Magic Items

Magic items are prized by D&D adventurers of all sorts and are often the main reward in an adventure. The rules for magic items are presented, along with the Treasure Hoard tables, in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. This section expands on those rules by offering you an alternative way of determining which magic items end up in the characters' possession and by adding a collection of common magic items to the game. The section ends with tables that group magic items according to rarity.

The system in the Dungeon Master's Guide is designed so that you can generate all treasure randomly, and the tables also govern the number of magic items the characters receive. In short, the tables do the work. But a DM who's designing or modifying an adventure might prefer to choose the magic items that come into play. If you're in that situation, you can use the rules in this section to personalize your treasure hoards while staying within the game's limits for how many items the characters should ultimately accumulate.

Distribution by Rarity¶

This alternative method of treasure determination focuses on choosing magic items based on their rarity, rather than by rolling on the tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide. This method uses two tables: Magic Items Awarded by Tier and Magic Items Awarded by Rarity.

By Tier. The Magic Items Awarded by Tier table shows the number of magic items a D&D party typically gains during a campaign, culminating in the group's having accumulated one hundred magic items by 20th level. The table shows how many of those items are meant to be handed out during each of the four tiers of play. The emphasis on characters receiving more items during the second tier (levels 5-10) than in other tiers is by design. The second tier is where much of the play occurs in a typical D&D campaign, and the items gained in that tier prepare the characters for higher-level adventures.

Magic Items Awarded by Tier¶

By Rarity. The Magic Items Awarded by Rarity table takes the numbers from the Magic Items Awarded by Tier table and breaks them down to show the number of items of each rarity the characters are expected to have when they reach the end of a tier.

Magic Items Awarded by Rarity¶

Minor and Major Items. Both tables in this section make a distinction between minor magic items and major magic items. This distinction exists in the Dungeon Master's Guide, yet those terms aren't used there. In that book, the minor items are those listed on Magic Item Tables A through E, and the major items are on Magic Item Tables F through I. As you can see from the Treasure Hoard tables in that book, major magic items are meant to be handed out much less frequently than minor items, even at higher levels of play.

Choosing Items By Level¶

You decide when to place an item in an adventure that you're creating or modifying, usually because you think the story calls for a magic item, the characters need one, or the players would be especially pleased to get one.

When you want to select an item as treasure for an encounter, the Magic Items Awarded by Rarity table serves as your item budget. Here's how to use it:

1. Jot down a copy of the table in your notes, so that you can make adjustments to the numbers as you select items to be placed in an adventure.
2. Refer to the line in the Level/CR column that corresponds to one of the following values (your choice): the level of the player characters, the challenge rating of the magic item's owner, or the challenge rating of the group of creatures guard ing the item. The entries in that row of the table indicate the total number of items that would be appropriate for the characters to receive by the end of the tier represented by that row.
3. Choose a magic item of any rarity for which the entry in this row is not 0.
4. When the characters obtain an item, modify your notes to indicate which part of your budget this expenditure came from by subtracting 1 from the appropriate entry on the table. In the future, if you choose an item of a rarity that's not available in the current tier but is sti ll available in a lower tier, deduct the item from the lower tier. If all lower tiers also have no items available of a given rarity, deduct the item from a higher tier.

Choosing Items Piecemeal¶

If you prefer a more free-form method of choosing magic items, simply select each magic item you want to give out; then, when the characters acquire one, deduct it from the Magic Items Awarded by Rarity table in your notes. Whenever you do so, start with the lowest tier, and deduct the item from the first number you come across in the appropriate rarity column for the item , whether its minor or major. If that tier doesn't have a number greater than 0 for that rarity, go up a tier until you find one that does, and deduct the magic item from that number. Following this process, you will zero out each row of the table in order, going from the lowest levels to the highest.

Overstocking an Adventure¶

The magic item tables in this section are based on the number of items the characters are expected to receive, not the number of items that are available in an adventure. When creating or modifying an adventure, assume that the characters won't find all the items you place in it, unless most of the loot is in easy-to-find locations. Here's a good rule of thumb: an adventure can include a number of items that's 25 percent higher than the numbers in the tables (round up). For example, an adventure designed to take characters from 1st to 4th level might include fourteen items rather than eleven, in the expectation that three of those items won't be found.

Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything, p. 135