Are attunement limits even necessary? (Probably, unless writing your own magic items)

[Greywander]

I understand how attunement could help a DM who has given out too many magic items, but even then there is only so much it can do if they've given out the really powerful items.

I've often heard people talk about how +X equipment is so boring, and as a DM they'd much rather give out magic items that are interesting (e.g. the Staff of Adornment or Birdcalls), and most +X magic items don't even use attunement.

This leads me to think that if a magic item is so powerful that it needs to be limited by attunement, maybe it shouldn't be in the game, or else only a few such items should be given out in the first place. This necessarily means writing up a bunch of new magic items to use instead, ones that give interesting effects instead of just raw power boosts. I think you might also be able to get away with partial attunement limits, where as you level up items of a particular rarity or less don't count against the limit, with legendary and artifact items always counting against the limit. E.g. the attunement limit for common items is lifted at 5th level, uncommon at 9th level, rare at 13th level, and very rare at 17th level.

This might be a good solution for specific tables, but I don't know that it's a great one for a general rule. Ultimately, this will depend hugely on the DM and how many magic items they give out, and how powerful those are. As such, it's hard to have a good general rule that works for everyone. The best general rule will probably be the more restrictive one, since that's more likely to work for everyone, but it's not necessarily needed at every table, and some tables will chafe at the restrictions.

I think magic items should also be a bit more quirky, e.g. they don't work under certain circumstances, or they carry situationally negative effects, and such. But again, this means writing a new list of magic items, which is doable but doesn't work for anyone who just wants to stick with the existing magic items. Maybe that could be a homebrew project someone undertakes: writing up a new list of magic items that don't need an attunement restriction, and possibly reworking attunement to function differently. Maybe attunement could actually be a benefit, allowing you to still benefit from the item even when it's not on your person, or allowing you to summon it to you or know exactly where it is, or creating some link between you and another person in contact with the item. Maybe attuned items are untargetable, instead redirection an effect to target you instead. Maybe attacking an attuned item inflicts damage on the person attuned to it, and dropping them to 0 hit points breaks attunement.

It just feels like there's so much wasted potential. 5e already doesn't assume magic items as part of its progression, so why waste magic items on power buffs? WotC could have made then interesting and weird instead. I guess they did both, as there are some interesting magic items, but it feels like they were afraid to lean to heavily into that.

[Dork_Forge]

In my opinon yes, they are necessary. They act not only as a gate to power, but create choice. If you just keep throwing on every item you find your power rises and it feels like 'why wouldn't I do this?' It cheapens magic items and creates world building problems, like why aren't the hyperwealthy, also hyper powerful because they're bedecked in a king's ransom of items?

I like seeing my players have to decide what to attune to, and find it interesting when they decide to shift their attuned items to better handle certain situations.

As for why not more quirky items that don't always work: because it's game and it would feel bad to try and use your super cool item and have it fail. That's why those mechanics are the minority (Dust of Sneezing and Choking, Potion of Poison etc.) and not the norm.

The former is hilarious to give to players though.

[Greywander]

Some items will be mutually exclusive. You can't wear two magic armors at the same time, nor can you wield two magic weapons at the same time (well, TWF exists, but who uses it?). You could make a case for wearing two cloaks, and you should be able to wear at least as many rings as you have fingers (at some point, stuffing rings on a finger would make the finger unable to flex), but there are a few things that can't be stacked.

Again, to make this work would likely require writing up your own magic items, such that none are too strong. Instead of focusing on power boosts, each one would have interesting effects that would only be useful in certain situations. A wand that can cast a cantrip is only helpful when that cantrip is helpful, for example, and having multiple such wands only increases versatility, not power. But sadly a lot of existing magic items don't conform to that standard, which is why you'd need to write your own.

[Dork_Forge]

Some items will be mutually exclusive. You can't wear two magic armors at the same time, nor can you wield two magic weapons at the same time (well, TWF exists, but who uses it?). You could make a case for wearing two cloaks, and you should be able to wear at least as many rings as you have fingers (at some point, stuffing rings on a finger would make the finger unable to flex), but there are a few things that can't be stacked.

To the bolded part, a lot of people ime, the naysaying optimising echochamber of a forum is not a good yardstick with which to judge play as a whole.

One of my games has a Barabrian/Rogue MC that uses TWF all the time to great effect, whilst not having to take any accuracy penalties like a GWM build would.

As for relying on the practicality of wearing items:

Not only is that even more work for the DM to consider, but it just begs argument at tables. "Of course I can wear x number of y, look I'll put stuff on right now."

And whilst you can't wear two magic armors at once... I'm not sure why you would want to. There are an abundance of better items you can cram onto your body. What's a reasonable restriction for number of amulets/necklaces? Can you wear a circlet under a helm?

You can easily end up in this kind of situation:

-Ten Rings
- armor
- shield
- weapon (with a variety of other weapons you can switch into)
-Two cloaks
-boots
-circlet
-helm
-three or more amulets
-a full orbit or Ioun stones
-a belt
-gloves
-a bandolier of wands

And so on and so forth until you look like a cross between Benny from the Mummy praying and Finn from the episode of Adventure Time when he grinds a dungeon train.



Again, to make this work would likely require writing up your own magic items, such that none are too strong. Instead of focusing on power boosts, each one would have interesting effects that would only be useful in certain situations. A wand that can cast a cantrip is only helpful when that cantrip is helpful, for example, and having multiple such wands only increases versatility, not power. But sadly a lot of existing magic items don't conform to that standard, which is why you'd need to write your own.

When you get to the point that you are not only removing a core limitation in the game, but you're also writing exhaustive lists of items you're well on your way to playing a different game. That's not a bad thing, but there comes a time when it isn't Theseus' ship anymore.

[Keravath]

If you doubt the significance of attunement limits and their impact on the game then you didn't play that much of the earlier versions of the game.

There are a lot of reasons high level play wasn't really enjoyed by many groups in earlier editions and one of those reasons was due to the runaway power of magic items. Unlike many other resources, magic items just accumulate over time. If a character can use all or most of them the character power level typically goes up at a rate equal to or greater than that provided by earning levels (though this is very dependent on the game world and DM - some folks play low magic worlds where every magic item is rare and characters may only ever see one or two - however, since magic items are so cool, I find that such a low magic game is an exception rather than the rule).

Attunement puts a cap on how much improvement characters see from magic items. It also forces them to choose which magic items to bring with them. The player might want to use everything but attunement forces them to choose and the DM can just turn around and refer to the rules when players beg to use more magic items.

Anyway, I've found it useful in 5e. I don't need to be as careful curating magic items found by the party since they may have to choose which they want to use.

However, when players from earlier editions are first faced with the mechanic it can be a bit of a shock since they are used to being able to wear pretty much everything they find at the same time (eg in previous editions of the rules a character could wear a headband of intellect, amulet of health, girdle of giant strength, winged boots, vorpal and holy avenger swords, carry a staff of the magi for its spells, plate mail of etherealness, ring of protection, cloak of protection or better yet a cloak of invisibility or both, talisman of pure good .. .plus a few more rings and other magic items all at the same time :) ) ... even if they were an elven fighter/mage - a lot of their power is coming from the magic item Christmas tree they have become.

Attunement places a hard limit on that style of play - a DM can change it all they want - but the default helps put a lid on higher level power creep and aids in the bounded accuracy concept.

[Kane0]

Not necessary, but absolutely useful. Attunement as a mechanic has room for development and refinement but as it is it serves a purpose.

[Tanarii]

Your primary argument seems to hinge on the DM choosing magic items, instead of procedurally generating content.


In my opinon yes, they are necessary. They act not only as a gate to power, but create choice.
Agreed. Choices are great. It's best when they arise naturally from the in-game universe. But sometimes they need to be artificially inflicted for the good of the game. Game structures that enhance them would be the next best place.

Unfortunately limited magic items starts to become "build choices" in many players eyes. Those are nice, but IMO not critical to the game. But realistically, magic items probably aren't fully in the category of build choices unless the DM agrees to make them so, and players get more input on which ones they get. They also include an aspect of making an in-universe choice (even if it's an artificial rule imposed one) about utilizing the environment, in this case found magic items.

[Amnestic]

Necessary? No. You could scrap it without your books setting on fire. I do think that attunement serves some important purposes though.

A) It's another aspect of player choice. Do I attune to ABC, ABD, or ACD today? What do I think I need? And once I hit my limit, do I risk selling off the excess magic items or have them 'uselessly' taking up space when I don't need them? It means that even if they are drowning in magic items they'll still think about it. Yeah, they might stick with a few staples, but they might also have a 'flex slot' depending on what they need.

B) It allows the potential for (sub)classes and magic items to bend the rules to be special. This is most obviously seen with the Artificer, who breaks the rules on attunement limit *and* has a capstone that grows in strength based on their number of attuned items. Though I don't think they have made any yet, there's also the potential for magic items that use up multiple attunement slots, or magic item sets that take up 'partial' attunement slots, but only when they're attuned alongside other parts of the same set. It keeps design space open.

C) Flattening the power curve is helpful for DMs - yes, they can adjust, they can add more enemies, they can make them hit harder, but flattening the curve means they don't need to as much. This also makes it easier to talk about online.

D) Most importantly in my eyes is that attunement existing changes player perception of magic items. By limiting the number of attuned items you can use from the get go, players will treat them differently than if attunement didn't exist at all. In your mind, attuned items are rarer, and treated as such by both players and DMs, than if we were still in the 3.5e christmas tree era. This was definitely important to me when I was making the move to 5e, and I'd gotten a bit sick of the xmas tree design sensibilities. Instead of laundry lists of "Mandatory Magic Items", you get "here's some cool things", which was such a welcome breath of fresh air.

[Greywander]

To the bolded part, a lot of people ime, the naysaying optimising echochamber of a forum is not a good yardstick with which to judge play as a whole.

One of my games has a Barabrian/Rogue MC that uses TWF all the time to great effect, whilst not having to take any accuracy penalties like a GWM build would.
I was kind of joking, but TWF is such that in most cases it's outright worse than using a two-hander or going sword'n'board, both of which only require one weapon. TWF with only one magic weapon leaves you behind the other styles, with a second magic weapon only getting you back to where you were before, and any additional magic weapons do nothing at all, except give you options to switch to depending on the situation.

Pretty much you can give a player as many magic weapons as you like and it won't affect much (assuming everyone in the party already has a magic weapon). The only thing that will actually make a difference is giving them a magic weapon that is stronger than anything they already have. This is also why I think magic weapons should share an attunement slot, since you can't really use more than one at a time anyway (except via TWF).


When you get to the point that you are not only removing a core limitation in the game, but you're also writing exhaustive lists of items you're well on your way to playing a different game. That's not a bad thing, but there comes a time when it isn't Theseus' ship anymore.
Really? Magic items are essentially an "optional" rule. This would be like saying that if you wrote up an entirely new list of feats then it would be a completely different game. It's certainly a lot of effort, but I think you're overestimating how much of an impact it would have. None of the game's subsystems, like combat, spellcasting, or ability checks, would be affected.


There are a lot of reasons high level play wasn't really enjoyed by many groups in earlier editions and one of those reasons was due to the runaway power of magic items. Unlike many other resources, magic items just accumulate over time.
This is a good point, but not an insurmountable one. If magic items are niche enough, the accumulation doesn't matter as much since they aren't much use outside that niche. For example, the Immovable Rod is only good for certain things, and doesn't "stack" with most other magic items. You can also build in conditions under which the magic item doesn't work, and these can be pretty common, such as being in sunlight, getting wet (e.g. rain, swimming), or being Tuesday. You can also build in ways of destroying a magic item (again, things like being exposed to sunlight or getting wet), or even give the magic item a more powerful effect that destroys the item when activated.

The crux of the problem is that, again, you need to write your own magic items to make this work. That seems to be the recurring theme here. The default items are simply too powerful to just remove attunement limits. Not all of them, but a lot of them.


Your primary argument seems to hinge on the DM choosing magic items, instead of procedurally generating content.
Fair point, I didn't consider randomly rolled loot. But that's only half the equation. If you write up a new list of magic items designed around not giving big power boosts when accumulated, then rolling them up randomly becomes less of an issue. If, for example, you're only generating things like Immovable Rods or Decanters of Endless Water or Alchemy Jugs when you roll on the table, it's going to cause a lot less issues if you're generating things like plate +3, Staves of Power, or Robes of the Archmage.

[Telwar]

If I recall correctly, the intent with attunement was to prevent the party from moving items around easily, in addition to trying to limit the Christmas Tree.

I don't particularly think attunement is that necessary. It's not terrible, but it is limiting, especially since a lot of less-than-always useful items require attunement when they really shouldn't. Maybe have some common sense* solutions, like two rings, no same-type-of-item stacking, etc.

If you want to keep it, adding attunement slots is pretty easy. One of the common solutions I see is typing the # of slots to Proficiency Bonus.

* - The shades of my middle and high school science teachers rise up to say there's no such thing as common sense, only experience.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think like a lot of things in 5e attunement is a better idea than the way it has been implimented. Basically there are a whole bunch of reletively weak items that require attunement and a few strong ones that somehow were left off the list. Broom of flying anyone?
It seems to be a way of limiting magic in a world that is by default high magic, which I suppose is ok. I like fewer items than was the norm in 2e, which we played before switching.
One downside I've noticed is that items are a good way to help balance martials at higher levels and attunement is a bit of a hurdle there.

[Witty Username]

When you get to the point that you are not only removing a core limitation in the game, but you're also writing exhaustive lists of items you're well on your way to playing a different game. That's not a bad thing, but there comes a time when it isn't Theseus' ship anymore.

Kinda, magic items exist in the game but they aren't really core. The game is designed to be, to some degree, functional without them. Also, the existing magic item rules are very finicky, Rarity is a mess and attunement is a bit all over the place. designing your own items that don't use attunement is reasonable (or not, I personally have tinkering with magic items that take multiple attunement slots). That being said I like cursed items and like trying to make cursed items that players are tempted to use, like a dagger that does extra poison damage to the user and the target, or a mask that grants immunity to charms but makes the wearer mute.

[Angelalex242]

If you hate attunement slots, play 3.5 and/or Pathfinder for a while.

Your character will look like a magic christmas tree.

[tenshiakodo]

I think there's a middle ground here. One doesn't have to throw attunement completely out of the window, but there's a few things to consider:

1) where are these magic items coming from? You, as the DM, are allowing them into your game. So one wouldn't become festooned with magic bling unless two things occur-

One character somehow gets more than their fair share.

Or, you really like handing out magic treasure.

2) not all items are created equally. This is a no-brainer, but some items at lower rarity that require attunement could exist at higher level without. You need to decide if something is worth an attunement slot for your game.

3) most attunements are boring. They say "you can use this". However, in Tales From the Yawning Portal, there's a cursed berserker axe that has a special benefit when you attune to it (if memory serves, it grants extra hit points). That's cool, and I think more items should grant minor benefits just for being attuned to it.

4) in old school D&D, the ability to collect magic items really helped shore up the non-caster classes. The whole idea of the sentient magic weapon that had cool magical powers it could use on behalf of it's master was written to give Fighters an edge even at high levels. Consider using items that support "martial characters" more, or even maybe giving them extra attunement slots over pure casters (but make sure this is something that occurs X levels in, to avoid multiclass dipping to get more magic items).

Once you've decided on how common/rare your items are, I would suggest not tossing out attunement entirely. Go easy at first.

A house rule I've seen used is 1+ proficiency bonus for attunement slots, or even just proficiency bonus (as most Tier 1 characters aren't going to have many items anyways). This gives you some wiggle room for higher level play, and can still work to avoid a free-for-all.

The thing to consider is that games like 3 and 4e required a lot of math fixing items to give you a little more attack or AC or what have you. 5e might not need as much of that (WotC and many players claim they don't, but there's a sidebar in Xanathar's that makes me wonder about WotC's claims).

So don't offer many of those. A "magical" weapon with a cool feature is fine enough, don't worry about magical plusses. But an item that offers cool features, like extra mobility or the ability to overcome obstacles that only magic normally can? That's going to make your players feel rewarded.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Necessary? In most worlds, it goes to help table and encounter balance. If magic items are very rare probably not so much.

[Daracaex]

I've been struggling with attunement limits a lot recently. While it's theoretically good to have a limit on player power and force players to make some choices, there are side effects. The biggest is that I am personally finding it very difficult to excite my players with new loot anymore. I find a cool magic item, place it in my game, and nobody really wants it because while it's cool, it's just not as good as what they've got. This also ties in with another big 5e issue of money and how to spend it. Even when I took the time to make a shop and figure out prices for the items in it, my players didn't exactly go wild because things weren't worth buying unless they were significant improvements. And it also doesn't help that attunement requirements for items don't seem to be based on power level of the item, but flavor (or some nebulous requirement that ends up with most items needing it).

I've done a couple things to try to mitigate this. My players have been gathering powerful artifacts that improve as they grow proficient with them, and I set them up so that high enough proficiency means they can use them without attunement, but they get an additional effect if they do attune to it. I've also went through and changed their magic items so that attunement is only needed to access some aspects of an item and not all, and made switching attunement only one round to encourage more frequent use of situational items. I'm now considering granting attunement slots equal to proficiency bonus instead of a static 3. All of this is really just delaying the inevitable issue though. I'm not sure what the solution should be, but I do think there is an improvement to be made on the current system.

[Keravath]

...

The crux of the problem is that, again, you need to write your own magic items to make this work. That seems to be the recurring theme here. The default items are simply too powerful to just remove attunement limits. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
...


I mentioned that accumulation of magic items can be a problem. However, I want to emphasize that isn't true for everyone. Some DMs and tables LOVE to play with heaps of magic items for every purpose. They LIKE walking around as magical arsenals and I expect that those folks play the game just fine without using Attunement limits at all.

The default items have been in D&D since the beginning, virtually unchanged in all the editions I have played. This is the first edition to introduce the concept of attunement and all of these magic items worked just fine in the previous editions.

Attunement in 5e is a mechanism to limit powerful magic items at the higher levels to make the game more playable for those less into magic items dominating high level play and to help compensate for the DMs natural desire to give the players shiny stuff that does not go away. I think it is a great mechanism to help with those goals.

Finally, a DM could custom create every single magic item, could give each one a vulnerability or weakness that would result in its destruction, could give them powers that are useful but less powerful than some of the standard items ... but that is an immense amount of work to create an entire magic item system to replace the present one. I agree it might work better for a specific DMs objectives in their game (and if they want to put in the effort then awesome :) ) but for most of the rest of us, the attunement mechanic is an adequate if blunt instrument to address the situation of magic item accumulation into the higher levels.

[heavyfuel]

If you hate attunement slots, play 3.5 and/or Pathfinder for a while.

Your character will look like a magic christmas tree.

Both systems expect players to be decked out in magic items, though. 5e does not.

A PC with no magic items in 3e/PF simply does not keep up with the game math in regard to monster AC, attack, saves, etc, so of course you'll end up with a bunch of magic items.

Scraping attunement slots from 5e is going to have the same problem.

Who'd've guessed that different systems would give different outcomes, huh?

[Akal Saris]

5E's attunement limits mean that my characters have tended to get locked into the same 3 items for 5+ levels because most new items are, at best, sidegrades. Especially if the character has a strong emotional attachment to a specific item.

Personally I think that an absolute limit of 3 attuned items is too stingy and punishes some characters too much. I think one solution would be to make an exception for weapons (solving the issue that weapon users may want to switch weapon damage types, use both melee and ranged weapons, dual wield, etc.), and/or to broaden the limits to something like '3 equipped attuned items and 3 'utility' attuned items'.

[Dark.Revenant]

I find the easiest way to strip off attunement is to make the item consumable. A consumable version of a Flame Tongue, for instance, would be very simple: it's a plain magic sword until you activate the fire effect, and when the flame burns out, the sword turns to ash. No attunement required. You can alternatively make the item very situational, like "only works in this specific forest" or "activates only when fighting cultists from this particular sect of demon-worshipers", which should make attunement unnecessary.

You can offer more items, and more powerful items, to the party with this approach, and any kind of imbalance you create is necessarily curbed by the temporary nature of these items.

[Rukelnikov]

I think like a lot of things in 5e attunement is a better idea than the way it has been implimented. Basically there are a whole bunch of reletively weak items that require attunement and a few strong ones that somehow were left off the list. Broom of flying anyone?

This.

I got the impression that with the inclusion of attunement, plus the removal of item pricing, they didnt feel the need to "balance" the items much, which is why you get stuff whichs rarity/attunement (non)requirement seems odd.

[loki_ragnarock]

Necessary?
Well, no.

But they could be used conceptually for more than they are; martial stances, secret striking forms, hidden breathing techniques. Stuff you might use for a more martial arts world. Learning techniques from the ancient masters, and such like. Leaves room to mix and match styles without allowing for using all of them at once. Start in Iron Bull Stance with Judo Grip and Deep Breathe techniques, meditation to realign your chi/chakras/hamon/whatever for an hour and then you're in Monkey Style Stance with your Tiger Claw Strike and Slow Breathe techniques. Wouldn't want someone to have all the stuff going on at once; that'd be over 9,000.
Magic items by any other name, of course, but massageable into other shapes with some little effort.

I mean, they haven't released any product that really latches on, but it's a system point (among several) that leaves alot of room for exploration.

[Sigreid]

What they do is assist the DM with limiting the amount of magical junk the players can use at one time, without the DM as being labeled stingy or a tyrant. That's why there are attunement slots now. That's why you could only use one magic ring per hand in older editions. It also helps because DMs often LIKE to give out magic stuff and will happily give away enough that would blow up their game if not given some kind of a usable items limit.

[Angelalex242]

I do think some magic items should lose their attunement necessity after a while.

How long does a ring of jumping really need an attunement slot? It just doesn't.

And while it's not the only item like that, it's the most obvious one. What use is jumping in a world of flight?

[Kane0]

Alternatively, some items might not need attunement by X class, or take up 2 attunement by Y class, or have a benefit that exists without attunement plus additional bonuses with attunement, or attune faster or slower than normal (for Z class even), and so on.

[Angelalex242]

Eh. There's nothing so powerful it takes 2 slots.

[Kane0]

Well there's always custom stuff that DMs come up with, for example you could have a Very Rare shortsword that is +1 when it isn't attuned but when it is becomes +2 and can also turn your attacks into 15' cones (Dex save for half, DC 8 + Prof + Attack stat). Perhaps Barbarians and Rangers are able to attune without it counting towards their maximum but for Bards, Warlocks and Wizards it counts as two attunements.

And of course on top of this you could rule that PCs get attunement spots equal to their Prof Bonus rather than the straight 3, for additional scaling and variety. You could also just stop requiring attunement or stop it from counting against the maximum when you hit whatever requirement too, like after you get Extra Attack or have an INT of 17 or higher or reach level 12 or gain any spell slots above 4th level or attune to another specific item; anything really.

[Keravath]

Eh. There's nothing so powerful it takes 2 slots.

I don't know. I could see changing the system a bit so that characters have a certain number of attunement points (basically the ability to attune magic items) and then have magic items require a different number of attunement points to use them effectively.

At the present time, a Staff of the Magi or Cloak of Invisibility require the same amount of attunement as a Ring of Jumping which does seem a bit extreme. Simple :) but perhaps too simple?

[Joe the Rat]

Eh. There's nothing so powerful it takes 2 slots.


I don't know. I could see changing the system a bit so that characters have a certain number of attunement points (basically the ability to attune magic items) and then have magic items require a different number of attunement points to use them effectively.

At the present time, a Staff of the Magi or Cloak of Invisibility require the same amount of attunement as a Ring of Jumping which does seem a bit extreme. Simple :) but perhaps too simple?

I've been playing with this tangentially - not changing slots, but in how attunement interacts with magic items.

1) I've put together (and put rulings on) some magic items that have functions that anybody can use, but have additional features that can be accessed with attunement. I have a +2 Mace, which when atttuned is a Mace of Warning (which also senses danger within 30' of a matching lamp). I am thinking about retrofitting most of the "number and power" items to have the static modifier without, and the added powers with attunement. Or to take our favorite broom of flying, anyone can ride it, but commanding at a distance (possibly mentally) takes attunement.

2) I have a series of artifacts that have a basic use, a set of functions with attunement, and additional functions (and side-effects) by bonding with the object. Bonding doesn't take additional slots, but requires a long rest, and you first have to be attuned. If I were using more attunement slots, bonding would take an additional slot.

Example: The Dry Glass.
Anyone who reads the inscription and turns the hourglass can summon a salt mephit (Hi Kaveman!).
Attuning allows access to charges, expands your rock summon options, gives necrotic resistance, and offers a couple of spells.
Bonding gives you a +2 CON, adds more spells, an Instant fortress summon, as well as the ability to burn hit dice when you are out of charges. It also makes you 10% lighter and wild animals are friendly towards you. There are also a couple of Plot-specific functions that required bonding, but that doesn't affect regular play.

As is, my players are juggling attunements based on need - drop the efreeti chain to wear the quieter mithril armor and attune the rapier of wonder, then switch back when Red dragons and elementals are in play. After using up the charges in my queen's grasp gauntlets, I reawaken my bloodthirst tattoo and recover a little health in the next few fights. Do I want to wield the staff of fire, or give it to the floating sentient construct we found that can attune to items, and couldn't possibly decide that turning on the party would better serve its interests.


3) An oddity - I have an magic building... ship... thing... that allows multiple attunements at once. Attunement is necessary to fly the thing (and adjust cloud cover), but if multiple people are attuned, switching out the Helm only takes a few moments.