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Let's take a look at the Magic Items packet, shall we?

There are some absolutely great ideas in this packet, mainly in the small details and flavor. Randomly generated creators, natures, minor properties, and minor quirks are excellent concepts that manage to keep randomly generated magic items fresh and exciting. Obviously, if the Dungeon Master wants to give the players a specific item during an adventure, they can use these tables to give extra flavor to their creation, or they can make up their on minor properties. I can see this helping new DMs considerably. The only issue is that some of the properties are more useful than others - I can see characters coveting initiative bonuses more than being able to sense north.

The idea of attunement seemed very promising at first - limit characters to about three key magic items, and have all other items grant minor benefits only. However, almost all of the best magic items do NOT require attunement, only very powerful items like staves and powerful weapons. It only really serves to limit casters to a certain number of extra spells per day - but the Ring of Wizardry doesn't require attunement, so that's a bust. The mechanic is sound, but the implementation is not.

The lack of "magic-marts" will make some players and DMs happy, but I'm a bit sad to see it go. Some of my favorite settings ike Ptolus and Eberron, have magic items as an integral part of the culture, and even Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk have places where magic items can be traded and sold. I'm not saying there should be stores on every corner, but anything between a port city and a metropolis should have at least one store dealing in magic items, even if the ones they have for sale are Common or Uncommon, with the occasional Rare for large cities. If you can find a pile of saphires worth 50 gold pieces and sell them, you should be able to buy and sell a magic item worth 50 gold pieces. It makes sense.

Some ideas in this packet are not so great. I don't think Magic Item Rarity is a good idea. While I know some DMs will love it, and some players will love the excitement of finding new magic weapons and trinkets, it's skewed heavily towards MORE items rather than BETTER items. The "Christmas Tree" effect (characters with dozens of minor magic items) was one of the main downsides of 3rd edition, since it requires so much more bookkeeping. 5E isn't fixing this problem, it's making it worse.

I dislike the idea of attack/defense bonuses from magical items. Some people might enjoy them, but I think it throws off bounded accuracy to no end, especially when paired with the random nature of loot. A Rogue who picks up some +1 Leather Armor and a +1 Shortsword is going to break away from the bounded accuracy guidelines - since monsters aren't designed with expectations that players will have +X items on hand. I'd rather have magic items be composed of other useful bonuses and benefits, perhaps conditional advantage and access to limited uses of spells, rather than flat bonuses.

Belts of Giant and Ogre Strength have to go. Flat increasing a stat to a certain level is ridiculously powerful. As many playtesters have already pointed out, it makes dexterity-based Fighters WAY more powerful, since they can dump Strength and focus on Dexterity, then increase Strength to incredible heights later on with a fairly common magic item. I'm okay if they increase carry capacity or feats of strength, but they shouldn't exist in their current form. Imagine if there was a version for each attribute - after about 7th level, starting attributes wouldn't matter at all.

Magic item rules are yet to be included, but they'll have to cover a wide variety of abilities to choose from, essentially everything that's available as an items should be able to be crafted at some point (except perhaps Legendary or Artifact-level items). I'm interested to see how they manage to pull it off without unbalancing the system and/or economy.

Below are my changes that I would implement with D&D Next's Magic Item System 

1) Magic items of a certain rarity or less can be bought and sold in cities of a certain size. Small cities should be able to handle anything Common or Uncommon, and have a few selections on hand as well. Large cities should have enough funds to buy Rare items, and have a few on hand. Capitols or Metropolises shoudl be able to handle Very Rare items, and should be well stocked with all Common and Uncommon items. Interplanar locations like Sigil should be able to buy and sell even Legendary items, and anything Rare or less should be easily found there. Artifacts should only be acquired as part of a LONG quest, and they should be game-changing in nature.

2) Players must attune to ALL their magic items. They can use a number of items at once equal to 2 + 1/4 their character level, alternatively, their Charisma modifier (minimum 1) plus 1/4 their character level. This won't stop players from hoarding items, nothing can stop that, but it can restrict them to choosing a specific set of items for each adventure.

3) Magic Item Rarity is specifically tied to character level. For every 2 character levels, (1-2, 3-4, 5-6), there is a table with % chances of finding specific rarities of items. For example:

Level 1-2: 1-50 No Item, 51-75 One Common item, 76-95 1d2 Common items, 96-100 1d2-1 Uncommon Items (min 0, if 0, then one Common item)

Level 7-8: 1-25 No Item, 26-50 1d3 Common items, 51-70 1d2 Uncommon Items, 71-85 1d2-1 Rare items (if 0 then 1 Uncommon item), 86-95 1d2-1 Very Rare items (if 0, then 1 Rare item), 96-100 1d2-1 Legenday Intems (if 0, then 1 Very Rare item)

And so forth. The DM is the final arbiter on whether a given encounter might have a magic item as a reward. They can choose to grant magic items as they wish, regardless of the table, but the table should serve as the default reward system for a DM who wants to keep balance in their campaign.

4) For each rarity, there are 100 items of that rarity on a table. The DM can choose to give one of those items (or a group of them, for example one option might be 3-5 potions), or instead they can select one of the options on that table and give it to the players. It's the DM's discretion.

5) Magic items never grant a flat bonus to attack, AC, skill checks, or saving throws. They can grant situational advantage, or a bonus a limited number of times per day, but there's no such thing as a +1 Longsword. You might instead find a Longsword of Sharpness (+1d4 slashing damage with a change to inflict Bleed damage on a critical), a Longsword of Bane (+1 to hit and damage a specific kind of creature), or a Longsword of FlameTongue (Three times per day on command, you can fire a cone of Fire like the Burning Hands spell, using your Weapon Attack -2 to determine the effectiveness).

6) Every character in the game should be able to take a feat in order to create magic weapons and items, not just spellcasters. Spellcasters should have the exclusive ability to create Wands, Staves, Scrolls, Potions, and Rods, but everything else should be accessible to a Fighter or Rogue who takes a Feat. With a specific Specialization, even Fighters and Rogues should be able to craft spell-completion items.

That's my analysis and the fixes I would personally make. What do you think? Do you agree with my ideas, or do you have your own "fix"?

Thank you for reading and commenting. 

Oct 9, 2012 -- 1:24PM, rampant wrote:

What are your thoughts on the +3 great sword that's not really a +3 greatsword. The one that gives you 3 points to work with and than lets you move them between three categories. 

Correction. It lets you move them between 2 categories: 'Attack and Damage' and 'AC'.

You do not split them between Attack and Damage. 

How about actual guidelines for no, low, medium, and high magic settings.

My setting as a DM is medium. +1 items are common enough that every bad guy and his lieutenants have them but +3 and flame tongue are quested for. So my game could assume every major humanoid has 1d4-2 magic items whereas someone else's low magic setting has to roll 90+ on a percentile die to get anything and 95+ for rare or better.