Shiny Bits: An Essential Guide to WorldSmith's Magic Item Generator

The Magic Item Generator is one of the most commonly used D&D 5e generators on WorldSmith, and it’s used by thousands of GM’s every month. It’s perfect if you’re looking to make DnD homebrew magic items or get started making your own balanced homebrew campaigns. It’s fast, gets great results, and is the only platform I've used that can consistently make me giggle when I bring a wondrous item to the table.

If you’re looking for a very standard magic item you can always check out DnD Beyond’s cache of standard magic items, but as you may find out, most players are already pretty familiar with these items. Plus, DnD is often unwilling to make items that are too overpowered or have too high a chance of backfiring…which is where WorldSmith’s item generator comes in.

Select the Type

WorldSmith's magic item generator has a heap of drop down menus to help you generate your assets, and the first and most important one for magic items is type! We’ve covered most of the basics here, like rings, scrolls, amulets, potions, weapons, wands, armor, and instruments, among others. If for some reason you don’t find a category that fits what you’re imagining, you can always put it into the Custom Note (we’ll talk about that in a bit) or send feedback to the devs (they are uncommonly responsive!).

Determine Rarity

This helps WorldSmith understand just how special your magic item will be! This menu goes all the way from ‘Common’ to ‘Artifact’. A common magic item will likely not have a powerful in game effect, will be made of common materials, and will also likely be cheap to purchase (yes, WorldSmith will tell you the price of the item, which is helpful for all of your loot crazy players out there!). An Artifact is a magic item that is literally one of a kind - a fabled item that cannot be reproduced. It will be extremely expensive and may have game changing effects built into its stat block. Uncommon or Rare items will be everything in between.

Pro Tip: If you’re looking to make a cache of many magic items, you may want to use WorldSmith’s Treasure Generator. You can set the rarity and how many magic items you want, and it will create as many as you specify. It’s a great way to generate 10 little magic items in under two minutes for your party to choose from.

Determine Primary Effect

Selecting something here will help the WorldSmith generator develop abilities and buffs that give your item the flavor you want. The drop down menu covers many of the basic effects that magic items have in the game, including buff, debuff, healing, control, utility, summoning etc.

There’s a chance the concept for your magic item doesn’t fit neatly into one of these descriptors, or it may combine several abilities into one! If that’s the case you’re probably better off either selecting the primary effect and then instructing in the Custom Note if it has a secondary effect, or just leaving this menu blank.

Determine Usage Limit

We’ve all had that player who uses their magic item in every single encounter…well no longer! WorldSmith has a convenient Usage Limit menu, so you can make the item have charges that refill after a short or long rest, or like a Deck of Many Things, have a more unique, one time effect. Of course, you could also just let the gods of fate craft your future and leave this menu blank…

Determine Activation Method

There are three options for your item in this drop down menu: Action, Passive, and Triggered. Action means you’ll need to use a full or bonus action to use the magic item, passive means the magic item will be running at all times, and triggered can mean something fun of your own creation! If you select triggered, we recommend you add something into the custom note to tell the generator under what circumstances the item will be triggered.

Determine Elemental Type

This menu can help give your custom magic item a bit more flair. Select the elemental type and WorldSmith will take that into account when generating, modifying the description, damage or resistance type, or other factors to align with the elemental type. Will you make a heavenly spell scroll bursting with light and life, or a chaos blade crackling with world ending energy?

It’s of course not necessary to making a great magic item, but can help when you’re looking for a consistent stat block with just the right tone that matches your campaign.

The Custom Note

The Custom Note is the most important area to put details about your custom magic item. WorldSmith is fully capable of coming up with fantastic magic items on its own, with just minimal guidance from the drop down menus, but if you’re looking for a specific type of item or a specific magical effect, this is where you’re going to write it!

You can fit quite a lot in this section, so feel free to be as detailed as you’d like or copy paste from a description in your notes or from a favorite book if you’d like to turn something from another story into a playable Dungeons and Dragons item. The more details you give the generator, the closer the final product will be to what you have in mind.

If you want the item to be linked to the lore of your custom world, you can actually tell the magic item generator to pull from a previous generation on WorldSmith, or from your game notes. It will quickly look through all the lore you already have for your game and incorporate that into the description.

Editing and Saving

One of the best things about generating items in WorldSmith is the stat blocks are completely editable. Normally after generating I will give it a read and modify a few things to better fit my world or the characters in my game.

You can even add new sections if it interests you and whatever abilities you like, creating complex multi use items that add a whole new dimension to play! Modify to your hearts content.

When you are finished, don’t forget to save the creation to your campaign in WorldSmith, or download it to your desktop. The WorldSmith team loves to see your creations, so give it a share in our Discord or make it publicly accessible on WorldSmith’s interface for other creators to see.

Good luck! We can’t wait to see what unwieldy weapons of death and destruction you cook up next! 

What’s Next?

WorldSmith is one of the best game master tools for DnD, especially when it comes to making homebrew DnD adventures, creatures, and campaigns. Check out all the other tools available our other AI-powered DnD generators like our shop, monster, spell, NPC generator and much more. If you ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team!

Over the coming years WorldSmith is hard at work making their generators work in other systems and creating a shiny app, so keep your senses tuned for that as well.