Build-Changing Magical Items in DnD 5E

Author: pandaniel

This marks the release of our follow up article for The Best Magical Items in DnD 5E to explain both items, and rules of specific items that affect how one would build their character if they knew about getting the item at character creation, or sometimes later in their progression.

These items can be described as “build-changing” magic items, as they can change builds, possibly to a big extent. The biggest of these types of items are those that change your ability scores, and the mizzium apparatus. Be warned that the power of these items heavily depend on how they are used, and it is highly likely that items mentioned in the first part will be better for you, if you are not specifically built to maximize the effectiveness of this selection. This guide thus serves more as a general list of “build-changing” magic items, regardless of their usefulness for most characters.

Ability Score Alteration Items

There are a variety of items that alter ability scores, ranging from permanent upgrades, to temporary upgrades, items that simply set one of your ability scores to a certain number, or add to your score.

Permanent Upgrades

Reasonably, these permanent upgrades are not suppressed in an antimagic field or similar, as they are no longer fueled by magic after you gain their benefits. An important interaction that is related to increasing an ability score in this way is the following:

This implies that if we improve an ability score, we could potentially set up multiclasses which would otherwise be infeasible.

Another note for permanent upgrades is that if you have access to multiple of them for one ability score, it is important to take note of the order in which you use them. Some items allow an increase up to a maximum, with some having a higher maximum, whereas others always increase your maximum no matter what. Therefore, you should start by upgrading your ability score with the item that has the lowest maximum and work your way up from there. Finally, a general rule for ability scores limits ability scores to 20 for PCs. “Adventurers can have scores as high as 20, and monsters and divine beings can have scores as high as 30.” (PHB p. 173). If an item lists no maximum, we can get to at most a 20.

Here is a list of items that permanently upgrade ability scores:

• Manual of Gainful Exercise (Strength) ^DMG
• Manual of Quickness of Action (Dexterity) ^DMG
• Manual of Bodily Health (Constitution) ^DMG
• Tome of Clear Thought (Intelligence) ^DMG
• Tome of Understanding (Wisdom) ^DMG
• Tome of Leadership and Influence (Charisma) ^DMG

All of these items require 48 hours of work within a 6 day period to increase their relevant ability score. After a century, this can be done again using the same book; if your backstory somehow allows you to both have the item, and live a super long time, you may be able to take advantage of this.

Like a real student, you can totally do this studying or potentially practice in a very short time if you need to cram. If you go 24 hours without finishing a long rest, a successful DC 10 Constitution saving throw ensures you don’t become exhausted. Another 24 hours means the DC increases by 5, but if we assume you can reasonably make the first DC, and you take a long rest after the 48 hour period—you’re as good as new after 56 hours by sleeping off the level of exhaustion.

Nether Scroll of Azumar (Intelligence) ^CM
This scroll is surprisingly not a consumable magic item, and can be used by multiple people, just not successfully more than once for the same person. After 30 days of 8 hour daily study, you can attempt a DC 25 Intelligence (Arcana) check. On a success your Intelligence score increases by 2 (a maximum of 22), you gain advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects, and you gain a stone golem ally.

Bag of Beans (Eggs) (Any) ^DMG
The Bag of Beans has a multitude of possible effects. If the DM decides to roll on the table, there is a 10% chance per planted bean to get 1d4 + 3 eggs (for an average of 5 eggs). There are 3d4 beans per bag, meaning you get around 4 eggs on average when you get this magic item. These eggs, upon a successful DC 20 Constitution saving throw increase your lowest ability score by 1 (randomly chosen on a tie).

While this may not seem very useful by itself, as your lowest ability score is also likely your least useful ability score, it is very possible to keep on stacking eggs on the same person when finding bags of beans and rolling correctly. This way, you eventually get to a point where they are also increasing useful stats.

Ways to help you succeed on the required saving throw include but are not limited to: proficiency in Constitution saving throws (through for example your class or Resilient: Constitution); the resistance cantrip; the bless spell; Peace Domain Cleric’s Emboldening Bond; Paladin’s Aura of Protection; the Lucky feat; a Bard’s Bardic Inspiration; an Artificer’s Flash of Genius; advantage (through for example foresight or holy aura).

Temporary Upgrades

While the rules as written for multiclassing prerequisites do not include any mention about permanently or temporarily gained ability score improvements, which imply that either option would be valid, the rules as intended as per the Sage Advice Compendium do mention a differentiation:

For the purpose of our suggestions later, we will assume this is how it will be ruled at tables. Additionally, unlike the permanent bonuses, these benefits will be suppressed in an antimagic field or similar, except for those conveyed by artifacts: “Spells and other magical effects, except those created by an artifact or a deity, are suppressed in the sphere and can’t protrude into it.” (PHB p. 213). This is of course something to take into account, but may not change much of your decision making.

Here is a list of items that temporarily upgrade ability scores:

• Ioun Stone, Strength (Strength) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Ioun Stone, Agility (Dexterity) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Ioun Stone, Fortitude (Constitution) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Ioun Stone, Intellect (Intelligence) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Ioun Stone, Insight (Wisdom) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Ioun Stone, Leadership (Charisma) (Attunement) ^DMG

Similar to their tome/manual cousins, these items increase their relevant statistics by 2, however, with a limit of 20. The maximum score for these items limit the potential power greatly. A way to compare these items to other powers is that you are basically spending an attunement slot on one Ability Score Improvement, which is not an incredible option compared to feats, whereas most good magic items are better than good feats.

• Gauntlets of Ogre Power (Strength) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Belt of Giant Strength (Strength) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Amulet of Health (Constitution) (Attunement) ^DMG
• Headband of Intellect (Intelligence) (Attunement) ^DMG

All of these Dungeon Master’s Guide items change their respective statistic to a new score if it wasn’t higher already. At least one iteration of all these items can be created by an Artificer using their Infuse Item feature, with some opening up later than others. The one downside for the Strength and Intelligence items is that it you likely have a score either very close to–or even equal to or higher than–the score you would gain by attuning to one of these items; this phenomenon often makes it better to put such an item on someone that has dumped the relevant statistic. This, of course, is assuming you don’t know you’ll be gaining one of these items in advance. If you do, then it can be worth dumping that stat to get better stats elsewhere, but note that you’re probably locking in that attunement slot forever, so this might not be worth it in some games.

Belt of Dwarvenkind (Constitution) (Attunement) ^DMG
A belt that doesn’t only make you more Dwarf-like in terms of both statistics and looks, it allows you to interact better with Dwarves, and also increases your Constitution score by 2 to a maximum of 20! What more could you ask for? But no, really, if you don’t mind the possibility of growing a beard, this is quite a good item. This item can also be given to a Sidekick to give them a language for communication if they lack one.

Hammer of Thunderbolts (Strength) (Attunement) ^DMG
This item has a rather interesting attunement requirement: you must be wearing a belt of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power (though you need not be attuned). It increases your Strength by 4 with a maximum of 30 while holding it, with a few more effects. Unfortunately, this is likely not worth it on many builds as it pigeonholes you into using a maul.

Shard of Xeluan (Strength) (Attunement) ^KftGV
This obsidian shard increases your Strength score by 4 with a maximum of 22, as well as giving you an additional +1 bonus to spell attack rolls. Might want to skip the lottery after getting this item though…

Orb of the Veil (Wisdom) (Attunement) ^EGW
An interesting item that not only increases your Wisdom by 2 as well as its maximum, but also increases your darkvision range by 60 feet, and gives you advantage on Wisdom checks to find hidden doors and paths. A potential blessing in disguise is the curse that you are afflicted with when attuning to this item, which extinguishes all non-magical flames within 30 feet of you (though it also halves your fire damage output); a Gloom Stalker Ranger loves hanging out in the dark and is rarely impeded by reduced fire damage, so a way to extinguish lights without spending any action economy is a great damage buff!

Book of Exalted Deeds (Wisdom) (Attunement) ^DMG
The first of the two artifacts in this list, with an interesting way to gain its temporary benefits: attunement as well as 80 hours of study! Additionally, you need to be a creature of good alignment to even be attuned to the item, which is required to read and study it properly. The rewards are the following: you gain a +2 bonus to your Wisdom score with a maximum of 24; you get 2 minor beneficial properties as well as 2 major ones; all your Cleric and Paladin spells count as being upcast by one level when cast; finally, you get a halo that helps with certain Charisma checks. The weird part about this item is that it disappears and appears elsewhere after you’re done reading. As attunement ends if an attuned item has been more than 100 feet away from you for at least 24 hours, you will basically only get the benefits from the item for 24 hours. It almost seems like the developers forgot about this rule when writing this item, only making it good if this is house-ruled.

Book of Vile Darkness (Any) (Attunement) ^DMG
The second of the two artifacts in this list, which also requires attunement and 80 hours of study. This book, however, can be attuned to by anyone, but can alter your alignment if you fail a DC 17 Charisma saving throw if you aren’t evil aligned. Similarly to the Book of Exalted Deeds, you need to perform at least one evil act every 10 days to keep its benefits.

Its rewards are the following: you get a +2 bonus to one ability score with a maximum of 24, but decrease another of your choice by 2 to a minimum of 3; you get 3 minor and beneficial properties and one major one, but also 3 minor and 2 major detrimental properties which range from mildly annoying to crippling depending on your campaign; you get advantage on certain Charisma checks, but become disfigured in some way; once per dawn you can cast dominate monster (save DC 18) on an evil target; finally some less consequential bonuses.

Overall, this does not seem nearly as good as the Book of Exalted Deeds (if you are allowed to keep its benefits after attunement ends/don’t lose attunement), but whatever floats your boat–maybe this fits your character a lot more.

Party Member Prioritization

While the choice of whom these kinds of items should go to heavily depends on your party and builds, there are some general guidelines that may be useful for your considerations.

Items that increase Strength are best on melee martials, but if those don’t require it, put it on whoever has the lowest score for the purposes of carrying capacity.

Those that increase Dexterity are best on ranged martials, but if those don’t require it, put it on whoever gets the most out of the boost in initiative it would entail (take into account diminishing returns!).

Constitution increases are mostly best on casters, especially those who can bring their Constitution saving throw bonus to +9 for the purpose of automatically succeeding DC 10 Constitution saving throws for concentration, which is the DC for 21 damage and below. You may consider putting this on a Barbarian instead, but it likely does less than you may expect, as their scores need to be very high to leverage Unarmored Defense.

If the item instead increases your Intelligence, you should first consider Wizards and then Artificers, otherwise, put it on whoever has the lowest score for the purpose of not dying due to intellect devourers.

Wisdom increases are best on Clerics, then Druids, and then Monks, but if they don’t need it, put it on a teammate who gains the most out of the increase in the Wisdom saving throw success chance.

Finally, Charisma increases are best put from best to worst on Paladins, Warlocks, Bards, and finally Sorcerers. If none of those need an increase, put it on whoever uses Charisma the most out of remaining options.

Example Builds

Hex2Graviturgist (Headband of Intellect)
Hex2Graviturgist is a heavily MAD build that can use Graviturgist Magic Wizards’ Gravity Well with eldritch blast to great effect, which is usually only playable using the Tortle race or through (amazing) rolled stats. However, with a headband of intellect you can keep your actual Intelligence score low (but high enough for multiclassing), while making up for it with the magic item. A similar idea can be used to play a Hexsinger, which combines Bladesinger’s Extra Attack feature from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything with eldritch blast for even more damage output.

More than the battlefield control power of Repelling Blast and Gravity Well combined, you gain an additional interaction that makes for an even more powerful at-will option: When applying both forced movement effects, you can resolve their order by consulting the Simultaneous Effects optional rule in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, which states that the person who controls the character that is taking the turn can decide the order. You first apply Gravity Well to move the target above you in the air, then apply Repelling Blast to push them away from you — diagonally up. This leaves them high enough to cause fall damage and the prone condition when they land.

Gravity Well can move each affected creature 5 feet for a given casting, and Repelling Blast works for every beam of eldritch blast; by splitting the attacks, you can drop multiple enemies prone with this interaction, which can sometimes be more powerful than just focussing on one.

Hex2voker (Headband of Intellect)
Hexvoker usually doesn’t focus on Charisma at all, using a Hexblade 1 dip as an armor dip that doubles down as a magic missile synergy. But knowing you’ll get a headband of intellect early on allows you to focus your stats on higher Charisma, like the Hex2Graviturgist, thus making a second level in Hexblade miles more attractive for a great at-will damage+control option in the form of eldritch blast with the Agonizing and Repelling Blast invocations.

Rage Fiend: Remastered (Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Belt of Giant Strength)
The Rage Fiend is a build with 6 levels of Giant Barbarian and 14 levels of Fiend Warlock. It usually focuses on Strength as a primary score and uses spells which do not rely on its Charisma score from the Fiend Patron. That changes in the case you can guarantee to get one of the listed items early on (preferably at level 1). Spells such as hypnotic pattern, banishment, synaptic static, danse macabre, mass suggestion and scatter are now very enticing options, not to mention, eldritch blast is now an amazing ranged option available to you. For feats and ASIs you’d pick Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Fey-touched, Resilient Wisdom, and +2 Charisma (keep in mind, you’re a variant human and therefore Polearm Master is picked at 1). For invocations you’d have Repelling Blast, Agonizing Blast, Eldritch Mind, Tomb of Levistus, Eldritch Smite and Lifedrinker by the end of the progression, though the order may vary.

Undead2Artillerist (Headband of Intellect)
Finally, a self-reliant headband of intellect user, able to create their own item using Infuse Item: Replicate Magic Item. A Warlock level allows Artillerists to regain a spell slot for their temporary hit points cannon every short rest, basically turning it into a short rest resource. The Undead Warlock levels allow them to get a boosted version of the previous mentioned eldritch blast combo, adding a fear effect while in a Form of Dread.

Mizzium Apparatus ^GGR

This item opens up a ginormous amount of options in terms of spellcasting with the correct build. You are required to be a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard to attune to this item, but just one level is enough to meet this prerequisite. This item works as an arcane focus, but its actual use case is that it allows you to cast a bunch of spells you don’t know or have prepared.

The prerequisite for casting a spell through this item is that it is on your class’s spell list, which means it works with not just Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard spells, but any of the classes you may or may not have multiclassed into, as those are spells on “your class’s spell list”. To do this, you have to succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana ) check with a DC of 10 + twice the level of the spell slot you expend to cast the spell (similar to the Blackstaff item). If you don’t succeed, you cast a different spell, rolled on a table based on the spell slot expended.

While spells cast from a magic item usually don’t cost a spell slot, are cast at their possible lowest level and don’t have any components, this differs for a mizzium apparatus, as you aren’t casting the spells “from the magic item”. It even states you cast a spell “as normal”, which implies a few things:

• Spell slots are expended
• Upcasting is possible
• Components are still required
• While not explicitly stated, it can be assumed that the spellcasting ability used for the spell is the one corresponding to the spell list you choose.

The idea around a build that wants to use this item to its fullest, is that you set yourself up such that you can cast high level spells from any of your spell lists, allowing for a much higher versatility than otherwise possible. Want to cast heroes’ feast as a Cleric 1/Wizard 10? Sure. Go wild! You have the spell slot, and it is on your spell list. This is similar to tech possible with the Cartomancer feat, released in The Book of Many Things. Though even without exploiting multiclassing, being able to increase your Sorcerer/Warlock/Wizard spell repertoire is immensely powerful.

Example Builds

Both of these builds utilize a dip into the Circle of Stars Druid for their 2nd level feature: Starry Form. This form can be accessed using a bonus action, and a Wild Shape usage, and allows you to choose the Dragon form. For 10 minutes, you can replace a 9 or lower on your d20 as a 10 for Intelligence and Wisdom checks, as well as Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration on a spell. As you need to roll an Intelligence (Arcana) check to use the mizzium apparatus, this is an incredible boon, and allows for a (near) guaranteed success for many spell levels.

Additionally, both builds mostly take levels in Chronurgy Magic Wizard. The reason for this is two-fold: Wizard is the most powerful class; Dunamancy spells aren’t on any class spell list natively, except if you pick either the Chronurgy Magic or Graviturgy Magic Wizard subclass. Therefore, we opt for Chronurgy Magic Wizard, as it is the most powerful of the two, and allows for an otherwise inaccessible subset of spells. Of course, any type of Wizard would do the trick, with the School of Divination Wizard potentially being quite fitting.

Lastly, we “only” dip in two classes for either build. While one could argue that you dipping in more classes is more reasonable when you have a mizzium apparatus, it is also useful to be able to cast high level spells without relying on the item, and ability scores cannot be spread very nicely to allow for more dips. It also helps that there are only 37/517 spells you don’t have access to in the entire game, with many being bad!

Chron1/Stars2/Chron2/Peace1/ChronX
This build requires an arguably small adaptation to our PeaceChron build. This build instead starts off with a Chronurgy Magic Wizard level which allows us to cast great spells like sleep right from the get go, and make use of Starry Form at level 3 to cast both Druid and Wizard spells of our highest spell slot level guaranteed. After two levels of Chronurgy Magic Wizard, we can use gift of alacrity, which we follow up with a Peace Domain Cleric level, for its powerful Emboldening Bond feature and access to the Cleric spell list. Instead of picking Telekinetic at your fourth Wizard level, choose Skill Expert, which allows us to double our proficiency bonus for Arcana checks. Choose +2 Intelligence over Lucky at level 15 (13 in the build link), and delay Lucky. An alternative option is to pick Lucky instead of War Caster if you aren’t failing many concentration saving throws, as both Lucky and the Starry Form help with concentration, and Lucky can also be used for clutch rolls for your mizzium apparatus spells.

With Starry Form up, we have a 100% success chance to cast our highest level spells until level 14 using the mizzium apparatus. After which we have a 100% success chance by using both Starry Form and Emboldening Bond at once to do the same thing. Unlike the original PeaceChron, you would favor more ritual spells, as those still need to be in your spellbook for the purpose of ritual casting, and high level spells that you may not be able to cast guaranteed without Starry Form or Emboldening Bond.

Take into account the reliance on Starry Form for this build. It shines at tables that can expect to have 2 or fewer significant encounters per short rest. A variant of this build is to follow the level progression of the PeaceChron build on our site until level 6, and to pick the Druid level after this point. That version cannot always reliably cast its most potent spells using the mizzium apparatus, but does have earlier access to strong options without relying on the magic item, like gift of alacrity and phantom steed.

Chron1/Stars2/Chron4/Knowledge1/ChronX
An alternative to the previous build, which picks the Knowledge Domain Cleric instead of Peace Domain Cleric for its innate “Expertise” feature. This means you do not have to swap out Telekinetic for Skill Expert. Additionally, we make up for the loss of d4’s from Emboldening Bond by either picking the Mark of Making (Human) or Vedalken, either of which allow you to add d4’s to Intelligence (Arcana) checks. This build plays the same way, but is likely worse at most tables due to the lack of Emboldening Bond and Resilient (Constitution). If Peace Domain Cleric is not available, it may be your best bet.

One more option is to pick a level in Knowledge Domain Cleric after 2 levels of Chronurgy Magic Wizard instead of 4, if you believe early access to Cleric spells is worth delaying the Wizard levels. We opt for level 7 total to pick the Cleric level, as this is when the “Expertise” feature becomes required to keep on being able to cast our highest level spells with a 100% success chance using Starry Form.

Harkon’s Bite ^VRGR

While this item does not have a very exciting main effect, its curse is actually rather potent, in a surprisingly positive way for the right characters. If your character, or party members are Chaotic Evil, you can get a bunch of boons without endangering anyone. The “curse” attached to this item afflicts you with werewolf lycanthropy, which if you aren’t Chaotic Evil can make you lose control of your character, or worse, as per the lycanthropy rules in the Monster Manual. If you build around this fact, lycanthropy can become rather potent.

The main benefit is that you become immune to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical attacks that aren’t silvered, which is incredibly strong, as both magical and silvered attacks are rather rare. Additionally, your Strength becomes 15 if it wasn’t already. You don’t even need to attune to the item to gain this “benefit”, and can share it with other party members too! This boon in disguise is useful on anyone with the correct alignment, but you can further optimize it by having less than 15 Strength before getting the item, if this is optimal for your given situation.

Two-Birds Sling ^MOT

The two-birds sling makes the humble sling quite potent. With two distinct levels of potencies depending on whether you follow the Rules as Written. Whenever you hit a target, you can ricochet the attack towards a second target within 10 feet of the first, making another attack that can possibly also hit that target.

The first step of making an attack in the Player’s Handbook says “Pick a target within your attack’s range: a creature, an object, or a location.” (pg. 193). Therefore, you can target the empty space or ground next to a creature you wish to kill (first target), then redirect the attack to the creature (second target), and repeatedly attack the second target until you miss. Another possible interpretation of “first target” and “second target” is that these properties are relative to the specific attack, e.g. if you attack the ground and ricochet to a creature, the creature would in that moment be the first target, in which case you would target the ground again and repeat the process. With some particular builds this can deal literally infinite damage, such as by using Clockwork Soul Sorcerer’s Trance of Order feature, which can guarantee a hit against some targets. Such a use case is quite broken and probably shouldn’t be used in most games.