Okay, I’ll probably have to give context. I‘m analyzing which items require attunement and why. There are precisely 2 listed reasons for an item to require attunement in the DMG (though examination shows those reasons are not sufficient to explain actual items that require attunement a lot of the time). The particular rule I’m currently examining, to determine which attunement items it actually applies to is:
”If having all the characters in a party pass an item around to gain its lasting benefits would be disruptive, the item should require attunement.”
I‘m assuming “disruptive“ means either overpowered or a hassle. Since you can’t effectively pass an item around in combat rounds this criterion must be talking about out-of-combat usage. Depending on party size, a party can attune and pass around an item for everyone to use in about 4 to 6 hours, which means they could even do it a couple of times a day if they wanted to. This means that attunement does nothing to prevent overpowered usage either in combat or on a day-long scale. It can prevent hassles on a day-long scale in rare situations, such as regeneration items. If they didn‘t require attunement a party would pass them around regularly, and even if they were high enough level for it not to be overpowered (doesn’t take much) it would be a hassle for the players and DM alike. While you still can pass it around to a lesser extent even with attunement, because of the amount of healing normally available in 5e it just isn’t worth the effort. So in that situation attunement does exactly what it is supposed to by eliminating a disruptive hassle from the game.
But items like that, which involve daily level hassle rather than being overpowered are rather few and far between. I’m attempting to determine what types of situations that criterion may apply to that could happen in an in-between time scale: when you are willing and able to spend 5 minutes to a couple hours, but not willing to spend half the day on it. I‘m searching for such examples because I want to give the attunement criterion the benefit of the doubt that it actually is meaningful, but it requires an additional timescale where it is regularly and significantly meaningful for that to be true.
One possible example would be damage resistance and a trapped corridor that shoots gouts of flames at you when you go down it. Wear the ring of fire resistance as you pass through it, then toss it back to the next party member, and repeat. But even that example relies on there being an actual time pressure. Otherwise attunement just means you spend half the day rather than 5 minutes to accomplish the same thing. Attunement creates a “disruption” rather than preventing one. (I actually think attunement requirements on damage resistance are based on the other criterion I didn‘t bring up, so I don’t want to focus on this as more than example of the difficulty in finding good examples.)
I’m sure that context will help, but I’m hoping it doesn‘t derail the thread into a more general attunement discussion. I’ve started general attunement threads in the past, and will start one to report my findings in the future, but in this case I‘m wanting to focus in particularly on that quoted criterion and when it could actually be meaningful.
