Non-adventurer magic items

[WarKitty]

I'm trying to think up magic items that would exist in a high-magic setting. The D&D books have a good set of items for adventurers, but what about the rest of the world? What sort of items would they own?

A few that I have so far:

An item of vermin repelling
A ring that detects poison in any food or drink touched to it
A small stone that functions like a debit card

[B1okHead]

You could also have magical forms of transportation like magical trains and sky ships. (think eberron)

[Psyren]

Something for long-distance two-way communication
Something for food preservation/storage
Something to detect/deter thieves and burglars for the wealthier citizens

[Grelna the Blue]

• Heatstone (for use in ovens)
• Everburning torches (adventurers aren't the only users)
• Shaker of flavoring (w/ Prestidigitation effect)
• Self-cleaning sheets (popular with the wealthy and in brothels)
• Scepter of Amplify Voice (for the battlefield or addressing the commoners from balconies)

[Duke of URL]

Resetting remove disease and create food and drink traps.

[WarKitty]

A few more ideas I recall (not all are originally mine):

Belt of weight changing - makes you appear fatter/thinner depending on the prevailing beauty standard of your culture
Amulet of stain removal - for the wine you spilled on your doublet midway through the party
Ointment of makeup - rub this ointment on your face for an instant makeup job!

Edit: Soupkitchen with goodberry?

[Coidzor]

^: You forgot the higher-end version which isn't just illusion but actually changes one's body's composition.

Items of neutered-prestidigitation for constantly keeping the wealthy from being soiled.

Fertility drugs, contraception, magical baby monitors/alarms, things to make pregnancies and deliveries safer.

Some method for moving large quantities of goods vast distances (soarwhales[AE&G], the lightning rail and airships[ECS], permanent teleportation circles in the hands of commercial interests[PHB], Skeleton rail-gun repurposed to civilian use[PHB+TO]).

A way to disseminate information quickly, if only for military purposes (again, skeleton railway, maybe something like the clacks from discworld, or just enough lower-level wizard-scribes or dragonmarked along the lines of that house with the Sending SLA from Eberron). You can scale it anywhere from a magically efficient pony-express(skeleton railway) to the telegraph/telephone to perfect reception/connectivity interplanar wireless internet.

A ways for courts to deal with magic as evidence. Ways for law enforcement to deal with magic both as a hostile force and as a tool.

Methods by which to protect and prevent sovereigns from being abducted or replaced by anyone with shape-changing capabilities and bluff and methods by which to verify someone's identity that are not falsifiable.

[Mastikator]

Magic items that heal people, regrow body parts, removes poisons and diseases, insanity. For hospitals or places of healing. Could be a resetting trap.
Magic items that make food, or make crops grow faster.
Magic items for transportation (teleporation or magical carriage)
Magic items that store information (think; magic computer).
Magic items that store other items and protect them.
Magic items that clean thing (prestidigitation) and mend broken things.
Magic everlasting torches, or how else are we going to see at night?
Magic items that allow people to telepathically speak with other people who have said item (magic cell phone).

You could have magi-tech that'd be greater than the magic of Startrek. Just think of any piece of technology in reality or sci-fi- magic can do it.

[WarKitty]

A few details on my specific game setup, or at least the relevant area.

Magic is as easy to learn as blacksmithing, or farming, or any other career. However, 95% of the world's population is level 6 or below. This means any spell of 2nd level or below should be easily available to anyone with a bit of coin. 3-4th level spells are a bit harder but not overly difficult, a moderately wealthy individual could get them. 5th-6th are findable if you are extremely wealthy - the king and his top nobles, guild leaders, or whoever is the major power in the area. Above 6th...well, there's very few casters that could cast a 7th level spell. The northern elf fortress has wizards of this level, but their secrets are jealously guarded.

[Aquillion]

Clothing to protect against the elements would be a big deal.

Healing items, obviously, are important to absolutely anyone.

General "luck" items that make you better at everything are going to be hugely popular with everyone, too, of course.

For those who can afford them, teleportation items. Transportation items in general.

Divination items are going to be valuable, too.

For the really high-end stuff: Anything that extends your lifespan, anything that can bring back the dead. That's the kind of thing that kings and princes will spend their entire fortune on, after all (or as much of it as they need to.)

[Chilingsworth]

Soupkitchen with goodberry?

One of my favorite characters actually did this! High level asimar healer. One day she prepared all her level 1+ slots as good berry and bought a ton of berries. Then distributed them to the slums of her city.

[JaronK]

A Toothbrush that uses a prestidigitation effect to clean teeth and gums extremely well.

Eternal wands of prestidigitation, for house cleaning.

JaronK

[Dragon Elite]

Unseen servant and Dancing lights for your mad rave parties!

[HunterOfJello]

Eternal Wands could easily be popular in all sorts of locations.

An Eternal Wand of Prestidigitation in most households. The housewives use them up to twice a day to clean up especially bad spills and things. They may also enjoy having an Eternal Wand of Mending and other 0 level spells.

In deserts and on sea ships, Eternal Wands of Create Water would be invaluable.

Also, Amanuensis could replace the printing press since it can copy words so fast and easily.

*Edit*


Hand of the Mage would be an amazing magical item for disabled people to use. You can only lift 5 lbs, but that's a lot more than you could lift if you didn't have arms.

[Dimers]

Most of the magic items and rituals of real-world cultures were intended for general luck, fecundity, influence over others' emotions, improved awareness, protection from poison/disease/cursing, or divination about future events. "What," one might ask, "no sonic damage? No stat bonuses? What were they thinking?"

[Tvtyrant]

Hallowstones; they hallow any area they rest in and are used to make Magic Circles against Evil around houses.

[Coidzor]

Repellent for more than just vermin typed monsters.

Bait or some other tool that improves the docility of magical beasts for training.

A set of paints/paint brush that responds to the users's mental commands and automatically adjusts color to whichever one the user wants to use next.

[Randel]

A permanent infusion of Prestidigitation and Mending into expensive items so that they auto-clean and repair themselves (like a grand piano that is in the family for generations and can tune, clean, fix itself despite centuries of scratches and such). Or fine china that will snap back together if shattered on the ground.


Blessed Books that are encyclopedias or the like instead of spellbooks. Some books could be set up so they automatically update from a central library, like a newspaper you only buy once. Could have a few that are full of porn and its either enchanted to look fine literature unless the code is spoken or it has moving pictures.

A shelf with a limited mage hand/prestidigitation built in so that it always cleans and organizes whatever is placed in it.

[Psyren]

A permanent infusion of Prestidigitation and Mending into expensive items so that they auto-clean and repair themselves (like a grand piano that is in the family for generations and can tune, clean, fix itself despite centuries of scratches and such). Or fine china that will snap back together if shattered on the ground.

It's worth mentioning that Psionic Prestidigitation does incorporate the effects of Mending. Maybe they do belong together

[panaikhan]

Blessed Books that are encyclopedias or the like instead of spellbooks. Some books could be set up so they automatically update from a central library, like a newspaper you only buy once.

I actually used a variation of this theme in one of my Eberron campaigns.
The Newspaper was a series of large stone obelisks, set at strategic street-corners. They were all linked to a central Obelisk with type-set characters (similar to printing press technology) in each of it's four faces. Each day at noon, the 'slave' obelisks updated via a modified Mage Mark effect to duplicate the information.

[bokodasu]

The thing about magic items is that they don't break/wear out, so you can have, say, an item of at-will unseen servant that's been in the family for generations. And everyone would, because why wouldn't you? 1800 gp per servant, pays for itself in just under 50 years. At-will mount, to avoid stabling/caring for horses.

Indoor climate control items would be popular.

Items of at-will goodberry + create water = 2700 gp to feed an arbitrary number of people forever. Boringly, but nobody should be going hungry. (And berry-picking would become a vital cornerstone of society.)

Items of Grease for the shipping industry, or village festivals. (Wrestle the greasy dire boar!)

There are some spells that having cheap and plentiful would change society in ways I can't even think about - Charm Person, Sleep, Detect Thoughts... actually most of the low-level enchantment/illusion/transmutation spells.

[Coidzor]

Disguise Self and Alter Self in particular would make things pretty kinky.

[Shadowleaf]

This is pretty easy. Take all the problems they had in the middle ages, and then fix it with magic. Food, Sanitation, Communication, Medicine, Life Quality, Boredom, lack of education, etc.

Basicly everything we eventually solved with technology. TV? Major Image which can be reprogrammed upon demand. Medicine? Cure Disease/Poison. Communication? Message.

[Ravens_cry]

Reading the mechanical vehicles thread, Vizzerdrix idea for a Animated Object Engine would be a pretty dandy idea for farmers. Yes, it would be hideously expensive, but so were the portable, portable in the sense of having wheels, steam engines that were taken from farm to farm, allowing all sorts of jobs to be done much faster and easier.

[Shadowleaf]

Reading the mechanical vehicles thread, Vizzerdrix idea for a Animated Object Engine would be a pretty dandy idea for farmers. Yes, it would be hideously expensive, but so were the portable, portable in the sense of having wheels, steam engines that were taken from farm to farm, allowing all sorts of jobs to be done much faster and easier.

Problem is that Summon Food is a lot cheaper, and you can just reflavour it with Prestigitation. Use it in a resetting trap for maximum effect.

[Ravens_cry]

Problem is that Summon Food is a lot cheaper, and you can just reflavour it with Prestigitation. Use it in a resetting trap for maximum effect.

Just because you can make magic cardboard porridge taste like whatever you damn want, it still looks and feels like wall paper paste. There is a reason why food pills and similarly unappealing synthetic foods have never taken off, why things like tofu burgers spend so much work getting things like texture and appearance right, despite having as good, or better, nutrition then the original.
It might be good on a journey, it might be good for the poorest of the poor, but I think farming would still be viable in a Tippyverse.

[WarKitty]

Problem is that Summon Food is a lot cheaper, and you can just reflavour it with Prestigitation. Use it in a resetting trap for maximum effect.

Instead of wheat farms, you have giant farms to produce caster's pouches and material components.

[Coidzor]

mmm, Agricultural revolutions.

[Choco]

Think of all the cool high-tech things that we have today, and that you see in scifi shows. Now change the explanations of why they work from "science" to "magic". You now have a practically limitless supply of handy "magic" items to choose from.

[WarKitty]

I don't *think* it would go all the way to tippyverse. I'm severely limiting the number of casters over 7th level. Outside of the mage city, higher-level magics are almost always going to be precious legacy items. A 7th level wizard or cleric is powerful, but not as completely overpowering that a mundane couldn't gank them. I'm trying to hit that balance where magic is common and useful, but casters are not gods.