D&D: Five Magic Items Perfect for Beginners
Magic items are great treasures for anyone… but these five magic items are perfect for players who are new to Dungeons & Dragons.
Everyone knows that when it comes time to hand out treasure, what you really want are the magic items. Whether wands that glow with wondrous light, or a whole lot of orbs, magic items have a lot to offer. But if you’re brand new to D&D, you might not know your bag of holding from your portable hole. We’re here to help by going through five great items for new players.
Clockwork Amulet
The Clockwork Amulet brings back a long-forgotten concept from 3rd Edition: taking 10. Except it’s better because it lets you take 10 on an attack roll, once per day—meaning you can treat your attack as having rolled a 10 instead of rolling a d20. Excellent if you need to guarantee a hit.
Hat of Wizardry
This magic item lets you pull a random cantrip out of your hat… now where have we heard this one before…
This is an item that makes for great tabletop stories—it gives you access to something minor, but under the right circumstances it can save the day. It’ll start your players thinking about how their magic items might come in handy in unexpected ways.
Wand of Secrets
This wand has only 3 charges and can be used to detect a trap or secret door—which makes it an excellent resource for teaching new players all about looking for hidden things without having to dump them into the pit. And with only 3 charges, they’re all but guaranteed to find something–but not everything. It enriches a player’s experience and primes them to do more things, this is exactly what a good magic item should do.
Dragon Slayer
This magic weapon might not be an iconic weapon—for that, you’ll want a holy avenger or an ogre-slaying knife (it’s got a +9 against ogres)—but it evokes one of the most iconic D&D moments, riding out to slay a dragon. This weapon can help a low-level party face down the dragon that typically shows up in a low-level WotC adventure—but it also calls them to be heroes.
Sending Stones
Finally, we have the Sending Stones, which allow you to cast Sending from one stone to another once per day. This is a great way to ensure that your party can stay in contact with someone they need – including each other when they invariably split up despite your best advice.
Some lessons you have to learn the hard way.
Happy adventuring! What are your favorite magic items?
Check out the Beginner’s Guide to D&D
