When does an object count as a magic item

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There are many items that can produce effects similar to magic, from fire damage to poison damage, and there are also many objects that are elemental in the process of casting spells such as spell foci or spellbooks. This often causes people to wonder, if such items count as magic items.

However, special rules apply for magic items: they can be detected by detect magic, they cannot be activated by the Use an Object action, if they are weapons they can overcome resistance to non-magical weapons, etc.

Because of this, is important to understand by which criteria we can separate items that could potentially be considered magic items but are not from items that are actual magic items. What is a method to test this?

When does an object count as a magic item?

Best Answer

Does its description or something else in the rules say it’s magical?

The Sage Advice Compendium provides helpful insight into determining if a particular feature is magical:

  • Is it a magic item?
  • Is it a spell? Or does it let you create the effects of a spell that’s mentioned in its description?
  • Is it a spell attack?
  • Is it fueled by the use of spell slots?
  • Does its description say it’s magical?

If your answer to any of those questions is yes, the feature is magical.

Now, this first item in this list is “is it a magic item?”, and obviously this isn’t helpful if we aren’t sure our item is a magic item. However, the rest of the questions here can help us determine if an item is magical. In particular, the last one: “does its description say it’s magical?”

While many magic item descriptions don’t actually explicitly state “this item is magical”, they don’t have to, because the rules will tell us they are magic some other way. For example, the Dungeon Master’s Guide includes a chapter full of magic items. At the beginning of this list, we see:

Magic items are presented in alphabetical order. A magic item’s description gives the item’s name, its category, its rarity, and its magical properties.

Published adventures typically have appendices of magic items unique to the adventure, and in these cases, usually you have to read the section header, since it will just start listing the items. For example, we see at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen:

Appendix C: Magic Items

So if an item appears on a list like the one in the DMG or in a appendix labeled “Magic Items”, it is a magic item.

But sometimes the actual item description does have the answer for us. For example, this question observes that D&D Beyond has what appears to be both magical and mundane versions of healing potions. This phenomenon is a result of healing potions appearing on the Adventuring Equipment table in the Player’s Handbook, where every other item is mundane. In my answer to that question, I observe:

Potion of healing (all rarities) is found in the magic items chapter of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and potions are explicitly described as magic items.

We also find a common potion of healing described in the equipment section of the Player's Handbook:

A character who drinks the magical red fluid in this vial regains 2d4 + 2 hit points. Drinking or administering a potion takes an action.

A potion of healing is a magical red fluid.

In the case of the healing potion, the description itself tells us that it is a magical red fluid - a magic item. But when an item description does not itself say it is magical, check the sourcebook that item appears in: does it appear in a chapter or section entitled Magic Items?

This should cover all the magic items in the game, but the other questions from the SAC list may also be helpful if you aren’t sure. If after reviewing all the questions in the SAC bulleted list you still aren’t sure an item is magical, then you should defer to your DM’s judgment. But like I said, reviewing the SAC questions and checking the item’s sourcebook should reliably provide the answer.

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