D&D (2024) DMG 5.5 - the return of bespoke magical items?


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My observation is that 50 days is no barrier for most groups. The cost of living is negligible by the time you are crafting magic items. They will just get a room in town and wait it out.

Ways to prevent or slow down crafting
1. Require an expensive lab.
2. Require material components that are not easily found or bought. (As apparently DMG2024 proposes).
3. Require a special recipe for each magic item that you must first possess before you can craft an item. Drop such recipes as you will DMs.
4. My theory is that no law enforcement is strong enough to protect long term a magic item store. You deal through brokers either to sell or to buy and brokers have a reputation or discretion and integrity (if they don't they aren't getting business).
 

Welllllll.... what if you have a weapon with hex, or divine favor (a holy sword for 200gp!)? A shield with, well, the shield spell? A staff with cure, bless, the much improved jump? I'm sure there are even better examples I'm not thinking of at the moment.
We are finishing 2 2014 campaigns but also have a 2024 campaign that just started (session 0 and 1 game) so take EVERYTHING I am about to say with a grain of salt...

we discussed a Shield of Shield, a Sword of Hunters Mark and an armor of Cure wounds... all require attunement could go with the wand of magic missiles that doesn't and be on a non caster (example we used was a champion fighter) and what we decided was it was just more of the 'you have to use spells and magic to be cool' I don't know what else to say...

FOr a caster one guy said make a warlock/paladin give them the jump at will invocation for more maneuverability and be a great old one pact of the blade to get a Jedi feel... but also could have a sword of X armor of Y and Staff of Z to tripple or more number of low level spells they could cast in a day.
 

This thread is NOT about if this (magical item markets) is a good or a bad thing! People, and DnD itself, have disagreed for decades, I don't want to rehash that debate yet again.
Fair enough, but otherwise beyond sharing a bit of the crafting rules and your thoughts this seems to be a good balance between 3E and 5E, what is the point?

Are you asking our opinions or thoughts on any of this?
 
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Why is it a problem that players pursue a thing that fits their needs well? Especially when they're paying for the privilege?
I don't wanna speak for the OP, but in my case, it goes like that:

Players already have control over which feats to chose, which spells to prepare and so on.

Magic items being something out of their control adds a layer of random variety that feels good gameplay wise.

That's pretty much what rogue-like videogames do.
 

I suppose attunement could be the way to limit this sort of thing. I do not relish the thought of every character becoming virtually a cookie cutter with the same loadout of the most useful stuff all the time. If that's what happens, it might as well be built into the character.
Attunement will help yes. I know the staff requires attunement by a spellcaster, but I believe that the weapon and armor/shield ones just require attunement by anyone.

I do not like it when people build PCs that "need" a magical item to "work"
 



I don't wanna speak for the OP, but in my case, it goes like that:

Players already have control over which feats to chose, which spells to prepare and so on.

Magic items being something out of their control adds a layer of random variety that feels good gameplay wise.

That's pretty much what rogue-like videogames do.
even if magic items are 100% in your control. you still need to give items that are useful to player and items that players want. Otherwise you just give away bunch of vendor trash.
 

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