D&D 5E Most useful benefit?

[CapnZapp]

Which is best practice design:

Getting 19 ability score,
Getting proficiency saving throw, or
Getting advantage

For example, I'm designing a drinking horn that helps against alcohol, drinking contests; and poison in general.

Getting to count your Constitution as 19 when saving?
Or getting proficiency bonus on the roll?
Or advantage on the roll?

Which is the best design? In that it is helpful to many characters, useless to few, and broken to none?

One option is worthless if your Con is 20. This I feel to be instinctively okay.

But proficiency also seems like a natural choice. Too bad it's worthless to classes already proficient in Con saves.

Advantage is powerful, but perhaps mechanically inappropriate?

I haven't scoured the DMG for items. Feel free to point out any that answers my problem

 

[Nine Hands]

If you want an item to always be useful, then Advantage is the way to go. Since its a situational modifier, it makes sense for a magic item to grant it.

Or you could just have any poison put into the horn automatically become neutralized. This makes the magic item easier to work with and give it a bit more personality.

 

[houser2112]

I'd definitely stay away from the Con19 option (I hate that D&D went back to the fixed-score ability boost items, in general). No character I've ever made (and most other people, most likely) dumps Con, so the most you will get is a few points.

Considering how tightly focused the item's application is, I'd either grant Advantage, or grant proficiency if the user isn't already proficient and double the bonus if they are.

 

[ExploderWizard]

If you want an item to always be useful, then Advantage is the way to go. Since its a situational modifier, it makes sense for a magic item to grant it.

Or you could just have any poison put into the horn automatically become neutralized. This makes the magic item easier to work with and give it a bit more personality.

Yep. Advantage is the all around most neutral way to provide an even benefit. Some characters might already have close to or better than a 19 CON and some classes get their prof. bonus to CON saves already. Advantage wins for the best class neutral benefit.

 

[Alkavian]

I would avoid a stat bump and proficiency bonus. Granting advantage means the item can benefit anyone using it (making it more useful in a broad context). I think this is important when you consider the mechanics of 5e and the relative rarity of magic items in general. If you want your well-thought-out item to be appreciated you need to make it desirable to the party as a whole, unless of course it is being designed with a particular PC in mind. Even then, a generically useful item may still be more desirable outside the context of weapons and armor.

 

[KarinsDad]

Except that Dwarves already get advantage against poison, so it still has a group of PCs that it does not work for.

I would use the Constitution solution. Sure, it's only going to help +1 to +3 for most PCs and not at all for a small segment of PCs, but I usually consider advantage to be too powerful to hand out.

And a proficiency boost is class helpful or not, plus it makes the item better with level which doesn't make a lot of sense either.

 

[GMMichael]

Which is best practice design:

Getting 19 ability score,
Getting proficiency saving throw, or
Getting advantage

Think about it in terms of scope. An ability score applies to in-game and meta situations, and has pretty far-reaching effects. Saving throw proficiency: how often do saving throws come up? Plus, saving throws are a passive effect. You could limit the saving throw bonus to one particular situation (consuming poison, drinking contests, etc.), which narrows the scope significantly. Advantage, well, that can be as narrow or broad as you want. You might consider it more broad than the saving-throw-scope, because advantage works on the die-roll level versus a saving throw's requirement that you must be making a somewhat passive (reactive?) defense.

It's 5e. You know, "rulings, not accuracy." Just make up something cool, like:

This item grants you a Poison Die. When you want to use your Poison Die, you add it to your roll (whatever that might be), and the DM collects it. You get it back whenever you make a really loud burp at the table.

 

[DEFCON 1]

One way to approach it is to determine who it was that created the horn. Was it a dwarf? Was it someone else besides a dwarf?

If it wasn't a dwarf, then I'd say it grants Advantage on poison saves (and possibly Resistance to poison damage). The theory being that the non-dwarf person who made the item saw exactly the kind of endurance and stamina dwarves had when drinking and other related alcohol contests/events, and wanted to find a way at the very least to match them. Thus the item doesn't need to be something dwarves could use, because the item was specifically designed by a non-dwarf to bring them on par with the dwarves when it comes to drinking.

Now, if this was an item that a dwarf DID design and create... then obviously it has to be better than what a dwarf already has in relation to alcohol and/or poison. Otherwise, there'd be no reason for the dwarf to make it. So in this instance... the most obvious choice for a dwarven-created horn would be Immunity to poison altogether, as that's the next step up for dwarves.

Now, if that seems too powerful for too many people that aren't dwarves, then the final option is to step-up the bonus. The horn grants Resistance to poison damage and Advantage to poison saves, but if the drinker already has Resistance to poison saves, then it grants poison Immunity instead. That way it gives a bonus to all characters regardless of who they are.

 

[Dausuul]

Which is best practice design:

Getting 19 ability score,
Getting proficiency saving throw, or
Getting advantage

For example, I'm designing a drinking horn that helps against alcohol, drinking contests; and poison in general.

Getting to count your Constitution as 19 when saving?
Or getting proficiency bonus on the roll?
Or advantage on the roll?

Which is the best design? In that it is helpful to many characters, useless to few, and broken to none?

Let's see here.

Getting to count your Constitution as 19 when saving: Useful to almost everyone (not many PCs have Con 18+). Assume typical Con scores range from 10 to 16, this is going to be worth +1 to +4 on the roll. A bit underwhelming.

Getting proficiency in the save: Barbarians, fighters, and paladins have proficiency in Con saves. So for 25% of characters (plus anyone who took the Resilient feat for Con saves, which includes a big chunk of high-level spellcasters), this is worthless. For everyone else, the value increases with level. Assuming your campaign is neither very low-level nor very high level, it's worth +3 to +4.

Getting advantage on the roll: Useful to everyone except dwarves. The value depends on the save DC and the PC's Con save bonus, but in most cases it'll be between +3 and +5.

I would probably go with the third option: Advantage on the roll. Con 19 when saving offers too small a benefit IMO (poison is not that common a threat, ingested poison even less so), and proficiency in the save is too level- and class-dependent. Advantage on the roll offers a substantial benefit, useful to all non-dwarves at all levels. It also doesn't require any additional arithmetic.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I'd personally rate a drinking horn that helps "against" getting drunk more as a cursed item

What are the rules for getting drunk? I remember there was some kind of silly damage resistance rule at one point, but don't have my player's handbook handy. I'd put the effects of being drunk similar to exhaustion, as you get more and more impaired until you pass out. The horn lets you count as 1-2 levels less drunk in terms of penalty. Alcohol really isn't something you make a "saving throw" against. There's not a ton of randomness in its effects other than what you ate. The save is for staying conscious when you get to the blotto stage.

Now, this is a pretty minor ability in terms of game impact, so you'd probably want to decide if this is more of a fluff item, or also focus on the poison aspect. I could see neutralizing any poison poured into it. That's a pretty traditional thing among legend, but also pretty minor. Another would be to borrow a Pathfinder spell, Pick Your Poison, which is a cleric spell specific to the god of bravery and booze. Instead of suffering the effects from a failed poison save, you instead suffer a level of drunkenness. So the bearer could shrug off a couple of poison effects each day before he starts getting woozy.