A new Dungeons & Dragons supplement provides some instructions on the boons and banes of adding unique magic items to a campaign.
One of my favorite part of being a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master is designing unique magic items for players to find and use in a campaign. Players love magic items, they love how they grant them extra abilities, and they love finding ways of using those abilities to totally break or circumnavigate an encounter.
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But creating homebrew magic items have risks too. An unbalanced magic item can take over your campaign, providing one player with too much of an advantage in battle and ruining careful synergies between specific classes. Overpowered magic items also have the potential to create conflict, which a good DM can use to their advantage but can also cause unnecessary tension at the table.
To help players sort through some of the nuances of creating unique magic items and adding them to a campaign, Isaac A. L. May published Weird Stuff I Found on the Dungeon Floor, a 23 page supplement explaining how to construct a unique magic item and when to add one in a campaign. Instead of focusing on specific guidelines or tables, Weird Stuff I Found on the Dungeon Floor is more instructional in nature, providing useful anecdotes and guiding DMs on different ways to approach adding magic items in the campaigns. The supplement also provides a detailed breakdown of the creation of a unique magical item, looking at what questions to ask and how to weave the lore of a powerful item into a campaign
Of course, no guide to magic items is complete without some actual magical items to use, so Weird Stuff I Found on the Dungeon Floor also provides one hundred different low level magic items that are intended mostly for low level players. These items are similar to those found in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, providing some marginally useful effects for players without overpowering them. Some of these items (like the Cape of Butterflies, which generates Butterflies that can be used to distract or obscure players or opponents) are really neat and should inspire any DM that reads through it.
Weird Stuff I Found on the Dungeon Floor is a useful instructional supplement perfect for both beginning and intermediate DMs. If you want to enhance your DMing abilities, pick up this supplement today.
Weird Stuff I Found on the Dungeon Floor is available for $4.95 on the DMs Guild.