5e Are Ioun stones supposed to need attunement?

S'mon · Apr 17, 2019

DMG does not mention attunement but SRD says Attunement. Which is officially true?

pemerton · Apr 17, 2019

S'mon said:
DMG does not mention attunement but SRD says Attunement. Which is officially true?

An unhelpful non-canonical answer - but in The Dying Earth RPG I'm pretty sure IOUN stones require attunement, which is presumably based on what Vance wrote in his stories.

So surely that counts in favour of the SRD as opposed to the DMG!

S'mon · Apr 17, 2019

Well the issue is that 5e limits attunement to 3 items, so no ioun stone clouds. My preference is no attunement for that reason, but wondering what the intent was.

Paul Farquhar · Apr 17, 2019

DMG p176:

Ioun Stone
Wondrous item, rarity varies (requires attunement)

S'mon · Apr 17, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
DMG p176:

Not in mine - early printing?

CapnZapp · Apr 17, 2019

S'mon said:
DMG does not mention attunement but SRD says Attunement. Which is officially true?

The DMG does require attunement.

You're just missing it - it's mentioned once in the header, not for each individual stone.

77IM · Apr 17, 2019

S'mon said:
Not in mine - early printing?

It's in mine, and I have the first printing. I doubt they removed it for subsequent printings but maybe there was an error?

S'mon · Apr 17, 2019

CapnZapp said:
The DMG does require attunement.

You're just missing it - it's mentioned once in the header, not for each individual stone.

I did check header though. Hmn will check again when back from vacation

Paul Farquhar · Apr 17, 2019

One house rule I've toyed with using is to allow "sets" of items to share an attunement slot. Thus allowing a cloud of Ioun stones to count as one attuned item.