Magic Items That Grow with the Party?

[SMac8988]

Hello fellow DMs and Players alike. I was wondering if anyone has ever homebrewed magic items that level and grow with the players and how you managed something like this. I am working on several magic items that will be sentient, and as the relationship with the wielder grows the item will get more powerful; giving more benefits and eventually becoming legendary items. I want these items to start off fairly strong and grow with the party so that they don't fall off later on.

So anyone have experience in this!?

[nickl_2000]

Absolutely, it is actually fairly common to do it. That way the special magic item made for a character doesn't become useless or outclassed.

Typically you will see people have things grow with the proficiency bonus or get new abilities with each new tier of play.

If you want ideas, tell use the class and play style of characters and I'm sure you will get some decent ideas.

[rlc]

Yeah, the tiers of play are a good thing to key off of. Look at the different stuff that's already in the books and try to match it up with the proper rarity.

[strangebloke]

I've been using the ancestral weapons supplement from DMs guild and it's pretty good as far as optional rulesets go. Just a few bucks.

Implementing something like this for yourself isn't hard at all though.

[SMac8988]

The current plan would be the weapon starts off with several less effects; some fire damage, maybe a slight pseudo healing effect, and light source. But there is a spirit bound into the blade and the further the relationship develops the more abilities unlock. Like a fire aura, or shooting fire from the sword, stuff like that.

[Bjarkmundur]

Proficiency Bonus, Half Proficiency Bonus, Level and Intelligence modifier are all good points of scaling :D

You have to have some way to reward that one player that didn't dump int ;)

[Randomthom]

It's worth looking up Critical Role's Vestiges on this subject since this is more-or-less exactly what they are. Fun caveat, they don't trigger at a certain level but rather at a certain crux story point.

[dreast]

In older editions, these were known as legacy weapons. You can look there for some general outlines, but I'd recommend both toning them way down (characters are already a lot stronger now than they were) and keying them off of tiers, as recommended above.

[Nagog]

I also find that magic items gained levels 1-5 often scale out by the 10-15 range (if you're lucky enough for them to last that long). So my magic items typically scale by being utility items to augment player abilities. For example:

Grappling hook: Allows the user to make a grappling check at a range of 10 feet. Scales with the player's Athletics score, which already scales with Prof modifier.
Agathys' Bracers: Allows the player to cast Armor of Agathys once per day at a level equal to their proficiency modifier. Never gets insanely powerful for the level, but is still a really nice bonus and can scale really well if combined with DR or HAM or Abjurer's Ward.

Things like that. I've also given my party's Artificer a mechanical eye capable of casting Hunter's Mark with one of his spell slots, and I've always had available a ring to grant 10 temp HP at the end of every long rest. All of those have been really great items that don't scale out like a +1 weapon would.