How much of a rarity increase for a magic item to be slotless..

[animewatcha]

Like the topic asks. Plenty of magic items exist that require attunement. How much of a rarity increase (thus exponentially increasing cost as well) would be fair for a 'attuned item' to no longer require attuning?

[PhantomSoul]

Is it an item that shouldn't require attunement to begin with?

By default, I'd say there's no rarity increase because I wouldn't be removing attunement! (Especially because rarity is essentially irrelevant for balance in my experience; it might affect cost and when it comes up if you're using random loot tables... but those are more gating mechanisms than balance in my view [not that they can't be both if they're used gate the item to only pop up when the item is not too unbalanced... but that may never happen, especially without attunement!].)

[kingcheesepants]

I'd say bumping it up 1 category would be fair. But depending on the specific item it might be okay to add or subtract one from this. Attunement is meant to keep players from stacking too many effects at once and keep them from being too crazy overpowered. If the original item has an effect that doesn't come into play during combat or doesn't stack with anything else you can probably get rid of attunment without much issue. If however it does something like grant resistance or boost AC you'll want to be careful about removing attunement as having too many items of this type can make a player more overpowered than you'd wish.

[Kvess]

I'd suggest making the increase incredibly costly, if not disallowing that modification, considering that a slotless magic item would make its attunable counterpart obsolete. Or, to put it another way, it would make a magic item that would require a deliberate player choice to equip into a no-brainer: why not equip my Ring of Fire Resistance and Ring of Cold Resistance if they both doesn't require attunement?

That change seems pretty damn powerful to me.

[Angelalex242]

Before you make fun stuff cease requiring attunement, perhaps ease into it gradually.

If you've got a tier 3 party, try making uncommon items no longer require attunement, and see how that affects the game...if they can Christmas Tree uncommons to their heart's delight.

[PhantomSoul]

Before you make fun stuff cease requiring attunement, perhaps ease into it gradually.

If you've got a tier 3 party, try making uncommon items no longer require attunement, and see how that affects the game...if they can Christmas Tree uncommons to their heart's delight.

I (maybe wrongly!) assumed the OP probably had a specific item or set of items in mind. Doing it on an item-by-item basis is probably the safest bet (especially when the DM already controls influx of magic items).

[Cryptwright]

I always decided if something needs to be attuned based on what shenanigans they would do if it wasn't. Such as an object of find familiar, if not attuned they'd just pass it around the party til they each had one.

[Chronos]

I'm not sure how much difference it makes. If you want your players to have access to it, you should give them access to it, and if you don't want them to have access to it, don't give it, regardless of rarity. I know that there are optional rules for assigning prices to magic items based on rarity, but that's only if the DM has decided that they're available at all. The game wasn't designed around the assumption that magic item shops would be common.

[Cryptwright]

I'm not sure how much difference it makes. If you want your players to have access to it, you should give them access to it, and if you don't want them to have access to it, don't give it, regardless of rarity. I know that there are optional rules for assigning prices to magic items based on rarity, but that's only if the DM has decided that they're available at all. The game wasn't designed around the assumption that magic item shops would be common.

There is also a guide somewhere for better pricing than the book gives, the book has huge range spectrum such as 500 to 5000, and what not

[Angelalex242]

The main thing attunement does is make cool items obsolete once you have 3 better ones.

"Well, this would be cool, but I've got these badass items over here, so...guess this'll just sit on my character sheet."