Magic Item Changes In The 2024 DMG

Many Helpful Changes, Some New Problems, And The Talisman of Good's Shocking Omen

My players are going to start here. We tend to play in. higher magic item setting. So I’m going to go through the magic items in the new Dungeon Master’s Guide and note items that have changed in a way that seems interesting to me as a DM or that would affect me as a player.

Magic items are also an interesting place to start reading because it probably has the least amount of bona fide new content. There’s such a clear before and after with the 2014 DMG vs. the 2024 DMG. It’s easy to flip back and forth. If I start reading at the beginning of the 2024 DMG, I am more likely to take what is written for granted instead of thinking about it critically, paticulrly because the 2014 DMG is such a relative dud that I never bought it!

There aren’t a ton of changes in magic items. I’d say that most of the more problematic items were limited in ways that help the game, but not all (looking at you wand of fireballs). The weapon section isn’t as sword specific, but it’s still more sword dominant than preview videos led me to expect. Overall, four subtle but distinct design principles stand out as patterns from the individual item changes:

1. Changes to the Talisman of Good mean an evil cleric can make full use of it. to kill the most benevolent of creatures Little details like this that are so blatantly outside any logic or reasonable argument for how the game should work make me question the quality control and attention to detail of the entire operation. Some folks may dismiss this as a one off goof, but after graduate level studies in organizational behavior and culture it is a screaming cnaary in the coal mine.

2. There are a few new items introduced because they are cool and customizable templates. They are the Enspelled [Armor, etc] items. However, because they are so customizable, some of these items are massively overpowered. I won’t let players choose their magic items with these in play.

3. Several cornerstone items for clerics and druids were weakened (candle of invocation, necklace of prayer beads, staff of the woodlands). I’m not talking about getting rid of the staff’s pass without trace at will—that was a needed fix. The staff is the only class-specific casting item to lose charges. Cleric and druid were two of the three classes that were hurt by the new Player’s Handbook, and now their class-specific items are nerfed too? What’s going on here?

4. Several items that grant magical flight, which were common in high level convention play, were weakened. There’s clearly an internal logic of trying to make the rarer items more powerful. However, many of these items taking an action to activate makes them weaker in combat and suggests a lack of understanding of the nuances of good high level combat, where melee characters often need to fly faster than 30 feet per round to catch their quarry.

5. Magic items can still igve minor properties, but the beloved Language property was removed. This feels like part of a trend: Linguist was the only feat not reprinted in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, and the new Player’s Handbook is oddly restrictive about not letting players learn most languages. The design team said they didn’t want to hard lock characters into learning a certain language based on biology, which is wise, but they also barred many characters from learning the language of their ancestors. New magic item rules carry this bizarre restriction.

Armor

I have been relatively stingy with magical armor over the last several years. One of the things I’ve noticed is that WotC monsters are quite stingy with raising their to-hit modifiers, so magic armor can break bounded accuracy. In level 11-16 convention games with plentiful +2 armor or +3 shields, you’ll get a couple of characters at every decently optimized table with an AC of 22-25.

With 2024 rules, the main exception I’m going to make is shields. Dual wielding and to a lesser extent two handed weapons can get very powerful with the right magic items. A shield user can get left behind unless they see some powerful and funky shields that do more than just raise AC by another 1-3 points beyond a basic shield. WotC made a first step forward here, but didn’t playtest it for balance issues.

Dragon Scale Mail: No longer grants advantage on saving throws against Frightful Presence. From the ancient green dragon preview at GenCon, frightful presence msy be going away.

Elven Chain: Can now be chain mail.

Enspelled Armor: A new item. The DM chooses one spell from the Abjuration or Illusion spell list and puts it in the armor. That armor has 6 charges and the user can cast the spell by using a charge. It regains 1d6 charges per day ad requires attunement.

I like this concept of putting spells in armor but the details need a lot of work. Let’s go through some examples:

• Absorb Elements, Shield: 6 is a lot of charges, but worth attunement.

• Cure Wounds, Healing Word: Very reasonable but what is the ability score used?

• Prayer of Healing: Nearly infinite short rests. A warlock’s dream! Dont’ do this.

• Dispel Magic: Incredibly valuable and important for a smaller party, but 6 is a lot of charges here. What ability score is used to try to dispel a 4th level spell?

• Circle of Power, Greater Restoration, Mass Cure Wounds: 6 charges is way too much for these high level spells.

• Disguise Self, Invisibility: Oh, that’s why Illusion is the other school

• Blur, Mirror Image: These also make sense for Illusion

• Fear, Hypnotic Pattern: Six charges of these control spells at DC 15 can go badly.

• Silent Image, Major Image: This feels awkward to me for reasons I can’t explain.

Now for my biggest complaint: with the issues caused by dual wielding, there needed to be an enspelled shield. There isn’t. Homebrew DMs can fix this but it’s a massive oversight.

Shield of the Cavalier: This is a +2 shield that lets to replace one attack with a shield bash that does 2d6+2 base damage with the Push weapon mastery property and can knock a target prone if it your size or smaller. As a reaction, it can also create a 5 foot emination of protection from which nothing can get in or out. The reaction protects everyone inside from damage from whatever triggered it. A giant’s club, a fireball, a meteor swarm, all blocked. This reaction can be used once per day.

I feel like this reaction is on the right path but excessive. Stopping all damage from the boss’ big attack will make the DM feel bad. It also encourages players to all cluster around the shield user, which has a host of problems.

Weapons

My group loves magic weapons and I am happy to give them cool custom weapons as the game goes on not just +1s and +2s or 3s. For all the talk of broadening magic weapons to not all be swords, there’s still some real sword bias ad a lack of cool ranged weapons.

Ammunition of Slaying: My party has asked for a broader range of ammunition because their rivals are not dragons. However, there’s no arrow of god slaying and the party’s hobgoblin rivals have all the area’s arrows of humanoid slaying.

Dragon Slayer: Can be any weapon now. Homebrew DMs have figured this out for years. The same is true of flametongues—a wooden club can ignite—but not a frost brand or moon-touched weapon. Giant slayers and holy avengers are now all weapons too.

Dwarven Thrower: The thrown weapon damage boost is now force damage instead of more bludgeoning. WotC seems to have some plan up their sleeves for changing damage types instead of just doing magical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. For now, it’s just cumbersome accounting and guesswork unless you are fighting a swarm of rats.

The thrower can now also be attuned to by someone wearing a belt of dwarvenkind, which feels reasonable.

Energy Bow: I have no idea why WotC is emphasizing a cartoon that stopped airing 39 years ago when the massive growth of 5th Edition was largely driven by people who weren’t alive when the cartoon aired. This item is fine but if WotC wants to get the financial benefits of IP they completely own, they should just make new IP and hire a new generation of more diverse creatives to do it.

Enspelled Weapon: Similar to the enspelled armor, but with conjuration, divination, evocation, necromancy, or transmutation schools. It’s a useful stating point but DMs will want to exercise great care in which spells are available in these items.

Javelin of Lightning: When you throw the new javelin, it forces all creatures to make the Dexterity save, including the target. Previously, you threw it at a creature and still made an attack roll against that creature. The old javelin was all or nothing against that target, getting weapon damage plus the 4d6 lightning or nothing.

The javelin now returns to your hand after being thrown but only for its special lightning property. My party lost one when throwing it at their main rival while fleeing.

Last, it can do lightning damage when used for attack rolls.

Scimitar of Speed: Not changed, even though scimitars are far more popular now due to the Nick weapon mastery property. I thought they might have realized just how powerful this property is and changed the scimitar of speed as a result.

Sword of Sharpness: Now gives the target a level of exhaustion on a natural 20 instead of the 1 in 20 chance of taking a limb. I used a sword of sharpness for at least half a campaign and never took a limb, so this feels better.

Sword of Wounding: Now does a bonus 2d6 necrotic damage on a hit and forces a DC 15 CON save (repeated every round) or the target regains hit points. A much more useful weapon now, but why isn’t this just a weapon of wounding?

Vicious Weapon: Now does 2d6 extra damage of the weapon’s type on a hit. Sounds good. I’d worry about dual wielders but the horse is already out of the barn with flametongues.

Wraps of Unarmed Power: Good to see them included. Why do they let the user do force damage instead of bludgeoning damage when other +2 magic weapons don’t?

Rings/Rods/Staff/Wands/Wondrous Items

Nothing broad to say about these as a category of items. Thankfully, they did not change any existing staff to use a set spell DC; they still use the caster’s. Having multiple spell save DCs on a character is a headache for DMs.

Amulet of the Devout: This item and other items from Tasha’s that boost spellcasters’ DC were not reprinted, allaying my biggest fear in the magic item section. These items have proven to be too powerful at high levels, when a caster’s DC could be 18 or 19 without them. When the caster’s DC gets boosted even more, save or suck spells can be miserable for the DM to deal with.

Baba Yaga’s Dancing Broom: A new Uncommon item that lets you turn it into a dancing broom. It is a CR 1/4 creature with AC 15 and 17 hit points. If reduced to 0 hit points, the broom is destroyed and you lose your magic item, so avoid combat. The broom can fly but since it doesn’t let you fly it shouldn’t be attunement.

Bag of Devouring: Not changed when it needed a clarification: what type of action does it take to unfold and activate the bag. Can my barbarian/rogue Jasper finally use Fast Hands to do this as a bonus action?

Belt of Giant Strength. No changed. Many speculated that the belt would be changed to raise your Strength up to the threshold so a character with a Strength of 8 or 13 wouldn’t suddenly jump to 25 or 29.

Boots of Striding and Springing. These gave the effect of the jump spell always being cast on you, so they now give the new jump spell. Since the new jump spell is a de facto +20 movement speed boost, I expect these to be in high demand.

Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals. There’s no longer a reference to the conjure elemental spell, because that spell changed. As a result, there’s a functional boon to this item. It no longer takes your concentration to keep the elemental under control. Similar items for other elements are changed in the same way.

Bear in mind that in the new adventure being previewed in game stores, fire elementals gain resistance to all bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage along with vulnerability to cold damage, slightly fewer hit points and a slight damage reduction.

Broom of Flying: This item was probably intended to be risky. If there’s heavy wind, you could be blown off of your broom. Large flying creatures could grab your character and throw them off the broom. I had a vrock grab an 8 Strength Druid and spike her to the ground my first time when this was relevant. Things like this are how you could possibly justify the broom not requiring attunement.

However, few DMs actually did these tricks. Few players accepted the risks of flying a broom. So it probably needs to be an attunement item.

I rarely see players do the weight calculations to ensure they are under 200 pounds to get the full 50 feet of movement per round. Most Medium sized adventurers with a backpack and other gear are above 200 pounds.

Candle of Invocation: One of my bigger concerns with the 2024 Player’s Handbook is how they limited clerics and druids, particularly at high levels, by not giving them the same benefits as most other classes. One of the few uniquely cool things you could do as a high level cleric or druid was get a candle of invocation and light it to give multiple characters advantage on d20 tests, not just yourself. Everyone of the same alignment benefitted.

The revised candle takes away alignment but also takes away the ability for your candle to help anyone else. As someone who used more candles than anyone else I played with or DMed at cons over the last 5 years, this was an unnecessary nerf. Sorting out strangers’ alignment and whether hey benefitted from the candle took 30 seconds and had no other impacts on gameplay.

Carpet of Flying: Not changed. Important to note this since the broom changed.

Cloak of Invisibility: Now forces the user to use it in increments of an hour instead of a minute. Changed from 2 hours total to 3 hours, with each hour being a charge. Recharges 1d3 charges at dawn instead of 1 hour every 12 hours. Minutes meant the cloak was de facto always on so this is a positive change.

Cloak of the Manta Ray: Now requires attunement. Since the ring of swimming gives 40 feet swim speed but not the ability to breathe underwater without attunement, we’ve got a problem. Adventures where the party needs to be underwater for a long period of time are quite player unfriendly. Along with the burdens of underwater combat, there’s breathing. Adding an attunement tax to the main magic item that let you freely breathe underwater isn’t wise and gives more incentive to ditch the underwater quests.

Cube of Force: Now lets you cast a set of specified spells: mage armor or shield (1 charge), tiny hut (3 charges), private sanctum or resilient sphere (4 charges), wall of force (5 charges). The cube has 10 charges and regains 1d6 at down.

This is a massive and necessary nerf. Cube of force was infamous for someone using it and choosing the living matter can’t pass through side so monsters can’t get in and attack, or blocking all spells, or other ways to make a DM miserable. 10 charges means only 1 wall of force per day at most, which is reasonable for a rare item.

Cube of Summoning: These let you cast the 5th level version of a summon spell like summon beast or summon fey once per day, without concentration. They function like summoning elemental items.

Daern’s Instant Fortress: Can no longer be deployed during combat o your enemies’ heads as a weapon dealing 10d10 bludgeoning damage with a DC 15 DEX save for half. A very welcome change but some players will miss the overpowered shenanigans.

Enspelled Staff: These contain 6 charges of any spell. You cast the spell for one charge. If using the last charge, there is a 5 percent chsnce of destroying the staff.

Having a template is nice, but not all spells are created equal.

Figuring of Wondrous Power, Obsidian Steed: Now has a 10 percent chance to betray any rider, not just good riders. 10 percent is way too high for many players, making this a severe nerf. I think we’ve got a blanket rule to get rid of alignment for items even when it takes fun out of the game and hurts play.

Gloves of Thievery: Only give +5 to Sleight of Hand checks, not Dexterity checks to pick locks.

At some places in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, the Sleight of Hand skill is the only eay to pick locks, but this is poor design that forces players to take an otherwise useless skill. In other places in the Player’s Handbook and in most adventures, proficiency in thieves tools is what boosts your lockpicking. This is what happens when a major change in rules wasn’t playtested.

Hat of Many Spells: Letting the wizard get access to any spell? Nope. Particularly not when it takes a DC 10 + spell level Arcana check and WIzards now get Expertise in an Intelligence skill.

Helm of Telepathy: You now get telepathy with a range of 30 feet instead of having to cast detect thoughts on a creature then use that connection to send a telepathic message as a bonus action. In exchange, you can only cast detect thoughts once per day instead of at will, and it is either casting detect thoughts or the suggestion spell feature from the old helm.

The detect thoughts at will shenanigans of the old helm made this an attunement item. The new helm shouldn’t be.

Horn Of Valhalla: Now summons 2-5 berserkers (based on rarity) instead of starting at 2d4+2 and ending at 5d4+5. The old version got excessive quickly. Berserkers are a bit stronger now becase they attack at advantage if the target doesn’t have all their HP instead of having reckless attack (but reckless attack made those big bags of hit points much easier to use as a DM).

Instrument of the Bards: No longer imposes disadvantage on spell saves vs. a Charmed effect, i.e. hypnotic pattern. Now the bards will play the tune of rejoicing DMs.

Ioun Stone: No longer grabble by enemies, no longer have a listed AC and hit points. The hit points were so low that DMs ignored this.

• Awareness: Now grants advanatge on Perception checks and Initiative instead of preventing surprise, making it stronger in most games.

Manual of Gainful Exercise: These stat boosting items now raise your ability score maximum to 30, like epic boons. I strong doubt anyone spent much time playtesting what happens when ability scores other than Strength rise above 22. I player a very high power campaign where my bard got 24 Dexterity at level 7. We used an alternate initiative system at first so I wasn’t always rolling at a huge advantage but eventually we switched back and it got excessive. Boosted spellcasting abilities are even worse.

Necklace of Prayer Beads: The curing bead is just cure wounds, not both cure wounds and lesser restoration. I don’t know anyone who was confused by the old necklace so this just feels like a small nerf to the cleric and druid again.

The bead of summons gives guardian of faith (a tough spell to use in most situations) instead of planar ally (which required much more DM interpretation and was hard on everyone. This should have been summon celestial with no concentration. Instead we get a weaker spell.

Wind walk, which was often the most problematic because it short circuited overland travel challenges, stays.

Periapt of Proof Against Poison: Now requires attunement. This was popular in convention play because poison was overused at times and it didn’t require attunement. I’m not sure it’s worth the attunement slot in most games. I would have just made it resistance against poison, but they did that with the periapt of health (and made that attunement too) because disease is no longer a unique affliction / condition. (In a related story, I’m DMing an adventure this weekend with monsters who impose disease and it’s a real backwards compatibility issue.)

Ring of Elemental Command: Instead of spending 2 charges to cast dominate monster on an elemental of the chosen type, you can use an action to try to charm it for a turn. More importantly, you don’t have to kill an elemental of that type to get most of the ring’s properties. Each ring also gets a fourth spell they convey. This was a godo change, as finding the right elemental to slay was often too convoluted for a legendary item.

Ring of Telekinesis: No longer restricts you to items that are no longer worn or carried. That means the item requires a spell save DC because you ca use it on opposing creatures, and they forgot to give it one.

Ring of Warmth: Now reduces cold damage by 2d8 instead of being another item that gives codl resistance. Clever DMs will adapt this mechanic to other types of damage.

Robe of Eyes: Now gives truesight to 120 feet instead of just seeing the invisible or on to the Ethereal Plane.

Robe of the Archmagi: No longer has different versions based on alignment. The first item so far where removing references to alignment is a clear, unambiguous benefit to the player.

Staff of Power: You can no longer expend charges to deal more force damage on a melee hit.

Staff of Swarming Insects: No change, which means we will still have users blinding their allies along with the enemy.

Staff of the Woodlands: Some good news and some bad news here. The good news is there’s no more free pass without trace, it costs 2 charges. The bad news is the staff only has 6 charges now. Along with not being abel to do as much, this means you can’t do anything else with the staff if you cast wall of thorns, and there’s always a risk of the staff going away if you cast wall of thorns.

We’ve got yet another needless magic item nerf for the druid, along with candle of invocation and necklace of prayer beads. No other class specific items are getting random nerfs that don’t help game balance. However, the candle’s ability to spam healing didn’t change and the staff of healing didn’t change. Cleric and druid were also the classes that got the least in the 2024 PHB.

This feels like another weird designer prejudice, like their odd restrictions on languages, that just happens to go after something I loved about 5e.

Talisman of Pure Good. My lawful evil cleric of Asmodeus can now attune to the talisman of pure good.

I shouldn’t have to say anything more for us to laugh, cry, or heckle this changed item to the discard pile, but there’s more! She could use a charge from the talisman to force my lawful good wizard to make a DC 20 Dexterity save or fall into a fissure and be destroyed forever. The old talisman of pure good only destroyed evil creatures.

There are lots of jokes and caricatures about taking an argument or precedent to its most absurd end point. WotC actually went there!

It’s a glowing reminder that these changes were not playtested outside of WotC and reminds me of Van Halen and their brown M&Ms. If you are’t familiar with this story, Van Halen included a clause in their touring contracts that “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

Original frontman David Lee Roth explained why in his autobiography. Van Halen took a massive show full of pyrotechnics and electronics to markets that had never done that type of show before. There were real concerns that the stage would collapse or other safety issues. Van Halen’s contract specified everything needed for a safe show. The M&Ms were an advance warning signal that someone didn’t read the contract and there would be other technical problems that might be so severe that Van Halen couldn’t perform.¹

If an evil cleric can use the talisman of pure good to destroy a lawful good creature, what other problems might be buried in the books that WotC didn’t playtest as widely? I am far more skeptical about the rest of this book and the revised Monster Manual now now.

Talisman of Ultimate Evil: Only a fiend or undead can touch this item without taking 8d6 necrotic damage every round. That means without Nystul’s magic aura, a PC cannot use this item. However, a DM can give a villain this item to permanently destroy a character! That’s great.

Ironically, because that lawful good wizard of mine has Nystul’s in his spell book, he could use this item, taking 8d6 damage per day while he recasts it. Then he could use a charge to swallow up the cleric of Asmodeus.

Wand of Fear: Now cots 3 charges for the fear spell. A good change.

Wand Of Fireballs: Still 7 charges on the wand, but now you can only use 3 at a time. I don’t understand why this is the change. The wand of fireballs is a major problem item at levels 5-10 because a character has 8 spell slots of 3rd or higher level but also had 7 fireballs. They still have 7 fireballs! Keeping a player from being foolish and expending 4-6 charges at once makes the item stronger. They should have limited it to 3 charges.

This is a smaller version of the Talisman of Good brown M&Ms issue. I’m going to read all of their assumptions about resource management throughout the day like a hawk now.

We also have to ask why the staff of the woodlands lost charges while the more problematic wand of fireballs didn’t. Then again, fireball blowing up a room of meh to mid monsters has always been a bigger issue in my games than divine smite, but they limited smite while not changing fireball. I feel like just as the design team has odd biases against certain features or classes, they’ve got biases in favor of certain wizard staples and charms.

Wand of Lightning Bolts: See above.

Wand of Magic Missiles: It’s a great item for the on book use of letting a character with terrible ranged attacks do something and always hit. However, that’s never how I see it used. In many games, the wand sees disproportionate use at high levels to try and cancel a monster’s concentration spell by forcing 5-8 concentration saves. Now that’s limited to 5. Either way, this item gives DMs a perverse incentive to have spellcasters prepare the shield spell if they also use concentration spells.

Wand of the War Mage: Still requires attunement, when a +1 weapon doesn’t. I’ve never gotten this and still don’t.

Winged Boots: We’ve got a real nerf here, as winged boots limit your fly speed to 30 feet even if your walking speed is faster. It takes an action to activate them. Once active, the boots give flight for 30 minutes a charge (4 charges total). So there’s less flight time too.

I don’t like the speed reduction. Most flying monsters have a greater fly speed. The main use purpose of winged boots is to let melee characters fly to engage flying monsters. As a DM, letting characters with greater movement speed use that speed boost with winged boots was apositive outside of certain meme monk grappler builds. Activation taking an action in combat is incredibly punitive.

Seeing these changes are a red flag that designers don’t appreciate the nuances and complexities of good high level combat (it’s not just Vecna: Eve of Ruin.)

Potions & Scrolls

I’m notorious for not remembering to use them as a player and not giving enough as a DM. All potions being a bonus action to drink now probably won’t change that for me, because old habits die hard.

We also don’t use the “drinking multiple potions rule” because one player would destroy the stomach of all of his characters and he’s one of the group DMs. Players are hoping for drinking potions, at least all healing potions, as a bonus action.

One of my players was worried recently because the “craft a scroll” rules from the Player’s Handbook require the Arcana skill or Calligrapher’s Supplies and his druid isn’t proficient in either. I play in this game too but said if I was DM, I’d let a Druid (or Cleric) with the boost to Arcana craft scrolls or do other things that specifically “require proficiency” in Arcana.

Oil of Sharpness: Covers 20 pieces of ammunition instead of 5, but only affets nonmagical weapons or ammo. No double dipping. This is reasonable but takes away the oil’s best use.

Philter of Love: Not removed from the DMG despite the lack of consent and themes of date rape. One of the biggest scandals I ever saw in organized play involved use of a philter of love, causing the item to be banned from convention and game store play.

Potion of Comprehension: A new potion that gives you comprehend languages for an hour. They broke many things about PCs having breadth in the languages they know in the PHB, so it’s nice that they did at least something to clean the mess.

Potion of Healing: None of them get more healing now, but they are a bonus action.

Potion of Pugilism: For 10 minutes, all you unarmed strikes do an additional 1d6 force damage. Did they test this with the level 10+ monk who can make 5 unarmed strikes a round? I’m doubtful.

1. My dissertation adviser was so bad at reading the entirety of material I sent him that I added a small chapter to my proposed dissertation and didn’t tell him about it in advance. He read parts of the proposal for weeks before finally seeing that proposed chapter at the last minute. That’s how I knew he wouldn’t read all of the dissertation in detail and I needed to communicate every core idea orally.