Difference Between Magic Items

[Climowitz]

Many magic items that ban be created serve an specific purpose. Scrolls are one time only spells. Potions are similar but don't need some competence. Weapons have offensive enchantments while armor have defensive one. Wands allow for a limited amount of castings of the same spell. Rods give metamagic powers to it's wielder and staffs provides spells that can be used as if they were prepared or learned. Wondrous items doesn't have a specific purpose and mostly fit into a universal use fitting whatever needed no big specific design just a really lot of possibilities. While rings are almost exactly as wondrous items, with higher prerequisites and a single body slot they fit.
Idk if I'm missing some. But what do you think? Should rings and wondrous be the same magic item. Should rings have a higher power or capability or wondrous a smaller one?

[Kelb_Panthera]

There's really nothing wrong with the system as-is and you've only covered the core items anyway. There're about as many other types of items that can be crafted with a feat and a few more that require a class feature. There is -some- redundance between them but those redundances are usually paired with some non-redundant paramaters as well.

Take potions and skull talismans. Both are single use items and both can only be made from a spell that has a target line that includes one or more creatures. However, while a potion cannot be made from a personal range spell, a skull talisman doesn't have that restriction. Neither is the skull talisman restricted to 3rd level and lower spells. Finally, since a potion must be voluntarily drunk or at least go unresisted, it makes no sense to make one out of an offensive spell while a skull talisman affects whoever breaks it and can readily be used to setup traps.

Rings as a category do contain more of the high end effects than do wondrous items when it comes to published material. I don't see any particular need to fold them together.

[Fizban]

Rings are the most convenient and most easily protected body slot. They're down at the bottom of the Items Surviving [natural 1] Saving Throws table, and it's hard to justify being able to easily yank one off somebody without starting a grapple because they can just close their fist, and that's assuming the ring isn't inside a glove or gauntlet as well. Rings have two slots and are the easiest item to put on or remove, with the zero bulk or weight to worry about, making them the perfect choice for effects you might not want all the time (as opposed to say, carrying a bag of cloaks around). They're also just generally the smallest and least distinctive, which would make it harder for foes to identify their effects simply by sight (as many items are given extremely flash descriptions).

And of course, the books and particularly the DMG show some obvious trends in what sort of item does what. If you were going to remove (or draw harder lines enforcing) an item type, Rods are actually the one with the least use, as their only niche is. . . being handheld items without body slots. Which weapons, shields, and wondrous items all do (though the existence of Rods suggests those Wondrous items really shouldn't be doing that). In particular, many Rods require Craft Magic Arms, but many special magic weapons do not, for no other apparent reason than the weapon not being in a "rod" shape. The "metamagic" role was not added until 3.5. Some potentially fragile items that could be rods but aren't, could have that fragility as a balance, but we all know that's not actually an intentional feature.

For my notes I specifically state that Staves must have two or more spells and at least one of those spells must cost one charge (also note the minimum caster level of 8 for all stave spells), while Scepters are allowed to have a single spell at 2 charges (effectively letting you make a "wand" with 25 charges and higher spell cap, cheaper up front and normally impossible). Any elixer, unguent, pigment, ointment, salve, oil, paint, dust, powder, sand, perfume, aroma, stone, gem, bullet, candle, or other item that is usable by anyone and with less than a dozen charges which clearly should be or is using the "use activated single" pricing, is made with Brew Potion, because screw everyone behind those decisions. As for Craft Rod, I haven't made any hard rulings yet, because that would require going over every single "wondrous" item again to pull up all those that should actually be Rods, and possibly making a large number of specific weapons harder to make.

[Climowitz]

Right now in my mundo. I will make wondrous items be able to contain only one enchantment or usable spell in it. While rings won't have this limitation making so the most powerful magic items might be rings. While wondrous should be magic items that help with the every day. Like everlasting rations, decanter of endless water, flying carpet, bag of holding, etc. And should they have more than one enchantment or spell (those exist) their price should escalate quickly and exponentially.

Btw I'm rebuilding crafting rules. If the thread goes on with more people showing interest or anybody asks nicely I'll gladly share what I have so far.