D&D: Protect Your Neck with these Five Magic Amulets
In D&D, magic amulets are often some of the most powerful protective items out there. But which one should you pick?
Magic amulets are part and parcel in fantasy stories, and almost always as some kind of warding item. There’s just something about having a magical thing you wear around the neck that feels like it should be keeping you safe from poison or curses or the like. And D&D is no stranger to them, with a passel of different magic amulets scattered throughout the books.
But, unless your Wild Magic results have really gone off he rails, you’ve only got one neck, and thus, only room for one magic amulet. With that in mind, here are five candidates you might consider.
Amulet of the Planes
This amulet is an instant get-out-of-jail-free card, when the chips are down and you want to either save your whole party or try and banish someone to the shadow realm. How, you might be wondering? All you have to do is succeed at a DC 15 Intelligence check. If you manage it, you can cast Plane Shift, which can either banish an unwilling target to another plane, sending them there permanently if they fail a save.
Or if you happen to be able to get within touch range of up to eight of your party members, you can go to somewhere you know on another plane. For whenever the fight goes so bad you just need to be on a different plane of existence.
Amulet of Health
The Amulet of Health is an underrated item. While it’s not as flashy as something that lets you hurl fireballs or conjure up random animals or the like. But, the Amulet of Health just works. It sets your Constitution to 19, which can turn even the weediest Wizard into a slab of beef, Charles Atlas style.
It not only increases your hit points, but it boosts your saving throw against many of the most debilitating effects in the game. If you know you’re going to have one of these available to you, you can even dump Constitution (a bold move) since you’ll have it backed up. But I wouldn’t recommend basing a whole campaign around that.
Clockwork Amulet
Nothing is worse than the dice being against you. While the epic highs of rolling a natural 20 are not to be missed, the deep nadir of the natural 1 undermining even the most competent character is a bitter sting best left unstung.
But with a Clockwork Amulet, you can ignore all that. Its interlocking gears, fueled by the magic of Mechanus, make it a bulwark of perfect predictability. With this amulet, a common magical item, you can skip rolling a d20 to instead attack as though you had rolled a 10, allowing you to ensure success despite the dice being against you.
Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location
The Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location is one of D&D’s more far-reaching magic amulets. Because it protects you from divination magic, specifically making you unable to be perceived through magical scrying sensors (always an amazing plus), but it also prevents you from being targeted by divination spells.
Which has much broader applications than preventing you from being scried on. You can’t be found via the Locate type spells, nor can you be affected by detect thoughts or offensive spells like Mind Spike. You can’t even be targeted by Hunter’s Mark or similar abilities.
Amulet of the Inferno
Finally, we close with a magical amulet of artifact level from Chains of Asmodeus. The Amulet of the Inferno was an amulet created to celebrate the birth of the Lady of Phlegethos, the archdevil Fierna. Fierna was the daughter of Belial, and her power is celebrated in the amulet’s powers. In addition to the random beneficial properties that this artifact has, the Amulet of the Inferno also augments magical flames created by the one who wears it.
This means your magical flames can ignore resistances and immunities to fire, allowing even the most powerful devils to be burnt. You can also, as a bonus action cast Fire Bolt or Produce Flame, scaled to your character level. And on top of that, you gain resistance to cold damage and the ability to breathe underwater to the point that even magical flames you create can be cast underwater.
Not a bad way to protect your neck.
