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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5904621" data-attributes="member: 54877">Yes.  This is where I see an unholy mix of early D&D, 3E, and 4E filling a void.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />   One of the reasons that an early D&D wizard got to be pretty fun around 5th level was the 3rd level spells, and the options, but it was also because by that level the wizard often had some interesting things to do with items.  The drawback to this was that it was so dependent on the DM to hand out some fun charged items, when the game's advice discouraged such (though the random treasure tables did not).  And of course given the wizard's XP chart, that could be quite a wait. Let the wizard (and similar casters where appropriate) build a limited number of charged items--and only charged items by default.  Have the costs/limits escalate moderately per charge, but sharply per spell level.  For anything but single charge items, you might even effectively limit the wizard to some basic recharging and/or recrafting.  The wizard then typically starts his career with a single charged wand, staff, etc. from his mentor, with maybe a capacity of holding 5 charges of a handful of effects--not necessarily the same ones as on his spell list.   These items only work for their creator, and thus were crafted by the wizard as part of his apprenticeship, under the guidance of said mentor.  They aren't like the more powerful, useful scrolls, potions, wands, etc. made by dedicated crafters, but tools that atune to the wizard's own power.   Unlike the normal spells slots, as the wizard levels, these attuned item abilities generally provide a bit of breadth instead of depth.  (The spell slots are handling depth, now, and can be appropriately sparse to handle that.)  The wizard gains the ability to make more such items, with more charges, and more varied abilities, but they fall behind in power compared to the upper spells, and even the expansion of breadth is slow.  Will need to be careful to not let low-level spells scale in effect (either by level or more indirectly) to avoid the "use shield all the time for +4 AC" effect. The point here is that the wizard leans on these abilities heavily in his early career, but gradually finds them less and less important. You could produce a similar effect with any number of systems, for example: an expanded ritual system, with a lot of low-powered, cheap rituals; limited scroll production similar to above; a parallel "mana point" system that was much more limited due to drawing on the wizard's personal power.  I like the "attuned item" bit because it approximates something common in the genre that D&D has traditionally not done well, while filling a need.</blockquote>

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