Is this legendary homebrew cloak (Abyssal Regalia of the Dark Prince) balanced?

Question

I am creating some homebrew magic items for the players of my campaign to custom-tailor to their needs and wishes. The characters are currently level 15 and nearing the end, so legendary items are on the table.

For my warlock party member who serves the Demon Lord Graz'zt, I have created a cloak. I am uncertain, whether it is balanced, too weak or too strong.

He wanted the ability to change his Fiendish Resilience more frequently (like it is handled in the video game Baldur's Gate 3) and will have to give up his barrier tattoo to attune to the mantle. The Infernal Wardrobe part is basically just flavor, since the character is quite focused on his looks.

Abyssal Regalia of the Dark Prince

Wondrous item, legendary (requires attunement by a warlock)

Abyssal Presence. The cloak enhances your charisma and presence. You gain a +2 bonus to your Charisma score, reflecting Graz'zt's charisma and seductive charm.

Fiendish Elegance. Whenever you wear the cloak, you are always impeccably dressed, exuding an aura of allure and confidence. You have advantage on Charisma (Persuasion) and Charisma (Deception) checks when interacting with humanoid creatures.

Infernal Wardrobe. The mantle can change its appearance at your will, allowing it to adopt various styles.

Demonic Regeneration. While attuned to the mantle, you regain hit points equal to your Charisma modifier at the start of each of your turns while you remain conscious, as Graz'zt's dark power sustains and invigorates you.

Abyssal Resilience. While attuned to the cloak, it allows you to change your Fiendish Resilience as a bonus action instead of during a short rest.

Abyssal Armor. The cloak grants you a +1 bonus to your Armor Class as Graz'zt's dark influence strengthens your defenses.

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I was uncertain whether I should add the ability to cast the Dominate Person spell once per long rest, or if this ability should replace one of the others if the item is already on the stronger side.

Answer 1

This is too strong

We could go into detailed analysis, but I think this is too strong based just on Demonic Regeneration alone. The Ring of Regeneration, which is already very rare, just one step from legendary, regenerates 1d6 hits or on average 3.5 per 10 minutes, or 0.35 per minute or 0.035 per round. The legendary Ioun Stone of Regeneration gets you 15 hits at the end of each hour, or 0.025 points per round. The Abyssal Regalia regenerate Charisma modifier hit points per round, and we can assume that modifier is +6 for a level 15 Warlock due to the Abyssal Presence bonus. That is 171 times the amount being regenerated by the ring. Even for a legendary item, that seems beyond the pale.

On top of this, the Abyssal Regalia provide a +2 bonus to your main stat, Charisma, worded in a way that I think is meant to get around the cap of 20 Charisma limtiation, as it adds a bonus, it does not increase the stat. Again that in itself is already better than a very rare Ioun stone of Leadership, because there are few ways to get beyond 20. It reinforces all your primary spell attacks, spell save DCs etc. It is even better than a Tome of Leadership and Influence, that increases your stat and maximum score, because there is a hard ceiling to the maximum for gods and the like at 30, and this could get around that.

The AC bonus, skill advantages and in-combat reslilience switch are than just heaping more on top. The latter effectively is close to resistance against all damage types except magical weapons, which is also huge, especially in combo with the regeneration.

Answer 2

I actually think this is weak

And with this answer you have all 3 opinions, which tells you a lot about the state of magic items in 5e.

I will start with the down sides.

Demonic Regeneration

While 5hp per turn is much higher than any other regen you can get it isn't a combat benefit and isn't going to make any difference in any meaningful combat. Where it helps is out of combat, because you will be healing to full between fights. Sounds like an issue? Well only if your DM is in the unusual position of not balancing fights around the standard expectation of short rests and using hit dice. In the real world this is unlikely to do anything other than mean you don't spend hit dice.

Can you spend those hit dice elsewhere? Probably not, so it makes no difference.

Can the DM balance around this out of combat healing? If the DM throws more encounters at the party because you are always full on hp, then that isn't fair on the others in the group. I don't think that is a balance issue in terms of this item.

So the regen is weak. If you want it meaningful it needs to actually absorb a hit at the level you are fighting at.

My recommendation is for this to become a buff to the temp hp from Dark Ones Blessing. Maybe double the temp hp, or add resistance to that temp hp which is effectively the same thing.

Abyssal Resilience

In normal circumstances this could be really good, but this isn't normal, this is intended for Tiamat. The breath weapon could be anything, so there is actually a good chance that the player constantly swaps to the wrong one and gets no benefit at all. In your specific situation of why you are giving this item I don't think it does what you want it to.

I would allow a reaction (once per short rest) to change the resistance on the fly as the character receives damage. So they can start with fire, but if they are hit with ice they can immediately get resistance to it, but they are then stuck with it.

Using this method in any given fight they have a chance to start with the right resistance, and a chance to correct it knowing that it will 100% get used.

Now the up sides.

Abyssal Presence

You gave put this in for the player to reach 20 charisma, but I would let it increase the total to 22. They may never get far enough to get another ASI, but its a nice buff if they do and means the item won't suddenly get weaker if they level up. There are plenty of items that increase spell DC's etc so going to 22 isn't a massive buff at this level.

Fiendish Elegance and Infernal Wardrobe

Giving advantage on a social check is good, but its just fluff. In most conversations if 2 people are involved you can get advantage anyway. The style is also fluff, but both together are cool and thematic so are perfect for this kind of item in my eyes.

Abyssal Armor

Generic, but useful.

Other notes

Even if you make the changes that I am suggesting to buff the poorer features I think this is still a little weak, and crucially it doesn't add anything new to the player - all the buffs are pretty passive.

Whenever I create an item I do it to provide a player with a new 'thing' they can use which increases their flexibility as much as raw power.

If you add a dominate person I think that would be perfectly balanced, or maybe consider geas if you want it used out of combat instead. This gives the player a way to actually interact with the new item, so they feel like they are always getting use out of it rather than just forgetting it is there as it just silently works in the background.

With the additional spell and the changes I suggest I think this will be balanced. Balanced against what is a different matter, but anyone who uses rarity in a balance argument is starting off in the wrong place.

Answer 3

This is mostly fine

User "Nobody" correctly points out that the healing from this item is much more than published items, such as the Very Rare "Ring Of Regeneration" (21.5 hp per hour) or the Legendary "Ioun Stone Of Regeneration" (15hp per hour). But a thing we should consider is that neither of those items is particularly good. Healing outside of combat is sort of meaningless, since you could just take a short rest. I think the rarity assigned to these items is wrong.

(In particular, notice that the "Legendary" item is strictly worse than the "Very Rare" item! That's pretty strong evidence that at least one of them has the wrong rarity.)

Instead, we might compare this item to the "Gloves of Soul Catching", which I found while browsing D&D Beyond. This item increases the character's CON score to 20, and also grants +2d10 force damage per unarmed strike, and also grants healing equal to the force damage dealt. (Or you can trade the healing for other things.)

In many ways the Gloves of Soul Catching is more powerful than your item here. The 20 CON is better than the +2 CHA. If we assume the wearer of the Gloves is a monk, then they might make four attacks per round and hit with two of them, gaining 22 hit points per round, which is better than the 5 hit points per round from your item. And the +22 damage per round is better than the +1 AC that this item gives.

The Gloves of Soul Catching is one of the more powerful Legendary items, just as the Ioun Stone of Regeneration is an especially weak one. All that this goes to show is that there's a wide band of power levels within each rarity, and it's hard to say much by comparing to a single item.

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Personally I think the cloak is fine, especially as your group is nearing the end of their adventure. The abilities are things that appear elsewhere on lower-rarity items, or things that appear in stronger versions on other legendary items, with the exception of Abyssal Resilience which doesn't seem too exploitable at your levels.

The only thing that bothers me about it is that it has six (!) different powers. I would be tempted to suggest that you remove one of the powers before adding Dominate Person, just to have less to keep track of.

If this were being handed out for use in other games, I would also want to issue a warning about Dominate Person. Someone who has this power will be tempted to use it on non-hostile NPCs, which will make the NPC angry once it wears off. This could cause plot problems for the DM, and could irritate the other players, since they may not have wanted the character to offend random NPCs in this way.

However, you're handing this ability out on purpose, so I'll assume that you either trust your player not to do dumb things with it, or your campaign is in a place where nothing will break if he starts randomly casting Dominate Person on people.