/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General: NPC Edition

>player tries to leave right as the party is about to walk in on the dungeon boss

YOU WILL STAY AND YOU WILL SEE HOW COOL THIS IS

Pretty much this. If the group had of gone off to the office area to fill out the paper work I was just gonna turn it into one of those. "That's form B72, you need to fill out form RO9 first then you can be put on the waiting list for form 6Z8." Sadly the party got smart and was able to trick the Spectator in thinking he was dismissed.

Last thread I thought up a scenario with a hobgoblin army, big ass shields in the front, reach weapons (maybe spears) in the back. Now I'm considering giving them some of the benefits from the Shield Master and Spear Mastery feats to make the fight more dynamic.

Since we're talking about NPCs, who do you think would lead such an army? How do you think their personality and goals should be? What about memorable quirks and traits?

As a Leader? Could do a Hobgoblin that somehow got a huge boner for Romanesque shit. Gives himself a silly Goblin/Roman like name Stinkus Reekus Skullbreakian. Somehow finds himself as a Goblin "King" and makes his men fight in some sort of clumsy formation fight as you pointed out. It's not perfect, maybe not even good but more challenging to players than what they would face from typical Goblinoids. I dunno how a Goblin would be into this shit though as to take it up as a fighting style. Maybe he captured a Bard and forced him to tell him great tales of old battles or die.

Get thee to a d30 sandbox companion, asap. Pic related.

Is princes of the apocolypse any good?

i think hobgoblins are supposed to be the smart, tactical, militaristic goblinoids. so idk why everyone is saying hobs couldnt into shield walls and shit. if any monster were into shield walls, it would be hobs, imo.

my group is having a lot of fun with it
t. party rogue

Yes. Needs a lot of DM work in it, but it's overall good.

No Blade Ward?

Cantrip that says "Until the end of your next turn, gain resistance to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage dealt by weapons."

I already have 17 AC, 19 with a shield, and Heavy Armor Master for -3 damage from those 3 weapon damage types. At level 7 I can cantrip and attack each turn, so I'd be able to get into a Blade Ward + Attack, Fire Bolt + Attack, Blade Ward + Attack, etc rhythm for defensive periods, then switch to 2-3 weapon attacks when not threatened.

And what's good about minor illusion? Out-of-combat shenanigans and distractions?

And Find Familiar? Seems pricy to summon and then I need to keep it dismissed and out of danger until I need it for.. scouting? Jailbreaks? What? Can I get a bat familiar and see through its senses while flying around a corner or two and spots enemies and other things?

Im dming it and doing so pretty straightforward. What would work would you suggest to do for it? Im always looking to make things better.

Will the next UA surpass this month's in shitiness or have they hit rock bottom?

Next month's is going to address something that has bothered Mearls about D&D for like 30 years.

So chances are it will at least have some substance instead of being a super-nothing project he threw together for a con.

I am new to this meme. Relatively new to D&D and never read UA. Why is it bad?

the problem wasnt the shield wall necessarily, it was the combined arms unit of pikes and ranged in a war sense. which was a very specialized unit made to counter heavy cavalry.
obviously in dnd, its just people standing in front of ranged so they dont die, but if its that simple, everyone would do it.

Yeah the DMG one is remarkably bad, not even seasonal variations, and my current GM just rolls a table that might not vary by seasons either, with like 20% thunderstorms so far. More importantly though, he doesn't really use it a lot and I want to try keeping track of it and having about half the results have a mechanical effect (light obscurity etc.).

I was thinking of something simpler, the d30 stuff is so extremely complex that it's not something I'd want to roll every day in game and also most of the results aren't relevant, like .4" rain and 3 wind compared to .5" rain and 3 wind has no difference in description. I'll just use it and make my own though I guess, sift through some more pdfs and stuff to see if there's anything else.

Appearently they werent plannjngvto do one for july, and qas doubling down on the august one. Then they thought better and squirted something out in two hours.

But yeah its gonna suck.

bruh a familiar is some of the best utility in the game

>scouting, can see through it's eyes
>deliver touch spells through it
>give yourself/allies advantage with the Help action

all for 50g, and only when it dies.

The last character I played was an EKnight with an owl, (Magic Initiate for find familiar and two cantrips) and it was nuts. The rogue ALWAYS has advantage and sneak attacks. The owl also had super darkvision to make up my lack of it so that helped too.

It took them 3 extra weeks to make this

dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/quick-characters

that and they just don't give a fuck

Better question; who even cares?
I'm spending much of my time mining 2e books for material and converting it where and when I can and it's both more rewarding AND more substantial then the garbage WotC puts out.
Not precisely a meme.
A lot of their Unearthed Arcana (new rules, which are sort of like "not-quite playtested" rules now insofar as 5e's rules are playtested at all) has not been good or has literally been outsourced garbage because they themselves didn't want to do any work.

WotC has stopped trying to sell D&D as a method of generating profit and instead uses it as a way to sell D&D-based PRODUCTS. Card games, board games, etc.

Unearthed Arcana is a monthly release of homebrew from Wizards. They started off by posting useful stuff like Eberron content, Ranger Fixes, storm Sorceror and the Mystic. This month they posted something that should've just been put out there like the Innistrad supplement was. They basically just threw together some tables so you could roll new Characters, Roll and get a class. Roll and get a race. It delivered nothing of what's promised in the UA mission statement.

It took them 3 weeks to make a random character roll sheet? Doesn't /v/ Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums make those in less than an hour?

blade ward is shit, sure you get more defense, but like you said, you're literally just trading fire bolt to do it. you're saying "rather than do 1 to 4d10 damage, im going to possibly take less damage if i get hit" if you really want it, take it. but you're obviously trading damage for theoretical survivability

there are literal guides based entirely around "what is minor illusion good for" or "what is a familiar good for"
many of familiars uses were also covered in the last thread

welcome to our world

and now you see the problem, that took them 7 weeks

oh also they didn't even release it as a pdf, they released it as a .docx

I am awakened. Thank you.

I do agree, fellow user

I like the idea for the name, and the bard stuff. Hell, the bard could even be used for support, healing and counterspelling. But he'd have hobgoblins, not mere goblins, that's the difference. And I don't think it would be clumsy at all. The ones with shields would dodge and bash people prone, the spears would attack from the back with reach and advantage (if prone). Add in some ranged support to harass and disturb spellcaster concentration, and you've got a fine challenge right there. It would mostly have a weakness to damaging AoEs. but that's where the bard comes in.

I've heard that part of the reason Land druids are weaker than wizards is their weaker spell list. I have also heard that summoning spells are some of the best druid spells. Is it an effort in futility to try and play an 'efficient' land druid without using summoning spells? I really don't want to bugger around with slowing down combat by having two extra martials to move on my turn.

>Session today
>Our party takes a detour to help an old friend NPC hunt for yeti pelts in the mountains
>Through a combination of scouting ahead, preparing, and solid teamwork and communication, we managed to take down a big one inside its own cave
>What's more, it apparently recently dispatched another group of adventurers, whose clothes we promptly rifled through looking for spare change and other loot (and got some good stuff)
>Our cleric (who it should be noted for later acts almost nothing like a cleric and never heals or buffs anyone) notices a dwarven door at the back of the cave, gets the fighter to knock it open
>Spooky skeleton inside, died holding the door shut
>Door opens out onto a staircase descending down into darkness
>We go down, wary and ready to fight
>Spiral staircase empties out into a room strewn with bones
>At the far end stands an imposing suit of armor with a round indentation in the chestpiece
>Our wizard casts Detect Magic but of course we already know it's gonna pop alive or something
>Armor radiates magic, as does a huddled figure in the corner of the room, a skeleton holding a small orb of the exact right shape to fit into the chestpiece
>"Yeah, okay, we're getting out of here"
>Cleric goes over towards the orb
>"Don't touch it dude."
>"I want it though."
>Wizard and fighter sigh, both decide to leave him to his stupidity (he's done stuff like this before to terrible effect)
>Paladin leaves too, slightly hesitant since he's basically abandoning someone which kinda goes against his code, but whatever
>Cleric pulls out the orb, nothing happens
>Goes all the way upstairs where the party is camped out, planning our next move, to ask the wizard to Identify the orb
>Wizard, frustated but at least relieved the cleric's apparent love of shiny things hasn't lead to disaster this time, does so
>Surprise surprise, it activates the armor
>...So the cleric promptly goes back down the stairs to pop it into the armor
(1/2)

the problem sort of is, they dont get the range of utility, the quality of buffs, or the sheer damage a wizard would. but what they DO better than a wizard, is summon things (specifically, a ton of shit that can cast their own spells)
also, i would note, that when you say "two extra martials" the best summon is summoning a shitton of pixies/sprites

you can be a land druid, no ones stopping you. raw numbers, you arnt going to be as good, but you DEFINITELY arnt going to be dead weight. one thing you obviously do better, is heal

(2/2)
>"Dude, what are you doing."
>Cleric just grins, doesn't respond
>Yet again the wizard and fighter are content to leave him to his own devices
>Wizard sends his familiar along just to see him get whupped cause we all know what's going to happen
>Cleric places the orb in its place, the armor - a helmed horror - comes alive ready to fight
>Cleric produces an elemental gem he scrounged up earlier in the campaign, smashes it to summon an earth elemental
>Plans to fight the living armor with the elemental at his side "Just cause"
>Wizard and fighter think this is hilarious and sit back, waiting for him to kill himself
>Helmed horror strikes but rolls low on damage, elemental counterattacks and rolls good damage, but there's no way the cleric's luck is gonna hold out
>Paladin decides he can't take it anymore, runs downstairs to save our companion
>Wizard and fighter aren't about to let the paladin die, run after him to save him (and I guess the cleric from his own idiocy)
>All three arrive in the chamber, ready to fight
>Paladin throws and retrieves his magic hammer, doing damage
>Fighter throws a javelin, doing damage
>Wizard prepares to summon a water elemental from his magic bowl
>Helmed horror casts Chain Lightning and hits all of us in a group
>Paladin and Fighter are both at single digit HP
>Wizard is at -12 and unconcious, dying
>So this is how the party goes
>Next round, cleric and earth elemental both get lucky hits which (plus the damage done earlier) is enough to kill the helmed horror - that or the DM threw us a bone
>Paladin and fighter rush to save the wizard's life
>Cleric takes an "All's well that ends well" attitude, has no idea (until the end of the session) why we're all upset with him

It was thrown together before a con by Mearls, he just later rebranded it and put it out as an Unearthed Arcana.

Okay Anons, I need some homebrewin advice. I am currently involved in a Star Wars conversion project and we've hit a wall.

Truth be told, it's the same wall we've been running up against for the whole project: how do you create a Jedi class? The current build aims to combine some of the Monk and Warlock features together, using the latter as a base. We've decided to remove spell slot and spell point casting for the Jedi, instead relying on cantrips and Invocations (phb and homebrew) to grant them their more mystical/blatantly magic abilities.

Tldr: How much would you need to compensate the Warlock class for if you removed Pact Magic? Specifically, how many Monk features would it take to make up the difference? Pic unrelated.

>mining 2e books for material and converting it
Speaking of which, I've heard that 4e Monster Manuals had lots of creative and neat ideas that I'd like to check out and perhaps convert, but I can't seem to find a pdf of those. Would you happen to have one?

I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but check out Reddit's /r/UnearthedArcana page. There have been several people who have worked on Jedi, the best of which I believe to be the Sorcerer Subclass version.

No, I was never super into 4e myself. Not a truly horrid game or anything, it just wasn't the cup of tea me and my group preferred. Apologies.
You should be able to find one fairly easily online using file sharing sites and such I imagine though?

Here again.
Here's the MM1 for 4e 4shared.com/office/r7GFA-aI/DD_-_4e_Monster_Manual.html?locale=en
I hope that helps a bit, it's just what I found after a quick search.

Shit. Tell me more. That sounds awesome.

By "Help" do you mean I can send in the owl in to Help the Rogue, give them advantage, and trigger a Sneak attack?

And are there any decent touch spells worth taking with the EK's super limited spell choices?

>blade ward is shit, sure you get more defense, but like you said, you're literally just trading fire bolt to do it. you're saying "rather than do 1 to 4d10 damage, im going to possibly take less damage if i get hit" if you really want it, take it. but you're obviously trading damage for theoretical survivability

Well I am the tank for the group.
I was looking at Blade Ward, Shield, already got 19 AC from level 1, gonna keep taking tanky feats aside from War Caster in the future.

Anyone have stats on Baba Yaga for 5e? Need it between CR 16-26
Or this pdf. That would work too.

Isn't there a 'boss' similar to her in ___CoS___? You could try upscaling that.

Thanks for the recommendation. Though, I will stick around here a while longer to see if anyone knows how much to compensate a warlock for taking away their spellcasting.

Baba Lysaga, yeah.

First off, I wouldn't. If I were to make a warlock a Jedi, I'd change everything else instead. Spells are the best way to represent the force. Make most of the monk features part of the Force Patron abilities, then add Eldritch Invocations with that Patron as a prerequisite. Go Pact of the Blade, and Bam, you've got a jedi. The spells on the patron list should be along the lines of Jump, Catapult, and Mind abilities. Honestly, that's about all I'd do.

>By "Help" do you mean I can send in the owl in to Help the Rogue, give them advantage, and trigger a Sneak attack?

you can take the help action with your familiar, yes. Just delay their turn until the party member you want to help's turn, then say "Owly flies around the enemy, distracting them" thus giving advantage to whoever you'd like.

as for touch spells I dunno, probably not much but it's something that you can do.

as I said, familiars are great. I went variant human just to pick up magic initiate and get two more cantrips plus find familiar (character was a bounty hunter and I figured having a magic tracking owl would be cool)

Touch spells are great if you know how to use them. Shocking grasp is the obvious one. Just summon your Familiar as a spider. Give spider to Rogue. Rogue uses sleight of hand to place spider on unsuspecting enemy. Shocking Grasp the hell out of him, and you have magic assassin techniques.

A Better use though is to have Guidance and Spam that when it's on an allies person to give them infinite +1d4 to their skill checks with no one the wiser for it. Useful for games of chance or skill.

Whelp. You've made me regret picking up Heavy Armor Master with my variant trait. Though I guess that -3 damage prevented something like 20+ damage over the course of the first game session we played. I'm just also taking War Caster at 4, so I couldn't supplement with Magic Initiate until 6, though I'm not sure I'll even need it by then. May be better off with stat improvements or shit like Sentinel.

Do Familiars get their own turns?
Wouldn't casting Guidance use up my own action? Or rather, I could Guidance with my action and then attack once with my bonus action after I progress to that archetype feature? Why add a d4 to an ally when I could use that action to attack myself?

Ask your DM if he would allow you to take the SCAG cantrips. Green Flame Blade and Booming Blade are awesome for Eldritch Knights.

Thanks, user! I managed to find the 3rd, now I just need the 2nd. But those should give me enough to think on for a while.

A spider with visibly-electrical mandibles because it's been used as the conduit of shocking grasp spells sound like it'd be a neat familiar.

"Paladin, I know you're arachnophobic. But you seem particularly aversive to my spider friend as of late."

>Thanks, user! I managed to find the 3rd, now I just need the 2nd. But those should give me enough to think on for a while.
Glad to help! Hope you find some useful ideas and inspiration from it.

Guidance isn't for combat, its skill checks. Sure, you can do it for grapples or some such, but user was saying to slip your tiny familiar on a friend to ease everything they try.

Guidance is more to out of combat stuff.

I think is on the right track here. There are many jedi-ish spells. Maybe give it some invocations to make casting stuff like Suggestion easier.

>Ask your DM if he would allow you to take the SCAG cantrips. Green Flame Blade and Booming Blade are awesome for Eldritch Knights.
They do look amazing, but I know my DM's not wanting to introduce anything beyond the basics to us since we're all new. As I mentioned last thread, we just had our first session ever today. So the DM's just having us use the basic PHB to make our characters.

Damn, that's a good idea. Still not thrilled to use one of my 3-5 possible cantrips on Guidance, though. I only get 2 cantrips until level 9, then only 3 from then on. If I take Magic Initiate I can then take 2 more.

But I have to take Cleric spells for Guidance, which means my other cantrip and level 1 spell must be Cleric, and I probably have shit mods for them and can't scale the spell up into a higher level like I could with Wizard spells, right? Though I guess I could avoid things that use spell mods and go with Shield of Faith to bump my already high AC up even further?

Shield of Faith and Bless are both amazing spells that don't rely on your modifier. For the second cantrip, maybe Thaumaturgy for RP, or Mending, even. Spare the Dying, if there's not many healers in your party.

I think shield of faith is pretty underwhelming desu.

Well on my current character, if I had Shield and Shield of Faith, I could have 26 AC at level 2. Though the earliest I could get those two spells would be level 4, I think. Level 3 for EK, level 4 for Magic Initiate.

I dunno if 26 AC is good but it seems great to me, as a newbie. Maybe too great. Maybe, "Enemies stop trying to attack me and go exclusively for my allies" great. Seems like something my DM would do. "Seeing their attacks utterly fail to connect on you, they're saving you for last."

What's a good multiclassing option for EK, Veeky Forums?
Wizard is obviously the only one that shares the Int spell mod, but Paladin and Barbarian both fit a Str-focused EK, right? But Barbarians get a bonus for not wearing armor, while most EKs will be armored, correct?

Haste gives ya the same too though. + way more.
Shield of faith is "give 10% extra miss chance to enemies attacking whoever you cast it on for a 1-st level spell slot that eats your concentration".
Just kinda underwhelming imo.

I wouldn't multiclass as anything if I went EK desu.

Haste eats a third level spell slot... So I'd get it much later and have even fewer uses.
I mean, I'm probably going to get it, because it looks great, but still.

Shield of faith takes your concentration.
For a 10% miss chance.
You're new, so you don't know how big concentration is yet, or how not-worth-it using your concentration on that spell tends to be.

I know it can be important. For casters. What I'm looking at is the rest of the skills I want as an EK, which don't seem to be concentration.

But maybe that's because I haven't looked much into higher level spells. I think I only get to cast up to level 3 or 4, so I've mostly been looking at cantrips/level 1s for now.

EKis already a single class multiclassing, why would you multiclass again?

Barbarian is horrible for casters anyway, and paladin casts off wisdom. If you need more spells go wizard and call it a deal, but you wil be never a full caster anyway.

Do you guys like my lvl. 5 human warlock?

Name: Crow Vegelbud

Race: Human, Female

Class: Lvl. 5 Warlock Fiend Blade Pact

Background: Noble (NG alignment)

STR: 10 (+0)
DEX: 16 (+3)
CON: 12 (+1)
INT: 12 (+2)
WIS: 11 (+0)
CHA: 16 (+3)

Proficient Skills: History, Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion.

Spells:

Cantrips
---
Eldritch Blast
Blade Ward
Friends
Prestidigitation

1st Level
---
Burning Hands
Hex
Charm Person

2nd Level
---
Darkness
Suggestion

3rd Level
---
Fireball

Spell Slots: 2 (3rd level)

Perks: Alert

Preferred Pact Weapon: Rapier

Items: Crossbow, Dagger, Studded Leather Armor, Component Pouch, Fine Clothes, Purse, Dungeoneer's Pack, Ring, Playing Cards

Languages: Common, Elvish, Dwarven (I kind of see them as the English/French/Spanish of D&D)

Personality:

Traits
---
I have a strong sense of fair play. If someone is in trouble, I am always ready to help.

Ideal
---
Sincerity. There's no point in pretending to be something I'm not.

Bond
---
I protect those who cannot protect themselves; sometimes for a price.

Flaw
---
I'm a sucker for a pretty face (character is a lesbian).

Pic related.

It's not very optimized, but I chose what I would like to play and that's what came out. Originally it was 13/13 STR/DEX and I used a longsword, but I couldn't deal with the inefficiency.

Welp, *charisma, not wisdom. Still very little reason for it.

>paladin casts off wisdom

Forgot the most important part: Invocations.

Devil's Sight
---
Agonizing Blast
---
Thirsting Blade

>CON: 12 (+1)
>INT: 12 (+2)
>Blade Ward
>Friends
>devil's sight cheese

>Sincerity. There's no point in pretending to be something I'm not
>I'm a sucker for a pretty face (character is a lesbian).

>"hey cutie pie-ladin, you wouldn't believe how deep into a pact with the dark powers i am. "
>"wanna get Chain-pacted to me?"
>wink wink
It is gonna end poorly for you.

18 seconds late senpai.

Forgive me father, for my 3.pf past.

Fucking hell, Int should obviously be 12 (+1)

What's wrong with Blade Ward and Friends? Useful cantrips.

They're not useful cantrips, sadly.

I agree with Blade Ward being awful, but everything else is fine.
The only way I had to make it good was to enable my players to use it on inanimate objects.
The Sorcerer used it on a door and made it pretty hard for goblins to knock it down.

Devil Sight on a Human is even better than regular, I don't think that's "cheese" necessarily.
Stat wise, as he said, it's not optimized, but if he wants a smarter-than-usual character that's his prerogative.

I think the only thing that's gonna sting is when your Eldritch Blast is going to always be better than your regular attacks. That's the plight of bladelock. I wished Wizard had given them far better Invocations... Because they could have. Even giving them as far as +2 AC while wielding their pact weapon woulda been fine.

That being said, OP, I think she's fine. Could be lots of fun.
Try to really flesh out the story behind her pact and if she hides it. It totally can go against her ideal of Sincerity and could add to the dilemma. A Warlock's pact really is a huge chunk of the character, and your DM will like you for having a good story going with it.

One of my players made a pact with Azmodeus and, 2 seasons in, I'm already finding way to tie the Lord of the Nine Hells to the main plot.

How is Blade Ward awful?
Am I wrong in thinking it halves damage from the 3 types?
Wouldn't it convert a hit for 12 to 6, and a hit for 20 to 10? Is that not great crit protection?

Thanks. I'll mention the Blade Ward loophole, sounds interesting.

I read up a lot on that EB dilemna, but I'll have to accept it for that sweet, sweet gish-bait. Plus, with the EB and Pact weapon, the crossbow is pretty much for show.

Her ideal of Sincerity is fun. She doesn't want to pretend to be something else ("this magic is from spellbooks, the darkvision is magical contact lenses"), but that doesn't mean she has to bear her lifestory to everyone she meets.

Plus, her pact (like with all Fiends) was made with her life on the line. She's still NG, but I'm excited with how it'll tie into the plot.

You use your action for a turn to give you resistance to piercing/bludgeoning/slashing against *weapon attacks only* until your next turn.
If you use your action on that, generally you're not doing much else.
So you're essentially using your round to take half damage from weapon attacks... presuming they even hit you. You're not taking out the enemy or reducing their ability to fight. You're sitting there, expecting to be hit, and even then you're taking damage assuming they even *DO* hit you.
Why not just use the dodge action? 99% of the time you're going to get way better mitigation from it.

When and how do you plan on using it? Keep in mind it has a casting speed of 1 action. When is it going to be better to use Blade Ward than to use Dodge? When is it going to be better to go for a defensive option when you could be dealing damage, or fleeing, or doing anything else that's going to help you win the encounter?

In most case, it's not good just because it's not worth the turn spent to cast it. Even when Quickened via metamagic, it's a waste of time. As it is, the only time I feel it's kinda OK is if you're playing a class that can attack as a bonus action after casting a cantrip/spell (Eldritch Knight, Valor Bard).

In other cases, it's not good because the monsters aren't going to hit you with physical damage.

That makes sense. I was misreading the "until the end of your next turn" bit and thinking it was like a dodge that lasted over your next round as well.

I guess Blade Ward might be good against enemies with really great accuracy or against guaranteed weapon damage of those 3 types?

youtu.be/CVSgD1iB1G0?list=PLDXQ_XXbAws7gyakXAPAC8XmqzW38Ivbk&t=5665

METAGAMING REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

It'd be okay against an ancient dragon, because even disadvantaged they're still gonna hit you on a 3 to 4 up (assuming AC 20)

Only if the only thing you're trying to do is soak damage and stall. Which is what The Lump does. You don't want to be The Lump.
docs.google.com/document/d/1IeOXWvbkmQ3nEyM2P3lS8TU4rsK6QJP0oH7HE_v67QY/edit

Treatmonk is a fucking idiot, don't post his comic sans ms shit here please

Woah, what are you salty about?
He's a cool guy.

>Bladelock
>Deal with devil
>"muh NG"
>mind control
>lesbian

Nice meme. If you were at my table I'd kick you out in a heartbeat

female characters = nono
gay characters = nono

Fuck you senpai. What do you got against chick characters?

Does anyone think giving out utility magic items at low levels would be a problem?

For example, a battleaxe for the Barbarian that gives advantage on Intimidation checks, or a bowstring for the Ranger that can place a light cantrip on fired arrows, etc. None of the items I've given out give a flat increase to damage.

I'm a newish DM and am tailoring these items to shore up shortcomings they have with their party.

Give magic items sparingly.
Or else they start feeling real cheap, real fast.