Simple mechanics mostly work well to give your old magic items new life.
Arcana Unleashed has brought loads of magically focused options for DMs and players to use at their tables. It’s also introduced one new mechanic; evolving magic items. The premise is that players might often become attached to a favourite magic item, one that’s seen them through many a perilous encounter against dragons, demons and undead. Some might even name their magic items as Tolkien does in Lord of the Rings (like sting, Anduril or precious, though that last one should ring alarm bells if your players use it). The point is that some magic items are beloved tools.
The problem is that as characters progress, they become more powerful and need more powerful magic items. This might mean that the weapon you once revered, is now good for nothing more than selling on for a few extra gold pieces. Evolving magic items though, will become more powerful as the party gains levels. But are these mechanics any good and are they worth using? That’s what I’ll be answering below as I go through these new mechanics.
How do evolving magic items work?
Thankfully, the mechanics for an evolving magic item are quite simple. They work likes this:
- When magic items evolve: The DM decides when a magic item evolves, but usually this occurs when characters increase to a new tier.
- Crafting an evolution: Alternatively, players can use crafting to evolve their magic item. The time this takes and the cost required is the difference between the cost and time for the current rarity and the next rarity level.
- Rarity: When a magic item evolves, it increases to the next level of rarity and gains the relevant properties for that rarity.
- Appearance: It’s appearance changes in the way described at that rarity.
- Attunement: If you’re already attuned to the item, you retain that attunement. Attunement requirements remain the same on the item.
- Property stacking: The item retains previous properties it had at a lower rarity, however, attack and damage bonuses don’t stack (I assume this is the same for AC bonuses too, though this isn’t explicitly stated).
Turning magic items into evolving magic items
The mechanics in Arcana Unleashed allow you to turn a magic item into an evolving magic items. To do so, it’s quite easy. Some magic items just become the next stage of rarity when there’s an equivalent version of an increased rarity. That’s the case for the following magic items:
| Item | Evolved Item |
|---|---|
| +1 armor | +2 armor |
| +2 armor | +3 armor |
| +1 shield | +2 shield |
| +2 shield | +3 shield |
| Rod of the pact keeper (uncommon) | Rod of the pact keeper (rare) |
| Rod of the pact keeper (rare) | Rod of the pact keeper (very rare) |
| +1 wand of the war mage | +2 wand of the war mage |
| +2 wand of the war mage | +3 wand of the war mage |
| +1 weapon | +2 weapon |
| +2 weapon | +3 weapon |
Most magic items aren’t this straight forward though. For those magic items, there are 3 tables with different properties you can add to a magic item to take it to the next level of rarity. You can randomly roll on these tables or just pick something appropriate from the list to evolve the item (or create your own evolved property).
These new properties often amount to being able to cast a spell from the item, but can do things like improve initiative, improve ability checks, reroll d20 tests or gain truesight.
I actually counted and 24 of the 34 evolving magic items properties granted a spell you can now cast. I guess this is a safe evolution, but it’s not necessarily imaginative. I also feel like they could have had one option that said something like, grants a 2nd or 3rd level spell you can cast once per day that you can choose (increasing the spell level with the rarity).
Do the suggested evolution properties work?
For simple magic items. This is easy and yes, it does work. These are already established progressions for the magic items. But what about the options for complex magic items? I went through the Dungeon Master’s Guide and tested how some of these magic items evolved against different properties.
If we take something quite basic like the armor of resistance (rare) and make it very rare with resistant, which grants a damage resistance to the wearer (so now you have armor with 2 resistances).
We can compare this to dragon scale mail (very rare) which grants a resistance, +1 AC and a couple of situational dragon specific bonuses. I think I prefer the dragon scale mail’s bonuses, but the evolved armor of resistance has potential to be a more suitable armor type. The evolved armor of resistance does feel within the realms of how strong a very rare magic item should be, if a little on the weaker side.
We can compare some of the benefits to enspelled armor too. A very rare enspelled armor will have spells of level 4-5 and spell save DC of 15 to 17 and attack bonus of +7 to +9. Very rare evolutions that grant a spell grant level 5 spells of DC 17, so on the more powerful side. However, these spells only have one use per day whereas enspelled armor has 6 charges and recharges d6 per day so you’re getting a lot more uses of the spell each day. The evolving magic items will have a rare property (like a resistance) but I feel like that’s still a bit weaker, but still within the power boundaries of a very rare magic item.
I do think the evolving properties work, but they do err on the less powerful side. This is perhaps by necessity, but I do wonder if you could have 3 charges for the spells to more closely balance against similar very rare magic items.
I think the balance is fine, but I also think it’s OK for DMs to push the power levels a little further if they want.
How good are the example evolving items?
There are 5 evolving magic items given as examples that you can use. These look interesting but have some varying power levels. For example, the blossom rod can cast insect plague, plant growth and cause a sleeping emanation once per long rest in its very rare evolution. In contrast, the staff of power can cast about 3-4 level 5 spells per day with a decent range of spells and it adds +2 to AC, saving throws and spells attack rolls and is a +2 weapon. That’s considerably better.
Conversely, the keyholes dagger is a +3 weapon that you can transform into other weapons, giving you flexibility over the type of weapon you can attack with. Once it’s in its very rare form, it can reroll a missed attack roll once per day. It’s not loads better than a +3 weapon, but so long as it has a good weapon form for you, it is better by a small amount.
The wave swept weapon is similar in its attack boosts, but has extras too like a swim speed and a fly speed, making it even better, but again, remains within the power levels appropriate for an evolving magic item.
Magic items are never equally balanced against one another. That isn’t really possible with magic items granting such different benefits. These evolving magic items do fit within the right balance for items of their rarity though and they offer some interesting and progressive improvements to their properties.
Verdict
I think creating universal improvements to something like evolving magic items is harder to implement than it might seem. With so many variables, it would be easy to imbalance the game. I think with the random properties, these do lean towards the weaker side, but remain within appropriate power levels.
I’d be tempted to up the power levels a little, but I think these are broadly fine. I think they do better when giving examples of actual evolving magic items where they can be more precise and creative with the options. There’s a mix, but they get the power levels right and it allows the items to become more interesting.
As a simple mechanic for creating your own evolving items, I think these mechanics make it really simple and work well. A slight amount of weakness isn’t much of a problem, and magic items tend not to need to worry as much about precise balance as they’re gifted by the DM only when they want to. And even with weaker evolutions, this remains better than simply not having an evolution at all. Overall, I think this is a solid mechanic.
