Charms are a way of rewarding your players in Dungeons & Dragons that doesn’t involve gold or magic items. They can be given by magical creatures or other fantastical situations, usually as a reward for a job well done, but sometimes as a tool to deal with a terrible foe.
Several charms were introduced in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, and they are meant to be powerful yet temporary rewards. You can even make your own charms that fit your campaign if you’re interested. However, there are some perfectly fine options available for use right away.
7
Charm Of Heroism
You Won’t Feel That Heroic
All charms work much the same way, giving you the same effect as if you cast a specific spell or drank some kind of potion. In the case of the charm of heroism, you feel the same effect as if you drank a potion of the same name, gaining ten temporary hit points and the effect of the Bless spell for an hour.
Once you cast this charm, it is gone forever, so you will have to choose the moment to use it wisely. Since you don’t have a time limit to use it, you could save it for when you’re low on hit points, making a miraculous return-although if you wait too long, you might just end up dead.
6
Charm Of Vitality
Best Used Against Poison
This charm works as a potion of vitality, bringing with it three effects: it removes exhaustion, poison, and makes you gain the maximum possible hit points whenever you are healed for the next day. This is all very helpful, although you shouldn’t wait for a moment when you need all three things at once since that would be extremely rare.
The best use of this charm is to end the poisoned condition since that is the most common scenario of all three. That is unless you are planning a troublesome expedition that involves the exhaustion mechanic; those are incredibly rare, but some campaigns do revolve around it.
5
Charm Of Feather Falling
Break The Fall Before It Happens
This is a rather powerful charm since whenever you fall with it active, you only fall 60 feet per round and take no damage when you hit the ground. Powerful, but limited, since the charm itself is only active for ten days, after which the charm vanishes completely.
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Gaining this charm as a random gift can be odd since you won’t always have a specific situation where you fall to your death, much less plan for one in the next ten days. This is better used as a charm given before an adventure, where the players already know that falls could be lethal, removing one problem from the equation.
4
Charm Of Restoration
Cast Either Greater Or Lesser Restoration
This charm has three charges, letting you use one to cast Lesser Restoration and two to cast Greater Restoration. This means that you can either cast Lesser Restoration three times, Greater Restoration once, and Lesser Restoration once.
Greater Restoration is an incredibly useful spell, and long campaigns always have a moment when you need its benefits. This means that you are free to use one charge of the charm to cast the Lesser version, but after that, you are better off finding other ways to end effects like blinded or paralyzed since you need to save the other two charges for the Greater version.
3
Charm Of Darkvision
Don’t Fear The Dark
The charm of Darkvision does exactly what it says in the name: you can cast the spell Darkvision, but after three times, the charm vanishes. Players often pick party combinations that involve everyone already having the Darkvision trait, but a lot of useful species don’t have that feature, making this charm not completely useless.
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Like many other charms, this one can be used as a tool for the players before an adventure rather than after it. If a mythical creature tasks the party with a quest in the Underdark, you can make that creature gift the charm to those without Darkvision so they are better equipped for the challenges ahead.
2
Charm Of Animal Conjuring
Invoke Animals For Help
As you can expect by now, the charm of animal conjuring lets you cast the Conjure Animals three times without using any resources. You still need to maintain concentration, so you can’t just summon three swarms of animals to aid you; you have to do it one at a time.
Before you start thinking about all the wild combinations you could make with this spell, you should know that Conjure Animals was heavily altered in its 2024 version. You no longer summon any animal you want but a large swarm of them that can only be used in combat.
1
Charm Of The Slayer
Get Ready For Battle
This charm makes it so that, for the next nine days, a weapon in your possession becomes a magical dragon or giant slaying weapon. This means that other than gaining a plus one to attack and damage rolls, it also deals extra damage when faced against its namesake.
This is, above all other charms, one you gift to players to slay a difficult creature on their path. The story writes itself: they have a limited window of time to use their charm to defeat the evil dragon, so they have to rush and find its lair before they lose their advantage.
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