Author: Icebrick1
The intent of this article is to discuss the benefits and risks of using magic items in your campaign, and how you might want to use them, depending on how you like to run your game. It’s possible that the best option for your game is to not provide players access to them or at all, and it could also possible you should be handing legendary items like candy right from level 1.
Why do we use magic items at all?
Magic items are a reward, like levels and gold. Players like the feeling of getting stronger, and even if they should enjoy the act of adventuring for its own sake, they also like to receive something at the end of it. Unlike leveling and gold, magic items also usually have an element of surprise to them. You know in advance what you’ll get next level, and generally what money can buy, but who knows what magic items you might find in the dragon’s hoard? This unpredictable element is unique to magic items and adds a bit of excitement to them.
Aside from just being a reward, they can also increase the fun of the game by giving more options. Perhaps there’s some fun and creative solutions the players can come up with using a decanter of endless water that would’ve been unavailable otherwise. The ring of spell storing might be a fun item for both the Fighter and Wizard as the Wizard decides what spells to put into it and the Fighter gets to decide when to use the spells.
It’s also generally assumed that at least a few magic weapons will be available, otherwise at higher levels the weapon users in the party will have trouble contributing when they face enemies with resistance or immunity to damage from non-magical weapons.
Power can be troublesome
Most magic items increase the power level of the party, for obvious reasons. Oftentimes this isn’t a problem—after all, players naturally get more powerful over time as they obtain levels—but that doesn’t mean it lacks downsides. As the DM, you may have infinite power, but it still takes more work to challenge very powerful parties.
Take the average 2nd level party and throw a troll at them: it’ll probably feel like a challenge. Take the average 15th level party and throw an uber-troll at them which is just a normal troll but bigger, and it’ll likely get easily killed, even if you increase the stats exponentially, simply because the players have more options. Abilities like wall of force, web, and flight can completely bypass an encounter with a troll no matter how many hit points it has and how much damage it deals.
Once again, this can be overcome, and it will happen at higher levels whether the party has magic items or not, but magic items can speed up and exacerbate the issue. For example, a cube of force is just a rare item, and a level 1 party could easily kill a troll by using the living matter barrier and fire bolt. And that would only expend 3 out of the cube’s 36 (!) charges.
Additionally, magic items can cause power imbalances within the party. Let’s say you’re overly generous with AC boosting items. Suddenly the heavy armor users might have 26 AC from +3 plate and a +3 shield, with the medium armor users not far behind, while the Monk still has just 18 AC from her Unarmored Defense (16 Dexterity, 16 Wisdom) and a pair of bracers of defense. Anything that can reliably hit the rest of the party will hit the Monk almost 100% of the time. Similar things can occur if you give out too many magic staves (which tend to be much stronger than +1 to +3 weapons) that only the casters can use.
There isn’t really a solution to this, except to not give out too many magic items too early (and to keep an eye on distribution) so that the party doesn’t become insanely powerful, unless that’s what you want.
Rarity is a poor guideline
All the magic items in the Dungeon Master’s Guide have a rarity, but this only roughly correlates with power. Sometimes, items of a certain rarity are outright outclassed by items of a lower rarity. A bag of holding is an uncommon item that can carry up to 500 pounds and has a volume of 64 cubic feet. The handy haversack is a very similar item that can carry only 120 pounds total and has 12 cubic feet of space, yet it is a rare item. Other times, you will find that items within the same tier of rarity vary widely in power. You might decide to give the party a random uncommon item, which could range from providing a small boost like a +1 greatsword or niche utility like a decanter of endless water, to giving them something much more powerful, such as a broom of flying. If you want to judge how powerful an item actually is, you’ll have to look at what it does and decide for yourself without relying on the rarity guidelines. The Dungeon Master’s Guide magic item tables provide a slightly better guideline, as it’s generally weighted towards less powerful items, but it’s still mostly divided by rarity.
We intend to create entire guides rating magic items, but the important takeaway is that rarity is not a good indicator of power.
In previous editions of D&D, it was common for magic items to be easily purchasable. It was assumed that most magic items weren’t extremely rare and you could buy whichever ones you wanted for the right price. For 5E, the rules for magic item buying were largely dropped, leaving only vague guidelines in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and slightly more detailed guidelines in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Creating magic items is assumed to be a lost art that very few people can do today, and finding them for sale is a rare event that can’t be assumed. Should magic shops be reintroduced or were they rightfully excluded?
Advantages of a shop
Allowing players to purchase magic items gives value to their gold, which can easily become close to worthless at higher levels once the party can easily afford plate armor and material components. Magic item stores get the players excited as they save up their gold for something good. It can also cause them to make interesting decisions. Do they buy a decanter of endless water now because they can and it might come in handy? Or should they keep saving up for that powerful magic longbow? It makes the magic items something they can choose rather than it just being decided by the DM, and choice is good.
Disadvantages of a shop
It makes magic less special
Making magic items stores also removes many of the unique advantages they used to provide. You now know in advance what you’re going to get. Now, having magic items for sale obviously doesn’t prevent you from also giving magic items themselves as rewards, but if you find an item that is normally for sale it goes from a unique boon to just a form of money. Even if it’s an item that’s not normally for sale, the more magic items there are the less special they will feel. A +2 longbow might be an exciting upgrade if it’s one of a few magic items the party has come across, but if it’s the 25th item found it’ll likely just feel like a nice numerical upgrade. There are ways to help alleviate this, like homebrewing custom-made items for your party, but this takes work. Your party may even come to view magical items they discover as just another source of income, goods to be sold to finance the purchase of the magic items they really want, which can make some of the luster of magic items disappear as they become barterable goods like any other.
Prices are hard
As mentioned earlier, item rarity is a poor guideline for the power level of an item, so it can’t be relied upon for pricing. Additionally, the guidelines in the Dungeon Master’s Guide are far from perfect. In particular, uncommon items are very cheap, being 500 gp at most, allowing the party to potentially equip everyone with brooms of flying or winged boots for just a little more than a single set of plate armor. Even for much less powerful uncommon items, 500 gp quickly becomes pennies to higher level parties. There are unofficial price guides that can provide more reasonable prices, but these can never be perfect.
Our Recommendation
We reiterate that there is no objectively correct way to distribute items or use magic shops. Maybe you don’t worry about the party becoming more powerful and just want to give them whatever they want for cheap, and that’s fine. But we believe most groups are somewhat similar and care about the upsides and downsides described above. One recommendation to get the best of both worlds is to give the players a shop, but keep the selection at any given time small. This will keep magic items feeling rare, you will only have to worry about pricing a small number of items, and it still gives the players a use for their gold and interesting decisions to make.
