My brother and i were talking the other day about magic items and what magic items can be like in person, such as in the lord of the rings, magic items dont seem to bounce unless theyre on uneven surfaces.
Some standard qualities are glowing, like sting, or humming.
just curious if anyone knows anything else
I usually fluff up items proportionate to their power.
- A +1/+2 item is about as special as a stainless steel sword/armor. Good, but nothing special.
- +3/+4 total usually have an innate glow, and are crafted to look thematically relevant, like a flaming sword has a blood-grove that makes blood-splatters looks like molten lava, etc.
- +5 and higher starts to become unique, have names and quirks. Like floating in water, making odd sounds as you swing it, reacting to stimuli (hissing in extreme temperatures and so on).
- if they are +7 or higher I always try to find some manner of appropriate legend for them, and make them relevant to the game.
I find it highly inappropriate that minor magical items have much of a mystery to them, as it is so easy to make them, it belongs in the "weapon mods" category in my mind. Also makes it easier to discard of it when you get a better weapon at higher levels.
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This depends on how high-or-low-magic your setting is. If, as posted above, +1 items are simply better versions of their lessers, then I wouldn't worry about spending story time on them. If they're super rare, then a little love will probably make them more interesting and worthwhile to the players, since the actual game mechanic will likely fall a bit flat.
Some ideas to spruce up magic items:
1) Give it a history, and bring that into play. Have the bard recognize it, or the blacksmith/barmaid, or something of that sort.
2) Give it a quirk. Sting's glowing when near orcs could also be a penalty if you're trying to disguise it. The old LOTR game suggested non-glowing quirks, too, like bleating like a goat.
3) Give it secret powers, unlockable through quests. Earthdawn's entire magic system made SUPERB use this premise, and so long as the improvements to the item simply displace new items they otherwise would have found, there's no harm to the balance.
4) Curse one occasionally. Haven't seen much use of cursed items since the old 2.0 days, but they made the non-cursed items all more interesting by proxy.
And if I may add one quick word to the concept that +1 items can be as common as stainless steel is today: they could be. As in, why imply that they're genuinely magical at all? Perhaps they're just 'superior' and that's where they get the +1? It seems odd to cheapen the impact of magic in this way when you could easily have low-power items described in low-power ways.
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A fun thing my friends and i do when running games is the giving of auras to magic items that change depending on the player. The more powerful the item the larger the and more detailed the aura. Additionally the aura can take on the theme of the item such as a ring of protection showing a shield of energy when a weapon connects with the wearer that sort of thing.