D&D 5E Magic Item Slots in D&D Next

[SKyOdin]

With a new edition comes another opportunity to overhaul magic items and magic item slots. In 3E, we had head, face, neck, vest, armor, belt, cloak, arm, hand, and foot slots, with two ring slots. 4E consolidated that down to the head, neck, armor, waist, belt, arm, hand, and foot slots, with two ring slots.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing WotC further condense the number of magic item slots, but at this point I'm not entirely sure what would go. I suppose the game doesn't need separate arm and hand slots, as long as shields are separated off from the arm slot again. Another possibility would be to limit characters to a certain number of magic items not restricted by body part as long as items make sense together.

What magic item slots would you like to see in 5E?

 

[keterys]

I'm tempted to go a completely different direction - something like "You can have X magic items active at any one time" and let DMs pick X in advance, with a suggested default (ex: low magic 3, standard 5, high magic 7)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I voted 'further condense' but what I really wanted to add was, make 'un-slotted item' a slot, too.

 

[Consonant Dude]

Slots are bland and boring. They've said they want to make magic items flavorful and special and that is an occasion to hard code the limitations in the fluff.

That Orcish +2 wooden shield is great but it was made by dipping it in elven blood. It isn't gonna work all that well with non evil magic items and it plain doesn't work if you've got elven magic on you. It is also so repulsive it messes with any charm effect or spell you might attempt.

Your +3 sword is awesome but it is so audible and visible that forget about elven cloaks or any other sneaky type of items. It might even interfere with invisibility effect in disastrous ways.

Make the fluff flavorful and make it implicit that things may go wrong if you combine stuff. The real magic of spells and items in old DnD was the wild interactions we came up with. Turn that to eleven instead of bothering about slots.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not a big fan of "slots" as such; I prefer a more common sense, freeform approach - you can only have one brooch in use at a time, for example; if you wear more than one only the one most recently donned has any effect. But if someone has magic socks that do one thing and magic boots that do another, what's the harm? Or, a magic left boot doing one function and a magic right boot that has another...

Lanefan

 

[FireLance]

I'm tempted to go a completely different direction - something like "You can have X magic items active at any one time" and let DMs pick X in advance, with a suggested default (ex: low magic 3, standard 5, high magic 7)

On the other hand, if the DM wants to run a low magic campaign, shouldn't he ensure that the PCs never have more than 3 magic items at any one time, anyway?

Which kind of feeds into my point. Item slots basically serve the purpose of ensuring that the players can't stack magic item after magic item on their PCs. Of course, this is only a problem when there are a bucketload of magic items in the campaign in the first place, either through generous treasurefinding/reward assumptions (which can be rule or module based) or easy crafting. And frankly, every edition has come up with ways to circumvent this restriction, whether it is "slotless"/"stacking" magic items (at double cost) in 3e or divine boons/grandmaster training in 4e.

So if you ask me, just keep it simple: certain magic items are bulky by nature and there is a natural limit to how many you can use at the same time: armor, weapons and/or shields, gloves and gauntlets, boots and footwear, and possibly cloaks and bracers. Everything else is a matter of how many items you manage to obtain and can convince your DM to let you wear at the same time (although I personally would impose increasing penalties to AC, attack rolls and movement once my players cross some yet-to-be-determined line of ridiculousness - assuming I give them enough magic items to get there in the first place).

 

[the Jester]

I favor a system where the item defines the slot.

In other words, maybe you have a pair of bracers that state that they go in your wrist slot. You find a magic bracelet; it too goes in your wrist slot.

The advantage is that you can custom design some items to stack or not. Let's use a scabbard as an example. Maybe one says it goes in your waist slot, like a belt, while another goes in your scabbard slot. The second one you can wear with a magical belt- and it's a property of the magic scabbard itself that you can do so.

Likewise, some cloaks could be your back slot, so you can't wear them with a magic backpack, while others count as a neck item, so you can't add an amulet to the mix.

 

[Mengu]

I'd be happy ditching magic items all together but I guess then it wouldn't be D&D without a +5 holy avenger. Don't really care what happens with slots, so long as game balance doesn't depend on magic items.

The artificial limit of X magic items might work very nicely for something like LFR, but for a home campaign it could be hard to swallow. If X=3, and I have a lucky rapier, a vicious dagger, and a cloak of displacement, suddenly I can't use the undead slaying crossbow I just find without getting rid of something? Hard to explain.

 

[keterys]

On the other hand, if the DM wants to run a low magic campaign, shouldn't he ensure that the PCs never have more than 3 magic items at any one time, anyway?

Or perhaps he gives out enough items for people to have a couple each, and doesn't want them to put them all on a couple characters. I don't see a need to judge in advance.

The Lord of the Rings is quite low magic from a D&D perspective, but still had a weapon for everyone, cloaks, a magic light, a suit of armor, probably a horn, a crystal ball, and I hear even a ring

 

[Incenjucar]

I like 4E slots well enough. Neck slot needs to stop being the NAD bonus slot though. It just feels tacked on.