4th EDITION D&D SRD (PREVIEW) - ITEM SLOTS

Primary Slots

Weapon/Implement: Whether you’re swinging a mace or blasting with a magic wand, you have an item that adds to your attack and damage. These weapons also set your critical hit dice (the extra dice you roll when you score a critical hit. Even though this is called an item slot, that doesn’t mean you can’t wield more than one weapon.

Armor: This category now includes cloth armor, so the wizard in robes has magic armor just like the rest of the group. Magic armor adds an enhancement bonus to your Armor Class.

Neck: An item in the neck slot increases your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, as well as usually doing something else snappy. The most common items are amulets and cloaks.

Secondary Slots

These items don’t have enhancement bonuses. That makes them essentially optional. You could adventure with no items in your secondary item slots and not see a huge decrease in your overall power. Take what looks cool, but don’t worry about having empty slots.

Arms: These are bulky items that fit over your arms, such as bracers, vambraces, and shields. You’ll notice that shields no longer have an enhancement bonus. Instead, shields have special defensive effects and items you wear instead of shields, like bracers, are more offensive.

Feet: Focused on mobility and special movement modes, you can be pretty sure what you’re getting when you look at magic boots, greaves, or sandals.

Hands: Thinner items that fit on your hands fall into this category. This includes gauntlets and gloves. They usually help out your attacks or help your manual dexterity.

Head: These items increase your mental skills or enhance your senses. Helmets, circlets, and goggles all fall in this category. Another major subcategory here includes orbitals, such as ioun stones. If you see someone with an orbital, it’s a good bet you’re dealing with an epic character.

Rings: This slot has changed quite a bit. A starting character isn’t powerful enough to unleash the power of a ring. You can use one ring when you reach paragon tier (11th level) and two when you’re epic (21st level). And before you get started about how Frodo sure as hell wasn’t epic, let's be clear: the One Ring was an artifact, not a magic item any old spellcaster could make. Artifacts follow their own rules.

Waist: Items you wear around your waist are usually about protection, healing, or increasing your Strength temporarily.

Other Items

Some items don’t use item slots. Some of them aren’t useful in combat. Others can be useful in a fight, but only once in a while.

Potions: Potions are consumable items, and they're mostly focused on healing effects.

Wondrous Items: This category no longer includes wearable items. These are utility items that don’t take up space on your body or act as weapons.

Sources: D&D Miniatures Game Battle Rules∞, What You Need to Know About D&D - Quick Rules Primer∞, d20 System SRD∞, D&D Glossary∞

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