Best Magic Items--EVAR

[Lago_AM3P]

Just what the title sounds like.

Nothing fancy; just a detailed description of how the item is awesome and what book it comes from.

(DMG) Monk's Belt- Can be worth a lot of bread to a druid who forgoes wild armor and gets a greater mage armor from her wizard buddy. Also provides a bonus to unarmed strikes and you'll want to pick up Improved Unarmed Strike one day anyway and go Genma or Kuma on your opponents.

(DMG) Ring of Blink- Aside from being the bee's knees for a rogue, it's also a huge massive bonus to infiltration for no real reason at all. And it's cheap as heck, too.

(That Undead Cleric book) - Those cool rods that provide extra turning. The name of both escape me. However, if you want to abuse the fsck out of divine metamagic, it's go time, bitches.

[Neeek]

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(That Undead Cleric book) - Those cool rods that provide extra turning. The name of both escape me. However, if you want to abuse the fsck out of divine metamagic, it's go time, bitches.

Liber Mortis and Nightsticks

[Josh_Kablack]

DMG:
Decanter of Endless Water and Immovable Rod:
Ask any D&D player for what they'd do with either these and you get a different plan.

Lyre of Building:
One of these in your game destroys any hope of having anything like historical construction ever happen.

Complete Arcane:
Thought Bottle. A pretty cool concept, which is also game-breakingly powerful in multiple ways. Use it to reduce the XP cost of any spellcasting or item creation to a mere 500. Use it to gain back levels you lost to the difference engine. Or give up on the infinite loops and just use it to store each and every single spell that's unused out of your wizard's daily spell allotment until whenever you actually need it.

Epic Level Handbook:

Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar. The effects are subpar, but the Holy Word/Dictum which blast nonbeleivers are fun in 3.5 where have conflicting alignment types. A Succubus Paladin can walk around with Holy Word and Dictum going off all of the time. Unfortunately, the caster level is not set and therefore defaults to 20th level, which is not much to brag about in Epic, let alone on Epic Artifacts.

[MrWaeseL]

BoED: Starmantle cloak. Negate half the damage from physical attacks on a reflex save. Works with evasion!

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

These are among my favorites…

• Luck blade (0 wishes): Just buy as many of them as you can afford and carry. 22,060 gp and you can reroll any roll you just made as an extraordinary ability. Who cares about wishes anyway?
  
• Daern's instant fortress: Yeah, it was better in 2.0 and 1.0 when 10d10 damage meant something, but, hey, it's still awesome.
  
• Dust of dryness: For the ability to use the pellets as slingstones.
  
• Eversmoking bottle: Much like the decanter mentioned previously, it's great for absurd schemes.
  
• Quaal's feather token (tree): I don't know what Quaal was token when he came up with this, but being able to say, "Du-ude, there should, like, be a tree right there, man," and then take out a feather and make a 60-ft.-high oak tree is awesome. I've never been in the position to, but I always wanted to use a bunch of these while attacking a ship.

…but the best item ever award goes to…

• Dust of sneezing and choking: "Okay, linkboy, all you got to do is get within 10 ft. of the dragon and throw this stuff," say the brave adventurers. "We got your back." It's not the Con damage with its paltry save DC of 15, it's the automatic stunning for 5d4 rounds in a 20 ft. spread! You might have to have your party take turns using it so one guy isn't sitting out the fight every time, but otherwise this is broken as hell.

[Book]

Ring of the Darkhidden (MoF?) - It's priced using 3.0 rules. But's it's ultra-dirt cheap and makes you invisible to all who use Darkvision. As DM, I would insist it gets repriced using 3.5 rules. And also have a darkvision-clad party "properly RP" the fact that nobody in the group can see each other when using them en masse.

[Fwib]

'Invisible to darkvision' not 'invisible to those who use darkvision'

Also, how do you mean 'priced using 3.0 rules'? the ring of invisibility has not changed in price from 3.0 to 3.5, so why should an item that is just a subset change in price?

[User3]

I meant to state it that way, Fwib - mea culpa.

I had read an article awhile back written by Sean K. Reynolds who stated that the RotD was revised by WotC Editing and that the price of it was underpriced even in 3.0. The article was written at the time 3.5 was in publicly-acknowledged R&D. His hope was that it would get republished under new 3.5 pricing guidelines.

To note, a high & significant amount of D&D games occur in a darkvision-dominant environments (dungeons and Underdark). The RotD is an ultra-cheap way to royally screw over a huge portion of the monsters and combat encounters in said environments.

Acquisition of RotD (especially by parties who invest in multiples of these items) literally forces Underdark/Dungeon DMs into making wholesale adjustments to his encounters just to compensate for the power imbalance.

Also, the combo of RotD and Blindfold of Utter Darkness (A&EG) was a very common combo for many optimized gamers. The Blindfold is definitely undercosted using 3.5 pricing guidelines. Which many DMs have caught onto.

[Username17]

The 3.5 pricing guidelines have not changed except for Skill Bonuses. Spell effects and unique effects cost the same amount. Only skill bonuses have become expensive relative to the 3rd edition versions.

That realy is the only change - Skills have gotten shittier and skill bonuses have become more expensive. Crap like Ring of the Darkhidden has the same cost.

Which is really the point. It's 40,000 gp to get a mantle of +20 Hide which won't even let you snipe at people in a meaningful fashion, but it's only 32,760 gp for a ring that allows you to create magical darkness that only you can see through as a free action once per day. Giving bonuses to mundane tasks is a waste of time, getting arbitrary unbeatable magical effects is always teh win.

That's the way of things. Crap like Ring of the Darkhidden makes you win D&D. Always has, always will. 3.5 never laid down any guidelines that would change that - quite the opposite.

As a Dwarven Ranger you can get a casting of Darkvision on you for a 2nd level spell slot. That allows you to see 120 feet when everyone else and their mom can only see 60. Then you want a wand of Sniper's Shot and a bow....

-Username17

[User3]

I just want to do a shout out for the Ring of Spell Storing, At high levels, it really is the way that you keep the fighter viable.

On a lesser note, the Ring of Feather Falling is great. Its crazy cheap, and thus viable as treasure for very low-level parties, and if your DM is a trap and "crazy locations like the tops of trees and cliffs and crap" DM, then it'll see use as a movement form and as a "negate this class of trap" effect.

[Fwib]

Actually... re-reading the RotD text, I notice that it doesn't seem to specify that attacking will turn it off, like it will with a Ring of Invisibility - although I suspect most GMs might assume this.

If not, then yes, waaaaay underpriced.

[Username17]

Let's hear it for the portable hole and the bronze griffin. If you actually play with wealth = power, the primary cap on your power is how much you can carry. The portable hole fits 282 cubic feet, which will carry 16 million gold coins (proportionately less of anything else). I don't know how the epic economy can function without these.

Also, since flight makes you win, the bronze griffin is good times for a low price.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

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As a Dwarven Ranger you can get a casting of Darkvision on you for a 2nd level spell slot. That allows you to see 120 feet when everyone else and their mom can only see 60. Then you want a wand of Sniper's Shot and a bow....

Honestly, I've always found ranged attackers to be a bit overrated, at least in the games I've played. Sure this could conceptually help you, but most caverns just aren't going to feature terrain that big. So unless you're commonly wandering around in pitch black through huge open spaces, being able to see 120 feet with a bow just isn't that big of a deal. And anyway, once the guy gets hit he just charges toward where the arrow came and is now in sight range. In the rare situation you actually get to use it of course.

As for my item, I'll have to go with the Bulwark of antimagic from the draconomicon. A ridiculously underpriced tower shield that generates an AMF once per day. I seriously can't see why every fighter wouldn't want to be carrying around one of these babies. Give it to your frenzied beserker and you're basically unstoppable.

[Neeek]

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To note, a high & significant amount of D&D games occur in a darkvision-dominant environments (dungeons and Underdark). The RotD is an ultra-cheap way to royally screw over a huge portion of the monsters and combat encounters in said environments.

Isn't this an indication that Darkvision is grossly overpowered, more than the item that stops it?

[RandomCasualty]

1145479635[/unixtime]]
Isn't this an indication that Darkvision is grossly overpowered, more than the item that stops it?

Not really. Darkvision is just really common and a lot of monsters rely purely on it, and that's different from being overpowered. The concept of darkvision is basically something that lets you see in the dark without having to announce your presence to see anything by lighting up a torch. It's basically just good for hiding in shadows and darkness, but since everything has it, it's not even good for that.

The only place DV is possibly overpowered is in nullifying a rogue's ability to hide in shadows. Personally i'd prefer if DV beyond 10' still gave shadowy concealment, that'd fix everything. But that's a very minor point and in the context of most parties, they seriously could care less whether the rogue could hide in shadows beacuse they're clanging along in their full plate totally announcing themselves anyway.

But DV isn't grossly overpowered, it's just excessively common, and not only that, it's a mandatory ability. Most underworld monsters can't or don't carry torches, making darkvision a necessary crutch ability.

Basically the RotD is a counter to a vastly overcommon ability that grants a necessary capability (sight), which makes it insanely powerful.

[MrWaeseL]

Kiiiiiiiira N'vaelar (or whatever) from PGtF: It stores all your memories...forever! Really useful for whodunit type quests.

[Josh_Kablack]

Dust of Disappearance (DMG) - This grants you the version of Greater Invisibility where you can't be seen by See Invisibility nor revealed by Invisibility Purge and the item's wording makes that you "can't be detected by magical means" makes a dandy argument against all sorts of divinations.