Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Magic Items by a Factor of Three — Weapons

There’s a lot of homebrew content for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons found at D&D Beyond. Despite the hundreds of thousands of spells, races, subclasses, monsters, magic items and more I’m frankly shocked how many magic weapons exist in the database. I’ve looked at all the schools of magic, subclasses for each class individually, feats, monsters, races and a variety of other categorizations of 5E D&D content. Most recently I’ve been going through magic items one category at a time, which now includes homebrew armor, potions, rings, rods, scrolls, staffs and wands. Time to check out the over 102,531 homebrew magic weapons at DDB. Let’s get into it.

Magic items (weapons) at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew magic items like the rings mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. Since there are over 102,531 weapons in the collection I’m going to share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists.

Top 10 highest rating weapons

1. The Magician’s Judge. It’s probably fair to say the rating on this one, which is well above the second highest rated homebrew magic weapon — stems from it’s creator Matt Mercer and appearance throughout Critical Role’s Mighty Nein campaign. However, this is also a wonderful magic item because it does something other than affect combat prowess. That’s always a win in my book.
2. Sword, Perhaps? An odd name might account for the views on this one but the rating and adds tell me there’s a lot of people who think this is as cool as I do. There’s some bookkeeping involved, which I don’t like and instead I’d rather see something like a one and done check whenever circumstances arise but other than this quibble I’m a big fan. This effect could also be slapped on any weapon (or armor!) and create definitely unforgettable scenarios.
3. Dryad’s Gift (Bow). I thought this sounded familiar! Turns out it was the No. 1 choice for druids and rangers in particular. Perfect for any conservationist this longbow transforms ordinary branches into arrows when drawn, which then resume being branches after striking, along with some other neat thematic features too like sending messages through trees.
4. Britney Spear. Before you write this one off for a silly name consider how there’s a line between a silly concept and how it then translates into a component of the game. In this case very well. I dig it!
5. Dagger of Many Daggers. I really like how the designer put together the mechanics of how this nifty magic weapon functions. While I do enjoy toying with mechanics I’m not too keen on how the charge and recharge functions but overall this is really fun. Take notice all you Dagger Masters out there!
6. Ace of Spades. This is one of those magic items I suspect is intended to become a character’s primary gimmick. Because of this aspect I don’t like it as much. In 5E D&D with the overwhelming majority of a character’s features coming internally through their class I prefer magic items to provide little perks and utility more than dictate so much of a character’s combat persona.
7. Blazing Bowstring. Simple and straightforward and often this is a good thing. There’s nothing too fancy about this but it’s a terrific magic weapon for any character when attacking at range is required. I believe this one’s inspired by an item carried throughout Critical Role’s Vox Machina campaign by Laura Bailey’s Vex character.
8. Clockwork Rapier. Another familiar magic weapon this time from the bard’s top picks. Distinctive qualities make magic items memorable even if they don’t hold tremendous power within.
9. really cool bow. Bold claim even with the self-deprecating lower case name. I’ll give it the cool factor for the fun qualities of an otherwise run of the mill magic weapon. But really cool? That’s pushing it too far.
10. Summer’s Dance. I wonder how many of the 102,531 magic weapons in the DDB database are creators’ takes on stuff from Critical Role. This is another example of a relatively straightforward magic item with just a touch of fun flavor to make it more evocative for the player and I’m there for such things.

Top 10 most viewed weapons

1. The Magician’s Judge
2. Dryad’s Gift (Bow)
3. Mithral Weapons. Not so much a magic weapon as a material with quasi-magical properties I nevertheless appreciate this sort of content. It’s gonna break all sorts of norms as regards the baseline design of 5E D&D but if you’re okay with this it almost certainly adds a new dimension to your games.
4. Adamantine Weapons. The same creator as the No. 3 item takes the same approach with this material. Whereas mithral is light and flexible this is dense and strong.
5. Summer’s Dance
6. Stormsunder Greataxe. Like the Ace of Spades from the highest rated weapons this one kinda applies a strong theme to your character rather than providing a little twist. Maybe it’s because the latter is already an unusual weapon but I don’t feel as strongly about this being so weird. Do you want to imagine your character is Thor but with a greataxe?
7. Blazing Bowstring
8. Mjolnir. Treading into D&D-izing territory now! We’re something of connoisseurs of this stuff. Why this isn’t an artifact I cannot fathom and this unfortunately colored my view of the whole thing. I realize this is a peculiar personal preference for me but when it comes to something like this I’m looking for a lot more creativity.
9. Returning Dagger. I was all set to assume this was a magic dagger with a returning property. In other words a simple quality of life magic item. This designer’s iteration includes a clever twist on an otherwise common magic item feature and I appreciate this.
10. Vengeance Blade. Ooh! This sounds so edgy. Not at all what I expected this creator designed a pretty neat cursed item. I like how the beneficial quality is related to the curse and helps mitigate the drawbacks while the curse itself isn’t crippling. Nicely done.

Top 10 most added weapons

1. The Magician’s Judge
2. Dryad’s Gift (Bow)
3. Blazing Bowstring
4. Summer’s Dance
5. Dagger of Many Daggers
6. Clockwork Rapier
7. Mimic Sword. I appreciate some of the flavor baked into this fun item and I’d be more interested if I hadn’t already seen Sword, Perhaps? As it stands I did and enjoyed that take more than this one.
8. Blink Dagger. I’ll give this creator the benefit of the doubt since it was designed back in 2017. There’s much better representations of this returning property both official and third party. There’s even one right in this post!
9. Dragon’s Tooth Dagger. I’ll tell you why I like this really simple and unexciting magic weapon. For some players — myself included — it’s exciting to discover treasure with great flavor, aesthetic or however you want to call it even moreso than something with a powerful effect but evocative of absolutely nothing. A magic dagger dealing a little extra poison damage does not sound very cool. A dagger crafted from the tooth of a green dragon that retains a trace of its poisonous nature though? That’s a story to tell!
10. Arcane Dual Pistols. This is reminiscent of Ace of Spades except cranked up to 11 and along with this my distaste. Nothing against the creator, items like these just turn me right off. (It’s got nothing to do with firearms in 5E D&D though.)

Weapons rising to the top

Perhaps due to this series nearing an end with only wondrous items left to explore a number of thoughts arose while looking at these 20 items collectively across the three lists. For all intents and purposes 5E D&D weapons cleave to the game’s most prominent pillar — combat. To me this is the most subjective part of an already totally subjective experience. On one hand there’s magic weapons with relatively straightforward features, often passive, to simply increase combat prowess usually by dealing more damage. If I’m honest I like these ones the best — if they also incorporate evocative language.

There’s also magic weapons with noncombat features and among them I really like ones with interesting capabilities that are not merely another component of the game slapped onto a weapon. A sword giving a character the power to cast dispel magic doesn’t excite me one bit but show me a bow providing a way to send messages through a network of trees and now we’re talking. Then there’s magic weapons like a few I pointed out above that cross a line for me into becoming more important than the character wielding them.

“Whether crafted for some fell purpose or forged to serve the highest ideals of chivalry, magic weapons are coveted by many adventurers. Some magic weapons specify the type of weapon they are in their descriptions, such as a longsword or longbow. If a magic weapon doesn’t specify its weapon type, you may choose the type or determine it randomly. If a magic weapon has the ammunition property, ammunition fired from it is considered magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.” — from the 5E D&D DMG

I like more of these magic weapons than those I dislike, which is an unusual result of these posts. Sword, Perhaps? set the bar for me early on. It’s not perfect but it does achieve what I look for in a magic item — an easy to imagine fun scenario. I’ve already expressed my appreciation for the Dryad’s Bow and I also dig Dagger of Many Daggers for a neat mechanic. There’s two of these magic weapons I particularly enjoy because they weren’t at all what I expected and it was a pleasant surprise. I figured Vengeance Blade would require attunement by an edge lord and the Dragon’s Tooth Dagger would be very powerful and kludgy. I was wrong in both cases and happy to be so!

*Featured image — One of the most iconic magic weapons in D&D history of course found its way into Magic: The Gathering’s Adventures in the Forgotten Realms expansion. Sending creatures to the graveyard is par for the course in MTG so the Vorpal Sword has a big scabbard to fill. How about when a creature equipped with this head-lopping sword deals damage to a player that player straight up loses the game right then and there? [Art by Caio Monteiro]

New videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here