[RPG] n easy/quick way to look up certain magic items by the effects they have

dnd-5egm-techniquesmagic-items

I am currently designing a DnD-5e campaign and am after certain effects of magic items to be held by particular NPCs or monsters. I've looked through the DMG at the multitude of magic items in here and believe some of these would be the kinds of thing I am after, however searching through the umpteen pages of magic items in alphabetical order is nigh-impossible if I'm after something in particular with a particular effect.

Is there any resource that lists all the pre-made magic items by their effects, rather than in an alphabetical list? What do other GMs do if they want to find something to add flavour without memoirzing every item?

For instance, say I have an NPC who has a strong affinity to fire, I may be after a fire-based magic item. If I were to search through the DMG I could go to the "Staff" sections and find a useful thing there, or maybe look under "Fire" to find any items that begin with that word. But how can I easily find any items that do not begin with these letters?

Best Answer

DnDBeyond is probably the best solution

DnDBeyond is WotC's official digital location for rules and material for 5e. However, you must purchase any material that is not part of the Basic Rules/SRD in order to see details from that source. However, it has search functionality that seems to meet your exact needs.

By going to the magic item section and selecting "advanced search" you can do searches by many different parameters. Here is an example search for items that do fire damage.

The search results will show you a list of all items that meet your search criteria regardless of what you have purchased digitally. But you will only be able to see the details of that item if own that digital source. You can actually buy just that item from the source if that is all you are interested in as well.