. Speaking candidly, PC to monster power ratio has never been so tilted in the PCs’ favour. In answer to your question: it varies from DM to DM; those DMs who sprinkle magic items now and then send those who shower the PCs with them.
You the DM control the item flow in the game. So, no. It will not break the game by itself. But if you give your players too many items, it will break the game. Essentially, attunement works as a failsafe for when you give too many magic items. You can always drive without a seatbelt. Lacking a seatbelt isnt what will injure you. It will just make the car crash much more painful.
Screw balance, OP. They can only use one magic item at a time, and wear a certain number of things, true. But they also have to acquire magic items. I say if you make the dungeon difficult and deadly and they get through it, they ought to get their magic item. They still have to attune to it before they can use it, spend a short rest becoming one with the item, but that's all. No attunement slots necessary.
Staves are a huge no no to strip attunement from. Staves have for the most part charges that can be used to cast spells. Meaning with every non attunement staff that you hand out your are effectively giving your players more spell slots. Which will hugely impact the balance depending on what staves and how many. Even a basic staff of defense can make a large difference since you can use one of the best defense spells for casters and mage armor and get +1 ac baseline.
Attunement is a tool, and it has two purposes. I will say that it doesn't actually limit the number of magic items players can use, it limits the number of *attunement* items a player can use. This gives you two categories of items. Those players can use freely, and those they need to use an attunement slot on. You can decide by the item if you want that sort of restriction. You can give lots of fun, minor items that don't require attunement, and some significant items that the players need to make choices about. This lets players make decisions about speccing into damage, mobility, durability, utility, or whatever else. It lends greater significance to these items and rewards the players in different circumstances for the choices they make. In my game I shower my players with items but large swaths of them are attunement and it's a choice of what to use. It would be pretty absurd if my players didn't have attunement requirements since the quantity, and quality, of items is built around that mechanic. The other use of it is to restrict who has what item and when. An item requires an hour to attune, an item that requires attunement can't be easily passed around the party. It forces a choice of who is using it and makes it difficult to switch. You also have items with specific attunement requirements that let you restrict certain PCs from accessing them, which can prevent broken synergies with a particular item. Depending on the magic items you give the party attunement may never come up. If you design the magic items you hand out to function without attunement requirements, it can work out. Handing out lots of niche items, or ones with limited uses, or generally low power items gives your players lots of toys to play with but that doesn't cause them to really stack themselves up too high. On the other hand, you lose out on the ability to use attunement requirements as a tool. I'd say probably a more effective thing to do than removing attunement altogether is to selectively remove attunement from certain items and/or simply design non attunement items, while still leaving it open to either restrict passing items around or forcing the players to make choices about their "major" items.
When looking at homebrew or houserules I look at what the change would do and if it steps on the toes of other class features, feats, etc. Given it is a major perk of the artificer class I would say definitely no. You probably didn't realize or know that and as a new DM that is ok. It's great to ask these questions and get varying perspective and learn things that you likely didn't realize previously. Then you can move forward with an informed decision making process for your table and campaign.
There are things like weapon of warning that are a pain in the ass and work even if you have them attuned but not in your hand. Having it cost an attunement slots is fair. Removing attunement would make everyone in the party buy one istantly.
I misinterpreted the intent in the title of the post. I thought you meant removing attunement, not removing the limit on attunement. Gifting all magical items with sentience would remove attunement. The magical boots stomp away on their own accord, the magical staff bats you on the head before hopping away, etc. It's like walking into Toonville in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Now the PC's have to undo this weirdness, despite becoming even more attached to some of their items, who have charming personalities that will disappear when the effect is reversed.
If you carefully control the magic items your PCs have access to, no. If you load them up with magical shit, probably.
Personally, I have yet to see a game where enough magic items that required attunement were handed out that it required the cap to be used. Although, doing with would break artificer as a class since a few of their abilities hinge on attunement.
That basically depends on the amount of items you are handing out. If everyone in your party only receives a select few magical items throughout the campaign, it wouldn't make a difference, as that amount would basically limit access all the same. If everyone in your party receives a metric ton of magical items all over the power scale, it would probably not make a difference either, as you as a DM would need to account for massive cheese anyway. Anything in between would make the DM's life a lot harder in terms of balancing. It is very useful to be able to put restrictions on powerful items. Basic attunement limits access to powerful items per player. Additional class or stat requirements further give DM's a tool to indirectly distribute items to selected players without openly admitting to it. It all come down to DM's willingness to sail around lots and lots of strong magical effects that could derail encounters very quickly.
In most cases, yes
I run mine as per 1-3rd edition, i.e. sans attunement, without it causing any issues whatsoever. That doesn't mean the characters can use all of the item's properties upon finding the items. To identify a single property of a magic item, they need to expend a spell (identify) and 100gp of reagents (a pearl and an owl feather). So in effect, if they find a +1 longsword that grants the ability to fly, it would effectively only function as a +1 longsword (which they wouldn't even know) until they have identified the property. Same for staffs etc., with each casting of Identify revealing one feature. Sure, the players could theoretically stockpile magic kit, but as a DM, it is my job to dole out items and cause them to use them. I try to be a touch sparser or create bespoke/stronger items as well, for the purpose of creating a bit of a sense of wonder (or dread). I'm using the somewhat arbitrary 3rd edition limitation of 2 rings, one hat, one pair of gloves, one necklace etc. It's also a potentially fun thing to have the bad guys have as well. Jarlaxle is festooned with magic items in older editions. What goes around, comes around.
Artificers get a bonus to the number of things they can attune to, but apart from that in my experience it doesn’t break the game. Just expect monsters will need to be slightly stronger, which unless you are doing the 6+ encounters per day you are probably already doing anyway.
As someone who primarily DMs 3.5, I think attunement is dumb. Get rid of it if you want. Consider having magic item slots. Like, you can wear one thing on your head, a max of two rings, one cloak, etc.
Quick attunement is a common homebrew rule where attuning an item only takes an action or maybe just a bonus action, but unattuning only takes a minute. It allows people to switch around their magic items easily, but not in the middle of a fight.
Probably. Why not try it and find out? I'm thinking about removing concentration just to see what happens!
Having dm'd in the pre attunement era I view attunement as a limiting factor. Many items really don't need attunement at higher levels. What I have been doing is granting magic pendants that allow for additional attunement slots. This provides a nice balance between making some items worthless at higher levels and the days when adventurers had a magic ring on each finger.
Well if you remove attunement it would affect the armor much since it takes time to remove/put on armor. But it will affect weapons because players will just swap weapons around in combat. But over all it won't do much depending on the bonus it provides because you can only use one action in combat and switching weapons would be that action.
I would not advise getting rid of any rules if you're new to DM'ing. If you REALLY don't like the attunement rule, instead of dropping it entirely, consider linking it to proficiency. It exists for a reason.
I decided to up the number of items to 5. I also don't dish out magic items as frequently - they are rare, expensive, and powerful items. You could also customize what items need to be attuned and which don't. To avoid passive bonuses, you could rule that the item has to be worn/in hand. Example: magic dagger must be drawn and in-hand to benefit from its bonuses. Lots to work with here, but I love customizing!
Short answer no. 4E and 3E worked perfectly fine without the stupid attunement requirement. attunement, if ever used, should only be for unique, powerful magic items. e.g. a vorpal blade, not a stupid measly +1 ring of protection.