level appropriate magic items that aren't lame or bullshit

[shadzar]

guess we just made it up then because i have never seen that book in my life. but there was everlasting everything else, so.....

[Username17]

You are thinking of Murlynd's Spoon, which is a venerable item from 1st edition AD&D. it made its appearance in Unearthed Arcana in 1985, and is named after the character of one of Gygax's friends that died in 1975.

When Murlynd's Spoon was converted to 3rd edition, it was given a price tag that was too high - costing over five thousand gold pieces. This meant that characters low enough level to want it couldn't afford it, and they needed the basic magic bow they could sell it for more.

In Heroes of Battle, they made a pouch that was a slightly cut down version of the same thing, but massively scaled down in price, so low level parties could actually use the fucking thing.

-Username17

[radthemad4]

Everlasting Rations: This small leather pouch contains enough trail rations to feed a Medium creature for one day. Every morning at sunrise the pouch magically creates another day’s worth of rations. Faint conjuration; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item, Leomund’s secret chest; Price 350 gp.

[shadzar]

nope, wasnt the spoon which is in the DMG for 2nd as well, nor a pouch, so we must have made it up or there was a Bucknard's Everlasting Rations, and 3rd just removed the names like Bigby's this and that and Heward's etc...

im sure what i had was like a "tin" or rations cause i even got to choose K or C variety and my monk really didnt care cause it all tasted poorly so he bought spices for the whole party to use.

don't even get me started on the black pepper and purple worm incident where i had to also play a pixie or fairy players character....

sometimes normal items can be much more useful than magic ones, and some purple worms do sneeze.

wait! i think we took something out of Aurora's Whole Realms Catalouge. little in there was magic that we used, but for sheer volume of interesting and useful items, that is a mountain that you could climb forever and not r4each the top!

[deaddmwalking]

There's also a Travel Cloak that produces rations daily.

https://children-of-the-dragons-blood.o ... avel-cloak

That item saved my life from an intended TPK we avoided in a Dragonlance campaign. Apparently the DM was tired of the campaign and we ended up fighting Lord Soth in a chamber with a portal to the Abyss. Most of the party died, but it finally came down to two rolls. The wizard needed to succeed at hitting Soth with a mace of disruption requiring an improbably high roll (18 or better, iirc) and Soth needed an improbably low roll on his saving throw (1 or 2, iirc) to avoid destruction. Surprisingly, he died. But my character (who was unconscious) and the wizard survived. We couldn't leave except through the (one-way) portal to the Abyss, which seemed like a bad idea, so we camped there while we leveled and self-trained. For months of game time we survived on half rations from the cloak.

[Ice9]

Mirror of Opposition is actually a fucking great item. I'd never gotten one until recently, the high price being a disincentive, and on a cursory glanced had assumed it worked in some limited way.

Nope. 4/day, never runs out, no HD limit, full-strength copy. And while yes, it's breakable, you don't have to keep it out after making the duplicate, so not really any more of a threat than for any other item. Hell, it doesn't even say you can't keep using it on the same creature.

Even with a single copy, it still makes most fights a cakewalk. How many things can defeat themselves plus an entire party of PCs? And that's without going into cheesy uses, such as getting unlimited uses of all your consumable items.

Edit: Actually, it occurs to me that the MoO may not really be "level appropriate" for any level, for the reasons above.

[radthemad4]

This seems pretty neat at any level, though the effect is minor:

The Kitten of Contemplation is a magical figurine:

When the command word is spoken, the figurine becomes a fluffy white kitten, apparently only a few weeks old. The kitten immediately sits on the lap of its activator and begins purring. Due to the soothing and hypnotic nature of the kitten's purr, a spellcaster in contact with the kitten needs only half the normal time to memorize spells.

Okay, so whoever wrote this was a cat lover. Also, I find the image of two wizards fighting over a fucking magical kitten to be hilarious.

[Dogbert]

My Two Cents:

Any item that grants the following:

-Super Jump/speed < Flight < Teleport

-Alter Self < Any form of Polymorph

-Stealth < Invisibility

-ESP

-Bags of Holding

-Charisma < Charm/Dominate

Making a long story short: Anything that improves the PCs' adventuring quality of life in a consistent way or improves their degree of agency. The trick is, it's always better to have the party's spellcasters to craft them, because the "list price" for said items is usually ridiculously high.