D&D 5E Magic item attunement, like-dislike?

[Halivar]

i love attunement, but I love more how 13th Age does it. Here's what I would do:

You can wear as many magic items as you want. But if you attune to more than 3, they begin forming an ego, almost like a ragamuffin. This ego has a random personality determined by the DM and begins attempting to assert itself over the PC, using a variety of Int, Wis, and Cha-based saves. The DC of the save is 8 plus 2 for each attuned item and 1 for each unattuned item (as the ego begins awakening the other, lesser magic items and brings them into the hive mind). Consider adding 3 or 4 for each artifact. The changes are subtle at first, but ends with the complete possession of the PC (after 3-5 failed saves). Nothing short of destroying the magic items will free the PC, which, in the case of artifacts, can lead to an entire side-track.

EDIT: This can also lead to an explanation for sentient magic items: they possessed, and were imprinted by, a mortal with too many magic items long since gone.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I like attunement myself.

However I do find it strange that "normal" +1/+2/+3 magic armour, shields and weapons don't require attunement, despite some being very rare or legendary items.
When weaker but more flavourable weapons, shields and armour do require attunement.

It's not exactly hard to house rule that +2 and +3 magic weapons, shields and armour require attunement, but it seems odd this isn't already written in.

Whoa, yeah! I had just assumed that every permanent item requires attunement before reading this post.

It does make sense though. For all the 5e talk of story before rules and gear not being necessary, I'd be surprised indeed if the devs didn't consider certain staple/mathy items as a more-or-less assumed part of advancement. After all, 5e is all about feeling like D&D.

 

[Ancalagon]

I haven't used this yet, but as I plan an upcoming campaign in a somewhat magic rich setting (Yoon-Suin), I find this rule/approach to be a breath of fresh air.

 

[S'mon]

Now, if you want to be far away from recommendations.... well, the game isn't balanced to work that way, but nobody is going to stop you.

Actually 5e is balanced to work well across a wide range of magic item frequency levels, as indicated in the DMG. Attunement is one part of that. It's very helpful for me running a Pathfinder AP, with its frequent magic, under 5e rules, to have Attunement there keeping the amount of magic per PC bounded.

 

[Ancalagon]

Would having a class or race feature be something like "able to attune one more item than baseline" be OP?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Would having a class or race feature be something like "able to attune one more item than baseline" be OP?

Depends on what you mean by "OP".

Would it be more powerful than intended by the designers? Yeah.
Would it be so powerful as to not be able to be counter-balanced by not having some other sort of feature, such as getting this as a class feature rather than some other class feature? Probably not.
Would it break your game even if you think it is a cool idea? Doubtful - 5th edition is extremely resilient by design, and one person's "broke it" is another person's "made it more fun."

So go for it, try it out for a while and see if you like it. If you do, it's perfect.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Attunment is bad and breaks one of the goals of the game. By becoming unattuned on death, you will now have to recalculate in the middle of battle all your figured stats. While not an issue at low level, at high level with in-combat raising this is more than a bit of a problem. On top of that once you're done combat you then have to spend multiple rests re-attuning which encourages 5 minute work days as parties leave the adventure to get their stuff back together.

On top of that, the items that require attunement and the ones that don't make no sense. There are some clear examples of items that don't require attunement that are superior to ones that don't, so as for it balancing anything it fails.

Also it's pretty bad that the character sheets don't have an attunement required and an attuned columns, it's like WotC doesn't even use this cumbersome and useless system themselves so never thought to put it on.

 

[Kobold Stew]

So when you die, you can't spring back up and fight with equal effectiveness?
Working as intended, I'd say.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Attunment is bad and breaks one of the goals of the game.

Which goal, exactly?

By becoming unattuned on death, you will now have to recalculate in the middle of battle all your figured stats. While not an issue at low level, at high level with in-combat raising this is more than a bit of a problem. On top of that once you're done combat you then have to spend multiple rests re-attuning which encourages 5 minute work days as parties leave the adventure to get their stuff back together.

This sounds more like an issue caused by running the game with heavily ramped-up lethality, rather than an issue that occurs if playing the game according to the various suggestions and guidelines provided, as characters don't die nearly as often as would be needed for these conditions to happen.

There are some clear examples of items that don't require attunement that are superior to ones that don't, so as for it balancing anything it fails.

Please share as many of these examples as you can.

Also it's pretty bad that the character sheets don't have an attunement required and an attuned columns, it's like WotC doesn't even use this cumbersome and useless system themselves so never thought to put it on.

It is generally normal for the official character sheets of a game to assume that no optional rules are being used - in the case of D&D that means the character sheet is not actually intended to assume that the character will ever have any magic items.

You will note the sheet has a line for "class", not "classes" because multi-classing is an optional rule.
You will note the sheet has no designated area specifically to write down feats (sure, the "features & traits" area might seem like it is meant for feats to, but it doesn't actually say so) because feats are an optional rule.
You will note the sheet has no place to record hero points or plot points, because they too are optional rules.
Same with how "Treasure" and "Equipment" are sections for just that - treasures & equipment - and makes no assumption that what will be written there is the entirely optional magic items.

And, all it takes to mark Attunement requirement and the items actually attuned is to decide on a mark for it, like how my group would write "Ring of Protection-A" to show that this ring requires attunement, and "Ring of Protection-A*" to show that the character is currently attuned to that ring - a specially formatted column for these things would actually waste space, not improve the utility of the character sheet (which is why I left it off when building our custom character sheets that match which optional rules we do use).

 

[Kalshane]

I'm personally liking the rule so far, but it's easy enough to ditch or change if it doesn't match the expectations of your own game.

Actually 5e is balanced to work well across a wide range of magic item frequency levels, as indicated in the DMG. Attunement is one part of that. It's very helpful for me running a Pathfinder AP, with its frequent magic, under 5e rules, to have Attunement there keeping the amount of magic per PC bounded.

I'm doing the same thing, and attunement definitely helps. I also drastically reduce the number of magical items the enemies are carrying to one or two flavorful items for major NPCs and maybe a bit more for "bosses". No random giants running around with +2 greatclubs and +3 hide armor, for example. (Or the party being left with an enormous pile of rings of protection and cloaks of resistance after cleaning out a dungeon.)