When You Need that Special Something

I have a paladin in my current campaign who uses Trident almost exclusively. When it came time to dole out magic items to my party, I thought about what I could do for this character and decided that I should upgrade his Trident. After much thought I decided to give him a +2 trident. In addition, in contrast to the rest of the party, the paladin had a poor initiative bonus, so I decided to grant the weapon a +2 to initiative rolls to bring him in line with the remainder of the party.

After some thought, I came up with the following description:

Ocean’s Reach: Forged from the bones of a sea giant, Ocean’s Reach is a weapon of great power and versatility. Its handle is wrapped in kelp, and its tines are adorned with barnacles and coral. When wielded, it hums with a subtle aquatic energy.

I was not able to find a weapon to provide him with, so I created my own using D&D Beyond’s Homebrew collections.

D&D Beyond is the official repository for all things D&D, including more than 800 magic items at last count granting all sorts of boons and banes. D&D Beyond also allows you to create and share Homebrew items. There were over 500,000 magic items in the Homebrew Magic Items section of the website last time I looked, and you can add your own and share them with your own an account.

Creating Ocean’s Reach

We’re going to create a magic item called Ocean’s Reach.

Create the Magic Item’s Shell

First, navigate to D&D Beyond and open the Collections menu. In the Homebrew section there is an option for Create Magic Item. Clicking on the link will open the Create Homebrew Magic Item page, where you’ll see options to filter existing Magic Items to use as a template for your item. I’m going to create this item by selecting Trident +2 as a base and clicking the Create button.

First, we’ll fill out the required basic information. We’ll give the item a name, indicate its Rarity, Base Item Type, and Magic Item Type. We’ll name it Ocean’s Reach, give it a rarity of Rare. We’ll give it a Base Item Type of Weapon and set its Base Weapon to Trident. For the description we’ll enter the following:

Forged from the bones of a sea giant, Ocean’s Reach is a weapon of great power and versatility. Its handle is wrapped in kelp, and its tines are adorned with barnacles and coral. When wielded, it hums with a subtle aquatic energy.

You have a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.

• Enhanced Initiative: While wielding this weapon you gain a +2 bonus to initiative rolls.
• Water-Enhanced Strikes: The trident gains an additional +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls underwater.

After completing these fields. click on the Create Magic Item button to save your creation. The page will reload, and you will see additional options for the item available to you now.

Add Modifiers

Now we create the magical effects for Ocean’s Reach. In the Modifiers section, click the Add a Modifier button which will bring you to a screen to Add a Modifier to Ocean’s Reach. The Modifier Type will be Bonus, and its Subtype Magic. We’ll use a Fixed Value of 2 for this effect since the trident increases attack and damage bonuses by 2. Click Save and this will add the damage modifier to the item and return you to the Edit screen. You should see your modifier in the list now. Repeat this for the initiative modifier using Modifier Type of Bonus, Sub Type of Initiative and a Fixed Value of 2. You can repeat this for any additional modifiers you need to meet your customization needs.

Congratulations! You’ve just created your first homebrew magic item on D&D Beyond! You can view your creations under Collections > My Homebrew Collection.

And there you have it! You own personalized magic item!