In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a magic item is any object that is imbued with magic powers. These items may act on their own or be the tools of the character possessing them. Magic items have been prevalent in the game in every edition and setting, from the original edition in 1974 until the modern fifth edition. In addition to jewels and gold coins, they form part of the treasure that the players often seek in a dungeon. Magic items are generally found in treasure hoards, or recovered from fallen opponents; sometimes, a powerful or important magic item is the object of a quest.

Development

1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

In the first edition, all artifacts are classed as miscellaneous magic items, even ones that are weapons, armor, or rings. Each artifact has a certain number of Minor, Major, and Prime Powers, and of Minor, Major, and Side Effects which trigger when the item is acquired, or its Major and Prime Powers are used. The powers and effects are selected by the DM from a set of lists, so that players cannot predict the artifact's powers.

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

In 1994, Encyclopedia Magica Volume One, the first of a four-volume set, was published. The series lists all of the magical items published in two decades of TSR products from "the original Dungeons & Dragons woodgrain and white box set and the first issue of The Strategic Review right up to the last product published in December of 1993". The books total more than 1500 pages across the four volumes and each volume contains over 1000 magic items. There was "no attempt to correct rule imbalances, edit entries, or even match game mechanics to one particular edition of the game".

3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons

The 3.5 edition book Magic Item Compendium (2007) was a capstone book that reprinted, updated, organized, and regularized "numerous 3e magic items". Andy Collins, the lead designer on the project, "started this process by identifying the 'big six' magic items that took up the majority of characters' item slots: magic weapons; magic armor & shields; rings of protection; cloaks of resistance; amulets of natural armor; and ability-score boosters". Collins "identified the reasons that these [magic] items were particularly well-loved: they were cost effective, they could be improved, there was nothing else as good in their slots, they were simple, they didn't take time to activate [and] they provided effects that were required for characters to stay competitive". With this in mind, the designers then pulled items from all the 3rd and 3.5 edition books and "after looking through about 2000 magic items, they looted the best 1000 or so". The Magic Item Compendium also showed some early hallmarks of 4th edition design: items were marked levels and some items appeared at multiple strengths. It also introduced the idea of item sets, where items of a set would improve as more were collected, which would then reappear in the 4th edition book Adventurer's Vault 2 (2009).

4th edition Dungeons & Dragons

Many magic items in this edition "have an enhancement value" which improves a character's basic stats. This enhancement value is a "persistent, always-on" ability. Additionally, some magical items contain a daily power usable by the character. The main categories of magic items in 4th edition are: armor, weapons, implements, rings, potions, and wondrous items ("a catch-all category"). Some magical items could only be used in a specific body slot and a "character can wear only one magical item per slot — a character can't use two arm slot items (say, bracers of defense and a shield of protection) at the same time. The body slots are neck, arms, feet, hands, head, and waist". Ritual scrolls are single use consumable items, each of which contains a specific ritual (4th edition's equivalent of non-combat spells), halves the time required to perform that ritual and allows it to be performed without a ritual book. After it has been expended, a ritual scroll crumbles to dust. Unlike the scrolls of previous editions, 4th edition's scrolls are not classified as magical items.

5th edition Dungeons & Dragons

The 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide introduced the concept of Item Rarity, in which magic items are given a rating between Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, and Legendary to denote the frequency in which this item is expected to be found within the game. The only Common magic item to appear in the Dungeon Master's Guide is the Potion of Healing, with an additional list of Common items appearing in the supplementary book Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Artifacts act as a 6th Rarity category for items, such as the Hand of Vecna or the Wand of Orcus, in which there is only one of this item in existence. The categories of magic items in 5th edition are: Armor, Potions, Rings, Rods, Scrolls, Staffs, Wands, Weapons, and Wondrous Items (which acts as a miscellaneous category). Some items require attunement to be used, limiting the number of items a character can benefit from at once to 3 attunable items.

Notable magic items

Artifacts

Artifacts in the game are unique magic items with great power. Major artifacts include the ones in the following table. They are generally unique and exist for a specific purpose. Less powerful or potent artifacts, or ones that are not unique, are generally called minor artifacts.

Reception

Michael J. Tresca, in the book The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games (2011), highlighted that both mundane and magical items are key to Dungeons & Dragons combat but are also often overlooked. Tresca wrote, "be it mundane equipment the adventurer needs to survive or endless lists of magical items that give the character an advantage, equipment provides a means of artificially inflating a character's power level. As a result, adventurers obsessively catalogued every item they owned just to stay alive". The impact of hoarding items led to character encumbrance being "largely abandoned" at game tables over the various editions of the game since the bookkeeping became "too much of a hassle". Tresca also highlighted that enhancement values to basic stats became "exaggerated" over time: "magic armor bestowed a +1 bonus to armor class, magic weapons provided a +1 bonus to hit and damage, and so forth. These bonuses extend as high as +10 in some editions of Dungeons & Dragons". 20 magic items were highlighted in Io9 's 2014 "The 20 Most WTF Magical Items in Dungeons & Dragons" list and the author described them as "magical items that I will simply call 'Artifacts of Dickishness' " — the article highlights items such as the Ring of Contrariness, the Ring of Bureaucratic Wizardry, the Brooch of Number Numbing and the Horn of Baubles.

Inspirations

Other fantasy stories

Folklore and mythology