It really depends on your campaign, and the types of magic items. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to give my PCs magic weapons somewhere between levels 3 and 5. Magic armor tends to come a bit later, between 7 and 10. But various magic items can happen at any point.
How do you award magic items?
We only have to write down one meaningful item per character and it will likely take us up to a dozen sessions to award them all. Once each character receives an item we might write down new ones. Over the course of a campaign, each character might only receive one to three such items but they will matter a whole lot.
When should players get magic weapons?
Short answer is whenever you feel like they need one. But here’s my perspective on it. As a very rough and very modifiable guideline, the bonuses go up to +3 and levels go up to 20. This means +1 weapons around level 5, +2 around 10, and +3 around 15.
Can magic items break 5e?
So, besides artifacts all magic items are broken like anything else, just that they have resistance to all damage. This is basically so they cannot easily be broken, and most likely since it’s intended that they cannot be easily repaired.
At what level should players get +1 weapons?
If this suggestion is followed, then a character can obtain a +1 weapon at 4th level, +2 weapon at 7th or 8th level, a +3 weapon at 11th or 12 level, and so on.
Do you have to have magic in treasure room?
Having magic lay in a treasure room makes zero sense. In this manner, player characters have earned the piece of armor, weapon, wand or whatever it is. Second, is that magic items don’t need to look magical.
How many magic items should a 10th level character have?
There is this table (DMG p.135): In addition, there is the table on Starting Equipment on p. 38. which suggests a 10th level character should have no magic items in a Low and Standard Campaign and one uncommon item in a High Magic Campaign.
Do you have to look magical to get magic items?
Second, is that magic items don’t need to look magical. I have found that a player character will take the ornamental sword that looks pretty but is useless in battle rather than a sword that looks battle used and worn but is a +1.
How are magic items distributed in the DMG?
About a year and a half ago there was a thread on EN World about Analysis of “Typical” Magic Item Distribution, looking at the treasure generation tables in the DMG. The rough result is as follows (numbers are per-character):
