50 Useless Magic Items to Add to Your D&D Campaign
Our partner YouTube channel, Guiding Bolt, compiled a list of 50 different useless magic items to add some entertainment and whimsy to your D&D game. I’ve personally had success adding these to sessions and my players got a good laugh from some of them. Enjoy!
- Ring of Time Travel: Only travels forward at a rate of 1 second per second.
- Compass that detects the nearest magical item. (Compass constantly spins cause it’s the closest magical item)
- Arrow of Returning: It returns before hitting its mark.
- A “bag of hole-ding” that drops whatever is placed in it.
- Orb of Slope Finding: Set this orb on a surface and it will roll to the lowest point.
- Wand of Pointing at Things: It is a stick.
- A torch that never goes out, but only works in the day.
- A monocle that makes you grow a mustache automatically upon putting it on. The longer it stays on, the longer it grows. You can roll 1D6 to decide what color it grows in as.
- Shield of Song: Each time when hit, the shield emits a steel drum tone. These tones in succession make up a song, that if rapid enough, is actually Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet. At the end of the song, it loops back to the start.
- Ring of ChitChat: After speaking with a humanoid for one minute, you are able to find a common interest (such as food, the weather, or the economy). You are able to speak at length with the person, however if you should stop your side of the conversation, the conversation ends and the target goes on their way. Neither party retains any useful information from this banter. Any attempt to recall or act on this information will require a DC 14 wisdom check.
- Cowbell of Invisibility: You need to keep ringing it loudly to keep the spell going.
- A Misspell Book… Contains spells like “wireball”, “prismatic ore”… Be creative… Your choice, either they work but are worthless or they don’t work at all.
- Lens of Night vision, but it only works in direct sunlight.
- Rod of Shifting: When you activate it, it shifts everything two inches to the right. Not everything in the room. Not everything within a radius. Everything.
- The Waist of Time: A belt made of leather with an ancient clock as a buckle. It gives the user the ability to always know what time it is.
- Immovable gem. Completely immovable. You can’t pick it up. It has no other effect.
- Mirror of a Thousand Faces: Every time you look into it you see a different face.
- Coconuts of Redundant Encumbrance: Two large coconuts, tied together by a 20in hempen rope. They weigh 10lbs (5lbs each) and serve no other purpose than to weigh you down. They also make a very charming little ‘clunk’ sound when they bump into each other. They are very old and are believed to be the first ever item used for endurance training of very young acolytes by some forgotten monastic tradition from the tropical land of Chult.
- Rock of Gravity: Place the rock in hand and let the rock fall. If it hovers or falls up gravity isn’t working.
- The Rope of Entanglement.
- Everdry Quill: No matter what you do, no matter what ink you use, no matter how small you write, this gorgeous, luxury quill will always have just enough ink to not quite go as far as you wanted, but otherwise writes beautifully and produces amazing results with even the worst and most… exotic… writing fluids.
- An amulet that allows its wearer to pronounce silent letters. “Knight, gnome, knife, etc.”
- A pair of socks. Each sock is enchanted to find magical items. The item that it finds? The other magical sock.
- Blindfold of Darkvision: Grants the user darkvision, but is a blindfold.
- A jug of magically cold water. Its cold all the time, but once its opened, it freezes solid and cannot be melted by any means.
- Fire Inspector’s Ring: Let’s the user know how and by who any fire was started. Activated by touch.
- Boots of silence, but each step emits a bright light.
- Crown of Detect Thoughts: Allows the wearer to detect their own thoughts and changes colors based on their mood.
- Potion of thirst quenching.
- Belt of Attunement: Provides an extra attunement slot. Requires attunement.
- A comb of balding.
- A tiny violin that plays itself when you tell someone your back story.
- Magic Wand of Weather Detection: Gives off a ray of light when it’s sunny or emits a fountain of water when it’s raining. It only works outside.
- A map that gives you directions to wherever you’re currently standing.
- Boots of striding but one of them is fake.
- A 5oz bird capable of carrying 1lb coconuts, and only 1lb coconuts.
- A puzzle cube that cannot be manipulated at all, as if it is fused. It radiates strong magic. Its purpose is to radiate strong magic. It changes the nature of what magic it radiates every hour. Evocation. Divination. Etc. It’s actually an antique training device from yesteryear to help measure the success with which up and coming casters are at casting detect magic. It does nothing else. Unless you place it on a convergence of three ley lines beneath a full moon. Then. By a quirk of its construction. It will pop three feet into the air and spin around rapidly. As soon as anyone touches it. It makes a farting noise and vanishes. It reappears upon the desk of the archmage Vinculus. 300 years ago. He was looking for that.
- Torch of Darkvision: Grants the holder darkvision when lit.
- Dagger of Healing: Heals the same amount of damage inflicted every time.
- +3 magic sword, but it turns to wet noodle status RIGHT before it hits an enemy.
- Masochist’s shield: Screams for more when hit.
- Helm of Encouragement: A somewhat sentient helm which offers useless but kind-hearted comments every now and then. “Ooh! So close! It’s okay, you’ll hit him next time, buddy “Don’t worry, there probably wasn’t anything very good in the chest anyway. You were right to stab the rogue in the back of the neck for ‘looking at your boots too much’. Who needs lockpicks, right?”
- +4 tea kettle of heat resistance.
- Ring of Invisibility: Turns the ring invisible when worn.
- Tome of Cat: Players open the tome but can never read its contents, as opening it spawns a large cuddly cat that plops down for a nap on its pages or demands your attention to the point of exhaustion. Closing the book sends the cat away. There’s nothing worth reading in the tome.
- Wand of Wand-Creation: As an action, create a Wand of Wand-Creation. The wand you used to do this then disintegrates.
- A sword of warning that only warns you of things that you already see coming.
- Shield of Protection: Whenever the shield would take a hit, it moves so the wielder protects it from the incoming attack.
- A trident that on command can cause the target to become slightly damp. Like if you take your clothes out of the dryer 10 minutes too soon.
- The Sword of Uncomfortable Warmth: When wielded the wielder feels like they’re wearing a sweater on a summer day without a breeze.
While we labelled these items as useless, if you’ve got a creative group of adventurers, I bet they’ll find a clever way to use just about anything you give them. Do you have other ideas for useless magic items? Please share down below in the comments. I’m always looking for more inspiration! Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and we’ll see you back here next week!
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These will be featured in a magic shop located in the slums. I love it.
Fantastic. I hope they bring enjoyment to your table!
I have been working on a list of mostly useless magic items. Such as a scroll that summons a large thick bed of moss. Providing a comfortable place to sleep.
I like it. I better a clever party could find a creative use for that!
I have one: The energy sword
The sword has a 1 time use that does infinite damage, but when you use it your wifi blows up and you’ll never have good wifi. EVER
Dagger of Healing: Heals the same amount of damage inflicted every time. – Dangerous. Has your companion fallen? Threw a dagger at him, fails one death saving throw (and he is still on 0hp), but he will get up right after as he gets this 1d4+dex healing
smart! I hope my players think of that. I have added most of these items to a “Junk Cart” a street merchant is pushing around.
Nice! I hope you’re players enjoy.
I was thinking of barbarians halving the damage, then getting the full heal. COuld be great if a rogue was stabbing with it
New DM and I’m playing with a group from work. I’m looking for a bunch of trick items for my shop, Madam Curios ship of magical curiosities. And some of these will be appearing on her shelves.