Sword of Spirit
Legend
Designing My New Rules of Attunement
With the 2024 DMG and its magic item rules right around the corner, I finally managed to finish this set of magic item attunement house rules that has been three years in the making.
This is a sequel to Reverse Engineering the Real Rules of Attunement and also uses the 2014 rules.
After extensive analysis and multiple design iterations, I devised this alternate method of determining which magic items should require attunement. I’m sharing it here in case anyone else finds it to their liking, or gets inspired for how to handle attunement house rules in their own games. I’ll deviate from my normal pattern and start by giving the step-by-step method used to determine attunement, and save my more in-depth commentary for afterwards.
Introduction
The principles referenced in the DMG for determining whether a magic item should require attunement are good solid principles. I agree with them. However, the assignment of attunement requirements to magic items in the DMG and other products, in my opinion, fails to implement those principles well. My intention is to create a system for assigning attunement requirements to magic items that more faithfully applies those principles, and with as much clarity and ease of use as I can reasonably balance with that.
This system relies on two major innovations. The first is adding a lesser form of attunement I’m calling bonding. Any item either requires attunement, bonding, or neither. The second is reintroducing item/equipment slots from previous editions as a design consideration.
In practice, this means that many items will have their attunement requirement changed. It might be downgraded from requiring attunement to only requiring bonding, or (rarely) upgraded from not requiring anything to requiring bonding.
Important definitions are given first. Then follows the rules steps consulted in order to determine when any particular item should require attunement, bonding, or neither. Last comes a list of the altered attunement requirements of items from the 2014 DMG.
Definitions
Attunement – Attunement refers to the same feature, and operates the same as described in the DMG, with the exception that there is no prohibition on attuning to multiples of the same item.
Bonding – Bonding is a less restrictive form of attunement assigned to some items. The processes of bonding to, and ending one’s bonding to, an item are identical to those for attunement. However, the first item bonded to in each item slot is not counted for purposes of determining how many items one can be attuned to. If you are already bonded to an item in a particular item slot, each additional item you bond to in that same slot does count against the limit on the number of items you can attune to.
Item Slots – Magic items are either non-equipped, or equipped in one of 16 item slots: armor, belt, bracer/bracelet, cloak, clothing, eyes/mask, footwear, gloves/gauntlets, headwear, held (2 slots), neckwear, on person, ring (2 slots), tattoo. The DMG provides guidelines for wearing more than one item in what I’m terming item slots. For example, you could easily wear a large amount of neckware and rings. A few of these slots require further explanation.
Effect Levels – Effect level refers to a spell’s level, as well as the estimated equivalent spell level for effects other than spells. If an item has a specific feature or type of effect listed in the rules steps below, effect level is irrelevant—refer to the specific rule instead. When assigning an effect level start by looking for similar spell effects. The DMG has guidelines for damage and healing values by level. Conditions are listed under the appropriate categories below. An effect level also includes the ability to create, absorb, recover, store, or automatically negate spells of that level (examples: ioun stone of absorption, pearl of power, ring of spell storing). While effect levels can be anything from cantrips to 9th level, we only have to concern ourselves with three categories of effect levels.
Circumstantial Effects – Circumstantial effects of effect level 6+ are treated the same as non-circumstantial effects. Circumstantial effects of effect level 2nd to 5th are treated as if they were one level lower. Circumstantial effects based on specific rules instead of effect levels are ignored (ie, they have no effect on an item's attunement requirements). An effect is circumstantial if it meets any of the following conditions:
Go through the following rule steps in order. Rules in higher categories take precedence over those in lower ones. Rules in Categories A and B refer to types of items that always or never require attunement or bonding, regardless of their features. Rules in the remaining four categories apply to all other items, and refer to individual features of those items. For each such feature, follow the steps to determine the requirements of that feature. Then apply the most restrictive requirement to the item. If none of these rules cause the item to require attunement or bonding, it requires neither. Remember that specific rules take precedence over effect levels (for example, the fly spell’s effect level is not even looked at, because its function is to grant a fly speed, which is covered by rule 31).
Category A: Items that Never Require Attunement or Bonding
1) Non-equipped items never require attunement or bonding (examples: +1 arrow, horn of valhalla, potion of healing, spell scroll).
2) An item equipped by your mount or other companion creature never requires attunement or bonding from you, though such items might require attunement or bonding from the mount (examples: horseshoes of speed (bonding for mount), saddle of the cavalier (attunement for mount)).
Category B: Items that Always Requirement Attunement
3) Artifacts and sentient items always require attunement.
Category C: Features that Never Cause an Item to Require Attunement or Bonding
4) Consumable effects (examples: chime of opening, ring of three wishes).
5) User requirements such as class, alignment, or being a spellcaster (examples: wand of the war mage, wand of entangle). If such an item does not require attunement or bonding based on other features, then it simply can’t be used by characters that don’t meet the user requirements.
6) Cursed effects. However, most cursed items instantly bond to the wielder as soon as the curse manifests, regardless of whether their non-cursed effects would require it.
7) Immunity to disease.
8) Damage resistance to poison.
9) Darkvision or tremorsense (example: goggles of night).
10) Light generation, with the exception of sunlight (which is treated as a 5th level effect). (Light generation examples: flame tongue, gem of brightness).
11) A swim speed (examples: mariner’s armor, ring of swimming).
12) Cantrip and 1st Level spells and effects that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: hat of disguise, ring of feather falling).
13) Ritual spell effects that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: cap of water breathing, ring of water walking, wand of magic detection).
Category D: Features that Always Require Attunement
14) A bonus to proficiency bonus (example: ioun stone of mastery).
15) An ability score bonus (examples: gauntlets of ogre power, ioun stone of agility).
16) Immunity to any damage type except poison (example: efreeti chain).
17) Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and/or slashing damage (example: armor of invulnerability).
18) Disadvantage to hit you with weapon attacks (examples: cloak of displacement, ring of invisibility).
19) Grants you an additional attack, whether directly or by freeing up a hand in combat (examples: animated shield, scimitar of speed).
20) Spells and effects of 6th level or higher that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: helm of teleportation, ring of djinni summoning).
Category E: Features with Item Type Dependent Attunement Requirements
21) An armor class bonus requires attunement except on armor and shields (examples requiring attunement: bracers of defense, ioun stone of protection; examples not requiring attunement: dwarven plate, shield +1).
22) A weapon attack or damage bonus requires attunement except on items that can make weapon attacks (examples requiring attunement: bracers of archery, cloak of invisibility; examples not requiring attunement: demon armor, dragonslayer, weapon +1).
23) A spell attack or damage bonus requires attunement except on spellcasting foci (example requiring attunement: robe of the archmagi; example not requiring attunement: wand of the war mage).
24) A spell save DC bonus requires attunement except on spellcasting foci. (example requiring attunement: robe of the archmagi; example not requiring attunement: rod of the pact keeper (but requires bonding from another step)).
Category F: Features that Require Bonding
25) A saving throw bonus that either applies in general, applies to all saves using a specific ability, applies against all magic or spells, or is of similarly broad scope (examples: mantle of spell resistance, ring of evasion).
26) An ability check or skill bonus that applies to a whole ability or skill.
27) Immunity to poison damage (example: periapt of proof against poison).
28) Resistance to damage other than poison, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing (examples: armor of resistance, ring of warmth).
29) Disadvantage to hit you with spell attacks (example: spellguard shield).
30) Blindsight, or the ability to see invisible or ethereal things (examples: gem of seeing, robe of eyes).
31) A fly, burrow, or climb speed, the ability to levitate, a speed increase of at least 25 feet, or an improvement to jumping or climbing capabilities (examples: gloves of swimming and climbing, ring of jumping, winged boots).
32) Hit point regeneration (examples: ioun stone of regeneration, ring of regeneration).
33) Spells and effects of 2nd to 5th level that aren’t addressed elsewhere (examples: circlet of blasting, medallion of thoughts).
Commentary
Those are the step-by-step rules to follow in my system to determine which items require attunement, bonding, or neither. Now I’m going to dig into the philosophy behind it, and some of the specific considerations underlying my system.
The Two Purposes of Attunement
The DMG specifies two purposes for attunement (referenced in Reverse Engineering the Real Rules of Attunement). These two purposes correspond to two different things that attunement does. I’ll address each in turn, as this is foundational for everything else.
Purpose 1: Avoiding Hassles While Adventuring
The requirement to spend time attuning to an item is intended to make game-play smoother and closer to the way it is intended. Without such a restriction, one characters could load up on every relevant defensive item before running through a trap laden hallway. Then they stuff them all in a bag of holding and toss it back down the hallway for the next character to likewise load up, etc. This might be fun and clever the first couple of times, but after that it becomes what would generally be considered an undesirable hassle.
Requiring time to attune to an item that is likely to be used for such purposes is intended to avoid this hassle.
Purpose 2: Preventing Overpowered Bonus Stacking
The limit on being attuned to three items at a time is designed to prevent throwing off the game’s math to the extent that it just doesn’t feel like it’s working right anymore, because someone is immune to half the damage coming their way, can’t miss, can’t be hit, etc.
Limiting the number of items you can be attuned to at once is intended to prevent this problem.
Issues with Implementation of the Two Purposes
I approve of both of those purposes. I think they are beneficial things for the game to include. However, I think the official implementation fails to distinguish between these purposes in attunement requirements, restricts item usage for other purposes most players and DMs would not desire, and makes mistakes in determining which features actually need to be restricted for those purposes. I aim to address all of those issues with these new rules.
Purpose 1 Implementation: How and How Not to Actually Avoid Hassles While Adventuring
The biggest problem with the implementation of this purpose is that items that need the time requirement to attune don’t necessarily need to be restricted to the three item limit. In fact, most of the time they do not. The existence of a single attunement state forces these items to be inappropriately given the most severe restriction.
The interaction of bonding and item slots is intended to cover this. They make it so that most items that need an attunement (bonding) time requirement, but not a three item limit can have it. The reason stacking extra bonding items beyond those allowed by item slots triggers the three item limit will be explained later.
Purpose 2 Implementation: How and How Not to Actually Prevent Overpowered Bonus Stacking
The biggest problem with the implementation of this purpose is that there is no differentiation between limiting a character’s overall bonuses and limiting the stacking of bonuses to a single value. It might be unbalanced to have a +9 to your attack bonus, AC, or saves, but it might not be unbalanced to have a +3 to each of them. The current implementation can’t distinguish between these at all. Therefore a restriction intended to prevent you from stacking too many items that grant you AC, or gathering too many types of damage resistance, in effect prevents all sorts of other things that are in no way unbalanced.
Another problem is that some items that are unbalanced to collect benefits from at lower levels cease to be so at higher levels, and therefore their attunement requirement makes them become undesirable, while items of similar utility and rarity that lack attunement could still be used late game. I don’t want attunement to double as a “expiration level” beyond which it’s not worth having that item--and that’s what the current rules do.
A final issue with this restriction is that for many games it is completely unnecessary. Based on the average distribution of random treasure rolls in the DMG (better spelled out in XGtE) a typical party of 20th level characters will have about the right amount of magic items requiring attunement for each character in the party to have 3. If you hand out no more magic items than the norm defined by the random tables in the DMG and the charts in XGtE, and don’t allow characters to buy or trade whatever they want, you should rarely hit the three item limits, making them superfluous. Therefore, this entire purpose is only intended for campaigns that hand out more treasure than the normative values, or that allow players to acquire non-random magic items of their choice. For any other campaign, you can just ignore this restriction, stop reading right now, I apologize for wasting your time so far, and you can get back to enjoying your games.
Better implementing this purpose relied on three things. The first is clearly identifying which sorts of features actually are potentially unbalancing if you gather too many of them in general (rather than to a specific value). The second is identifying which sorts of features cease to be unbalanced at higher levels. The third is finding a satisfyingly simple way to implement all of these together. This was handled by using the interaction of bonding and item slots to allow you to have a lot of different items with various bonuses, while having a hard limit of 19 such items (16 item slots, + 3 extras). The stronger attunement restriction was reserved for items for which having around 10 or more would be clearly unbalanced. These numbers seem very generous, but will make more sense in the next section.
General Issues with Implementation
Additional implementation issues transcend those two purposes.
First, attunement may have been used in some cases (especially after the DMG) as a way to balance more powerful items. This is inappropriate because that is not its purpose at all.
Second, attunement was often used as a fun-bat to restrict the number of interesting items that could be attuned. I’m pretty sure there are very few players or DMs who want that sort of restriction. As it is, you can have a +3 weapon, +3 armor, and +3 shield with no attunement requirements, but flavorful items that have significantly less stacking issues require attunement.
Third, sometimes the specific unstated rules that appear to have been used to determine how to fulfill those purposes (see the previous topic) aren’t very good at it. Take the flame tongue. This is a rare weapon that isn’t really any better than the also rare +2 weapon. However it requires attunement, and based on analysis, the reason it requires attunement is because it generates light.
. . .
Seriously? I can’t even… Sorry, I have to get a hold of myself here, lol. Light generation requires attunement? Yes, yes it does.
And of course it absolutely should not. The only reason behind that rule that I can think of is that it theoretically frees up a hand that would otherwise be holding a torch or lantern. You can get an off-hand attack, or wear a shield! Powerful stuff! Except it’s not. Light is a cantrip, you can tie a lantern to your backpack, and darkvision is ubiquitous. This was a major design fail.
There are a few other things like that in there. While my list of rules is slightly longer than the Real Rules, that is because a good number of them are rules telling you that things like light generation absolutely never require attunement or bonding.
How to Fix General Issues with Implementation
Attunement is not for limiting the number of powerful items. Rarity is explicitly stated to be a measurement of power in the DMG. A party with higher rarity items, or more items absolutely should have more power at their disposal. Attunement is only to help make sure that no matter how many items a party has, a single character won’t be completely unbalanced because of them, and adventuring won’t become a hassle due to regularly passing around items. Therefore, when looking at the power of an item, only rarity is considered. Attunement and bonding requirements are not factored in at all.
The fun-bat issue of restricting interesting items is simple to fix—just don’t do it. My rules are designed not to privilege generic plusses over more interesting features when it comes to attunement restrictions.
Examining each of the unstated rules to determine whether they actually work as intended was a major element of this undertaking.
Commentary on Specific Elements of My New Rules
I have removed the limitation on attuning (or bonding) to multiple items of the same type (ie, two rings of protection). Since there can be multiple similar items, I feel that such a restriction was unneeded and encouraged cheesy design where you make a subtly different item so you can attune to both.
Unlike attunement or bonding requirements, item slots can influence the power level of an item. For example, since there are 2 available ring slots for bonding, and a basically unlimited number for items that do not require attunement or bonding, it could be appropriate to make some rings that grant a benefit higher value items than a pair of boots or suit of armor granting the same benefit.
The lack of attaching the 2 held slots to the 2 hands in particular serves a couple purposes. First, it makes it easier to apply for beings with a different number of limbs that could hold something. Second, it reduces privileging sword and board and dual-wielding characters over those that wield two-handed weapons, or carry multiple weapons, spell foci, or shields to switch between.
The amount of detail that is used to define the difference between non-equipped, held, and on person items was due to the significant difference in how those items interact with the rules. Most importantly, non-equipped items never require attunement or bonding, so it was of great importance to clearly define which qualify. Otherwise, some items that at first glance look “held” would require more attunement than by the official listings, which is not desirable.
The usage frequency of an item (1 week, 3/day, 1/day, at-will, etc) has no effect on an item’s attunement requirement. The reason for this is that these rules assume greater than normal amounts of treasure. With such greater amounts of treasure, a character could have an arbitrarily high number of items (20 wands, etc). Having multiple items can therefore effectively be the same as having one at-will item. This is a consideration in circumstantial items. If having multiple items could negate the circumstantial nature of an item, it isn’t really circumstantial. Do note, however, that the frequency of an item’s use absolutely should affect the value of an item.
I imagine that if they knew in 2014 that there were going to be playable centaurs, those horseshoes would have required attunement.
It’s theoretically possible for a sentient item to not need attunement or bonding based on the other specific rules. However, since a sentient item can essentially be considered an additional NPC for the DMG to keep track of, I felt that limiting the number of those was a good call. Technically, I’m limiting the number of them for the purposes of avoiding hassle, which is a special exception to the normal purposes and methods that felt justified in this case.
I assume the reasons that the unstated rules seem to allow water-breathing and swim speed without attunement is due to how deadly drowning is. I think the intent was to allow a character to go underwater and stick a water-breathing item on a drowning party member to save them. I think that’s probably a good call, and have likewise made that a feature that doesn’t require attunement or bonding.
Commentary on General Design Approach
I went through multiple iterations attempting to come up with the best system I could devise. I considered things such as having a third category for items that required attunement unless the wielder is a certain level. I considered categorizing general (attack, defense, etc) or specific (attack bonus, damage resistance, etc) types of features and having the attuned items limit apply to each category separately. I considered a greatly expanded version of my Category E rules, where each item slot didn’t require attunement for certain types of effects. I considered completely replacing attunement with item slots.
In the end, I wanted simplicity. I didn’t want magic items to have a lot of extra details in their headings. I wanted to focus more on maintaining the premise while enabling actually using the items you’d get in a high-treasure campaign than on making sure everything was locked down to a unbreakably tight balance.
The results I ended up with mean that there are only two real changes from the player side. First, some magic item headers replace “attunement” with “bonding” and some drop it entirely. Second, if you have a lot of rings, neckware, or held items you’ll have to be aware that additional ones function like attunement.
Potential Issues with These New Rules of Attunement
There are a few potential issues with these new rules of attunement.
Since it provides detailed rules, it is theoretically possible to game the system when creating items. For example, since there is no difference between an item that only works once a week, and an item that works at-will when it comes to attunement, a player might want to design an item with lots of daily uses, even when similar items in the DMG only have 1/day uses. The important thing to remember here is attunement requirements and value are unconnected. That item that is otherwise similar but at-will is likely to be a higher rarity. A similar issue could arise with item slots. The solution there is assume that the items in the DMG are well-known because they are generally the most efficient at what they do. (Echoes of 3e’s item slot affinity.) If you want to make a hat of fireballs to keep your held slots open, you might be able to, but expect it to be a higher value (ie, rarity) item.
If everyone in the party is given 10 copies of every item in the DMG, they might be able to put together combos that are absurd that may not have been possible with the official attunement rules. It is exceedingly difficult to make a system for magic items that prevents all unbalanced setups without becoming so restrictive it steals the enjoyment. Even with the official rules, you can make some very high power characters by picking the strongest non-attuned items and a good choice of three powerhouse attuned items. I think these rules provide a desirable balance for a higher than normal magic item allotment.
Lastly, this system might just not work in your game. If you’ve read this far and feel that way, I hope you got some ideas from it that you can make use of in your own design work. If you want to get a feel for whether you like these rules, I recommend examining the list of changes to the DMG items, as well as looking at your DMG for which ones haven’t been changed. If you mostly like what you see but have some reservations, you might want to look into changing certain rules. For example, you might not like how I separated disadvantage on attacks against you into weapon attacks and spell attacks, or how I make flying only require bonding. It’s easy to change a couple rules and see what it does to the overall results.
Conclusion
I set out to make a more satisfying system for attunement which would allow characters in treasure-rich campaigns to enjoy more, and more interesting, magic items, while preserving the two fundamental purposes of attunement and implementing them better than the official rules do. I believe I have succeeded. When I examine which items require attunement, bonding, or neither with my new rules of attunement, they feel right. The vast majority of the time, I like where a particular item ended up.
Although I only listed the items from the DMG, in the analysis and implementation I also included the magic items from many other official 5e books. The rules work on those other items also.
Again, I hope anyone who reads this gets something useful out of it to improve their game!
Future Designs
I’m currently working on a revision to the concentration rules, and hope to have it ready much faster than I finished this project.
With the 2024 DMG and its magic item rules right around the corner, I finally managed to finish this set of magic item attunement house rules that has been three years in the making.
This is a sequel to Reverse Engineering the Real Rules of Attunement and also uses the 2014 rules.
After extensive analysis and multiple design iterations, I devised this alternate method of determining which magic items should require attunement. I’m sharing it here in case anyone else finds it to their liking, or gets inspired for how to handle attunement house rules in their own games. I’ll deviate from my normal pattern and start by giving the step-by-step method used to determine attunement, and save my more in-depth commentary for afterwards.
Introduction
The principles referenced in the DMG for determining whether a magic item should require attunement are good solid principles. I agree with them. However, the assignment of attunement requirements to magic items in the DMG and other products, in my opinion, fails to implement those principles well. My intention is to create a system for assigning attunement requirements to magic items that more faithfully applies those principles, and with as much clarity and ease of use as I can reasonably balance with that.
This system relies on two major innovations. The first is adding a lesser form of attunement I’m calling bonding. Any item either requires attunement, bonding, or neither. The second is reintroducing item/equipment slots from previous editions as a design consideration.
In practice, this means that many items will have their attunement requirement changed. It might be downgraded from requiring attunement to only requiring bonding, or (rarely) upgraded from not requiring anything to requiring bonding.
Important definitions are given first. Then follows the rules steps consulted in order to determine when any particular item should require attunement, bonding, or neither. Last comes a list of the altered attunement requirements of items from the 2014 DMG.
Definitions
Attunement – Attunement refers to the same feature, and operates the same as described in the DMG, with the exception that there is no prohibition on attuning to multiples of the same item.
Bonding – Bonding is a less restrictive form of attunement assigned to some items. The processes of bonding to, and ending one’s bonding to, an item are identical to those for attunement. However, the first item bonded to in each item slot is not counted for purposes of determining how many items one can be attuned to. If you are already bonded to an item in a particular item slot, each additional item you bond to in that same slot does count against the limit on the number of items you can attune to.
Item Slots – Magic items are either non-equipped, or equipped in one of 16 item slots: armor, belt, bracer/bracelet, cloak, clothing, eyes/mask, footwear, gloves/gauntlets, headwear, held (2 slots), neckwear, on person, ring (2 slots), tattoo. The DMG provides guidelines for wearing more than one item in what I’m terming item slots. For example, you could easily wear a large amount of neckware and rings. A few of these slots require further explanation.
- On Person – The “on person” slot is for all items that provide a benefit to you simply by virtue of being on your person (examples: stone of good luck, ioun stones). Held items that also provide such a benefit when not held also use the on person, rather than held, item slot (example: weapon of warning). Items that provide an ongoing benefit from a distance are also in the on person slot (example: artifacts with random beneficial/detrimental properties, many of which fall into this category).
- Held – The 2 held item slots are for weapons, shields, and other items wielded in your hands, such as many spellcasting foci. To be included in these slots, an item must have features that operate only when held and equipped. Otherwise the item is either non-equipped or equipped in the on person slot. The 2 held slots are not associated with your two hands. You could use them to bond to 2 greatswords, shields, or staves, for example.
- The item is consumable (examples: potions, scrolls, chime of opening, necklace of fireballs (which is also not a neckwear item, because wearing it has no effect)).
- The item ceases to be held once used (examples: figurines of wondrous power, portable hole).
- The item doesn’t truly need to be held or carried (examples: bag of holding, bag of tricks, horn of valhalla).
- The item provides no benefit from continuing to hold it (or holding an identical item) on subsequent rounds, such as by activating an effect with a duration that continues when not held, or otherwise negates any further need (examples: wind fan, rod of security).
Effect Levels – Effect level refers to a spell’s level, as well as the estimated equivalent spell level for effects other than spells. If an item has a specific feature or type of effect listed in the rules steps below, effect level is irrelevant—refer to the specific rule instead. When assigning an effect level start by looking for similar spell effects. The DMG has guidelines for damage and healing values by level. Conditions are listed under the appropriate categories below. An effect level also includes the ability to create, absorb, recover, store, or automatically negate spells of that level (examples: ioun stone of absorption, pearl of power, ring of spell storing). While effect levels can be anything from cantrips to 9th level, we only have to concern ourselves with three categories of effect levels.
- Cantrip and 1st Level. Included conditions are deafened, grappled, prone, and restrained.
- 2nd to 5th Level. Included conditions are blinded, charmed, exhaustion, frightened, incapacitated, invisible, paralyzed, poisoned, stunned, and unconscious.
- 6th+ Level. Includes the petrified condition.
Circumstantial Effects – Circumstantial effects of effect level 6+ are treated the same as non-circumstantial effects. Circumstantial effects of effect level 2nd to 5th are treated as if they were one level lower. Circumstantial effects based on specific rules instead of effect levels are ignored (ie, they have no effect on an item's attunement requirements). An effect is circumstantial if it meets any of the following conditions:
- The effect is passive or ongoing but would apply for less than half of the time, or for less than half of the situations that such an effect would normally apply to. Such effects could include fire resistance that only operates against fire elementals, or disadvantage on only the first attack against you in a round. For reasons that will be explained in the commentary section, these rules do not take account of how often an item can be used (1/week or at-will are treated the same), but they do take account of passive or ongoing benefits not lasting at least half of a round.
- The effect is activated but has activation restrictions that limit you from utilizing it with a normal frequency. Such effects could do something like let you become invisible only on the night of the full moon. Frequency of activation (1/week, at-will, etc) is not taken account of, only the imposition of specific restrictions.
- The effect is an additional effect that only triggers on a natural roll of 20, or a similar rarity.
Go through the following rule steps in order. Rules in higher categories take precedence over those in lower ones. Rules in Categories A and B refer to types of items that always or never require attunement or bonding, regardless of their features. Rules in the remaining four categories apply to all other items, and refer to individual features of those items. For each such feature, follow the steps to determine the requirements of that feature. Then apply the most restrictive requirement to the item. If none of these rules cause the item to require attunement or bonding, it requires neither. Remember that specific rules take precedence over effect levels (for example, the fly spell’s effect level is not even looked at, because its function is to grant a fly speed, which is covered by rule 31).
Category A: Items that Never Require Attunement or Bonding
1) Non-equipped items never require attunement or bonding (examples: +1 arrow, horn of valhalla, potion of healing, spell scroll).
2) An item equipped by your mount or other companion creature never requires attunement or bonding from you, though such items might require attunement or bonding from the mount (examples: horseshoes of speed (bonding for mount), saddle of the cavalier (attunement for mount)).
Category B: Items that Always Requirement Attunement
3) Artifacts and sentient items always require attunement.
Category C: Features that Never Cause an Item to Require Attunement or Bonding
4) Consumable effects (examples: chime of opening, ring of three wishes).
5) User requirements such as class, alignment, or being a spellcaster (examples: wand of the war mage, wand of entangle). If such an item does not require attunement or bonding based on other features, then it simply can’t be used by characters that don’t meet the user requirements.
6) Cursed effects. However, most cursed items instantly bond to the wielder as soon as the curse manifests, regardless of whether their non-cursed effects would require it.
7) Immunity to disease.
8) Damage resistance to poison.
9) Darkvision or tremorsense (example: goggles of night).
10) Light generation, with the exception of sunlight (which is treated as a 5th level effect). (Light generation examples: flame tongue, gem of brightness).
11) A swim speed (examples: mariner’s armor, ring of swimming).
12) Cantrip and 1st Level spells and effects that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: hat of disguise, ring of feather falling).
13) Ritual spell effects that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: cap of water breathing, ring of water walking, wand of magic detection).
Category D: Features that Always Require Attunement
14) A bonus to proficiency bonus (example: ioun stone of mastery).
15) An ability score bonus (examples: gauntlets of ogre power, ioun stone of agility).
16) Immunity to any damage type except poison (example: efreeti chain).
17) Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and/or slashing damage (example: armor of invulnerability).
18) Disadvantage to hit you with weapon attacks (examples: cloak of displacement, ring of invisibility).
19) Grants you an additional attack, whether directly or by freeing up a hand in combat (examples: animated shield, scimitar of speed).
20) Spells and effects of 6th level or higher that aren’t addressed in another rule (examples: helm of teleportation, ring of djinni summoning).
Category E: Features with Item Type Dependent Attunement Requirements
21) An armor class bonus requires attunement except on armor and shields (examples requiring attunement: bracers of defense, ioun stone of protection; examples not requiring attunement: dwarven plate, shield +1).
22) A weapon attack or damage bonus requires attunement except on items that can make weapon attacks (examples requiring attunement: bracers of archery, cloak of invisibility; examples not requiring attunement: demon armor, dragonslayer, weapon +1).
23) A spell attack or damage bonus requires attunement except on spellcasting foci (example requiring attunement: robe of the archmagi; example not requiring attunement: wand of the war mage).
24) A spell save DC bonus requires attunement except on spellcasting foci. (example requiring attunement: robe of the archmagi; example not requiring attunement: rod of the pact keeper (but requires bonding from another step)).
Category F: Features that Require Bonding
25) A saving throw bonus that either applies in general, applies to all saves using a specific ability, applies against all magic or spells, or is of similarly broad scope (examples: mantle of spell resistance, ring of evasion).
26) An ability check or skill bonus that applies to a whole ability or skill.
27) Immunity to poison damage (example: periapt of proof against poison).
28) Resistance to damage other than poison, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing (examples: armor of resistance, ring of warmth).
29) Disadvantage to hit you with spell attacks (example: spellguard shield).
30) Blindsight, or the ability to see invisible or ethereal things (examples: gem of seeing, robe of eyes).
31) A fly, burrow, or climb speed, the ability to levitate, a speed increase of at least 25 feet, or an improvement to jumping or climbing capabilities (examples: gloves of swimming and climbing, ring of jumping, winged boots).
32) Hit point regeneration (examples: ioun stone of regeneration, ring of regeneration).
33) Spells and effects of 2nd to 5th level that aren’t addressed elsewhere (examples: circlet of blasting, medallion of thoughts).
Commentary
Those are the step-by-step rules to follow in my system to determine which items require attunement, bonding, or neither. Now I’m going to dig into the philosophy behind it, and some of the specific considerations underlying my system.
The Two Purposes of Attunement
The DMG specifies two purposes for attunement (referenced in Reverse Engineering the Real Rules of Attunement). These two purposes correspond to two different things that attunement does. I’ll address each in turn, as this is foundational for everything else.
Purpose 1: Avoiding Hassles While Adventuring
The requirement to spend time attuning to an item is intended to make game-play smoother and closer to the way it is intended. Without such a restriction, one characters could load up on every relevant defensive item before running through a trap laden hallway. Then they stuff them all in a bag of holding and toss it back down the hallway for the next character to likewise load up, etc. This might be fun and clever the first couple of times, but after that it becomes what would generally be considered an undesirable hassle.
Requiring time to attune to an item that is likely to be used for such purposes is intended to avoid this hassle.
Purpose 2: Preventing Overpowered Bonus Stacking
The limit on being attuned to three items at a time is designed to prevent throwing off the game’s math to the extent that it just doesn’t feel like it’s working right anymore, because someone is immune to half the damage coming their way, can’t miss, can’t be hit, etc.
Limiting the number of items you can be attuned to at once is intended to prevent this problem.
Issues with Implementation of the Two Purposes
I approve of both of those purposes. I think they are beneficial things for the game to include. However, I think the official implementation fails to distinguish between these purposes in attunement requirements, restricts item usage for other purposes most players and DMs would not desire, and makes mistakes in determining which features actually need to be restricted for those purposes. I aim to address all of those issues with these new rules.
Purpose 1 Implementation: How and How Not to Actually Avoid Hassles While Adventuring
The biggest problem with the implementation of this purpose is that items that need the time requirement to attune don’t necessarily need to be restricted to the three item limit. In fact, most of the time they do not. The existence of a single attunement state forces these items to be inappropriately given the most severe restriction.
The interaction of bonding and item slots is intended to cover this. They make it so that most items that need an attunement (bonding) time requirement, but not a three item limit can have it. The reason stacking extra bonding items beyond those allowed by item slots triggers the three item limit will be explained later.
Purpose 2 Implementation: How and How Not to Actually Prevent Overpowered Bonus Stacking
The biggest problem with the implementation of this purpose is that there is no differentiation between limiting a character’s overall bonuses and limiting the stacking of bonuses to a single value. It might be unbalanced to have a +9 to your attack bonus, AC, or saves, but it might not be unbalanced to have a +3 to each of them. The current implementation can’t distinguish between these at all. Therefore a restriction intended to prevent you from stacking too many items that grant you AC, or gathering too many types of damage resistance, in effect prevents all sorts of other things that are in no way unbalanced.
Another problem is that some items that are unbalanced to collect benefits from at lower levels cease to be so at higher levels, and therefore their attunement requirement makes them become undesirable, while items of similar utility and rarity that lack attunement could still be used late game. I don’t want attunement to double as a “expiration level” beyond which it’s not worth having that item--and that’s what the current rules do.
A final issue with this restriction is that for many games it is completely unnecessary. Based on the average distribution of random treasure rolls in the DMG (better spelled out in XGtE) a typical party of 20th level characters will have about the right amount of magic items requiring attunement for each character in the party to have 3. If you hand out no more magic items than the norm defined by the random tables in the DMG and the charts in XGtE, and don’t allow characters to buy or trade whatever they want, you should rarely hit the three item limits, making them superfluous. Therefore, this entire purpose is only intended for campaigns that hand out more treasure than the normative values, or that allow players to acquire non-random magic items of their choice. For any other campaign, you can just ignore this restriction, stop reading right now, I apologize for wasting your time so far, and you can get back to enjoying your games.
Better implementing this purpose relied on three things. The first is clearly identifying which sorts of features actually are potentially unbalancing if you gather too many of them in general (rather than to a specific value). The second is identifying which sorts of features cease to be unbalanced at higher levels. The third is finding a satisfyingly simple way to implement all of these together. This was handled by using the interaction of bonding and item slots to allow you to have a lot of different items with various bonuses, while having a hard limit of 19 such items (16 item slots, + 3 extras). The stronger attunement restriction was reserved for items for which having around 10 or more would be clearly unbalanced. These numbers seem very generous, but will make more sense in the next section.
General Issues with Implementation
Additional implementation issues transcend those two purposes.
First, attunement may have been used in some cases (especially after the DMG) as a way to balance more powerful items. This is inappropriate because that is not its purpose at all.
Second, attunement was often used as a fun-bat to restrict the number of interesting items that could be attuned. I’m pretty sure there are very few players or DMs who want that sort of restriction. As it is, you can have a +3 weapon, +3 armor, and +3 shield with no attunement requirements, but flavorful items that have significantly less stacking issues require attunement.
Third, sometimes the specific unstated rules that appear to have been used to determine how to fulfill those purposes (see the previous topic) aren’t very good at it. Take the flame tongue. This is a rare weapon that isn’t really any better than the also rare +2 weapon. However it requires attunement, and based on analysis, the reason it requires attunement is because it generates light.
. . .
Seriously? I can’t even… Sorry, I have to get a hold of myself here, lol. Light generation requires attunement? Yes, yes it does.
And of course it absolutely should not. The only reason behind that rule that I can think of is that it theoretically frees up a hand that would otherwise be holding a torch or lantern. You can get an off-hand attack, or wear a shield! Powerful stuff! Except it’s not. Light is a cantrip, you can tie a lantern to your backpack, and darkvision is ubiquitous. This was a major design fail.
There are a few other things like that in there. While my list of rules is slightly longer than the Real Rules, that is because a good number of them are rules telling you that things like light generation absolutely never require attunement or bonding.
How to Fix General Issues with Implementation
Attunement is not for limiting the number of powerful items. Rarity is explicitly stated to be a measurement of power in the DMG. A party with higher rarity items, or more items absolutely should have more power at their disposal. Attunement is only to help make sure that no matter how many items a party has, a single character won’t be completely unbalanced because of them, and adventuring won’t become a hassle due to regularly passing around items. Therefore, when looking at the power of an item, only rarity is considered. Attunement and bonding requirements are not factored in at all.
The fun-bat issue of restricting interesting items is simple to fix—just don’t do it. My rules are designed not to privilege generic plusses over more interesting features when it comes to attunement restrictions.
Examining each of the unstated rules to determine whether they actually work as intended was a major element of this undertaking.
Commentary on Specific Elements of My New Rules
I have removed the limitation on attuning (or bonding) to multiple items of the same type (ie, two rings of protection). Since there can be multiple similar items, I feel that such a restriction was unneeded and encouraged cheesy design where you make a subtly different item so you can attune to both.
Unlike attunement or bonding requirements, item slots can influence the power level of an item. For example, since there are 2 available ring slots for bonding, and a basically unlimited number for items that do not require attunement or bonding, it could be appropriate to make some rings that grant a benefit higher value items than a pair of boots or suit of armor granting the same benefit.
The lack of attaching the 2 held slots to the 2 hands in particular serves a couple purposes. First, it makes it easier to apply for beings with a different number of limbs that could hold something. Second, it reduces privileging sword and board and dual-wielding characters over those that wield two-handed weapons, or carry multiple weapons, spell foci, or shields to switch between.
The amount of detail that is used to define the difference between non-equipped, held, and on person items was due to the significant difference in how those items interact with the rules. Most importantly, non-equipped items never require attunement or bonding, so it was of great importance to clearly define which qualify. Otherwise, some items that at first glance look “held” would require more attunement than by the official listings, which is not desirable.
The usage frequency of an item (1 week, 3/day, 1/day, at-will, etc) has no effect on an item’s attunement requirement. The reason for this is that these rules assume greater than normal amounts of treasure. With such greater amounts of treasure, a character could have an arbitrarily high number of items (20 wands, etc). Having multiple items can therefore effectively be the same as having one at-will item. This is a consideration in circumstantial items. If having multiple items could negate the circumstantial nature of an item, it isn’t really circumstantial. Do note, however, that the frequency of an item’s use absolutely should affect the value of an item.
I imagine that if they knew in 2014 that there were going to be playable centaurs, those horseshoes would have required attunement.
It’s theoretically possible for a sentient item to not need attunement or bonding based on the other specific rules. However, since a sentient item can essentially be considered an additional NPC for the DMG to keep track of, I felt that limiting the number of those was a good call. Technically, I’m limiting the number of them for the purposes of avoiding hassle, which is a special exception to the normal purposes and methods that felt justified in this case.
I assume the reasons that the unstated rules seem to allow water-breathing and swim speed without attunement is due to how deadly drowning is. I think the intent was to allow a character to go underwater and stick a water-breathing item on a drowning party member to save them. I think that’s probably a good call, and have likewise made that a feature that doesn’t require attunement or bonding.
Commentary on General Design Approach
I went through multiple iterations attempting to come up with the best system I could devise. I considered things such as having a third category for items that required attunement unless the wielder is a certain level. I considered categorizing general (attack, defense, etc) or specific (attack bonus, damage resistance, etc) types of features and having the attuned items limit apply to each category separately. I considered a greatly expanded version of my Category E rules, where each item slot didn’t require attunement for certain types of effects. I considered completely replacing attunement with item slots.
In the end, I wanted simplicity. I didn’t want magic items to have a lot of extra details in their headings. I wanted to focus more on maintaining the premise while enabling actually using the items you’d get in a high-treasure campaign than on making sure everything was locked down to a unbreakably tight balance.
The results I ended up with mean that there are only two real changes from the player side. First, some magic item headers replace “attunement” with “bonding” and some drop it entirely. Second, if you have a lot of rings, neckware, or held items you’ll have to be aware that additional ones function like attunement.
Potential Issues with These New Rules of Attunement
There are a few potential issues with these new rules of attunement.
Since it provides detailed rules, it is theoretically possible to game the system when creating items. For example, since there is no difference between an item that only works once a week, and an item that works at-will when it comes to attunement, a player might want to design an item with lots of daily uses, even when similar items in the DMG only have 1/day uses. The important thing to remember here is attunement requirements and value are unconnected. That item that is otherwise similar but at-will is likely to be a higher rarity. A similar issue could arise with item slots. The solution there is assume that the items in the DMG are well-known because they are generally the most efficient at what they do. (Echoes of 3e’s item slot affinity.) If you want to make a hat of fireballs to keep your held slots open, you might be able to, but expect it to be a higher value (ie, rarity) item.
If everyone in the party is given 10 copies of every item in the DMG, they might be able to put together combos that are absurd that may not have been possible with the official attunement rules. It is exceedingly difficult to make a system for magic items that prevents all unbalanced setups without becoming so restrictive it steals the enjoyment. Even with the official rules, you can make some very high power characters by picking the strongest non-attuned items and a good choice of three powerhouse attuned items. I think these rules provide a desirable balance for a higher than normal magic item allotment.
Lastly, this system might just not work in your game. If you’ve read this far and feel that way, I hope you got some ideas from it that you can make use of in your own design work. If you want to get a feel for whether you like these rules, I recommend examining the list of changes to the DMG items, as well as looking at your DMG for which ones haven’t been changed. If you mostly like what you see but have some reservations, you might want to look into changing certain rules. For example, you might not like how I separated disadvantage on attacks against you into weapon attacks and spell attacks, or how I make flying only require bonding. It’s easy to change a couple rules and see what it does to the overall results.
Conclusion
I set out to make a more satisfying system for attunement which would allow characters in treasure-rich campaigns to enjoy more, and more interesting, magic items, while preserving the two fundamental purposes of attunement and implementing them better than the official rules do. I believe I have succeeded. When I examine which items require attunement, bonding, or neither with my new rules of attunement, they feel right. The vast majority of the time, I like where a particular item ended up.
Although I only listed the items from the DMG, in the analysis and implementation I also included the magic items from many other official 5e books. The rules work on those other items also.
Again, I hope anyone who reads this gets something useful out of it to improve their game!
Future Designs
I’m currently working on a revision to the concentration rules, and hope to have it ready much faster than I finished this project.
