Hey guys,
Ive gotten 2 items in EA that I find are overpowered that I feel that they need to be adressed. Toned abit or lose 1 of their abilities or somesuch.
Both are items for mages and while 1 is just really good nothing like it excists. The other is better then the best mage staff in dnd and it seriously feel it needs adressing.
Il start with the lesser of the 2. The Sapphire spark. A rare amulet. It gives you the ability to cast magic missle once per day. Which by itself isent that super good. But it has a 2nd effect. It buffs each missle with 1D4 additional Psychic force.
So why is this a problem? Well problem might be to big of a word, but its a
very good item. It almost doubles the damage each missle does. This makes magic missle a very powerfull spell (which it already is without this buff mind you) making each missle (which auto hit) do 2D4+1 damage. It is a rare quality item so I guess theres that but there arent really items in dnd that buff a specific spell (to my knowledge anyway. Please correct me if im wrong) and while there are rules for DM's to make their own items it also cautions not to make items to powerfull. Im personally in the camp of 'its to powerfull' even though I love it as an item. After I found it I found myself not casting anything else. Magic missle is already pretty good and this item just makes it amazing. The single uses of magic missle is just meh on an item but I find the buff to damage is just to big.
My suggestion:Maybe reduce the damage bonus to +1 or +2 damage for each missle because a potential 4 additional damage per missle is very strong. Its also of a type of damage that not many creatures have resistance or immunity against. Rare or very rare quality seems appropiate.
Now the one that I do feel needs a major overhaul. The staff of arcane blessing.
Hoo boy. Where do I begin. So lets start with the fact that it has 3 effects. On an uncommon item. Most items that you find will only have 1 effect at that rarity. Heck armor+1 is already rare and that only adds a bonus of 1 to your AC. Items with this many abilities are generally legendary or an artifact of some kind. That nitpick out of the way, ets go over the effects though....
While it is a magical staff, it has no bonus to attack or damage. That is fine, I think its unlikely that it would be used like that anyway
It allows you to cast bless. Which is also fine. Lets call that ability 1.
Ontop of that though if the one holding the staff casts bless it gains a further 1D4 to attack and saving rolls. It doubles the effect that bless does. Lets call that ability 2.
And the cherry ontop....and the thing that makes this item completly and utterly broken. Ability 3. It gives you a bonus of 2D4 to hit with spells. Its unclear to me if thats only the ones hit by bless or it applies to the one holding the item? I assume the latter. Because otherwise spellcasters blessed in this manner would gain 2D4+2D4 bonus to hit (
bless already gives a bonus to hit which effect is doubled and the 2nd effect on top of that would mean it becomes 4D4 which I think is unlikely)
So lets first bring up 2 other magical items that I would generally consider to be the pinnacle of magical staves for spellcasters. The Staff of power and the staff of the magi.
Staff of power. Very rare item. Counts as a +2 magical staff that also gives +2 to casting rolls, +2 to AC and it has 20 charges that you can use to cast spells or do more damage if you hit and expend a charge. You can also break the staff and extend charge to basicly turn it into a bomb but it also damages you.
Staff of the magi. Legendary staff. Counts as a +2 quarterstaff, gives +2 to spellcasting attack rolls. Has 50 charges to cast spell and you can absorb spells with the staff as a reaction if they are only cast at you. You also gain advantage on saving throws against spells.
So why bring up these 2 examples? They obviously have alot more abilities then the staff of arcane blessing right? Well the problem lies in that 2D4 bonus to hitting with spells. The biggest bonus on 1 single staff that you can find is +2. The wand of the war mage can go up to +3, and lets you ignore half cover but does nothing beyond that. Getting +4D4 to hitting with spells is so incredibly powerfull that even if you roll 1's on those die you are still getting a bonus double to that of these 2 examples above. A bonus of 4-16 to hitting something is laughably broken (should you buff the one holding the staff) and also seems abit out of character for the rest of the staff. The rest of the staff focuses on blessing your teammates for further effect which is I must admit a neat thing to add to a staff. But I feel the bonus to hit ontop of that is to much. The height of the bonus not beeing fixed but random is also abit weird as generally items give a fixed amount.
Even if the additional bonus to spellcasting applies to the caster, its minimum boost to hitting with spells is still equal to that of the above mentioned items and could be double as high. Add the spell caster to the people in the bless and you will just about only miss on 1's.
Suggestion: Lower the bonus to hitting with spells (for just the caster) to +1 or max +2 or remove it all together; but keep the rest of the stats. Maybe make it rare with 2 abilities (should the bonus to hit be removed) or a legendary artifact with all 3 (toned down to +1 or +2 ofcourse). Item would keep its niche but wouldnt make artifacts dwarved in power in comparison. And a staff that has a bonus to buffing your teammates is neat!
