I have a wizard who has a Pearl of Power. According to the rules, it looks like he should be able to, on each day, take a short rest to attune to it, use it to recover a spell slot, then take a short rest to re-attune to his usual other magic item.
This seems to me kind of a weasel workaround to effectively get attunement to 4 magic items, but looks legal. Is there any reason (other than time management) that this doesn't work?
Well, it'll take four short rests, not two, but otherwise, yes, this works.
An item can be attuned to only one creature at a time, and a creature can be attuned to no more than three magic items at a time. Any attempt to attune to a fourth item fails; the creature must end its attunement to an item first.
So at the start of the day, the wizard has to end his attunement to one of his other items before he can attune to the Pearl of Power. Similarly, after using the Pearl, the wizard can't just attune to the other item; he has to end his attunement to the Pearl first.
A creature’s attunement to an item ends if the creature no longer satisfies the prerequisites for attunement, if the item has been more than 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the creature dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. A creature can also voluntarily end attunement by spending another short rest focused on the item, unless the item is cursed.
And in order to end his attunement, he has to:
It is completely legal. He could even use several pearls of power every day.
The limiter is the availability of 1-hour intervals where he can do the attunement.
Adventurers often don't have the luxury of choosing their schedule. This particular DM not-so-often pulls quantum ogres from his hat to derail the R&R of the party. An adventure should keep the adventurers on their toes.
And he needs an extra 1-hour interval to de-attune before reatunning with another item.
