Experimenting to discover the properties of magical items CAN be fun, provided that the magic item itself was designed right.
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I ended up doing a few tables associated with this:
- Tells for Magical Treasure
- For the Impavid Potion Taster
- Sometimes incorporating some distinctive Monster Parts
- Or even providing some unusual Methods for Magical Item Identification
I’m very fond of Magical Items that end up serving as Tools/Solutions for unspecified, but very situational problems and encourage the Players to use them creatively. Many of my magic item tables lean into this approach with the wonderous abilities they add (as opposed to just something purely mechanical)
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Thanks for sharing! The items associated with spells would be especially useful for a game where I like my spells to just me items (cairn, knave).
The potion tells are great also. I think this very thing has been attempted by multiple refs more than once. Thanks for codifying it.
Your monster part items are fun too. I’d be interested in convincing a centaur to wear horseshoes for a year so I could make a magic item from it. That’s some long term relationship thinking right there.
I’m quite boring when it comes to magic item identification–I’m basically at the opposite side of “magic should be dangerous and random” side of things. But when I’m going all-in for “old school” vibes, I like to use the reaction roll table as much as possible (preferred one: Holmes/Moldvay). The better the reaction, the easier it is to identify.
This can be as mundane as scribbled command words or a communicating magic items (similar to magic swords & true Vancian spells).
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