D&D 5E Logic behind which magic items require attunement

[Sword of Spirit]

Has anyone examined this and derived the pattern?

I'm sure there is a pattern of some sort. For instance, weapons and armor that just grant pluses (even +3) don't require attunement. But weapons or armor that are weaker than +2 or +3 items sometimes do. In the case of Major and Minor magic items (per Xanathar's Guide), Minor items never require attunement (with the exception of Common Minor items, since all Common items are Minor), while Major items do more often than not.

In the case of weapons and armor my guess is that it has something to do with passive benefits. If a weapon both works as a weapon and provides you a passive benefit, it's like having your armor or weapon plus another item, so attunement is applied to limit that.

I have not yet done a detailed analysis of the items to attempt to verify my suspicions and extract the design pattern, but I thought I'd check and see if anyone else has already done so before I spend all that time on it.

 

[Yaarel]

For me, magic items are essentially psionic. The creator of the item is imbuing it with ones own psychic presence. So when interacting with someone elses magic item, one is really psychically connecting with that psychic imprint by the creator.

Norse texts influence me. There is a story about two Berserkar, whose mindforce (hugar) is strong enough to actually shift the shape of their body, when they induce the animalistic ferocity. They were wearing wolf fur as part of the meditative technique. Unconsciously, when the berserkar leaped into wolf form, they imprinted the wolf fur with their mindforce of shapeshifting. In wolf form, they left behind their clothes, including the wolf fur.

Someone else accidentally stumbled across the campsite of the absentee berserkar. It was cold, so he wrapped himself up in the wolf skin, was overwhelmed by the imbued psychic energy, also went into a berserkar rage and shifted into an animal-minded wolf, and went on a rampage.

In my mind, magic items are the extension of the mindforce and intention of the creator. The only way to use a magic item is to have a kind of personal relationship with the purpose of the magic item. According to the stories, it might even be dangerous, if there is no rapport.

 

[Sunseeker]

Most of the magic items in 5E are only slightly adjusted carryovers from previous editions.

So most of that lack of rhyme and reason is due to the fact that previous editions unique/named magic items lacked rhyme and reason.

 

[Yaarel]

There are solid flavor reasons for attunement. But regarding a mechanical pattern, I would be shocked if you found one.

The basic idea is to prevent the ‘Christmas tree’ effect, by limiting the number of powerful magic items.

However, the decision about whether a particular kind of magic item requires attunement or not seems ad-hoc. Its almost like, during playtest someone came up with a combo for one item, but couldnt think of a combo for an other item. So one ended up requiring attunement, and the other didnt.



In my own games, *every* magic item requires attunement, but I increase the number possible attunements to four.

 

[Jester David]

Generally attunement has to do with overlap (so you don’t have more than one item of a type and alternate when needed) or multi-character utility (so you don’t pass the item between party members).

If you have multiple magical swords, you can easily swap them out. If you have multiple suits of armour, less so.

 

[AmerginLiath]

For the most part, the list of items with attunement requirements seem to me to be those with ongoing effects (versus those that have specific daily charges or standard +X weapons and armor). In a way, attunement is like concentration in that it acts to limit the number of magical effects active upon a character at one time.

(it doesn’t seem that that’s 100% the case, but there’s enough overlap in the list that I think that that’s part of the designers’ logic)

 

[Li Shenron]

It's definitely about the Christmas tree, and that in turn is mainly related to passive (i.e. always active) personal buffs or protections. The purpose is twofold: avoid a single character to stack too many of these, and avoid a party pass the item among each other in quick succession to bypass a trap or similar obstacle.

By converse, magic items that benefit the whole party, such as bags, and consumables are never meant to require attunement.

There is probably no clear formula however, and some exceptions I don't understand such as the Candle of Invocation.