10 More Magic Items Analyzed with My Crafting System

A few years ago, I aimed to reverse-engineer the crafting system in D&D 5e and find a better formula for balancing custom magic items. I'm really proud of what I came up with, and it was fun to see how several existing magic items in the DMG fit it more or less perfectly. Re-reading that post gave me the urge to look at some more, so let's get started!

I highly recommend you read the original post here before continuing this one, but below is a cheat sheet with the basic formula and guidelines I came up with.

I ultimately want to polish this formula so that it always works. I know this isn't possible for all of the official items in 5e, but if I can confidently crack the code so that the outcome of the formula's item is always fairly balanced, custom items will be much easier for DMs to create, help PCs design and craft, and modify existing magic items within a certain rarity range.

To cover as wide a range as possible to test this formula, let's use my D&D Tools to randomly select some magic items to analyze!

Cloak of the Manta Ray

Let's start with a low-rarity one, even though these are pretty cut-and-dry. This cloak lets you (1) breathe underwater and (2) gives you a swimming speed of 60 feet, as long as you have its hood pulled up, which requires an action. That condition doesn't really limit it at all, so we're left basically looking at a permanent (though dumbed down since it only targets you) water breathing spell and a very quick
swimming speed. This fits at the highest possible end of Uncommon rarity, though I almost question why it doesn't require attunement. I guess it comes down to the limitation that it's only useful in water. So a 500 gp Uncommon item checks out.

Potion of Giant Strength

I definitely want to cover some consumable items in this list, since I think those should be much more readily craftable than permanent magic items anyway. Depending on the type of giant, this potion increases your Strength score to anywhere from 21 to 29 for 1 hour. There's not really a spell in 5e that changes your ability score, so I propose a completely different way to calculate the value of these potions: Looking at the creatures whose Strength scores they're based on! We are absolutely allowed to take this into consideration, since CR is one of the tools at our disposal in our table.

Hill giants are CR 5, which fits perfectly in its Uncommon rarity (roughtly 250 gp); and frost giants, stone giants, and fire giants all fit under Rare rarity with CRs of 7, 8, and 9 (500 gp, 1,000 gp, and 2,000 gp). Cloud giants are also of CR 9, but their Strength is higher, so we can bump up the price to the higher end of Rare, instead of the Very Rare it's listed as (making it cost an even 5,000 gp straddles that line and seems reasonable). Storm giants are CR 13, which puts them comfortably in Very Rare instead of Legendary rarity. It might be an issue with the odd rules of consumables in general, the clunky initial gp ranges defined in the DMG, or even Challenge Ratings themselves. But hey, this formula is meant mainly to determine cost anyway, so I would have no qualms at all about charging my players only 10,000 gp to craft a "Legendary" potion of storm giant strength.

As a note, I think the corresponding belts of giant strength should be the same rarities, albeit with the regular prices (doubled what is shown above).

Potion of Fire Breath

This Uncommon potion lets you target a creature within 30 feet of you and deal 4d6 fire damage to them on a failed saving throw. This is only slightly above the damage of a 1st-level single-target spell, but you can do it as a bonus action, which is great for action economy. Even though it has the same DC (13) as a 1st-level spell scroll, it also has 3 charges, so that plus the awesome bonus action use makes it a very reasonable Uncommon potion. I'd probably charge 100 gp to craft it, and require something like four azer tongues as the component.

Javelin of Lightning

I haven't done nearly enough weapons with this exercise, which is a disservice to adventurers who will probably focus more on crafting weapons than anything else, so let's do some. The javelin of lightning doesn't have any bonus to attack and damage rolls, but it's a magic weapon that can cut
through resistance against nonmagical attacks, making it already worth at least 50 gp. Its ability is to essentially cast a 2nd-level line spell while simultaneously making a thrown weapon roll against a target that takes that spell damage as well. This property can only be used once per dawn, as well, so I would charge very little for this. It definitely fits its Uncommon rarity, but only barely, so I'd probably charge no more than 100 gp for it.

Berserker Axe

Okay, enough with the Uncommon crud. Let's have ourselves a challenge and analyze a Rare, cursed item! I don't take curses into account when determining the rarity of an item. Curses basically impose limitations, but they do so invisibly, so they lower the effective rarity but not the actual rarity. In other words, if the curse was lifted from the item, what rarity would it be?

This applies to crafting as well, even with actual "curses" aside. If a character wants to create a Rare item but they only have enough money for an Uncommon item, I would let them craft it with a limitation that bumps it down to the rarity that they built it at. The limitation shouldn't make the item useless, but it should be just frustrating enough to give them the motivation to eventually put in the rest of the money to fix it up at the proper rarity.

That said, a berserker axe fits well into the Rare rarity. It has a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls, which is normally Uncommon, and you have 1 additional hit point per level while attuned to it. Hit points are real nice, but with only 1 per level, it's not gonna bump it too far over the Rare threshold, especially when it requires attunement. So crafting an uncursed berserker axe would take a little over a month and cost around 1,000 gp.

Dwarven Thrower

Here's a fun one: A Very Rare warhammer that (1) has a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls, (2a) can be thrown and (2b) flies back to your hand, and (3) deals an additional 1d8 damage on a thrown hit, or 2d8 damage to giants. Any weapon that has a +3 bonus is already Very Rare, so even though the item requires attunement, its bonuses make it quite a bit rarer. A warhammer's damage die is a d8, which is higher than any other weapon with the Thrown property, and being able to throw it without ha
ving to go get it again (basically a weapon with unlimited ammunition) lends a sizeable advantage to a Strength-based character who can use it at close and long range and at flying units. And what's more, it essentially crits every time when you hit a creature you throw it at, even more against giant creatures. This item probably goes into my custom Epic (i.e., Very Very Rare) category. To craft a dwarven thrower, I'd require probably 25,000 gp and a good 7 or 8 months of work.

Luck Blade

The luck blade is interesting. Despite being a Legendary magic item, it only has a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. Starting at that Uncommon baseline, let's look at the properties that bump it up so high: You get a +1 bonus to saving throws while it's on your person, which is half of the properties of a Rare ring of protection. You can call upon its luck to reroll one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw once per dawn, which is basically a point of Inspiration and not worth a ton. It's this that puts it over the top: 1d4-1 uses of the wish spell. Normally, being able to cast any 9th-level spell once per dawn would be a Legendary property all its own, but wish is, let's face it, a category all its own—a 10th-level spell essentially. However, you only get 1, 2, or 3 wishes from a luck blade, ever. So that bumps it back to a reasonable level without cranking the rarity and value up that high.

The 1d4-1 aspect comes with the notion that the luck blade was crafted initially with 3 wishes and then when it was found, some or all of them have already been used by the previous owner. That means that if a player wants to craft one, it makes sense for it to be created with 3 wishes. I would probably price it at around 150,000 gp, which would take almost a year and a half to craft. Honestly, though, with Legendary items, all bets are off. It's almost better to just make a quest at that point with the item as the reward, unless they have money coming out of their ears and you let large amounts of downtime pass in your campaign.

Dwarven Plate

Dwarven plate armor has a +2 bonus to AC, which makes it automatically an Epic magic item. The added bonus of being able to use your reaction to reduce the distance you are moved against your will by a measily 10 feet doesn't really add much, and since there's no attunement or requirements to use it, this armor fits just fine in around the 20,000 gp / six months range of cost and time to craft.

Amulet of the Planes

Despite only being "Very Rare," the amulet of the planes is the highest-priced item on Saidoro's Sane Magical Prices PDF. Let's see if my mechanical formula agrees with his calculations mainly based on how much it would realistically affect a world if someone had one.

The amulet of the planes has a fairly simple function: Basically, you can cast plane shift at will with unlimited charges. That alone bumps a Very Rare item casting a 7th-level spell up three levels, solidly in Legendary rarity, but it has a limitation: In order to use the amulet, you have to succeed on a DC 15 Intelligence check, or else you're teleported to a random location, possibly on the plane you wanted to go to and possibly somewhere else entirely. That's a pretty big limitation, especially

if you're a brutal DM who chooses a lava pool or a lake of acid or the void of space or the Negative Energy Plane as the failed location. Also, it's an Intelligence check, too, not an Arcana one that could benefit from a proficiency or expertise bonus. Even at a 20 (+5) Intelligence, that's only a 55% chance of success. It is a bit of a shame that it's an action, though, since the player with the amulet could easily spam it even if they were in mortal danger for 6 seconds. That's not even mentioning its perfect use as a panic button in other situations.

I definitely lean toward Legendary with the rarity of this item, but if we did keep it a Very Rare (under our definition, Epic) item, it would have to be as high on the scale as possible, around 50,000 gp, taking well over a year to craft and requiring the blessing of an androsphinx or the jeweled eye of a demilich or something as a component.

Staff of Power

Let's end with a staff. Staffs are always interestingly complex magic items, but most of them that just have a bunch of spells in them you can just apply my description of the staff of healing in my original post. This one is a bit different.

First off, the staff is a +2 magic quarterstaff. A bit weird for a weapon only attunable by wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks. However, you also gain a +2 bonus to AC, saving throws, and spell attack rolls, which is incredible. The AC bonus alone puts the staff as an Epic magic item. Along with all those bonuses, the staff has 20 charges, with which you can add 1d6 force damage to targets hit with a melee attack (not super significant, since again, it's only usable by spellcasters); and you can use the charges to cast spells, the highest of which is 6th level. You can also break the staff to cause a massive explosion, dealing 16–320 force damage to yourself and anywhere from 4–160 damage to everything within 30 feet of it when it breaks. I doubt most players would ever actually do this, so it's not a very attractive bonus. Lastly, if you expend the final charge, there's a chance for it to transform into a Rare +2 quarterstaff forever, which isn't as bad as less rare staffs straight-up crumbling into dust or disappearing, so there's that to consider as well.

20 is an awful lot of charges, but I think that this staff still fits in the DMG's rarity range. It's times like this I'm glad for my Epic classification. It just feels like this should be a full two rarity levels higher than a Rare staff, and in this case we can make that happen without bumping it all the way to Legendary. Those limitations still keep it below that threshold, I think. That brings the staff of power to around 30,000–40,000 gp to craft.

Thanks for joining me! If you have any specific magic item in the DMG you think might not fit my formula, or if you're curious about a custom magic item you've created, let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can figure it out.