Dungeons and Dragons

I've written a handful of dumb magic items, but none of them have come up in play yet. My favorites are a Wand of Lightning, which is made of copper and can call lightning to the wand's location if you point it at the sky during a storm; and the Solar Tuba of Illumination, which glows when you play it but only works in sunlight.

I tend to hand my players quasi-OP items while gating the power very deliberately so I can counterplay it as DM.

E.g. my party’s sorcerer got a magic amulet that can be activated once per long rest to give allies advantage on the next attack — but I added the catch that it only has a 5 ft effect radius, so the players can only exploit it so much without risking major AoE damage.

It’s a nice reliable buff most of the time, but forces the players to be strategic and take risks to make the most of it… And from an RP perspective, the enemy characters might be likely to notice the party grouping around some magic artifact and go after the sorcerer as a result.

I like making some silly magic items here are a few of my favorites:

• an invisible dagger ( the dagger can turn invisible only)
• a necklace that gives paladin features but it loses a link if the player lies. Eventually make it too small to remove and then choking the player
• animate Korred hair that gives the player the korred's hair feature.
• Many handed pocket (an single shared pouch contents that multiple people can use)

They are all fun to use

A sword that glows around [race of the character]

Bagpipes of invisibility. Turns you invisible, but only when you are playing them and they are LOUD.

Still good enough to give an attacker disadvantage in a fight, but the player won't be using them to sneak into anything lol. Eventually I had the player I gave them to receive instructions from a master bagpipes player on how to play them without using their hands as a minor upgrade

I like messing with my players sometimes so I did one where it was a sword that felt like there was incredible power waiting to be awakened. But that was it. The enchantment was just to make it seem powerful. Those were some fun sessions lmao

Real answer is a combat oriented version of the deck of many things. A player was a rogue gambler with a bunch of luck based rng stuff so I figured it'd be a good fit and it was really fun.

Last campaign I had a glass dagger that could shatter a construct it it failed a save, and something else on a crit. Though I never got the chance to find out.