Make Your 5E D&D Magic and Magic Items More Mysterious

June 21, 2022

It is not unheard of to hear me talking about fifth edition being my favorite of all the editions of Dungeons & Dragons but in some cases I think they got it wrong. One of these examples is the ability to know the properties of magic items simply by spending a short rest or one hour essentially communing with said object. This means the character who dumped Intelligence and Wisdom and has no proficiency in History, Arcana, Investigation or heck, maybe even Nature can tell you exactly what an incredibly powerful magic item is after spending only 60 minutes considering the object.

Analyze this!

Before you get up in arms I am very much aware you can use the alternate rules and allow those with the identify spell to figure out these magic items by casting this spell. While this is indeed better than the previous example it still has problems. For starters a 1st level character has access to the identify spell, which can be cast as a ritual, to learn everything about the item including any curses it might hold. This is just not good enough for me. There has to be a larger barrier to magical things in our 5E D&D games to give our Dungeon Masters the ability to sow some mystery into the games as well as allow the characters to uncover things through the course of play.

Looking back into the past editions I came across a very powerful 3.5 D&D spell useful in a number of ways. Analyze dweomer is not a perfect fit because the spell description indicates it does not even work on artifacts. How do we make our rules work to get the mystery of magic items dealt with but still allow the eventual learning of such largely powerful items through out all tiers of game play?

“You can observe magical auras. Each round, you may examine a single creature or object that you can see as a free action. In the case of a magic item, you learn its functions (including any curse effects), how to activate its functions (if appropriate), and how many charges are left (if it uses charges). In the case of an object or creature with active spells cast upon it, you learn each spell, its effect, and its caster level. An attended object may attempt a Will save to resist this effect if its holder so desires. If the save succeeds, you learn nothing about the object except what you can discern by looking at it. An object that makes its save cannot be affected by any other analyze dweomer spells for 24 hours. Analyze dweomer does not function when used on an artifact.” — Analyze dweomer from the 3.5 D&D Player’s Handbook

First I am going to look at a number of different magic items. Doing so I find most items have three or less properties. We already know there are six tiers of magic items — Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, Legendary and Artifact. I propose the following changes to 5E D&D. First If you want to use the “study an item over the course short rest” method it should require some kind of check. For your game you might allow a variety of skills but I think as a default it should clearly be Arcana. The DCs for such a check are as follows:

Common — DC 12
Uncommon — DC 14
Rare — DC 16
Very Rare — DC 19
Legendary — DC 22
Artifact — DC 25

Succeeding on such a check allows you to learn 1d3 properties and you can do this no more than once a day per item. I feel this is generous and could allow players to exploit the dice rolling boons already built into the system like, advantage, guidance, Bardic Inspiration, Flash of Genius and so many others.

The next step would be to alter identify, which allows you to essentially bypass the skill roll as you are using a resource. However in both cases neither would let you know the object is cursed. Should the object be cursed unless safety measures are taken either method could allow the curse to take hold as you are interacting with and therefore essentially touching the object in question. Identify would allow you to learn 1d3 properties of the item and you could do the same of no more than once a day. You can do as you like but I feel studying an object and identifying an object fall under the same umbrella and therefore you would not be able to do both to the same object in a given day.

This methodology could allow for a character who specializes in Arcana to be able to decipher items much easier but it would also allow for magic items, potions and even scrolls that could change the mechanics of identify for you. Imagine a monocle granting an extra property on all identify rolls so it was 1d3+1. Imagine a ring granting advantage on all intelligence (Arcana) rolls to study a magical object. What about a scroll to break the rules of identify and allow you to study a magic item with this spell and know if it holds any curses?

We could the look at the spell analyze dweomer for further inspiration. Having the ability at 1st level to see magic and understand all its properties right from the beginning of the game leaves little room for mystery and exploration. Looking at the aforementioned analyze dweomer spell it is a 6th level spell. This means full spellcasters dedicated to the magical arts wouldn’t have access to this spell until 11th level. Since not all games get to this tier of play it puts the abilities and thus the mysteries into the hands of powerful NPCs and grants DMs more control over the game as well as giving the players the ability to find out through play.

I can still recall having to pay a tidy sum of our party’s gold to learn what items did in previous editions of the game as we did not always have someone who could identify items and we always had to trust what the NPC said. It was certainly harder times back then and there is a part of me that misses the mystery.

Looking back at analyze dweomer I could see it taking 1-10 minutes to cast and it could last for 10 minutes or even an hour. It would then allow you to see all the things detect magic does plus all the things identify does but you would roll your d3 and add your spellcasting modifier (or just intelligence min 1 if you are looking to be a stickler) and in addition it would let you know if the object is cursed. If so one property could be what would break the curse if someone were already affected. As an extra benefit of the spell this does not require you to touch the object and the caster would then be safe from being affected by the curse if the item was in fact cursed.

What do you think? Am I way off the mark? Did I hit the nail right on the head? You tell me!

Thanks for reading. Until next time, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — The Kenku Artificer from Magic: The Gathering’s Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate looks to be studying a magic item closely. [Illustration by Dave Greco]