[RPG] Which originally published items would meaningfully benefit a ‘Thief’ Rogue that had Use Magic Device

class-featurednd-5emagic-itemsroguethief

This class feature seemed to me to be dead-on-arrival when published.

It's unclear exactly which items originally presented in the DMG that this feature was intended to work with.

  • Exactly which items in the DMG are made usable by a level 13
    Thief when granted the Use Magic Device class feature?

  • Of those items, which of them are meaningfully useful to a creature that doesn't otherwise meet those requirements?

    (For example: Pearl of Power does nothing for a Thief even if they can ignore the class requirement of "spellcaster", so it is not meaningfully useful.)

Extending this question to all published works would be too vast of a question, but limiting it to originally published materials should be a reasonable task.

Best Answer

The following items from the DMG are included and useful:

  • Dwarven Thrower
  • Holy Avengers
  • Instruments of the Bards
  • Moonblades, but only if you are neutral good
  • Prayer Beads
  • Robe of the Archmagi (but only if its alignment matches) (15+Dex AC and bonuses against spells)
  • Rod of Resurrection
  • 11 different kinds of staves
  • Tome of the Stilled Tongue (bonus action cast one spell per day)
  • 7* kinds of wands, but you could already use those if you were a spellcaster e.g. a high-elf rogue
  • Whelm
  • All spell scrolls

Note that the PHB has no magic items.

Mostly these magic items give you potent spellcasting abilities, but some of them (the robe of the archmagi and the staff of power) also raise your AC. A rogue with a +3 shield and staff of power and appropriate Robe could have an AC as high as 30.

Moonblades are a special case where this feature gives a thief access to something truly uniquely powerful, though since that's a racial rather than class restriction it's not like you couldn't have had one anyways just by playing an elf or half-elf.

  • this assumes you go with the RAI rather than RAW on this answer here, i.e. 'requires attunement by a spellcaster' counts as a class restriction bypassed by this feature instead of not.
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