How does allowing or disallowing simulacra to attune to magic items separately from their creators affect game play?

Question

This question proposes that by RAW a simulacrum can attune independently from its creator.

In Adventurers League, a simulacrum cannot attune to items independently from its creator, see this question.

Whether simulacrum can attune independently by RAW could be a subject of debate, but that's not what this question is about.

My question is:

How does allowing or disallowing simulacra to attune to magic items separately from their creators affect game play?

Good answers will be factually and/or rules-based, and will ideally provide insight from campaigns you have played in, either as GM or player, where simulacra been allowed/disallowed to attune to magic items separately from their creators.

To provide some context, the party is a mix of 14th level characters. There is only one character able to cast simulacrum, although all the characters are pretty strong. Magic items are somewhat plentiful. All characters have all attunement slots full, and some items go unused for lack of an attunement slot. We tend toward resource-intensive situations so extra attunement slots will definitely make the wizard and simulacrum more powerful, and make the party more powerful.

Answers should probably depend less on the specifics of this particular campaign and more toward facts, rules, and insights based on campaigns you've played in.

Answer 1

Simulacrum is too broken for it to really matter

What matters in D&D is the action economy, and Simulacrum gives a player essentially double the economy they had before.

It isn't so bad at 14th level, because it is still limited by cost and time, but once you hit level 17 and gain access to Wish the player can effectively make another one every day, which more than doubles their effectiveness (since they will likely play less conservatively with spell slots), doubles the time they take at the table, and puts other players into the shade even more than they probably already were given how powerful wizards are.

Adding a few additional baubles, magical or otherwise, makes little overall impact once you take into account the sheer power of Simulacrum in the first place.

Even if you are considering a player giving a simulacrum a wand, that is assuming they duplicated a wizard, which until Wish probably isn't the best use of it anyway. The best use if to capture (or convince) and replicate a powerful NPC and they are already powerful enough without additional items.

Not allowing attunement is a sticking plaster on a broken leg. If you are going to let your wizard run with Simulacrum shenanigans, then you might as well just lean into it. In fact letting them use items might have another benefit depending on your economy, it means they can't sell those items and finance more castings of the spell!

Answer 2

The issue is not whether or not you allow the simulacrum to attune to items independently, rather, it is which items you allow the simulacrum to make use of.

Generally speaking, the difference will be small. The simulacrum's increase in power will be trivially equal to the increase in power those items would provide to the original caster, since the simulacrum and the caster share game statistics.

However, the spell puts some restrictions on the simulacrum's abilities, and certain magic items may or may not interact with those restrictions, depending on the DM's ruling. So it is not so much if you allow the simulacrum to attune to items independently, rather, it is which items you allow the simulacrum to make use of. Here are the relevant restrictions from the spell description:

The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or other abilities, nor can it regain expended spell slots.

If the simulacrum is damaged, you can repair it in an alchemical laboratory, using rare herbs and minerals worth 100 gp per hit point it regains.

I won't provide an exhaustive list of magic items that might interfere with these restrictions, but I will give a few motivating examples. Consider the Pearl of Power:

While this pearl is on your person, you can use an action to speak its command word and regain one expended spell slot. If the expended slot was of 4th level or higher, the new slot is 3rd level.

While it is to me clear enough that the Pearl of Power would not work to restore spent spell slots to a simulacrum, there is room for a DM to rule otherwise (through a somewhat ill conceived reference to specific-beats-general). Should the DM rule that the Pearl of Power works, this is a significant buff to the simulacrum.

The other consideration is items that provide magical healing. This is discussed in detail in this Q&A: Can the creature created by a Simulacrum spell be affected by healing magic?. In my opinion, Rubiksmoose makes the most compelling case when he writes:

Allowing other forms of healing means that the alchemical process would be useless

This statement must preclude other forms of regaining hit points otherwise it is meaningless. Even though it does not say so explicitly, the above method is clearly meant to be the only way for a simulacrum to regain hit points.

It does not say that potions or healing magic or rest doesn't work for example, but if they were possible then the expensive complicated process for healing would be meaningless and there would be no point in including it. Sleep especially makes this meaningless because it is free and available to every creature/class and allows for healing completely. Why would anybody ever pay 100gp per hit point if they could sleep or use any of the myriad of other methods for regaining hit points available? This logic also applies to traits or features that let you heal.

To me, it is abundantly obvious that the alchemical process outline in the spell description is the only way to heal a simulacrum. However, wax eagle outlines an argument to the contrary. For example, consider the Ring of Regeneration:

While wearing this ring, you regain 1d6 hit points every 10 minutes, provided that you have at least 1 hit point.

If the DM allows this ring to work on the Simulacrum, then the expensive healing process typically required is entirely bypassed.

So you should discuss with your DM before hand about how to rule on items that interact with the restrictions contained in the spell description. If you allow those restrictions to be bypassed, then you make an already strong spell significantly stronger.

Answer 3

This depends on the items you have available

In general I think the effect will be a slight increase in party power.

For example, in our campaign, we have left-over Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and I have a Spider Staff that is great to give party members spider climb to scout along ceilings and walls, but that is hogging my concentration. If we can equip the simulacrum with them, we gain about 20 lbs additional carry capacity, and my concentration is freed up for other spells like polymorph or wall of force, without risk of a painful drop from the ceiling. Both of which are nice, but not overtly powerful.

However, if we had an extra Wand of Polymorph, this would add the ability to potentially blank one dangrous foe per fight, even after the simulacrum has used up its spell slots.

At the extreme end, imagine having a left-over Staff of the Magi, Helm of Teleportation, and Ring of Telekinesis for an added average 7 levels of spells, unlimited supply of telekinesis and two party teleports a day. Equipping the simularcrum thus would be a considerable increase in firepower, without any special consent from the GM.

Typically, the items you have access to at a given level are determined by the amount of treasure you find, so at level 14, you are extremely unlikely to have extra game-changing legendary items, if you have any at all.

If your equipment is level-appropriate, you will already have equipped the best items to yourself, and equipping the weaker extras that you have no attunement slots or actions for, you will only get a mild increase in power, compared to what you can do overall -- and compared to the huge amount of power that having the simulacrum adds in the first place.