dnd-5ehomebrewmagic-items
As many of my players are into flavorful, unique magic items, I've been attempting to create some custom magic items. Most of them are fairly simple, a sword with an extra 1d4 shock dmg, a broach that gives advantage to constitution saving throws, a staff that can be used as an everburning torch; stuff like that. One thing I've been having trouble figuring out though is which items should require attunement.
Is there some quality that determines if a magic item requires attunement?
Here's how (I added some things to make the damage more consistent; average is 418.791):
Your Character (let's call him Cody from now on) is a level 20 Goblin (ASs: 10/13/12/18/16/13) with these classes...
... who gets expeditious retreat and shield from his font of magic and carries these items:
Your Target (let's call her Tessa from now on) is a gas spore because of their exceptionally low Constitution and Wisdom. (although any creature that is not immune to disease or resistant/immune to force, cold, or necrotic is valid if they fail the saves)
If the one-eyed shiver deals damage to a creature in this area, the creature also takes 5 (1d10) cold damage.
33-34 Maximize the damage of the next damaging spell you cast within the next minute.
Flesh Rot: The creature's flesh decays. The creature has disadvantage on Charisma checks and vulnerability to all damage.
While the target is cursed, your attacks and spells deal an extra 1d8 necrotic damage to the target.
You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus.
When you damage a creature with an attack or a spell and the creature's size is larger than yours, you can cause the attack or spell to deal extra damage to the creature. The extra damage equals your level.
f is force, n is necrotic, c is cold
This makes 391.804 force, 15.992 necrotic, and 10.995 cold damage for a total of 418.791 damage on average [Max: 428]
It doesn't end there. What you need to do as a DM is have an out-of-character discussion with your players on what they want to do about the belongings of the dead PC, and also how they want to role play a funeral, wake, or some kind of "last rites" or farewell event. Then ask the players to work with you to arrive at an equitable means of dividing up the belongings (absent a will or some such in-game structure already in place ...)
Where there are two players desiring an item (ex: ring of spell storing, since anyone can use it) then the simplest way is to let the dice help: have them roll 2d6. (or 1d12, or 1d20...) Whomever scores the highest gets the item. (There are many other ways to do this, but this I've seen used for easy resolution since about four decades ago).
A less simple way to resolve number 2 is to have a party vote on who should get that item, but in small parties this can raise as many problems as solves, leading to the kind of quarreling you want to avoid. I've seen it work a lot better in larger parties.
Magic items are reasonably rare in this edition, in the base model. It can be argued that the party earned them from a given adventure; it took everyone's effort to defeat "monster X" and get to that chest with the treasure, magic items, art objects, gems, etc. With that in mind, a magic item can be seen as a party asset. (The groups I've played in have, with very few exceptions, approached it this way for decades).
FWIW, the "party based magic item" concept fits into an overarching idea that the game authors had:
... rules on magic item distribution aren't based on a party of a particular size The rules are party-based - the group is receiving the items - rather than character based. {Jeremy Crawford}
Note: that's not a hard and fast rule, and the context of that tweet was in reference to the expanded guidance(rules) offered in Xanathar's Guide to Everything regarding magic items.
This point of view -- magic items as a party asset -- is particularly useful when you consider that the game's premise is that a party of adventurers, not a single adventurer as seen in a lot of video games, work together as a team to combine their unique individual talents to achieve various goals. The party needs to come to a consensus, as players, on a mutually agreed division of treasure.
Is there anything wrong with handing the items down "to the next rolled up character for a player" as a default solution? No. It is one way to remove the sting of character death. There is nothing wrong with that, but since you want to avoid quarreling, then you need to get your players to come to a consensus on what they all prefer.
Here's a potential snag: the party ranger dies a horrible death. The player rolls up a new character, and decides on a cleric. Some of the items may not be a good fit for the new character.
Delegate to your players the work of creating a group norm. Facilitate it, rather than issuing a decree. Once they have buy in, they own it.
There are two ways to look at this potential problem:
This is not a rule or a DM ruling, but offered as a point of discussion for a given group to arrive at a fair way to divide treasure among themselves.
Monetary.
1. Equal shares: simple division by the total number of characters involved.
2. Shares by level: all character levels of experience are added and the total treasure divided by this sum. One share per level. (I don't recommend this, based on my experience; your group may like this idea).
3. Equal shares plus bonus: If your group likes this idea -- if one character was head and shoulders above the others in doing amazing things then the group will vote them the bonus -- that can work, but it needs to be an established norm beforehand. (excerpted/condenses from the AD&D 1e PHB (p. 122)
Magical Treasure:
What we found most palatable over a variety of groups was to clearly identify items, and then try to put them into piles that fit our various character classes. We'd then negotiate/discuss "who wants what" and "I'll trade you this for that" as various items were considered. When there was an impasse, the two or three characters interested in a given item would roll for it and then press on. That character then would get no selections until all others had gotten an item. (Trading was common, however, as different items were found ...).
When a PC died, we'd typically divide up what items where there among us ... and often reserved an item or two for "the next character poor Jed rolls up" to give them a boost when we encountered their character at the next DM arranged opportunity/tavern/city ... but that varied from group to group.
Systems should always be established prior to the inception of the adventure whenever possible. (AD&D PHB p. 122)
My experience taught me to dispense with "whenever possible." A treasure division system should be established by the group before the adventures, if your objective is to reduce friction between players. The reason I recommend this is due to your stated goal: you want to prevent friction between players.
There were a few groups I played in where the players were as much rivals as allies, and that's just how the groups were. Treasure division sessions could get a little dicey, in both the literal and figurative sense. It does not appear that you want to see your table head in that direction.
Best Answer
DMG p136 defines attunement but doesn't put forth anything concrete about what would require attunement. The closest I can come to an answer on this is mostly metagame thinking on the part of the designers.
Either to limit an item to a specific class/race or to thwart the passing around of items that can be problematic if they were allowed to be easily passed around from character to character. Example: if the Wizard tossed the Rogue her Ring of Fire Resistance in preparation of that fire trap, just in case the Rogue missed his roll to disarm (used to see stuff like this all the time). Although it is still possible it now takes 3 hours according to the rules.
The "Creating A New Magic Item" section p285 (referenced by Nitsua60)