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Magical items are a central part of fantasy stories from Skyrim to Lord of the Rings. We all get excited when we open a chest and find an enchanted sword or magic staff inside, but which magical items are most popular among Dungeons and Dragons players? I took a look at the data…
A Word About the Data
The information is taken from our D&D character dataset of over 1.2 million dndbeyond characters and calculated in this Kaggle Notebook. Magic items are simply taken from the SRD and character inventories are filtered based on that. Around 600,000 characters had items from the SRD in their inventory, which forms the basis for the percentages. More about the data can also be found in our post about the most popular classes and races.
The Most Popular Magic Item in D&D
Probably not surprising for most: Potion of Healing. Almost every character will need healing at some point, and healing potions are the obvious choice. It’s also an easy way for Dungeon Masters to reward players in a way that everyone appreciates. Almost 17 percent of all characters in the dataset had a healing potion with them!
Since that was too obvious, here’s number 2: Bag of Holding. Also not particularly surprising, as it allows carrying more items and more items = more fun. Around 6 percent of all characters had one. The next few places might get a bit more interesting.
The Top 10 Most Popular Magic Items
So here’s the complete list of magic items. What’s notable is that most are items that protect and can be used by most characters at the same time. The Wand of Magic Missiles is the only “aggressive” item on the list.
| Rank | Item | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Potion of Healing | 16.73% |
| 2 | Bag of Holding | 5.66% |
| 3 | Spell Scroll | 4.16% |
| 4 | Ring of Protection | 2.78% |
| 5 | Cloak of Protection | 2.14% |
| 6 | Boots of Elvenkind | 1.39% |
| 7 | Elven Chain | 1.30% |
| 8 | Cloak of Elvenkind | 1.20% |
| 9 | Ring of Mind Shielding | 1.16% |
| 10 | Ioun Stone | 1.11% |
The Top 20 Least Popular Magic Items
I personally really enjoy building characters that do unusual things. That’s why I find it almost more interesting to look at the magic items that almost nobody else uses. Here I’ve included not just percentages but also the actual numbers, just to show how few players actually use these items.
| Rank (from bottom) | Item | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vicious Weapon | 3 | 0.000389% |
| 2 | Vorpal Sword | 5 | 0.000649% |
| 3 | Dancing Sword | 7 | 0.000909% |
| 4 | Potion of Giant Strength | 8 | 0.001038% |
| 5 | Mithral Armor | 8 | 0.001038% |
| 6 | Belt of Giant Strength | 9 | 0.001168% |
| 7 | Adamantine Armor | 12 | 0.001558% |
| 8 | Potion of Resistance | 12 | 0.001558% |
| 9 | Ring of Resistance | 16 | 0.002077% |
| 10 | Artifacts | 18 | 0.002336% |
| 11 | Armor of Resistance | 24 | 0.003115% |
| 12 | Ring of Elemental Command | 44 | 0.005711% |
| 13 | Armor of Vulnerability | 158 | 0.020509% |
| 14 | Mirror of Life Trapping | 310 | 0.040239% |
| 15 | Censer of Controlling Air Elementals | 318 | 0.041278% |
| 16 | Talisman of Ultimate Evil | 319 | 0.041408% |
| 17 | Candle of Invocation | 331 | 0.042965% |
| 18 | Talisman of the Sphere | 369 | 0.047898% |
| 19 | Horseshoes of Speed | 376 | 0.048806% |
| 20 | Sphere of Annihilation | 442 | 0.057373% |
