D&D 5E Amulet of Health, Another Strong Item

[KarinsDad]

Amulet of Health
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
Your Constitution is 19 while you wear this amulet. The amulet has no effect on you if your Constitution is already 19 or higher.

So for many PCs, this would bump their Con by 5 to 7, a +2 to +3 item.

But it's not rare, it's uncommon.

Seems like WotC is throwing out quite a few +2 or +3 items without us necessarily seeing the +1 items.

2 to 3 hit points per level, +2 to +3 on Con saves against poison and nasty undead, +2 to +3 on concentration checks. Fairly strong.

 

[Andor]

Amulet of Health
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
Your Constitution is 19 while you wear this amulet. The amulet has no effect on you if your Constitution is already 19 or higher.

So for many PCs, this would bump their Con by 5 to 7, a +2 to +3 item.

But it's not rare, it's uncommon.

Seems like WotC is throwing out quite a few +2 or +3 items without us necessarily seeing the +1 items.

2 to 3 hit points per level, +2 to +3 on Con saves against poison and nasty undead, +2 to +3 on concentration checks. Fairly strong.

The stat boosting items appear to all give you a flat 19. So powerful, but below the potential peak. In fact almost every character will natively surpass the stat boosting items some time around level 8, for their primary stats anyway. While this is a potent item, the 5e approach completely eliminates the stat boosting arms race of 3e. Instead of stat boosting items being critical to performing your primary role, they are rapidly obsoleted for your primary role and thus relegated to bolstering a secondary stat or reducing the MAD penalty for mutli-classed characters.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Just because they are rated as uncommon doesn't mean there needs to be dozens of them lying around at low levels either.

Remember all magic items are optional and the DM decides where and when they will appear in the campaign.

 

[mach1.9pants]

And there is no definition of uncommon, rare etc. so does uncommon mean found once in a campaign, rare found only if you quest for it? Up to your group

 

[Gargoyle]

I've always liked making magic items powerful, but somewhat rare. Items with +1 enchantments tend not to be that exciting in recent editions because you don't need magic weapons as much as the old days. It used to be you had to have them to damage all sorts of creatures, now it's just a small bump. Like advantage, I'd rather any bonus be a noticeable one. Just my take on it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Just think of that kobold you have to take it from.

 

[Crothian]

Just think of that kobold you have to take it from.

And when things go bad for him the kobold that takes off running because he can sprint for the next hour before getting tired.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And there is no definition of uncommon, rare etc. so does uncommon mean found once in a campaign, rare found only if you quest for it? Up to your group

No definition right now, maybe, but I'll be extremely surprised if the DMG uses those terms and doesn't define them, because that would be bloody stupid, frankly. If you just want DMs to determine how common something is, you don't go around putting that sort of tag on things - it only has value if you define it in some way.

That said, whilst yes, the Amulet is powerful, it's an attunement slot, and I'm pretty sure all the "set stat to 19" items will be pretty nifty in the right hands. I'm betting all +3 weapons and armour will be attunement-requiring, as will, I suspect, serious caster staffs/wands/scepters etc., and we know Bracers of Defense +3 are, so players are likely to be making some pretty hard choices on what their PCs are wearing.

Certainly if you were getting beaten up a lot, and had a CON of 13 or less, this would be huuuuge, but if you either already had a good CON, or weren't getting beaten up much, well, maybe you'd want some other attuned item.

 

[Kinak]

I disliked the old girdles of giant strength because they wiped away your choices. Suddenly, your choice to play a weak character by assigning a low score to strength became completely irrelevant.

In a way, I think 5e's equivalents are actually worse, because the people with good scores (read: 20s) won't get any benefit from them. So they'll naturally trickle down to the party members with the worst scores.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[ExploderWizard]

I disliked the old girdles of giant strength because they wiped away your choices. Suddenly, your choice to play a weak character by assigning a low score to strength became completely irrelevant.

In a way, I think 5e's equivalents are actually worse, because the people with good scores (read: 20s) won't get any benefit from them. So they'll naturally trickle down to the party members with the worst scores.

Cheers!
Kinak

Wiped away your choices? Unless you played that all such items came with a compulsion to wear them (no save) I don't see how any choices are removed. If you don't want to be super giant strong the don't put on the item.

It doesn't get any simpler than that.

Remember attunement slots too. If you are a low STR character that doesn't need it much then you will use your attunement slot for something more beneficial.