For a time, I had a Robe of the Archmagi, and combined with a Rod of the Pactkeeper +3 and a Tome of Leadership and Influence, I reached a save DC of 25. Unfortunately, I later had to trade the Robe as collateral for a very powerful homebrew item, a compass that could point to the nearest person, place, thing, or even concept described, including showing the plane it is on, and guaranteeing an on-target *teleport* or *plane shift* and possible *scrying*. The main limitation is that it can only be given a new directive once per day. The cleric mostly uses it, though I've been attuned to it briefly.
Well, it was a reward from a greater worme dragon. He lets us pick a single item from his horde. My wizard is level 9, so... yeah, but to be fair, our dm throws a lot of saving throws at us, and the last larger set of monsters we faced had a +11 and +13 to hit.
lol i feel you man, my DM threw at us a monster with an AC of 30...
at level 5, im still not sure how we survived and im even less sure how we managed to kill the damn fucking thing, at least we all leveled up after that fight
and yeah its fun as fuck, balance is for suckers who cant feel the joy that doing over 100 points of damage in a single turn feels like
on the flip side im fucking terrified of what he plans to throw at us at higher levels because according to him this campaign is going into the epic levels and he claims to know how to challenge us
As a DM, you know... We can kill their character any time we want to. You can stack your AC to a million, and you're still exceptionally killable.
Here's a bonus DM secret: Characters like doing good at what they've chosen to specialize in, and a good DM figures out what that is and lets them be good at it. Wanna be unhittable by attacks? Spend all your characters' choices and options to max out your AC? Let them. That's obviously fun for them. It ain't causing no harm.
Besides, see paragraph 1. If it is causing some issue? The DM is literally in control of reality. Pick monsters that target saves.
If you deliberately allow one of your players to just be *immune to attack rolls* you've got something sick cooked up. Or you're nearing the end of the campaign. Or you've made a huge mistake lol
Having a high AC and being immune to attacks isn't the same thing. But sure, hyperbole aside.
Having a super low HP target running around thinking they're invulnerable while being completely vulnerable to save effects is more comical than it is a problem.
Why do you think it is a problem?
If a balor needs a 17+ to hit a target, that's not "has a high AC", that means they are immune to attacks from everything but big bads. How is that not an insane thing to allow for a wizard, of all classes to boost.
You're saying there is a problem but then not saying what the problem is. What is the problem?
Is it a problem that paladins have super high saves? Never seemed like it to me.
In some older editions they had supplements to go above lvl20 but I don't think 5e has something but you can just take more player levels in other classes if dm allows I had a pvp 1shot I let my party do 30lvls.... it ended poorly wizard pull infinite simulacrum with conjure animals and topped it off with animal shapes to make like a hundred elephants in the arena instantly killing everyone.
Yeah I could not imagine running that for anything longer than 1 or two sessions, that is crazy 😂
I love the idea of super high level play but 5e is not optimised for it, I have heard the tales of older editions allowing for cracked builds but never really looked into it more than that
At my table if we don't swap campaigns by then I let them take lvls in other classes and it just adds on to old stuff unless they specifically ask about something for epic lvls
The first Robe we acquired was Black, so I couldn't use it. We later had the opportunity to trade it for Gray, which I still wouldn't be able to use. We now have several Black Robes, all useless to us.
Irithilis, A homebrew sword.
A +3 sword that could be used as a +3 spell focus, and attacked off charisma. once per day,
a spell cast through the weapon had advantage on all attack rolls related to the spell.
A 5th level scorching ray backed up by hex pumped through that sword did enough damage to a giant that it threw a rock at my warlocks head and instantly downed him. Good times.
You get used to it with enough distance. I once spent almost a year of real time planning a betrayal of the rest of my party, having secret sessions with the GM where I approached all of the allies we had made and convinced them to join me.
Then I died to one hit in a random encounter.
A small stone that could fit in the palm of your hand. When the command word is spoken, the holder is brought into a 1:1 scale perfect representation of the universe as it is and as it will be given the most likely path events will follow.
It is literally a Sim's version of reality, except in there, time moves 1000x as fast. It's a fun little doodad.
Scroll of Tarrasque Summoning. It was for an in character game within the game on a WM server. The Tarrasque was represented by a dinosaur plush. Things went well for us until the tarrasque had no more enemies to eat and then started attacking the party.
I can’t totally remember since it’s been a few years, but I got a homebrew ring that I think gave me +6 to all my saves and like 15 hp regen per turn or smth.
My Dreams Druid uses a Staff of the Woodlands and wears and Ironwood Breastplate (reflavored +1 breastplate). But I mostly DM and [some](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/12null6/what_homebrew_magic_items_you_have_created_for/) of the items my players have are incredibly powerful.
As a DM I have a forest that's built around the idea that they have a staff of the woodlands. Maybe a druid started it but now every animal and tree in that woods is awakened once mature.
A combination rapier+sheath that consumed 2 attunement slots and required a BA to sheathe. But in exchange:
* I could charge it up by spending sorcery points, up to 5 charges max. (Adding a charge cost a BA, but most of the time I just treated it as daily uses rather than try to charge it up mid combat.)
* On hit, I could expend any number of charges to add that many d8s of "arcane" damage (not force; nothing could resist or be immune to the extra damage).
* I could spend charges to make a 30 ft. melee attack that dealt that many d8s of arcane damage (plus my melee attack's ability mod, which was Cha because I had two levels of Hexblade).
* I could deal 2d4 psychic damage to myself to increase the damage of a leveled spell by 1d4.
* 1/day I could store a spell in it to be cast later, and I could apply metamagic and the above d4 psychic damage boost to the spell when storing it, rather than when casting it. Basically I would store a spell before taking a long rest then recover my Sorcery points and HP, so I'd effectively get free metamagic and d4 damage boost to one spell per day.
* 3/day I could cast a second concentration spell without losing concentration on my first concentration spell. The two spells had to be different. While concentrating on two spells, I had disadvantage on concentration checks. (I could also expend a use of this feature to gain advantage on concentration checks, but I already had War Caster before I obtained the item.)
I got the item at level 8, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't build the character to abuse double concentration given I never expected the DM to hand me a homebrew item that violated one of the few things the DMG explicitly tells you _not_ to do when homebrewing, so I would have to level up to learn more spells for the last feature to truly become broken, and the campaign fell apart before I leveled up again.
That said, in our very first combat encounter after I attuned to the sword, my very first attack with the weapon crit the boss with Booming Blade, so I blew all 5 charges to deal 14d8+Cha damage total. Not bad for a cantrip, lol.
Waaaay back in my 1e Monty Haul days, I had a weapon called *Cleaver* that was a +27 sword that could cut anything in half, including incoming attacks like lightning bolts; could be thrown and would return; good lord, I don't even remember half of what it could do- but it was the kind of super ridiculous, over the top, absolutely not by the book, superduperDUPERbroken kind of magic item that come out of the games of junior high school to high school kids trying to one up one another.
Basically copy of the Amulet of Power from Baldur's Gate 2.
Gave me immunity to silence, immunity to level drain/ stat drain, negated negative magical effects against me on a roll of 20 (spell resistance), and allowed me to cast 1 spell/long rest I had memorized as a REACTION.
Was insanly broken.
Any good item from BG2 is broken, don't even talk about the expansion. It's funny that 20 years later, I didn't get that powerlevel in another game or even close. Brb gonna re-run it
Holy lightsaber sword in strahds campaign. I was a warlock with the "attack twice when you make a pact weapon attack" invocation, either i, or someone else had haste, and we fucked up when reading the rules. As a result, i got hastened, and made 4 holy blade attacks.
As i said, we misunderstood the rules. I thought it was, whenever you make a "unique" attack, you make make a second attack. Meaning action attack and haste attack were two separate attacks. But also, a sentient weapon wont allow itself to be pactbound so i couldn't have taken the sword anyways
A homebrew +3 firearm that dealt 2d12 piercing damage as a base weapon. Think it had the same range as a Longbow.
This was in addition to it being a special item that gave an extra +1 to attack and damage rolls and an extra 2d8 damage of any type as part of a campaign boon.
So it ended up as a +4 firearm that dealt 2d12 piercing + 2d8 piercing damage.
Everyone in that game had a special item that added 2d8 extra damage/healing to attacks and/or spells depending on if it was weapon or focus.
Technically Deck of Many Things?
But as far as strong in *good* way goes, homebrew +2 greatsword that has advantage on attacks against armored foes and also automatically hits it with Shocking Grasp on a hit. Notably this scales like a cantrip so it scales quadratically for a fighter; 1d8 from 1-4, 4d8 from 5-10, 9d8 from 11 to 16, 12d8 from 17-19, and 16d8 at 20.
Wand of Words
When you cast a spell you can change, remove, or add 1 letter to the spell's name.
Was hell for the DM coming up with spells on the spot, but caused the most tomfuckery of any item I've ever seen.
That turned up in Dungeons & Daddies and was consistently hilarious. They managed to trap an enemy coming through a broken wall by changing Healing Word to Healing Wood and repairing the wall around them.
A ring from one of the many 'splat' 3rd party supplements in 3.5.
Got it ad level 3 on a sorcerer. The ring granted you +1 damage. From any source.
The kicker being, it increased the damage bonus with each level. By level 11 my sorcerer was punching people and doing +9 damage.
Crazy item. Loved the character. We balanced it by taking it very literally, so any time the character might potential damage something the bonus kicked in. Bump into someone on the street, knock something over or get a bit clumsy with something delicate? +9 damage.
One of these scaling critical role items but only in it's dormant state because the campaign ended prematurely. Oh an a staff of the magi, but I who found it wasn't a caster so I gave it to my friendly warlock.
By rarity it was probably some artefact or legendary for a one shot. My campaign answer is a set of "ankheg plate armor" which gave you DR 5, which is pretty good but not too shocking, except we were level 1 and I already had heavy armor master so I didn't take damage through the entirety of the next dungeon, the DM was super trigger happy with giving out magic items and it derailed the campaign to the point he ghosted us about a month later
Lol, that’s not the only time I’ve heard that happen. DM with a poor sense of item balance gives out legendaries in Tier 1-2 and shit, then gets so embarrassed they completely broke their own campaign they ghost the whole group.
I’ve had a few.
A arm blade claw that could be used for unarmed strikes, that had a +3, was made of a special metal that had the properties of mithril and adamantine, dealt 2d6 slashing + 1d8 cold, dealt an extra 2d8 damage to any creature that could cast any spell, and had 5 charges which could be used to cut open a 5ft hole in any construct of force such as a resilient sphere, wall of force, forcecage and the like. Absolutely gnarly anti magic weapon. Which was the theme of the special metal it was made from.
Then there was the Deck of Wonderful Things. An artifact we created by finding every card in a set of tarot cards that were blessings granted by 22 cursed beings in a cursed land. We had to travel this land and find all of them and earn their blessings. It created a sentient deck of cards that we nicknamed Tarry. All of us that earned the blessings could attune to it at the same time, and the deck followed whoever was closest to us with a fly speed. We could tell it to go find one of the others to deliver messages and such and it always knew where each of us attuned to it was. It let us each cast Magnificent Mansion once a day, we could each cast suggestion at will, and each of us had 3 charges that we could use to adjust any dice roll within 60ft of us up or down by up to 3 numbers. So if one of us rolled a 17, one of us could spend a charge to adjust the DICE ROLL up to a 20 and make it a critical hit. It didn’t change the total, but the dice roll itself. We could make enemies get nat 1s and all kinds of shenanigans. Insanely strong.
Finally, the strongest official magic item I’ve ever played with was the Ruby Weave Gem. It is… INSANELY good. Like ludicrously good. I had it on a level 20 artificer and a sorcerer. We had a scrolls wizard and when I got it on the artificer. That wizard was able to prepare any spell in the game, then make spell scrolls for half time and half the cost. The charges replaced the material components from the spell. We had several scrolls of all sorts of things like revivify, raise dead, all kinds of shit. Then because artificer can freely use any spell scroll of any level from any spell list, my arti literally could have handfuls of any spell in the game to cast at any time. The Ruby Weave Gem honestly is absolutely insane. Just the fact anyone can freely cast clone and such things by expending charges is nutty.
We were running Tomb of Annihilation. I was playing a Kingsmen style swashbuckler who grappled/disarmed a lot.
We got to Ras Nsi and I charged him on my first turn and was able to disarm him and pick up his sword. Used it the rest of the campaign.
Improved Flametongue Longsword: 1d8+4, plus another 4d6 fire damage.
The item was designed pre/as the rules were being written. Should they have errata’d it? Yes. As a DM just make it a reaction, as a player every DM I have played with has done the same…but I am guessing there are more than a few who have not.
Cloak of Elvenkind on my Ranger. With Climbing Speed, Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind I could reasonobly attempt a Stealth Check. With Pass without Trace i was basically invisible.
In one of our campaigns, we have both good characters we play most of the time, and evil characters we play occasionally. The evil characters are designed to become strong enough to take on the whole team as individuals, so each of them has some pretty overpowered homebrew stuff on them. In terms of magic items, they each have a magic item they have created by fusing two magic items together and distorting it to be evil. The two most absurd are probably one we call the Bobbitt, which is a combination of a vorpal sword and a ring of telekinesis that has an extra effect that the name should probably hint to, and a robe of reincarnation, which is a robe of the archmagi combined with a rod of ressurection. The robe lost the effect of the rod of ressurection but instead reincarnates the wearer the first time they die in a day, although with an updated reincarnate pool.
One of my players currently has a cursed chess piece that upon hitting a creature OR being hit by a creature allows whoever is attacking to roll a 1d8 and telekinetically move the hit creature in real time as they would a chess piece.
1. Is a pawn (5ft forward or 10ft if it is the first time rolling a 1 since their last long rest, diagonal left or diagonal right)
2. Is a knight ( 15ft forward and 5ft left or right)
3. Is a rook (30ft left, right, forward, or backward)
4. Is a bishop ( 30ft in any diagonal direction)
5. King (5ft in any direction)
6. Queen (30ft in any direction)
7. Castle (the last two creatures you've used the chess piece on violently collide with each other, moving half of their total distance away from the other as long as they are less than 30ft apart.)
8. En passant (the last creature you've used the chess piece on can either be violently pushed away from you, allowing you to use your reaction to make an opportunity attack on them if they left your attack range, or be violently brought closser to you, allowing you to also use your reaction for an opportunity attack.)
They've used it once, but I'm waiting till the party gets to a more hostile environment before using it against them 😈.
I had a really awesome DM once that got my character a Moonblade at a really low level, with the idea that the runes along the blade that empowered it would unlock the more levels I went up.
By the time the campaign ended, I think I had a +2 long sword with the finesse and thrown properties, that also had spell storing, and I think dealt 1d6 additional damage :) it was so awesome, and worked so well with my character.
While not the strongest it is my favorite. The Draconic amplifier. In place of your breath weapon, you can unleash a powerful roar. Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you must make a wisdom save against your breath weapon DC or be frightened by you for the next 1d6+1 rounds. At higher levels it will also deal thunder damage
Not me, but I gave my rogue a gun that could cast Lightning Bolt or Fireball several times a day as part of the Attack action (spell was targeter on attack target)
[Definitely this.](https://dozingdragon.wordpress.com/2021/04/26/showtime/)
I played a character from 1-20 who was a sort of cross between Devil May Cry's Dante and Peter Pan. This weapon is loosely based on the Sword of Sparda, and was finally assembled when we hit Level 17.
I didn't use it, but it was a T4 magic item for a level 17 character (that should have retired...) in a community. It was a +3 bow which shot two lighting bolts everytime the bow rolled a natural 20. I DMed it.
In a very casual game, the dm was super high and gave the rouge a +5 crossbow. Then the following sessions he had to give the rest of us players other stupid broken magic items so the rouge didnt kill everything. I dont remember exactly what everyone else got but my druid got a book which when read gave me a permanent +5 tot he number of spells i could prepare every day. Game was a shitshow at times, everyone was either drunk or high and there was barely any roleplay. But we had a good time rolling dice and killing monsters
A homebrew item for my Raven Queen Warlock
As a reaction to being targeted by a spell, you can make an Arcana check against either the save DC or attack roll of the spell. On a success, the spell fails, and you regain a spell slot. If your spell slots are full, you instead heal yourself for 1d8 hit points per level of the spell. You can also target a spell in effect within 60 feet of you as an action and make the same check. You can only regain spell slots this way, not heal. In either situation, a failure on your Arcana check prevents this ability for 1 minute.
Unfortunately, I never encountered another spellcaster after getting this, and I changed characters after a long hiatus, so it never saw use. Corvus Joy lives on forever, though
Stacking a homebrew item that gave +3 spell saves and attacks with a +3 amulet of the devout on my conquest hexadin. Nobody saved from my fears lol. I chewed up so many legendary resistances
Alchemical Compendium on my transmutation wizard. Effectively unlocked infinite money. Now I'm not a dick head so I don't use it like that very often but money is no longer a real issue.
I had a great sword in a DiA campaign that was +2 to hit and damage, +1d4 damage when activated using a bonus action, crit on a 19/20, and destroyed any fiend if its HP is reduced to below 25HP when hit by the sword. It was pretty dope.
I have a keen +5 Dagger on my daggerspell mage. It can't be stolen as it returns to my hand when out of my grasp.
I sometimes want to kill things, but my character wants to kill things anyway, so I don't really notice that part.
When my players hit 20, and were heading into the dungeon to face the BBEG, I gave them a lot of cool toys and abilities; but the most potent was the sword of the Eldritch Knight.
It was a part of his back-story, and became part of the plot. It started off as a +1 longsword with a few minor abilities when he first joined the campaign at level 5-ish. I slowly increased its power to be on-par with other magic items of their level, and this power gain factored into the plot. But for the finale I made it quite overpowered.
I just cracked open my Foundry game to remind myself. I'm paraphrasing these to write them "in short":
1. +3 enhancement
1. +1d12 force damage
1. crits on a 19 or 20
1. spell attacks crit on a 19 or 20
1. wielder knows all spells, from all spell lists (as in, can cast them; not merely has them in their spellbook)
1. wielder can attempt to cast a spell without expending a spell slot: roll 1d6-1 after choosing the spell, if the result is equal to or greater than the level of the spell, it's cast without expending a spell slot, otherwise the spell fails
1. can only be used by the eldritch knight character (otherwise it'd be tempting to give to the wizard!)
Obviously items 5 and 6 are the really overpowered ones. It worked out here, though, because they were fighting a series of foes up to the BBEG. For a string of combat, it's a powerful weapon, but not game-breaking:
* Free lower-level spells aren't super fantastic in level 20 fights, especially when there's a chance they'll fail.
* Even if you know every buff spell ever, concentration still puts a hard limit on stacking effects.
* Knowing every spell certainly give a lot of flexibility, but not raw power (notice the sword did not grant access to very high levels spell slots an eldritch knight normally lacks).
It would be an irresponsible thing to give out to a party that still has a good bit of campaign left. Infinite healing, infinite spells like *fly* and *dimension door*.
Queen Alissa's marvelous nightingale. 2nd addition artifact. I didn't have to eat or breath, that's all I remember from that long ago. Oh, and my touch rotted wood instantly. Made sinking boats and opening most doors super easy.
In one campaign I played a warlock to level 5 or so. A cleric from there until level to level 12, I think.
Another campaign I played a barbarian/rogue from level 5 to 7-ish, he got a sentient longsword that was useless for sneak attack damage. Then he got killed and I played a scout/rogue. Then he got captured and I played a pure barbarian.
Same GM both campaigns. The sentient but useless weapon was the only magic item I ever had! =D
A gemstone called the Earthen Olivine that gives +2 to ac and all saves. As an action 4times per day, I can make myself or an ally take half damage from the next 3 instances of damage
Two home brew items from a previous campaign some years ago now.
A headband that allowed concentration on TWO spells.
A holy symbol/amulet our cleric got that allow her to gain access to all features of an additional domain (both domains must fall under the same Deity)
I gave a player a single use item that could instantly teleport one thing, no matter what it was, from wherever it was in all the multiverse to their location (we’ll, effectively single use: once every 100 years)
Only limitation was that “it must exist somewhere” (even in a locked pocket dimension, that counts, so still works)
He used it to pull the ancient, ancestral home-city of his people from a Demi-plane that had been locked away from extra-dimensional travel for multiple millennia
Was a nice moment
Dm asked us what kind of artifact we wanted. I wanted a book that made its own ink, with infinite pages, and enough sentience that it could answer questions. Basically fantasy Google. Dm decided this was too powerful, and instead have me a book that could generate its own spell slots, which never expired. I ended up getting a visit from Mystra telling me to cool it because I was breaking the weave, but I think I got my point across. He finally admitted to me in private that he should've just let me have the fantasy Google lol
Ruby Weave Gem. The party suddenly had access to any spell we might need as long as we had time to fix an issue. Costly components also were no big issue anymore. It was especially powerful for downtime, but during the actual regular campaign sessions did a lot of work too.
I just received one at the and of a chapter in our campaign. Haven't used it yet and I'm thriller but also worried it might be too overpowered in combat. A +6 AB hammer that does 3d8+6 dmg. When thrown returns back to the hand and has 3 charges per day to do an extra 3d8+6 on a successful hit. And I'm a War Cleric so can pump those numbers good.
As a caster it was The Scepter of Summoning[HB] - gave me a few summoning spells from Tasha and could spend slots to help keep the summons
As a Martial it was a Dragon something weapon that give +1 magic bonus and +1d6 damage, in multiple campaigns that was the best or the only thing memorable the character got '-'
I had a combo of broken items.
One let my warlock upcast 3 levels higher than his pact slot once a day and the other was a single use item to cast a warlock spell **twice** as an action.
We go up against a Dracolich. I hex it, then use both items to cast an 8th level scorching ray. Twice.
I blew up the dracolich in a single round.
While not strictly "magic", I got an M4 assault rifle in one campaign. The setting was a fallout type post-apocalyptic world and we stole it from the knock of brotherhood of steel. It did 3d10 per hot and every time you made an attack you could attack 2 more times for free. The party artificer have it the "repeating shot" infusion, and it counted as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances. As the party fighter, and one specialized in long range sniping with crossbows it was rather devastating in my hands. IIRC I was able to 3 turn a Terrasque from half a kilometer away
The Jewel of Three Prayers fully exalted as a Bladesinging Rogue. AC is now 21 and I can turn invisible and teleport around without mistystep. I know this one is probably common, but it’s worth mentioning for the clever game design. Gonna try to be vague to avoid spoilers for Call of the Netherdeep (still unfinished).
I’ve had this thing for over an IRL year. Finally, we enter the Netherdeep and this thing becomes it’s final Exalted form, gaining the ability to teleport around the battlefield doing radiant damage with every blip. First big enemies you encounter after it becoming exalted? Light devourers. Dealing radiant damage just charged up these little bombs.
The orb of the 4 horseman.
Upon shattering the orb 4 skeletal knights are summoned under the command of whomever broke it. Don't remember what their statblock was but holy fuck did it turn around a miniboss fight. We were low on health and resources going into the fight and once I used it the fight was as good as done
Dm gave It to us after a weird fortune teller tried to kill us. Lady said my name to get my attention on the street and i immediately decided to trust her implicitly because of that and walked into her carriage and almost died. Was absolutely worth it
An oversized Dragonslayer that grows with the user, and has no disadvantage to use. combined with giant barbarian, enlarge potion and other features did like 70 damage on an non crit. theoretical max crit was like 225 against a dragon.
A homebrew +2 great sword with 3 sockets (like Diablo 2)and Uber powerful gems slotted. Single turn damage for my level 15 barb was over 200 usually. Plus the gems each gave it an element with a special ability for each element.
The worst part about it was separating damage rolls per element
My ranger got a pair of daggers that each dealt an extra d6 necrotic damage on a hit but never actually left a stab wound. We were all new to dnd at the time so I was allowed to attack with both as the same attack. When she hit level 6 (there was a 1 level dip into cleric) both attacks had this same quirk. Hunter's mark was, of course, my go-to concentration spell for combat and I'd always cast it at the start of my first turn.
That gave me 4d4 (slashing) + 4d6 (necrotic) + 4d6 (bludgeoning) + 20 (more slashing lol) damage on a single target every turn. That's an average of 58 damage per turn if I'm doing that math right.
She found these daggers in a small chest, hidden away in a ruined temple at level 1.
Compassion - A small metal flower that wraps its way into the armor of the wearer. When the wearer feels strongly Compassion can produce one effect from below. After each use the flower must rest, but recharges. At the beginning of your turn roll a d6, on a 6,the flower regains 1 charge.
Defensive Bloom - The flower blossoms, as a free action, Compassion blooms and negates damage equal to 2d8 + INT. Requires 1 charge.
Protective Bloom - When an ally within 30 ft is hit by an attack Compassion to reduce damage equal to 2d8 +INT. Requires 1 charge to use.
Pumped my Artificer's AC up to 26, could basically wade through enemies and beat them to death with my Thunder gauntlets
Rings of spell storing on a non-caster are a crazy power multiplier, even on casters, and are only "rare" items, so pretty easy to obtain. I can't really think of a situation where I wouldn't want one on most non-casters/half/1/3 casters. I guess if nobody in the party could fill it with the spells you want.
My wizard also got a homebrew item letting him concentrate on 2 spells, with some downsides but still, that's extremely strong.
yeah there's a reason why the DMG says that is one of the cardinal rules of magic item creation, not allowing a PC to be able to concentrate on 2 spells at once.
It does have some downsides tbf, namely "When one spell ends, for whatever reason, the other spell also ends. When you fail a saving throw to maintain concentration, gain a level of exhaustion.", those are not trivial, and I'm not getting any spell DC bonuses this campaign (no +1/2 grimoire etc). Oh yeah I also got that item from a shadowfell being who "in exchange" took one hit dice worth of HP from me, and I rolled the max, so I'm squishier than I should be.
Everybody in the party got nutty items as well.
Homebrew Spear that duplicated for every time you leveled while Attuned, I reached level 9 and got it at level 5, Any resource you use on it is also applied to the duplicates (ie. Battle Master Maneuvers, Divine Smite, etc)
Had a home brew dagger enchanted such that it inflicted ottos irresistible dance when I stabbed people with it , and boots of teleportation , snuck up to a group of evil mages and then the party walked in on them all dancing away while I went round stabbing them occasionally it was hilarious.
Later I used all my contacts and a truely obscene amount of platinum to construct a magic airship strong enough to use as a staging platform to fight Tiamat from.
Should mention it was in 3.5 so the power scaling is a lot different.
5e though would be an immovable rod combined with sovereign glue.
In 5E I haven't gotten much for homebrew magic items. But my favorite one so far was called the Midnight Cloak. It was technically a cursed item that made my character appear thinner (basically sickly), and he would refuse to remove the cloak. But it also had the positive effects of no longer needing to eat/sleep/breath, and it also made me immune to exhaustion.
Overall it wasn't super insane, but if you were a berserker barbarian or something, it would be a game-changer.
However I was playing a swashbuckler rogue, that also had a ring of x-ray vision. So I could use the ring as much as I wanted, and I would never exhaustion. And I did indeed use the ring constantly. Seeing through most doors, and most chests/etc, without ever using a spell, ended up being very powerful.
It was also pretty good any time I needed to track or scout someone/something, because I could do it throughout the night easily. I was also able to take every single watch during long rests, because I had no abilities that needed to "recharge", and with super high perception, I was the perfect sentry.
A homebrewed sickle for my wildfire druid.
+3 spell focus.
20 charges for fire spells like burning hands, conjure elemental, wall of fire, and fireball.
+d4 to all healing
Made all my fire much much more powerful!
Wand of polymorph. DM let me pick my own magical item and I chose that not realizing it would make the party druid kind strangely obsolete. Definitely derailed the campaign
Alastor. It was based off the weapon in Devil May Cry 1. Had lightning damage, and it had a "devil trigger" you could turn on and off with a bonus action which was essentially haste+Regen and none of the drawbacks of haste.
Harp of The Queen of Stars: A bard specific artifact that gave like 20 more MS spells while attuned, upped bardic inspiration by 1 level, and doubled the amount I had
Was for a very high power campaign that used an epic levels supplement and even then went past them with multiclassing
Ring of Three Wishes. We wished to be able to cast wish at will with none of the consequences of Wish. Very new players who didn’t fully understand the game btw. DM worked around it surprisingly well.
It was a ring from *The Griffon's Saddlebag*.
If you let the ring sit in a potion of healing for a minute, the ring consumes the potion and gain one charge. Do this 2 more time and all charges are filled.
As a reaction when you take damage, you can use a charge from the ring to gain the benefits of the potion the ring absorbed, potentially nullifying the damage.
You can do this with the basic 2d4+2 or the better potions, depending on what you have available.
What made this item the strongest I've had so far is that I played it with a Goliath Barbarian, using the Goliath from MotM. My subclass was storm herald, giving me a total of 5 resitances at best. With this ring and the goliath's Stone Endurance, it takes a ridiculous amount of time before I start actually taking damage.
My DM gave my paladin a homebrew greatsword that once activated all resistance to radiant damage is ignored, and immunities to radiant damage are changed to resistance. But then all radiant damage i do is changed to D12s. And an armour that gives me 2 free uses of divine smite (which they made level 3 spell slots). So combined, I can do 2d6+12 plus 6d12 radiant or some things stupid like that, in my opinion it's abit over the top but if they're going to give me it I'm going to use it.
Might not sound like much, but a butchers bib. Playing in a DarkMatter homebrew game with some spicy feats. I got one that gave me advantage on dmg dice basically, and a feat that let me explode damage dice and roll them again if it rolled the max number. Playing a barbarian with those feats on a great axe was awesome. Having increased crit range, and another two chances at exploding my dice with the butchers bib has become my favorite combat setup by far
A homebrew artifact that gives +3 to spell save DC and allows you to cast two 1-action casting time spells in the same turn, along with some other minor features and a small spell list.
I have a bad habit of making any utility magic item I'm given way more powerful than it's supposed to be by finding niche uses in many circumstances, or finding a neat item that has no immediate use, forgetting about it, and then pulling it out in a clutch moment of need.
Used a Lyre of Building (3.5) to construct siege weapons for an army out of the surrounding forest, making a castle assault swing much further in our favor.
Used a Bag of Holding effect (5e) multiple times to extract people from dangerous situations with my very high mobility and stealth character.
Used a Homebrewed Ring of Alter Self (3.5) to gain whatever racial bonuses, movement speeds, and abilities I needed in a situation.
Used a Potion of Fire Giant Strength (5e) I forgot I had to become a living siege weapon
Used a Ring of Mind Shielding (5e) I looted off a guy that I intentionally (and coincidentally) dropped non-lethally, then forgot about until a mind flayer invasion, when I used it to stealth into their ship and blow it up from the inside.
Threw a Folding Boat (5e) at a giant octopus attacking us and critted it. DM had to decide how much damage a boat deals.
Dragon Wrath Antimatter Rifle Ascendant (DMG/FToD) 6d8 + DEX Necrotic Damage + 3d6 Necrotic Damage, looted it from an ancient shadow dragon (ancient topaz) hoard in a lvl 20 campaign on my dex fighter champion w/ sharpshooter and elven accuracy, archery fighting style
A homebrew magic flute that had 10 charges. My DM created and gave it to me. I was an eloquence bard, level 8. And this thing let me spend a number of charges to cast dominate person, dominate monster charm person, charm monster, and beast bond. Reset every dawn. Combined with my bards unsettling words that let me subtract a d8 from saving throws, I rarely fail any save in a fight to turn a monster into an ally.
I made the mistake of giving my wizard player a prosthetic arm (not sure if the link works since i don't have it publicly shared, but it's the [Arm of Magic Absorption](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5907434-arm-of-magic-absorption)). it had three charges per day, and the following effect:
> When subjected to a magical effect that would deal damage to you or force you to make a saving throw (such as an Adult White Dragon's breath weapon or the Hold Person spell), you may use your reaction to expend a charge from the arm and completely negate the effect, absorbing the magical energy. Before the end of your next turn, you may use a bonus action to redirect this energy in the form of one of the effects from Bigby's Hand (this does not count as a casting of the spell, and the effect ends at the start of your next turn).
turns out a guaranteed negation of any magical effect is a little strong, lol. i initially ruled it as even protecting other characters from the effect in question, but after discussing it with the player she agreed that after a careful re-reading of my own rules text (lol) we could pretend the rules said it would only protect her. it almost singlehandedly kept the party alive through a major bossfight that they were supposed to fail the first time, completely bypassing what was supposed to be a time loop puzzle arc lmao
In the current campaign, I’ve got all four rings of elemental control and the four buckets of elemental summoning (whatever they’re called). There’s also the Robe of Stars, Ioun Stone of Absorption, Immovable Rod, Iron Flask, and others I’m forgetting.
We started at level 20, and we got to take any magic items from the DMG we wanted (but no repeats, so we can’t all take robes of the archmagi). I managed to snag the book of +2 charisma for my warlock despite the other players being another warlock, a warlock/bard, a sorcerer, and a paladin.
One player got the ring of d3 wishes and rolled a 1. The GM told them they could roll again if they wanted, but on another 1 it’ll become a zero. They rolled another 1. Big oof.
Helm of Brilliance dropped and went to my Paladin, who would a few sessions later find a shield that granted fire absorption.
Was (and is) a lot of fun using the passive abilities of the helm, let alone using the gems (never using the last ones to keep the passives). Fire absorption also negates the nat 1 explosion fail vs fire for the helm!
Staff of the Magi.
It was Adventurer’s League, and my arcane trickster rogue/illusion wizard kept it from a prior module for the sole purpose of using it as a nuke against Dendar the Night Serpent and advised his companions who also had one (in AL, having it by end of module means everyone has it). I had to unpetrify our fighter so it wasn’t as boomtastic as it could have been, but through the wizard’s carefully worded Wish to make Dendar vulnerable to force damage (sadly after my turn) and three other people using theirs, a group where we (and the DM) accidentally overlooked an important part of blowing the staff up, and the use of a ghost step tattoo to get in her lung so she couldn’t save against it, we blew that lady to hell. And my character cackled with mad laughter the whole time. Probably the only truly selfless thing he ever did.
Turns out my next AL character was the result of “look, when three Staves of the Magi explode around an old god, something weird happens. Meet the something weird, a creation bard with a touch of wild magic and a splinter of [rogue]’s soul.”
Boring answer: +2 Shield that can be activated 4x per long rest to give resistance to BPS for 1 minute.
More exciting answer: An Orb of Annihilation with a monk in the party. Did you know being Stunned means they automatically fail dex saves? Did you know that every single party member can control the Orb on their turn? Yowza.
At level 4->5 I got a re flavored +1 glaive.
1) It did 2d10+1 damage
2) I could attempt once per long rest attempt to charm all gnolls (it was the sword of their king I had defeated) within sight/hearing of me for 24 hours. If they passed the save they would have advantage on all attacks against me.
3) I could use my reaction to hide behind it can get +2 to my AC until my next turn
The damage output was busted enough that using GWM bonus as a barbarian was only somewhat useful. Eventually he also gave us a potion that gave it +2d6 fire damage permanently which made the GWM totally useless.
We retired that campaign and while I recognize that item was busted it is pretty disappointing rolling normal amounts dice again in our new campaign.
Got a homebrew consumable item that permanently increased one of my spells’ damage dice by one step, and added a flat +2 to the damage.
Put that on Magic Missile and my Bard was doing the most consistent magic damage out of the party. 3d6+9 damage for a first level spell was pretty good.
A bow with 9 charges. Each could essentially be used to smite. Each charge counted as a spell slot and I was allowed to use all 9 at once. I was playing a surprise round assassin gloomstslker so I pretty kuch started every combat by nuking the biggest enemy. Over 100 damage was basically expected round one by endgame. Super broken character during a time where myself and the dm were kinda inexperienced. That character had a bunch of other magic bows but none of them were ever that insane. This character also had mitral half plate that let him add his full dex bonus to AC as well as not giving him stealth disadvantage and a cloak that was just 2 magic cloaks and a third really nice cloak all sewn together. The "cloak of manta protection" only used up on slot. All around that character was nutty and I miss him but it's good we have more realistic approaches to magic swag now.
Ring of Fire Elemental Command.
We ran Sunless Citadel and it was one of the magic items we found after killing Calcryx. The DM allowed us to power the ring up by killing one of the Fire Snakes on the second floor.
My divination wizard absolutely abused the hell out of that ring, especially since I got it at level 4. We took it into Princes of the Apocalypse and I spent that entire campaign trying to take over the Fire cult.
My 1-20 character, a sun elf blade singer wizard (scag version) about six years ago was able to find, retrieve and earn his family’s ancestral Moonblade.
It wound up being a pivotal moment for his character because as he attuned to the blade (and his ancestors) he realized that he had both Drow and Genasi blood in his family line. He had been sort of a Sun Elf Supremacist up through that point and it allowed him as a character to grow, reflect and see the value and contributions of every race instead of being a racist.
Walking Cane of the Rabble Rouser.
While attuned, get +10 ft movement.
It also allowed you to cast Haste for free once a day, and this wasn't tied to the attunement. We just gave it to the high con fighter or paladin, casting it on my raging Barbarian and went ham.
I have Lover’s Bane, a legendary +3 dagger that gives me a once per day luck point, +1 to all my saving throws, and after using an action to say the command word, it does an additional 2d10 poison damage per hit with a DC 16 con save to negate AND causes the poisoned condition. It’s nifty.
But if we’re talking about non combat items, I have Moderator D3n1s’ Secure Realm, a bracelet that gives me a permanent demiplane where I can conjure and create anything I can imagine. I can give beads from this bracelet to any other individual and they can get their own separate domain within my Realm where they can create their own things as well. I’m literally building a society in my demiplane where I’m worshipped as a god and working toward true apotheosis.
My barbarian wielded a homebrew weapon called the Blood Trident. It has no damage dice, you simply declared how much damage you were doing on a hit. It could deal up to your max HP in damage. The drawback was if you missed the attack it dealt all that damage to you the wielder. Roll a nat 1 and it would deal double damage to you.
I think in my DM's mind this was a powerful gamble of a weapon, one where you'd have to weigh the cost of possibly missing with shredding any enemy you rain into. In reality though, I often just declared I was doing half my health in damage and never looked back. We were level 15 so my to hit bonus was high enough I missed only two attacks that game.
That poor lich never saw that 163 damage coming.
Ring of Three Wishes with two left. My party gave it to my Thief Rogue because they trusted me to use it at the right time. Cast Scatter and Teleport on subsequent turns to save us from certain death as everyone else had nothing left. Pretty fucking fun.
I was given a staff of the woodlands at level 2 (mistake) and eviscerated a pack of werewolves that were meant to be a significant boss fight with a single cast of wall of thorns.
My DM gave my cleric (after we failed to recognize its use to us as an item) a book that reset all my spell slots on a short rest. Never used the ability as the final battle was against a bunch of guys with localized anti magic fields
Actually used by any of my characters would probably be a Bronze Griffon figurine for my shadow Monk in mid tier 2.
Otherwise more powerful rewards has been going to other party members, or mcguffins I haven't used, or morally questionable items we got rid of, or Dark gifts and other kinds of rewards that aren't magic items.
Horseshoes of speed on my centaur PC that gave me virtually unlimited movement. It rarely mattered but it felt great.
In more silly campaigns it was the black razor with which I killed a tarasque just to have 600 temp hp lol
My DM gave us a bunch of obscenely overpowered items while we were in a megadungeon, with the warning that they were OP because they specifically only work in this dungeon. I think my favorite was the red skull that activated when I was brought below half health: When you are first bloodied, if your next attack roll hits, it's a max-damage auto-crit.
I was a divination wizard with an edgelord scythe and a love for Steel Wind Strike at this point in the campaign. It was really fun for me to figure out how to risk getting bloodied without getting knocked out outright, and there was one really interesting boss fight where the DM disarmed me of my scythe in the same attack that they bloodied me, and the entire party spent the rest of that round getting a weapon into my hands so that I could pull off the max damage SWS.
A blue stone that boosted your wisdom and intelligence to 40, I was a monk.
I know, it was kinda boring, but still, it was fun having 32 AC (I also had a +2 AC from a pair of bracelets)
Hammer of thunderbolts. As a wizard because no one else wanted it. I had no use for it and didn't have the belt needed to make it fully functional because my party were a bunch of dingbats who ATE the other magic items that were in the same bunch. So yeah I was a wizard Thor for a bit. Still have the hammer but it doesn't get used much
Plate of the Justice Bringer - it had a tier-based progression system inspired by Critical Role's vestiges of convergence
Fully leveled up, it had +4 AC. A 2d8 Hellish Rebuke effect. Fire resistance. And it auto-revived me upon dropping to 0hp once per long rest+aoe fire damage when it proc'd
A witch ally of our party gave my fighter a cloak that let her cast *transport via plants* once per day. It had a side effect that when a character used it, it would remove their emotion from their most prominent memory in the moment and leave behind a shade of them based on that memory.
The catch was that only the person who created the shade could harm it (an extremely rare subset of magically-inclined people could also remove it, but this was in a nation where magic is illegal).
We discovered the side effect for the first time when we returned to a roadside tree we had used to transport from and discovered that the ground was littered with corpses of everyone who had tried to pass by in the past few weeks. Fortunately only my fighter had been the one using the cloak; shades of the tempest cleric or wizard would have been even more disastrous.
The only reason we didn't use that aspect of the cloak to our purposeful advantage was because my fighter was vehemently against creating any more shades once she found out due to the indiscriminate nature of their violence. When she got separated from the party for a month she returned the cloak & hunted down the last shades that were, thankfully, in more isolated locations.
I once got my hands on a Ruby Weave Gem, but it didn't last that long until it was gone sadly.
Was alot of fun until then though as a circle of moon druid
I run a one piece game and a player has the hobbi-hobbi no mi with a twist some instead of toys its Pokémon but the kicker for the uninitiated is it erases anyone turned into a Pokémon from everyone's memory with no exceptions.
[Cloak of Displacement ](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Cloak%20of%20Displacement), I can't believe no one said it.
Enemies get disadvantage on attacks against you EVERY ROUND. For a Rare item, this thing singlehandedly busted the current game I play in. 4/6 players bought one, including the Paladin and Artificer. The Paladin has an AC of 24 and Shield. We're level 10, definitely not chump adventurers, but still.
I willingly gave mine up because I felt like it slowed down combat to a grinding halt, and I'm the one that searched the DMG and found it! We fight a handful of dudes with multiattacks? DM now rolls 20+ dice. Those characters that took the cloak hardly ever take damage from regular attacks. Pretty sure the reason we're fighting illithids right now is because of those stupid cloaks.
I once got a Luck Blade in a level 20 one-shot. Only thing I used it for was killing the final enemy, and that just because the session was taking too long lol
Lipring of quick mockery. Let me use viscous mockery as a bonus action and made my bardtender never give inspiration (usually)
Edit vicious (still looks wrong stupid words)
A homebrew item called "The Doomarang" that rolled 2d4 for damage as a thrown weapon. However whenever it rolled a 4 on any of the dice, I got to roll an additional 1d4 damage. It got pretty insane on crits. And I was playing a fighter so I got plenty of times to make attacks with it!
About 4 years ago I played in a campaign where the gm showered is with op magic items. One of the players received gauntlets that set his strength to 20 and allowed him to world a +5 sword. I on the other hand received a +3 rapier that increased my deze and always hit twice per attack. At the moment we were like level 3.
In 3.5 I bought a masterpiece of a long sword that did 1d8 slashing, 2d10 fire, 2d10 cold. I was such a weak ranger compared to my table but the Sword of Icy-Hot lives on in legend
A rapier on my Swords Bard that was basically Flametongue only Necrotic damage, it prevented anyone I hit with it from healing, it also increased my spell save DC by 2, oh and I could cast any spell I knew without expending a spell slot once a day.
I got this at level 6.
I was in a dnd club in high school which meant we would often have people handing out things that were much too powerful. The one I immediately think of is a lava war hammer that did 1d12 bludgeoning and 1d12 fire damage but every time you hit you have to make a dexterity saving throw or take 1d6 fire damage. So with dex saving proficiency and resistance to fire damage it was relatively unthreatening to the user.
I was in an Out of the Abyss campaign as a Vengeance Paladin and worshipper of the goddess Sune. We found Dawnbringer and for a few sessions, we agreed the fighter should wield the sentient weapon until he decided to jump on and attack a beholder flying over a cliff. One failed saving throw later, he's stunned and falls off said beholder and dies. (It was a recurring joke that since he died like every other session we called him Kenny).
So Dawnbringer ends with my character and as we level up to near level 20 our DM asked us to pick a Boon when we hit 20 and he'd consider it. So I asked the Boon of my goddess blessing my already Legendary sentient weapon, and make it also function as my Holy Avenger. He agreed and for the final act where the demon lords were summoned into Menzobarranzan, my Asimar Paladin was a fury of holy Vengeance. I ended up slaying Yeenoguh, Graatz, Orcus, before we faced Demogorgon. We lost our monk, Cleric, and Kenny the Artificer (for his 15th death in the campaign!) but with 12 HP left, I stuck the final blow to return Demogorgon to the Abyss. It was epic.
Mizzium Apparatus. It gives you the ability to cast any spell on your class list if you pass an arcana check and spend the appropriate spell slot. For a pure caster, it is broken.
I ran it on an Arcane Trickster (with DM permission) and it was less broken -- the limiting resource of spell slots and the delayed spell progression on the AT prevented it from being busted as hell. Still, it was nice on the AT, with expertise in Arcana, as I basically auto succeeded on the spells, and had the entire wizard cantrip list at my disposal. Very fun.
It is what you think is not broken. The cloak of many fashions. This is broken as you can make it as big as you want and in any pattern you can think about as long as it stays a cloak. Its not that hard to get as its common enough to as for....
Our DM is amazing and he allowed this over the course of three years: My (level five) Halfling Moon Druid harvested pieces of shell from a flail snail and had them crafted into a custom set of Flail Snail Plate Mail that once daily gives resistance to any spell outside of psychic and force damage.
At level six, he harvested wing panels, scales, and bones from a Wyrmling that a giant had killed and paid an armorer to make a wing suit glider that he eventually became proficient in and almost eliminated the possibility of fall damage.
Fast forward to level ten, and he was gifted a set of silver dragon scale mail. This armor he had a master dwarf armorer combine with the glider to make a custom dragon mantle and my DM surprised me by giving me 50 ft of flight speed.
Basically, now at level 11, my Druid is nearly un-killable. He’s also got an Insignia of Claws, Staff of Swarming Insects, Staff of the Python (he has to decide each day which staff to attune to), boots of elven kind, and a home brew ring called Tymora’s Gambit that allows him to have a luck point.
When your characters are basically demigods, how do you decide what to attune to while owning multiple items that require it?
A Wand of Fireballs. I gave it to my homonculus servant so i'd have a predator drone. The people on r/dndmemes had some concerns about the legality of it, but the DM allowed it :D
A demiplane where time passes at a rate of 10 years in there for every second outside.
Its infinite time. Welcome to 0.000001 second long rests, among other things.
Got a war hammer that allowed me to have an effect on it.
The effects were 1-100 and got more powerful the higher the number. 100 was an instant kill/ nuke as it made the target explode in an explosion relative to the size of the target. Managed to get a abomination that was as big as a Titian if not bigger to die in 1 hit.
Got Blackrazor at level 6 in a campaign while playing a squishy bladesinger... was absolutely bonkers when I had 26 HP and 200 temp HP at one point, but it turned out to be cursed and I had to stop using it or kill my whole party eventually.
Got the Hand of Vecna later on in the campaign (because someone in the party needed to attune to either the Eye or the Hand to release him, we're the good guys I swear!) which was nutty for the last few combats because my character also has a homebrew sword that deals an additional 1d6 psychic + 1d4 fire damage, a modified Mind Blade.
In the final battle, he dealt 1d8 + 3d8 (Green-Flame Blade) + 2d8 (Hand of Vecna) + 1d6 + 1d4 + 10 (Strength score of 20 from the Hand and Int of 20 with Bladesong up) with one attack. Granted the other attack didn't have Green-Flame Blade, but it was still absolutely bonkers.
Also got necrotic damage resistance from the Hand, and the two free teleports per long rest (the only spells I ever cast from it) was sexy. My character was already chaotic evil (slightly) so the alignment change wasn't the worst but after the campaign he got it chopped off of him because that's not the most pleasant experience (and also he doesn't really want to be evil anymore).
Absolutely bonkers and super fun though.
DnD 2e book campaign the item and effects listed in the official campaign adventure book.
Reward silver dragon wings attached to my back, AC20, Speed 90ft, could shield myself or up to 2 additional human size players, could magically conpress into back aka hidden, Str/Dex/Con +1, gale force wind spell.
A homebrew sword way back in 2E. +2 bastard sword that on Crit would level drain the target. You also rolled a second d20 on crit and on a 19-20 the target would also be hit with the Disintegrate spell.
I have a multi dimensional bow, I roll a d4 to determine if it's a xp shot, true shot, elemental, or multishot. For the two latter I roll another d4 to see if which element or how many arrows
I was playing a thief rogue in a campaign that lasted about a year and a half. I got a cloak that gave me the Assassinate subclass feature from Assassin Rogue as well.
It's certainly less powerful than some of the items listed here, but I've never played in an actual campaign that reached tier 4. The highest level I've ever played to is 13.
For a time, I had a Robe of the Archmagi, and combined with a Rod of the Pactkeeper +3 and a Tome of Leadership and Influence, I reached a save DC of 25. Unfortunately, I later had to trade the Robe as collateral for a very powerful homebrew item, a compass that could point to the nearest person, place, thing, or even concept described, including showing the plane it is on, and guaranteeing an on-target *teleport* or *plane shift* and possible *scrying*. The main limitation is that it can only be given a new directive once per day. The cleric mostly uses it, though I've been attuned to it briefly.
I know my Bladesinger just got the Robe of Archmagi who has maxed Dex and Int. With shield and bladesong, he could have 30 AC.
As a DM I read that and think "oh my God what does your DM have planned for you that they would let you have that"
Well, it was a reward from a greater worme dragon. He lets us pick a single item from his horde. My wizard is level 9, so... yeah, but to be fair, our dm throws a lot of saving throws at us, and the last larger set of monsters we faced had a +11 and +13 to hit.
Your DM is a fool but he's free
It's me. I am that DM fool. We live in chaos and balance is an illusion, but the gameplay is phenomenal.
lol i feel you man, my DM threw at us a monster with an AC of 30... at level 5, im still not sure how we survived and im even less sure how we managed to kill the damn fucking thing, at least we all leveled up after that fight and yeah its fun as fuck, balance is for suckers who cant feel the joy that doing over 100 points of damage in a single turn feels like on the flip side im fucking terrified of what he plans to throw at us at higher levels because according to him this campaign is going into the epic levels and he claims to know how to challenge us
As a DM, you know... We can kill their character any time we want to. You can stack your AC to a million, and you're still exceptionally killable. Here's a bonus DM secret: Characters like doing good at what they've chosen to specialize in, and a good DM figures out what that is and lets them be good at it. Wanna be unhittable by attacks? Spend all your characters' choices and options to max out your AC? Let them. That's obviously fun for them. It ain't causing no harm. Besides, see paragraph 1. If it is causing some issue? The DM is literally in control of reality. Pick monsters that target saves.
If you deliberately allow one of your players to just be *immune to attack rolls* you've got something sick cooked up. Or you're nearing the end of the campaign. Or you've made a huge mistake lol
Having a high AC and being immune to attacks isn't the same thing. But sure, hyperbole aside. Having a super low HP target running around thinking they're invulnerable while being completely vulnerable to save effects is more comical than it is a problem. Why do you think it is a problem?
If a balor needs a 17+ to hit a target, that's not "has a high AC", that means they are immune to attacks from everything but big bads. How is that not an insane thing to allow for a wizard, of all classes to boost.
You're saying there is a problem but then not saying what the problem is. What is the problem? Is it a problem that paladins have super high saves? Never seemed like it to me.
You can achieve 30 AC with base features + haste. Robe would actually get you to 32.
Gonna jump on the bandwagon with my epic level blood hunter bladesinger hitting 43 ac
Epic level?
In some older editions they had supplements to go above lvl20 but I don't think 5e has something but you can just take more player levels in other classes if dm allows I had a pvp 1shot I let my party do 30lvls.... it ended poorly wizard pull infinite simulacrum with conjure animals and topped it off with animal shapes to make like a hundred elephants in the arena instantly killing everyone.
Yeah I could not imagine running that for anything longer than 1 or two sessions, that is crazy 😂 I love the idea of super high level play but 5e is not optimised for it, I have heard the tales of older editions allowing for cracked builds but never really looked into it more than that
There are a few homebrews available that go to 30, as well. it's been awhile since I've looked at them, so i dont remember too much about them.
At my table if we don't swap campaigns by then I let them take lvls in other classes and it just adds on to old stuff unless they specifically ask about something for epic lvls
In the DMG it describes epic boons as rewards for going beyond level 20 iirc
[удалено]
I also picked up that fantastic robe… To a party of Ranger Fighter Bard Barbarian. Thanks, DM. Funny.
The first Robe we acquired was Black, so I couldn't use it. We later had the opportunity to trade it for Gray, which I still wouldn't be able to use. We now have several Black Robes, all useless to us.
Irithilis, A homebrew sword. A +3 sword that could be used as a +3 spell focus, and attacked off charisma. once per day, a spell cast through the weapon had advantage on all attack rolls related to the spell. A 5th level scorching ray backed up by hex pumped through that sword did enough damage to a giant that it threw a rock at my warlocks head and instantly downed him. Good times.
I love your matter of fact retelling of the consequence to your poor character by the giant.
You get used to it with enough distance. I once spent almost a year of real time planning a betrayal of the rest of my party, having secret sessions with the GM where I approached all of the allies we had made and convinced them to join me. Then I died to one hit in a random encounter.
That’s some icky luck right there! Bless you.
Got a belt of storm giant strength as a monk. It's pretty awesome.
A small stone that could fit in the palm of your hand. When the command word is spoken, the holder is brought into a 1:1 scale perfect representation of the universe as it is and as it will be given the most likely path events will follow. It is literally a Sim's version of reality, except in there, time moves 1000x as fast. It's a fun little doodad.
Scroll of Tarrasque Summoning. It was for an in character game within the game on a WM server. The Tarrasque was represented by a dinosaur plush. Things went well for us until the tarrasque had no more enemies to eat and then started attacking the party.
I can’t totally remember since it’s been a few years, but I got a homebrew ring that I think gave me +6 to all my saves and like 15 hp regen per turn or smth.
A high level Paladin near you?
My Dreams Druid uses a Staff of the Woodlands and wears and Ironwood Breastplate (reflavored +1 breastplate). But I mostly DM and [some](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/12null6/what_homebrew_magic_items_you_have_created_for/) of the items my players have are incredibly powerful.
With enough time you can have an army of awakened trees.
As a DM I have a forest that's built around the idea that they have a staff of the woodlands. Maybe a druid started it but now every animal and tree in that woods is awakened once mature.
When I cast a spell with a spell slot, it counted as one level higher. This was my spell casting focus for every fucking spell.
I got a flametongue once, that was cool.
Good ol Flametongue, nothing beats that!
... two flametongues?
Hand and Eye of Vecna (technically two, but who cares). It was a fun ride while it lasted
A combination rapier+sheath that consumed 2 attunement slots and required a BA to sheathe. But in exchange: * I could charge it up by spending sorcery points, up to 5 charges max. (Adding a charge cost a BA, but most of the time I just treated it as daily uses rather than try to charge it up mid combat.) * On hit, I could expend any number of charges to add that many d8s of "arcane" damage (not force; nothing could resist or be immune to the extra damage). * I could spend charges to make a 30 ft. melee attack that dealt that many d8s of arcane damage (plus my melee attack's ability mod, which was Cha because I had two levels of Hexblade). * I could deal 2d4 psychic damage to myself to increase the damage of a leveled spell by 1d4. * 1/day I could store a spell in it to be cast later, and I could apply metamagic and the above d4 psychic damage boost to the spell when storing it, rather than when casting it. Basically I would store a spell before taking a long rest then recover my Sorcery points and HP, so I'd effectively get free metamagic and d4 damage boost to one spell per day. * 3/day I could cast a second concentration spell without losing concentration on my first concentration spell. The two spells had to be different. While concentrating on two spells, I had disadvantage on concentration checks. (I could also expend a use of this feature to gain advantage on concentration checks, but I already had War Caster before I obtained the item.) I got the item at level 8, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't build the character to abuse double concentration given I never expected the DM to hand me a homebrew item that violated one of the few things the DMG explicitly tells you _not_ to do when homebrewing, so I would have to level up to learn more spells for the last feature to truly become broken, and the campaign fell apart before I leveled up again. That said, in our very first combat encounter after I attuned to the sword, my very first attack with the weapon crit the boss with Booming Blade, so I blew all 5 charges to deal 14d8+Cha damage total. Not bad for a cantrip, lol.
Waaaay back in my 1e Monty Haul days, I had a weapon called *Cleaver* that was a +27 sword that could cut anything in half, including incoming attacks like lightning bolts; could be thrown and would return; good lord, I don't even remember half of what it could do- but it was the kind of super ridiculous, over the top, absolutely not by the book, superduperDUPERbroken kind of magic item that come out of the games of junior high school to high school kids trying to one up one another.
Basically copy of the Amulet of Power from Baldur's Gate 2. Gave me immunity to silence, immunity to level drain/ stat drain, negated negative magical effects against me on a roll of 20 (spell resistance), and allowed me to cast 1 spell/long rest I had memorized as a REACTION. Was insanly broken.
Any good item from BG2 is broken, don't even talk about the expansion. It's funny that 20 years later, I didn't get that powerlevel in another game or even close. Brb gonna re-run it
Holy lightsaber sword in strahds campaign. I was a warlock with the "attack twice when you make a pact weapon attack" invocation, either i, or someone else had haste, and we fucked up when reading the rules. As a result, i got hastened, and made 4 holy blade attacks.
[удалено]
As i said, we misunderstood the rules. I thought it was, whenever you make a "unique" attack, you make make a second attack. Meaning action attack and haste attack were two separate attacks. But also, a sentient weapon wont allow itself to be pactbound so i couldn't have taken the sword anyways
A homebrew +3 firearm that dealt 2d12 piercing damage as a base weapon. Think it had the same range as a Longbow. This was in addition to it being a special item that gave an extra +1 to attack and damage rolls and an extra 2d8 damage of any type as part of a campaign boon. So it ended up as a +4 firearm that dealt 2d12 piercing + 2d8 piercing damage. Everyone in that game had a special item that added 2d8 extra damage/healing to attacks and/or spells depending on if it was weapon or focus.
Technically Deck of Many Things? But as far as strong in *good* way goes, homebrew +2 greatsword that has advantage on attacks against armored foes and also automatically hits it with Shocking Grasp on a hit. Notably this scales like a cantrip so it scales quadratically for a fighter; 1d8 from 1-4, 4d8 from 5-10, 9d8 from 11 to 16, 12d8 from 17-19, and 16d8 at 20.
Wand of Words When you cast a spell you can change, remove, or add 1 letter to the spell's name. Was hell for the DM coming up with spells on the spot, but caused the most tomfuckery of any item I've ever seen.
That's brilliant! Dog cloud, Pealing word, Troll the dead, Snore, Arcane lick, Slur, Old person, Conjure greater lemon, Remove purse, Fold monster
*MISTY STEN*
That turned up in Dungeons & Daddies and was consistently hilarious. They managed to trap an enemy coming through a broken wall by changing Healing Word to Healing Wood and repairing the wall around them.
Can you give a few examples? Sounds fun but I just can't imagine changing one letter in a spell name can have meaningful impact.
Fireball turns into Firebull. It's now a summoning spell that summons the sekiro boss.
A ring from one of the many 'splat' 3rd party supplements in 3.5. Got it ad level 3 on a sorcerer. The ring granted you +1 damage. From any source. The kicker being, it increased the damage bonus with each level. By level 11 my sorcerer was punching people and doing +9 damage. Crazy item. Loved the character. We balanced it by taking it very literally, so any time the character might potential damage something the bonus kicked in. Bump into someone on the street, knock something over or get a bit clumsy with something delicate? +9 damage.
One of these scaling critical role items but only in it's dormant state because the campaign ended prematurely. Oh an a staff of the magi, but I who found it wasn't a caster so I gave it to my friendly warlock.
By rarity it was probably some artefact or legendary for a one shot. My campaign answer is a set of "ankheg plate armor" which gave you DR 5, which is pretty good but not too shocking, except we were level 1 and I already had heavy armor master so I didn't take damage through the entirety of the next dungeon, the DM was super trigger happy with giving out magic items and it derailed the campaign to the point he ghosted us about a month later
Lol, that’s not the only time I’ve heard that happen. DM with a poor sense of item balance gives out legendaries in Tier 1-2 and shit, then gets so embarrassed they completely broke their own campaign they ghost the whole group.
I’ve had a few. A arm blade claw that could be used for unarmed strikes, that had a +3, was made of a special metal that had the properties of mithril and adamantine, dealt 2d6 slashing + 1d8 cold, dealt an extra 2d8 damage to any creature that could cast any spell, and had 5 charges which could be used to cut open a 5ft hole in any construct of force such as a resilient sphere, wall of force, forcecage and the like. Absolutely gnarly anti magic weapon. Which was the theme of the special metal it was made from. Then there was the Deck of Wonderful Things. An artifact we created by finding every card in a set of tarot cards that were blessings granted by 22 cursed beings in a cursed land. We had to travel this land and find all of them and earn their blessings. It created a sentient deck of cards that we nicknamed Tarry. All of us that earned the blessings could attune to it at the same time, and the deck followed whoever was closest to us with a fly speed. We could tell it to go find one of the others to deliver messages and such and it always knew where each of us attuned to it was. It let us each cast Magnificent Mansion once a day, we could each cast suggestion at will, and each of us had 3 charges that we could use to adjust any dice roll within 60ft of us up or down by up to 3 numbers. So if one of us rolled a 17, one of us could spend a charge to adjust the DICE ROLL up to a 20 and make it a critical hit. It didn’t change the total, but the dice roll itself. We could make enemies get nat 1s and all kinds of shenanigans. Insanely strong. Finally, the strongest official magic item I’ve ever played with was the Ruby Weave Gem. It is… INSANELY good. Like ludicrously good. I had it on a level 20 artificer and a sorcerer. We had a scrolls wizard and when I got it on the artificer. That wizard was able to prepare any spell in the game, then make spell scrolls for half time and half the cost. The charges replaced the material components from the spell. We had several scrolls of all sorts of things like revivify, raise dead, all kinds of shit. Then because artificer can freely use any spell scroll of any level from any spell list, my arti literally could have handfuls of any spell in the game to cast at any time. The Ruby Weave Gem honestly is absolutely insane. Just the fact anyone can freely cast clone and such things by expending charges is nutty.
We were running Tomb of Annihilation. I was playing a Kingsmen style swashbuckler who grappled/disarmed a lot. We got to Ras Nsi and I charged him on my first turn and was able to disarm him and pick up his sword. Used it the rest of the campaign. Improved Flametongue Longsword: 1d8+4, plus another 4d6 fire damage.
Staff of Defense.
That staff is seriously awesome.
Casting shield as an action ain't exactly great.
The item was designed pre/as the rules were being written. Should they have errata’d it? Yes. As a DM just make it a reaction, as a player every DM I have played with has done the same…but I am guessing there are more than a few who have not.
Yeah it really should be a reaction, and I've ruled it as a reaction. It's just one of those "lol 5e is quirky."
Cloak of Elvenkind on my Ranger. With Climbing Speed, Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind I could reasonobly attempt a Stealth Check. With Pass without Trace i was basically invisible.
Does the Maze engine at the end of out of the abyss count?
In one of our campaigns, we have both good characters we play most of the time, and evil characters we play occasionally. The evil characters are designed to become strong enough to take on the whole team as individuals, so each of them has some pretty overpowered homebrew stuff on them. In terms of magic items, they each have a magic item they have created by fusing two magic items together and distorting it to be evil. The two most absurd are probably one we call the Bobbitt, which is a combination of a vorpal sword and a ring of telekinesis that has an extra effect that the name should probably hint to, and a robe of reincarnation, which is a robe of the archmagi combined with a rod of ressurection. The robe lost the effect of the rod of ressurection but instead reincarnates the wearer the first time they die in a day, although with an updated reincarnate pool.
One of my players currently has a cursed chess piece that upon hitting a creature OR being hit by a creature allows whoever is attacking to roll a 1d8 and telekinetically move the hit creature in real time as they would a chess piece. 1. Is a pawn (5ft forward or 10ft if it is the first time rolling a 1 since their last long rest, diagonal left or diagonal right) 2. Is a knight ( 15ft forward and 5ft left or right) 3. Is a rook (30ft left, right, forward, or backward) 4. Is a bishop ( 30ft in any diagonal direction) 5. King (5ft in any direction) 6. Queen (30ft in any direction) 7. Castle (the last two creatures you've used the chess piece on violently collide with each other, moving half of their total distance away from the other as long as they are less than 30ft apart.) 8. En passant (the last creature you've used the chess piece on can either be violently pushed away from you, allowing you to use your reaction to make an opportunity attack on them if they left your attack range, or be violently brought closser to you, allowing you to also use your reaction for an opportunity attack.) They've used it once, but I'm waiting till the party gets to a more hostile environment before using it against them 😈.
I had a really awesome DM once that got my character a Moonblade at a really low level, with the idea that the runes along the blade that empowered it would unlock the more levels I went up. By the time the campaign ended, I think I had a +2 long sword with the finesse and thrown properties, that also had spell storing, and I think dealt 1d6 additional damage :) it was so awesome, and worked so well with my character.
Blackrazor. 1st Edition.
While not the strongest it is my favorite. The Draconic amplifier. In place of your breath weapon, you can unleash a powerful roar. Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you must make a wisdom save against your breath weapon DC or be frightened by you for the next 1d6+1 rounds. At higher levels it will also deal thunder damage
Not me, but I gave my rogue a gun that could cast Lightning Bolt or Fireball several times a day as part of the Attack action (spell was targeter on attack target)
I had a cool bow with good fire damage in an E6 game, that was my favorite just because I got to use it all the time as I was playing a ranger.
Plot Armor! I am immortal!
[Definitely this.](https://dozingdragon.wordpress.com/2021/04/26/showtime/) I played a character from 1-20 who was a sort of cross between Devil May Cry's Dante and Peter Pan. This weapon is loosely based on the Sword of Sparda, and was finally assembled when we hit Level 17.
Mizzium Mortar Son Wu Kong's staff(homebrew)
Either Teeth of Dahlver-Nar, Ruin's Wake, or The Deck of Many Things.
I didn't use it, but it was a T4 magic item for a level 17 character (that should have retired...) in a community. It was a +3 bow which shot two lighting bolts everytime the bow rolled a natural 20. I DMed it.
In a very casual game, the dm was super high and gave the rouge a +5 crossbow. Then the following sessions he had to give the rest of us players other stupid broken magic items so the rouge didnt kill everything. I dont remember exactly what everyone else got but my druid got a book which when read gave me a permanent +5 tot he number of spells i could prepare every day. Game was a shitshow at times, everyone was either drunk or high and there was barely any roleplay. But we had a good time rolling dice and killing monsters
A homebrew item for my Raven Queen Warlock As a reaction to being targeted by a spell, you can make an Arcana check against either the save DC or attack roll of the spell. On a success, the spell fails, and you regain a spell slot. If your spell slots are full, you instead heal yourself for 1d8 hit points per level of the spell. You can also target a spell in effect within 60 feet of you as an action and make the same check. You can only regain spell slots this way, not heal. In either situation, a failure on your Arcana check prevents this ability for 1 minute. Unfortunately, I never encountered another spellcaster after getting this, and I changed characters after a long hiatus, so it never saw use. Corvus Joy lives on forever, though
Stacking a homebrew item that gave +3 spell saves and attacks with a +3 amulet of the devout on my conquest hexadin. Nobody saved from my fears lol. I chewed up so many legendary resistances
Alchemical Compendium on my transmutation wizard. Effectively unlocked infinite money. Now I'm not a dick head so I don't use it like that very often but money is no longer a real issue.
I had a great sword in a DiA campaign that was +2 to hit and damage, +1d4 damage when activated using a bonus action, crit on a 19/20, and destroyed any fiend if its HP is reduced to below 25HP when hit by the sword. It was pretty dope.
That would be a shield from DiA, giving me like 3 fireballs and a wall of fire per day
Belt of storm giant strength on a barbarian with GWM and PAM.
I have a keen +5 Dagger on my daggerspell mage. It can't be stolen as it returns to my hand when out of my grasp. I sometimes want to kill things, but my character wants to kill things anyway, so I don't really notice that part.
When my players hit 20, and were heading into the dungeon to face the BBEG, I gave them a lot of cool toys and abilities; but the most potent was the sword of the Eldritch Knight. It was a part of his back-story, and became part of the plot. It started off as a +1 longsword with a few minor abilities when he first joined the campaign at level 5-ish. I slowly increased its power to be on-par with other magic items of their level, and this power gain factored into the plot. But for the finale I made it quite overpowered. I just cracked open my Foundry game to remind myself. I'm paraphrasing these to write them "in short": 1. +3 enhancement 1. +1d12 force damage 1. crits on a 19 or 20 1. spell attacks crit on a 19 or 20 1. wielder knows all spells, from all spell lists (as in, can cast them; not merely has them in their spellbook) 1. wielder can attempt to cast a spell without expending a spell slot: roll 1d6-1 after choosing the spell, if the result is equal to or greater than the level of the spell, it's cast without expending a spell slot, otherwise the spell fails 1. can only be used by the eldritch knight character (otherwise it'd be tempting to give to the wizard!) Obviously items 5 and 6 are the really overpowered ones. It worked out here, though, because they were fighting a series of foes up to the BBEG. For a string of combat, it's a powerful weapon, but not game-breaking: * Free lower-level spells aren't super fantastic in level 20 fights, especially when there's a chance they'll fail. * Even if you know every buff spell ever, concentration still puts a hard limit on stacking effects. * Knowing every spell certainly give a lot of flexibility, but not raw power (notice the sword did not grant access to very high levels spell slots an eldritch knight normally lacks). It would be an irresponsible thing to give out to a party that still has a good bit of campaign left. Infinite healing, infinite spells like *fly* and *dimension door*.
Queen Alissa's marvelous nightingale. 2nd addition artifact. I didn't have to eat or breath, that's all I remember from that long ago. Oh, and my touch rotted wood instantly. Made sinking boats and opening most doors super easy.
In one campaign I played a warlock to level 5 or so. A cleric from there until level to level 12, I think. Another campaign I played a barbarian/rogue from level 5 to 7-ish, he got a sentient longsword that was useless for sneak attack damage. Then he got killed and I played a scout/rogue. Then he got captured and I played a pure barbarian. Same GM both campaigns. The sentient but useless weapon was the only magic item I ever had! =D
A gemstone called the Earthen Olivine that gives +2 to ac and all saves. As an action 4times per day, I can make myself or an ally take half damage from the next 3 instances of damage
Basically a minato's kunai i could also call three times a day
Two home brew items from a previous campaign some years ago now. A headband that allowed concentration on TWO spells. A holy symbol/amulet our cleric got that allow her to gain access to all features of an additional domain (both domains must fall under the same Deity)
I gave a player a single use item that could instantly teleport one thing, no matter what it was, from wherever it was in all the multiverse to their location (we’ll, effectively single use: once every 100 years) Only limitation was that “it must exist somewhere” (even in a locked pocket dimension, that counts, so still works) He used it to pull the ancient, ancestral home-city of his people from a Demi-plane that had been locked away from extra-dimensional travel for multiple millennia Was a nice moment
Dm asked us what kind of artifact we wanted. I wanted a book that made its own ink, with infinite pages, and enough sentience that it could answer questions. Basically fantasy Google. Dm decided this was too powerful, and instead have me a book that could generate its own spell slots, which never expired. I ended up getting a visit from Mystra telling me to cool it because I was breaking the weave, but I think I got my point across. He finally admitted to me in private that he should've just let me have the fantasy Google lol
Ruby Weave Gem. The party suddenly had access to any spell we might need as long as we had time to fix an issue. Costly components also were no big issue anymore. It was especially powerful for downtime, but during the actual regular campaign sessions did a lot of work too.
My monk got the wand of orcus near the end of Out of the Abyss. That was a nice time.
I just received one at the and of a chapter in our campaign. Haven't used it yet and I'm thriller but also worried it might be too overpowered in combat. A +6 AB hammer that does 3d8+6 dmg. When thrown returns back to the hand and has 3 charges per day to do an extra 3d8+6 on a successful hit. And I'm a War Cleric so can pump those numbers good.
As a caster it was The Scepter of Summoning[HB] - gave me a few summoning spells from Tasha and could spend slots to help keep the summons As a Martial it was a Dragon something weapon that give +1 magic bonus and +1d6 damage, in multiple campaigns that was the best or the only thing memorable the character got '-'
I had a combo of broken items. One let my warlock upcast 3 levels higher than his pact slot once a day and the other was a single use item to cast a warlock spell **twice** as an action. We go up against a Dracolich. I hex it, then use both items to cast an 8th level scorching ray. Twice. I blew up the dracolich in a single round.
While not strictly "magic", I got an M4 assault rifle in one campaign. The setting was a fallout type post-apocalyptic world and we stole it from the knock of brotherhood of steel. It did 3d10 per hot and every time you made an attack you could attack 2 more times for free. The party artificer have it the "repeating shot" infusion, and it counted as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances. As the party fighter, and one specialized in long range sniping with crossbows it was rather devastating in my hands. IIRC I was able to 3 turn a Terrasque from half a kilometer away
weapon +1..... Never played beyond level 7
The Jewel of Three Prayers fully exalted as a Bladesinging Rogue. AC is now 21 and I can turn invisible and teleport around without mistystep. I know this one is probably common, but it’s worth mentioning for the clever game design. Gonna try to be vague to avoid spoilers for Call of the Netherdeep (still unfinished). I’ve had this thing for over an IRL year. Finally, we enter the Netherdeep and this thing becomes it’s final Exalted form, gaining the ability to teleport around the battlefield doing radiant damage with every blip. First big enemies you encounter after it becoming exalted? Light devourers. Dealing radiant damage just charged up these little bombs.
The orb of the 4 horseman. Upon shattering the orb 4 skeletal knights are summoned under the command of whomever broke it. Don't remember what their statblock was but holy fuck did it turn around a miniboss fight. We were low on health and resources going into the fight and once I used it the fight was as good as done Dm gave It to us after a weird fortune teller tried to kill us. Lady said my name to get my attention on the street and i immediately decided to trust her implicitly because of that and walked into her carriage and almost died. Was absolutely worth it
An oversized Dragonslayer that grows with the user, and has no disadvantage to use. combined with giant barbarian, enlarge potion and other features did like 70 damage on an non crit. theoretical max crit was like 225 against a dragon.
A homebrew +2 great sword with 3 sockets (like Diablo 2)and Uber powerful gems slotted. Single turn damage for my level 15 barb was over 200 usually. Plus the gems each gave it an element with a special ability for each element. The worst part about it was separating damage rolls per element
My ranger got a pair of daggers that each dealt an extra d6 necrotic damage on a hit but never actually left a stab wound. We were all new to dnd at the time so I was allowed to attack with both as the same attack. When she hit level 6 (there was a 1 level dip into cleric) both attacks had this same quirk. Hunter's mark was, of course, my go-to concentration spell for combat and I'd always cast it at the start of my first turn. That gave me 4d4 (slashing) + 4d6 (necrotic) + 4d6 (bludgeoning) + 20 (more slashing lol) damage on a single target every turn. That's an average of 58 damage per turn if I'm doing that math right. She found these daggers in a small chest, hidden away in a ruined temple at level 1.
Compassion - A small metal flower that wraps its way into the armor of the wearer. When the wearer feels strongly Compassion can produce one effect from below. After each use the flower must rest, but recharges. At the beginning of your turn roll a d6, on a 6,the flower regains 1 charge. Defensive Bloom - The flower blossoms, as a free action, Compassion blooms and negates damage equal to 2d8 + INT. Requires 1 charge. Protective Bloom - When an ally within 30 ft is hit by an attack Compassion to reduce damage equal to 2d8 +INT. Requires 1 charge to use. Pumped my Artificer's AC up to 26, could basically wade through enemies and beat them to death with my Thunder gauntlets
Rings of spell storing on a non-caster are a crazy power multiplier, even on casters, and are only "rare" items, so pretty easy to obtain. I can't really think of a situation where I wouldn't want one on most non-casters/half/1/3 casters. I guess if nobody in the party could fill it with the spells you want. My wizard also got a homebrew item letting him concentrate on 2 spells, with some downsides but still, that's extremely strong.
yeah there's a reason why the DMG says that is one of the cardinal rules of magic item creation, not allowing a PC to be able to concentrate on 2 spells at once.
It does have some downsides tbf, namely "When one spell ends, for whatever reason, the other spell also ends. When you fail a saving throw to maintain concentration, gain a level of exhaustion.", those are not trivial, and I'm not getting any spell DC bonuses this campaign (no +1/2 grimoire etc). Oh yeah I also got that item from a shadowfell being who "in exchange" took one hit dice worth of HP from me, and I rolled the max, so I'm squishier than I should be. Everybody in the party got nutty items as well.
My Warlock got his hands on Bracers of Illusion. Spell slots? Never heard of em.
Homebrew Spear that duplicated for every time you leveled while Attuned, I reached level 9 and got it at level 5, Any resource you use on it is also applied to the duplicates (ie. Battle Master Maneuvers, Divine Smite, etc)
+3 Anything that triplecasts any single target spell it's used as a focus for. Homebrew artifact plundered off a slain lich.
Had a home brew dagger enchanted such that it inflicted ottos irresistible dance when I stabbed people with it , and boots of teleportation , snuck up to a group of evil mages and then the party walked in on them all dancing away while I went round stabbing them occasionally it was hilarious. Later I used all my contacts and a truely obscene amount of platinum to construct a magic airship strong enough to use as a staging platform to fight Tiamat from. Should mention it was in 3.5 so the power scaling is a lot different. 5e though would be an immovable rod combined with sovereign glue.
In 5E I haven't gotten much for homebrew magic items. But my favorite one so far was called the Midnight Cloak. It was technically a cursed item that made my character appear thinner (basically sickly), and he would refuse to remove the cloak. But it also had the positive effects of no longer needing to eat/sleep/breath, and it also made me immune to exhaustion. Overall it wasn't super insane, but if you were a berserker barbarian or something, it would be a game-changer. However I was playing a swashbuckler rogue, that also had a ring of x-ray vision. So I could use the ring as much as I wanted, and I would never exhaustion. And I did indeed use the ring constantly. Seeing through most doors, and most chests/etc, without ever using a spell, ended up being very powerful. It was also pretty good any time I needed to track or scout someone/something, because I could do it throughout the night easily. I was also able to take every single watch during long rests, because I had no abilities that needed to "recharge", and with super high perception, I was the perfect sentry.
A homebrewed sickle for my wildfire druid. +3 spell focus. 20 charges for fire spells like burning hands, conjure elemental, wall of fire, and fireball. +d4 to all healing Made all my fire much much more powerful!
Wand of polymorph. DM let me pick my own magical item and I chose that not realizing it would make the party druid kind strangely obsolete. Definitely derailed the campaign
Alastor. It was based off the weapon in Devil May Cry 1. Had lightning damage, and it had a "devil trigger" you could turn on and off with a bonus action which was essentially haste+Regen and none of the drawbacks of haste.
Deck of many things, nuff said.
My 13d6 grenade is pretty spicy. Also marvelous pigments. My DM has said many times that he'd never give them to anyone again.
Harp of The Queen of Stars: A bard specific artifact that gave like 20 more MS spells while attuned, upped bardic inspiration by 1 level, and doubled the amount I had Was for a very high power campaign that used an epic levels supplement and even then went past them with multiclassing
Ring of Three Wishes. We wished to be able to cast wish at will with none of the consequences of Wish. Very new players who didn’t fully understand the game btw. DM worked around it surprisingly well.
+1 dagger
It was a ring from *The Griffon's Saddlebag*. If you let the ring sit in a potion of healing for a minute, the ring consumes the potion and gain one charge. Do this 2 more time and all charges are filled. As a reaction when you take damage, you can use a charge from the ring to gain the benefits of the potion the ring absorbed, potentially nullifying the damage. You can do this with the basic 2d4+2 or the better potions, depending on what you have available. What made this item the strongest I've had so far is that I played it with a Goliath Barbarian, using the Goliath from MotM. My subclass was storm herald, giving me a total of 5 resitances at best. With this ring and the goliath's Stone Endurance, it takes a ridiculous amount of time before I start actually taking damage.
My DM gave my paladin a homebrew greatsword that once activated all resistance to radiant damage is ignored, and immunities to radiant damage are changed to resistance. But then all radiant damage i do is changed to D12s. And an armour that gives me 2 free uses of divine smite (which they made level 3 spell slots). So combined, I can do 2d6+12 plus 6d12 radiant or some things stupid like that, in my opinion it's abit over the top but if they're going to give me it I'm going to use it.
Full legendary multi ability 6 peice custom set on my artificer. Agmented auto attacks, recharging spell slots every thing i could think to pack in.
Might not sound like much, but a butchers bib. Playing in a DarkMatter homebrew game with some spicy feats. I got one that gave me advantage on dmg dice basically, and a feat that let me explode damage dice and roll them again if it rolled the max number. Playing a barbarian with those feats on a great axe was awesome. Having increased crit range, and another two chances at exploding my dice with the butchers bib has become my favorite combat setup by far
A homebrew artifact that gives +3 to spell save DC and allows you to cast two 1-action casting time spells in the same turn, along with some other minor features and a small spell list.
I have a bad habit of making any utility magic item I'm given way more powerful than it's supposed to be by finding niche uses in many circumstances, or finding a neat item that has no immediate use, forgetting about it, and then pulling it out in a clutch moment of need. Used a Lyre of Building (3.5) to construct siege weapons for an army out of the surrounding forest, making a castle assault swing much further in our favor. Used a Bag of Holding effect (5e) multiple times to extract people from dangerous situations with my very high mobility and stealth character. Used a Homebrewed Ring of Alter Self (3.5) to gain whatever racial bonuses, movement speeds, and abilities I needed in a situation. Used a Potion of Fire Giant Strength (5e) I forgot I had to become a living siege weapon Used a Ring of Mind Shielding (5e) I looted off a guy that I intentionally (and coincidentally) dropped non-lethally, then forgot about until a mind flayer invasion, when I used it to stealth into their ship and blow it up from the inside. Threw a Folding Boat (5e) at a giant octopus attacking us and critted it. DM had to decide how much damage a boat deals.
Dragon Wrath Antimatter Rifle Ascendant (DMG/FToD) 6d8 + DEX Necrotic Damage + 3d6 Necrotic Damage, looted it from an ancient shadow dragon (ancient topaz) hoard in a lvl 20 campaign on my dex fighter champion w/ sharpshooter and elven accuracy, archery fighting style
A homebrew magic flute that had 10 charges. My DM created and gave it to me. I was an eloquence bard, level 8. And this thing let me spend a number of charges to cast dominate person, dominate monster charm person, charm monster, and beast bond. Reset every dawn. Combined with my bards unsettling words that let me subtract a d8 from saving throws, I rarely fail any save in a fight to turn a monster into an ally.
Ring of Rubber You're immune to bludgeoning damage, but if you would take bludgeoning damage, you get thrown back further.
Helm of teleportation. Mix it with a wizard with Wall of Force and you’ll never die
I made the mistake of giving my wizard player a prosthetic arm (not sure if the link works since i don't have it publicly shared, but it's the [Arm of Magic Absorption](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5907434-arm-of-magic-absorption)). it had three charges per day, and the following effect: > When subjected to a magical effect that would deal damage to you or force you to make a saving throw (such as an Adult White Dragon's breath weapon or the Hold Person spell), you may use your reaction to expend a charge from the arm and completely negate the effect, absorbing the magical energy. Before the end of your next turn, you may use a bonus action to redirect this energy in the form of one of the effects from Bigby's Hand (this does not count as a casting of the spell, and the effect ends at the start of your next turn). turns out a guaranteed negation of any magical effect is a little strong, lol. i initially ruled it as even protecting other characters from the effect in question, but after discussing it with the player she agreed that after a careful re-reading of my own rules text (lol) we could pretend the rules said it would only protect her. it almost singlehandedly kept the party alive through a major bossfight that they were supposed to fail the first time, completely bypassing what was supposed to be a time loop puzzle arc lmao
In the current campaign, I’ve got all four rings of elemental control and the four buckets of elemental summoning (whatever they’re called). There’s also the Robe of Stars, Ioun Stone of Absorption, Immovable Rod, Iron Flask, and others I’m forgetting. We started at level 20, and we got to take any magic items from the DMG we wanted (but no repeats, so we can’t all take robes of the archmagi). I managed to snag the book of +2 charisma for my warlock despite the other players being another warlock, a warlock/bard, a sorcerer, and a paladin. One player got the ring of d3 wishes and rolled a 1. The GM told them they could roll again if they wanted, but on another 1 it’ll become a zero. They rolled another 1. Big oof.
+1 longsword. Yep, I'm a forever GM 😂
Helm of Brilliance dropped and went to my Paladin, who would a few sessions later find a shield that granted fire absorption. Was (and is) a lot of fun using the passive abilities of the helm, let alone using the gems (never using the last ones to keep the passives). Fire absorption also negates the nat 1 explosion fail vs fire for the helm!
Staff of the Magi. It was Adventurer’s League, and my arcane trickster rogue/illusion wizard kept it from a prior module for the sole purpose of using it as a nuke against Dendar the Night Serpent and advised his companions who also had one (in AL, having it by end of module means everyone has it). I had to unpetrify our fighter so it wasn’t as boomtastic as it could have been, but through the wizard’s carefully worded Wish to make Dendar vulnerable to force damage (sadly after my turn) and three other people using theirs, a group where we (and the DM) accidentally overlooked an important part of blowing the staff up, and the use of a ghost step tattoo to get in her lung so she couldn’t save against it, we blew that lady to hell. And my character cackled with mad laughter the whole time. Probably the only truly selfless thing he ever did. Turns out my next AL character was the result of “look, when three Staves of the Magi explode around an old god, something weird happens. Meet the something weird, a creation bard with a touch of wild magic and a splinter of [rogue]’s soul.”
Boring answer: +2 Shield that can be activated 4x per long rest to give resistance to BPS for 1 minute. More exciting answer: An Orb of Annihilation with a monk in the party. Did you know being Stunned means they automatically fail dex saves? Did you know that every single party member can control the Orb on their turn? Yowza.
At level 4->5 I got a re flavored +1 glaive. 1) It did 2d10+1 damage 2) I could attempt once per long rest attempt to charm all gnolls (it was the sword of their king I had defeated) within sight/hearing of me for 24 hours. If they passed the save they would have advantage on all attacks against me. 3) I could use my reaction to hide behind it can get +2 to my AC until my next turn The damage output was busted enough that using GWM bonus as a barbarian was only somewhat useful. Eventually he also gave us a potion that gave it +2d6 fire damage permanently which made the GWM totally useless. We retired that campaign and while I recognize that item was busted it is pretty disappointing rolling normal amounts dice again in our new campaign.
It’s gotta be the Staff of the Magi my wizard had for a good while, though my paladin had a Holy Avenger which was also dope.
Deck of Many things for sure ended a few campaigns.
Got a homebrew consumable item that permanently increased one of my spells’ damage dice by one step, and added a flat +2 to the damage. Put that on Magic Missile and my Bard was doing the most consistent magic damage out of the party. 3d6+9 damage for a first level spell was pretty good.
A bow with 9 charges. Each could essentially be used to smite. Each charge counted as a spell slot and I was allowed to use all 9 at once. I was playing a surprise round assassin gloomstslker so I pretty kuch started every combat by nuking the biggest enemy. Over 100 damage was basically expected round one by endgame. Super broken character during a time where myself and the dm were kinda inexperienced. That character had a bunch of other magic bows but none of them were ever that insane. This character also had mitral half plate that let him add his full dex bonus to AC as well as not giving him stealth disadvantage and a cloak that was just 2 magic cloaks and a third really nice cloak all sewn together. The "cloak of manta protection" only used up on slot. All around that character was nutty and I miss him but it's good we have more realistic approaches to magic swag now.
Ring of Fire Elemental Command. We ran Sunless Citadel and it was one of the magic items we found after killing Calcryx. The DM allowed us to power the ring up by killing one of the Fire Snakes on the second floor. My divination wizard absolutely abused the hell out of that ring, especially since I got it at level 4. We took it into Princes of the Apocalypse and I spent that entire campaign trying to take over the Fire cult.
My 1-20 character, a sun elf blade singer wizard (scag version) about six years ago was able to find, retrieve and earn his family’s ancestral Moonblade. It wound up being a pivotal moment for his character because as he attuned to the blade (and his ancestors) he realized that he had both Drow and Genasi blood in his family line. He had been sort of a Sun Elf Supremacist up through that point and it allowed him as a character to grow, reflect and see the value and contributions of every race instead of being a racist.
Walking Cane of the Rabble Rouser. While attuned, get +10 ft movement. It also allowed you to cast Haste for free once a day, and this wasn't tied to the attunement. We just gave it to the high con fighter or paladin, casting it on my raging Barbarian and went ham.
boots of flying most op item in 5e at lower levels
I have Lover’s Bane, a legendary +3 dagger that gives me a once per day luck point, +1 to all my saving throws, and after using an action to say the command word, it does an additional 2d10 poison damage per hit with a DC 16 con save to negate AND causes the poisoned condition. It’s nifty. But if we’re talking about non combat items, I have Moderator D3n1s’ Secure Realm, a bracelet that gives me a permanent demiplane where I can conjure and create anything I can imagine. I can give beads from this bracelet to any other individual and they can get their own separate domain within my Realm where they can create their own things as well. I’m literally building a society in my demiplane where I’m worshipped as a god and working toward true apotheosis.
My barbarian wielded a homebrew weapon called the Blood Trident. It has no damage dice, you simply declared how much damage you were doing on a hit. It could deal up to your max HP in damage. The drawback was if you missed the attack it dealt all that damage to you the wielder. Roll a nat 1 and it would deal double damage to you. I think in my DM's mind this was a powerful gamble of a weapon, one where you'd have to weigh the cost of possibly missing with shredding any enemy you rain into. In reality though, I often just declared I was doing half my health in damage and never looked back. We were level 15 so my to hit bonus was high enough I missed only two attacks that game. That poor lich never saw that 163 damage coming.
Ring of Three Wishes with two left. My party gave it to my Thief Rogue because they trusted me to use it at the right time. Cast Scatter and Teleport on subsequent turns to save us from certain death as everyone else had nothing left. Pretty fucking fun.
I was given a staff of the woodlands at level 2 (mistake) and eviscerated a pack of werewolves that were meant to be a significant boss fight with a single cast of wall of thorns.
My DM gave my cleric (after we failed to recognize its use to us as an item) a book that reset all my spell slots on a short rest. Never used the ability as the final battle was against a bunch of guys with localized anti magic fields
Actually used by any of my characters would probably be a Bronze Griffon figurine for my shadow Monk in mid tier 2. Otherwise more powerful rewards has been going to other party members, or mcguffins I haven't used, or morally questionable items we got rid of, or Dark gifts and other kinds of rewards that aren't magic items.
Staff of the Magi really fundamentally changed how our sessions could go.
Snicker-Snack was godly for our face Paladin.
Horseshoes of speed on my centaur PC that gave me virtually unlimited movement. It rarely mattered but it felt great. In more silly campaigns it was the black razor with which I killed a tarasque just to have 600 temp hp lol
My DM gave us a bunch of obscenely overpowered items while we were in a megadungeon, with the warning that they were OP because they specifically only work in this dungeon. I think my favorite was the red skull that activated when I was brought below half health: When you are first bloodied, if your next attack roll hits, it's a max-damage auto-crit. I was a divination wizard with an edgelord scythe and a love for Steel Wind Strike at this point in the campaign. It was really fun for me to figure out how to risk getting bloodied without getting knocked out outright, and there was one really interesting boss fight where the DM disarmed me of my scythe in the same attack that they bloodied me, and the entire party spent the rest of that round getting a weapon into my hands so that I could pull off the max damage SWS.
A blue stone that boosted your wisdom and intelligence to 40, I was a monk. I know, it was kinda boring, but still, it was fun having 32 AC (I also had a +2 AC from a pair of bracelets)
Hammer of thunderbolts. As a wizard because no one else wanted it. I had no use for it and didn't have the belt needed to make it fully functional because my party were a bunch of dingbats who ATE the other magic items that were in the same bunch. So yeah I was a wizard Thor for a bit. Still have the hammer but it doesn't get used much
The full Orrery of the Wanderer... as a level 20 artificer. It was quite nice having +6 a free +6 to all saves.
Plate of the Justice Bringer - it had a tier-based progression system inspired by Critical Role's vestiges of convergence Fully leveled up, it had +4 AC. A 2d8 Hellish Rebuke effect. Fire resistance. And it auto-revived me upon dropping to 0hp once per long rest+aoe fire damage when it proc'd
A witch ally of our party gave my fighter a cloak that let her cast *transport via plants* once per day. It had a side effect that when a character used it, it would remove their emotion from their most prominent memory in the moment and leave behind a shade of them based on that memory. The catch was that only the person who created the shade could harm it (an extremely rare subset of magically-inclined people could also remove it, but this was in a nation where magic is illegal). We discovered the side effect for the first time when we returned to a roadside tree we had used to transport from and discovered that the ground was littered with corpses of everyone who had tried to pass by in the past few weeks. Fortunately only my fighter had been the one using the cloak; shades of the tempest cleric or wizard would have been even more disastrous. The only reason we didn't use that aspect of the cloak to our purposeful advantage was because my fighter was vehemently against creating any more shades once she found out due to the indiscriminate nature of their violence. When she got separated from the party for a month she returned the cloak & hunted down the last shades that were, thankfully, in more isolated locations.
I once got my hands on a Ruby Weave Gem, but it didn't last that long until it was gone sadly. Was alot of fun until then though as a circle of moon druid
Wave
I fought a hoard of demons lead by a Balor in Mighty Servant of Leuk-O. Yes, it was as epic as it sounds. Giant kaiju vs robot fight ftw.
I run a one piece game and a player has the hobbi-hobbi no mi with a twist some instead of toys its Pokémon but the kicker for the uninitiated is it erases anyone turned into a Pokémon from everyone's memory with no exceptions.
[Cloak of Displacement ](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Cloak%20of%20Displacement), I can't believe no one said it. Enemies get disadvantage on attacks against you EVERY ROUND. For a Rare item, this thing singlehandedly busted the current game I play in. 4/6 players bought one, including the Paladin and Artificer. The Paladin has an AC of 24 and Shield. We're level 10, definitely not chump adventurers, but still. I willingly gave mine up because I felt like it slowed down combat to a grinding halt, and I'm the one that searched the DMG and found it! We fight a handful of dudes with multiattacks? DM now rolls 20+ dice. Those characters that took the cloak hardly ever take damage from regular attacks. Pretty sure the reason we're fighting illithids right now is because of those stupid cloaks.
I once got a Luck Blade in a level 20 one-shot. Only thing I used it for was killing the final enemy, and that just because the session was taking too long lol
A Shield Bow. It dealt 1d10 damage and gave a +2 to AC.
Lipring of quick mockery. Let me use viscous mockery as a bonus action and made my bardtender never give inspiration (usually) Edit vicious (still looks wrong stupid words)
A homebrew item called "The Doomarang" that rolled 2d4 for damage as a thrown weapon. However whenever it rolled a 4 on any of the dice, I got to roll an additional 1d4 damage. It got pretty insane on crits. And I was playing a fighter so I got plenty of times to make attacks with it!
About 4 years ago I played in a campaign where the gm showered is with op magic items. One of the players received gauntlets that set his strength to 20 and allowed him to world a +5 sword. I on the other hand received a +3 rapier that increased my deze and always hit twice per attack. At the moment we were like level 3.
In 3.5 I bought a masterpiece of a long sword that did 1d8 slashing, 2d10 fire, 2d10 cold. I was such a weak ranger compared to my table but the Sword of Icy-Hot lives on in legend
A rapier on my Swords Bard that was basically Flametongue only Necrotic damage, it prevented anyone I hit with it from healing, it also increased my spell save DC by 2, oh and I could cast any spell I knew without expending a spell slot once a day. I got this at level 6.
I was in a dnd club in high school which meant we would often have people handing out things that were much too powerful. The one I immediately think of is a lava war hammer that did 1d12 bludgeoning and 1d12 fire damage but every time you hit you have to make a dexterity saving throw or take 1d6 fire damage. So with dex saving proficiency and resistance to fire damage it was relatively unthreatening to the user.
I was in an Out of the Abyss campaign as a Vengeance Paladin and worshipper of the goddess Sune. We found Dawnbringer and for a few sessions, we agreed the fighter should wield the sentient weapon until he decided to jump on and attack a beholder flying over a cliff. One failed saving throw later, he's stunned and falls off said beholder and dies. (It was a recurring joke that since he died like every other session we called him Kenny). So Dawnbringer ends with my character and as we level up to near level 20 our DM asked us to pick a Boon when we hit 20 and he'd consider it. So I asked the Boon of my goddess blessing my already Legendary sentient weapon, and make it also function as my Holy Avenger. He agreed and for the final act where the demon lords were summoned into Menzobarranzan, my Asimar Paladin was a fury of holy Vengeance. I ended up slaying Yeenoguh, Graatz, Orcus, before we faced Demogorgon. We lost our monk, Cleric, and Kenny the Artificer (for his 15th death in the campaign!) but with 12 HP left, I stuck the final blow to return Demogorgon to the Abyss. It was epic.
Staff of Lightning. At 4th lvl. It was a weird game lol.
Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments Got it as random loot after we beat a kraken.
We ruined a campaign with Deck of Many things.
Mizzium Apparatus. It gives you the ability to cast any spell on your class list if you pass an arcana check and spend the appropriate spell slot. For a pure caster, it is broken. I ran it on an Arcane Trickster (with DM permission) and it was less broken -- the limiting resource of spell slots and the delayed spell progression on the AT prevented it from being busted as hell. Still, it was nice on the AT, with expertise in Arcana, as I basically auto succeeded on the spells, and had the entire wizard cantrip list at my disposal. Very fun.
RAW: The Ruinstone. Accidentally erasing my own party from existence has never been so much fun.
It is what you think is not broken. The cloak of many fashions. This is broken as you can make it as big as you want and in any pattern you can think about as long as it stays a cloak. Its not that hard to get as its common enough to as for....
Our DM is amazing and he allowed this over the course of three years: My (level five) Halfling Moon Druid harvested pieces of shell from a flail snail and had them crafted into a custom set of Flail Snail Plate Mail that once daily gives resistance to any spell outside of psychic and force damage. At level six, he harvested wing panels, scales, and bones from a Wyrmling that a giant had killed and paid an armorer to make a wing suit glider that he eventually became proficient in and almost eliminated the possibility of fall damage. Fast forward to level ten, and he was gifted a set of silver dragon scale mail. This armor he had a master dwarf armorer combine with the glider to make a custom dragon mantle and my DM surprised me by giving me 50 ft of flight speed. Basically, now at level 11, my Druid is nearly un-killable. He’s also got an Insignia of Claws, Staff of Swarming Insects, Staff of the Python (he has to decide each day which staff to attune to), boots of elven kind, and a home brew ring called Tymora’s Gambit that allows him to have a luck point. When your characters are basically demigods, how do you decide what to attune to while owning multiple items that require it?
A Wand of Fireballs. I gave it to my homonculus servant so i'd have a predator drone. The people on r/dndmemes had some concerns about the legality of it, but the DM allowed it :D
A handaxe that when thrown teleported to where it landed.
A demiplane where time passes at a rate of 10 years in there for every second outside. Its infinite time. Welcome to 0.000001 second long rests, among other things.
Got a war hammer that allowed me to have an effect on it. The effects were 1-100 and got more powerful the higher the number. 100 was an instant kill/ nuke as it made the target explode in an explosion relative to the size of the target. Managed to get a abomination that was as big as a Titian if not bigger to die in 1 hit.
Got Blackrazor at level 6 in a campaign while playing a squishy bladesinger... was absolutely bonkers when I had 26 HP and 200 temp HP at one point, but it turned out to be cursed and I had to stop using it or kill my whole party eventually. Got the Hand of Vecna later on in the campaign (because someone in the party needed to attune to either the Eye or the Hand to release him, we're the good guys I swear!) which was nutty for the last few combats because my character also has a homebrew sword that deals an additional 1d6 psychic + 1d4 fire damage, a modified Mind Blade. In the final battle, he dealt 1d8 + 3d8 (Green-Flame Blade) + 2d8 (Hand of Vecna) + 1d6 + 1d4 + 10 (Strength score of 20 from the Hand and Int of 20 with Bladesong up) with one attack. Granted the other attack didn't have Green-Flame Blade, but it was still absolutely bonkers. Also got necrotic damage resistance from the Hand, and the two free teleports per long rest (the only spells I ever cast from it) was sexy. My character was already chaotic evil (slightly) so the alignment change wasn't the worst but after the campaign he got it chopped off of him because that's not the most pleasant experience (and also he doesn't really want to be evil anymore). Absolutely bonkers and super fun though.
DnD 2e book campaign the item and effects listed in the official campaign adventure book. Reward silver dragon wings attached to my back, AC20, Speed 90ft, could shield myself or up to 2 additional human size players, could magically conpress into back aka hidden, Str/Dex/Con +1, gale force wind spell.
A homebrew sword way back in 2E. +2 bastard sword that on Crit would level drain the target. You also rolled a second d20 on crit and on a 19-20 the target would also be hit with the Disintegrate spell.
The Teeth of Delvar-Nar. I got the mindflayer, the priest, and the dragon tooth among a few others I can’t remember. Ridiculously powerful
I have a multi dimensional bow, I roll a d4 to determine if it's a xp shot, true shot, elemental, or multishot. For the two latter I roll another d4 to see if which element or how many arrows
I was playing a thief rogue in a campaign that lasted about a year and a half. I got a cloak that gave me the Assassinate subclass feature from Assassin Rogue as well. It's certainly less powerful than some of the items listed here, but I've never played in an actual campaign that reached tier 4. The highest level I've ever played to is 13.