D&D 5E Attunement question

[Tom Bagwell]

I'm trying to decide if I should require attunement for an item. A Paladin in my group recently obtained a holy sword (that he attuned to). During that process, his hand and forearm were transformed into a living gemlike material and which now provides certain bonuses and abilities (+2 to Strength for uses involving just the hand; once per day, a hit that would take him to 0 HP will take him to 1; and 3x/day if an ally within 30' takes a critical hit, it becomes just a normal hit). So, it's powerful in its own right...but there's no way anyone but the Paladin will be able to use it. So, is Attunement really necessary?

 

[DeviousQuail]

Certainly quite a potent item. Attunement seems like a good cost to keep power levels in check with other players IF they haven't been getting similar awesome stuff. If they have then I say it's okay to require or not require attunement. As long as you're okay with balancing their power with tougher challenges, stakes, etc.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

First of all, once you give an item to a player, I strongly believe it should be the complete package. Changing things after a session will frequently lead to unhappy players, especially if you nerf something (i.e. require attunement when the player thinks it does not require attunement). You should think of this before you give it to a player.

On a regular day where I do not get a present, I will feel just fine. On a day where someone first gives me something that I like, and then takes it away, I still end up with no present, similar to the other day, but I feel much worse.

Having said all that, you could make the item cursed. That is something that the player does not need to know beforehand, but will only find out when he fails to sheathe/unwield the sword, and it stays in his hand, or when he tries to use Lay on Hands, and it turns out that this sword has been (partly) sapping those abilities to fuel its own magic. (Not sure if you guys already went through a roleplay scenario where the player obviously let go of the sword or used Lay on Hands).

 

[Kobold Stew]

Can an enemy character remove the limb (dis-arm him)? And then use it themself?

Pretty clearly, the answer is no. I would say it requires attunement. In this case,it's not a cost, it's actually a feature -- it marks the limb as belonging to the character.

 

[Flamestrike]

I'm trying to decide if I should require attunement for an item. A Paladin in my group recently obtained a holy sword (that he attuned to). During that process, his hand and forearm were transformed into a living gemlike material and which now provides certain bonuses and abilities (+2 to Strength for uses involving just the hand; once per day, a hit that would take him to 0 HP will take him to 1; and 3x/day if an ally within 30' takes a critical hit, it becomes just a normal hit). So, it's powerful in its own right...but there's no way anyone but the Paladin will be able to use it. So, is Attunement really necessary?

Its roughly as strong as a free feat or a bit stronger.

But it would suck having it attach and use an attunement slot.

Maybe some drawback attached instead?

 

[aco175]

Did the sword cause the gem-arm? If it did, I would only say 1 attunement for both. Otherwise, I may let it go with no attunement and give some other boons to the other PCs, like what @DeviousQuail stated.

 

[Tom Bagwell]

Did the sword cause the gem-arm? If it did, I would only say 1 attunement for both. Otherwise, I may let it go with no attunement and give some other boons to the other PCs, like what @DeviousQuail stated.

This is actually where I think I was heading as I wrote the description above. A powerful religious artifact had been stolen by an unknown faction, and he had proven himself worthy. As both recognition and to equip him for the challenges ahead, he was granted the sword and arm. (Losing the arm was his final test, the willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good.)

Nobody else would ever be able to use it, even if it were severed. The sword and hand will grow more powerful over time as he does.

I...don't give out a lot of magical items. As of the latest scenario, they had managed to acquire a relatively small sum of cash, enough to buy some healing potions and to live on. On the other hand, they now have a fairly powerful organization somewhat in their debt that they can call on for support. The only magic item they'd acquired was a wand of sleep.

Also, I've nearly killed the group on a couple of different occasions. More my fault than theirs, I'm still dialing in my understanding of power levels in designing encounters.

After all that's gone before, the others have joined the Paladin in agreeing that the artifact needs to be recovered. They've proved themselves as well and also received items to help them along the way.

More importantly...now that they have these items, I have a bit of a buffer in designing encounters and I'm less likely to misjudge badly enough to wipe them out by accident.

All that being said, I like the idea of treating the sword and arm as a single item for attunement purposes, and I think I'll go that route. (Everyone else also received two items...one that requires attunement and one that does not.)

 

[MarkB]

Did the sword cause the gem-arm? If it did, I would only say 1 attunement for both. Otherwise, I may let it go with no attunement and give some other boons to the other PCs, like what @DeviousQuail stated.

Yeah, the way I'd phrase it is "requires attunement to [NAME OF SWORD]".

 

[Umbran]

Did the player have a choice in getting the arm?

What happens if he choose to not use an attunement slot? Does his arm fall off, or something?

Generally, if the GM does something to a character without player choice, the GM probably shouldn't add costs to that.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

The real point of attunement is to put a cap on the number of items you can use, right? In this case, seems fair - pretty powerful item.