Best Magic Items for Ranger in D&D 5e

For the longest time, Rangers had a secret weakness of there being only one magic bow in the entire game; the Oathbow. This problem has been recently solved in a major way, with plenty of magical bows and crossbows for your DM to choose from. They’re all great, so I won’t bother to talk about weapons much today. I’ll focus more on items that expand what the class is capable of and enhances what you’ve already got.

Moon Sickle (Attunement, Rarity Varies): This simple item grants a small boost to healing spells along with a bonus to your spell attack rolls and spell save DC depending on this item’s rarity. Note that you do need to be holding the weapon to get this bonus. You may see this as not compatible with your ranged build, but the solution is simple. On turns where you need the bonus, just reach down and hold the sickle as you cast the spell. You likely won’t be attacking on the same turn you cast most spells that want this bonus anyway.

Uncommon:

Saddle of the Cavalier: For the Beast Masters and Drakewardens among you, I highly recommend using your companion as a mount. This opens up a lot of fun and interesting strategies, and this item is a big reason as well. It makes your companion much more durable, helping it survive much longer in combat and saving you the resources necessary to resummon it.
Wand of Web (Attunement): Whoever decided that Rangers don’t get Web (besides Swarmkeepers) should really rethink everything in life that brought them to that point. This item fixes this grave error, though Entangle is a fine replacement for this effect if you can’t get this item.
Winged Boots (Attunement): Rangers are one of the classes that benefit the most from flight, as it allows them to safely attack at range while staying out of melee range. It also helps you hold concentration for the same reason. Flight is great, and this item is one of the best at providing it.

Rare Items:

Cape of the Mountebank (Attunement): A few subclasses get Misty Step, but aside from that, Rangers lack short range teleportation options. This item fixes that in a major way, giving the Ranger more utility and flexibility both in and out of combat.
Cloak of Displacement (Attunement): Rangers are a bit weak on the defensive side. They don’t get Shield, and the best AC most Rangers can hope for is around 17 as they likely won’t have a spare hand to hold a shield with. You normally offset this weakness by staying at range, but this item is great to have for all the times where that strategy doesn’t quite work as you hoped.
Horn of Valhalla: For when the 8 conjured wolves wasn’t enough, why not conjure a whole bunch of warriors as well? This item is genuinely broken against any enemy that doesn’t resist non-magical damage.
Horseshoes of Speed: Again for the Beastmasters, you can totally have your beast spirit take the appearance of a horse in order to use these. A flat +30 to their movement speed makes their charge ability much easier to land, and is just extremely useful overall.
Two-Birds Sling: This item is genuinely broken. If you have multiple enemies within 10ft of each other, you can potentially chain attacks from one of them to another with just a single attack. I generally recognize the hand crossbow as the strongest weapon for a Ranger in combination with Crossbow Expert, but this item blows that build out of the water in terms of damage output while still leaving your bonus action free.
Wand of Fireballs (Attunement): Rangers lack large AoE damage spells (at least, they lack good ones). This item fixes that entirely. I would recommend that you pay attention to when this spell is the right answer, and when a spell like Conjure Animals would be more effective. Generally, a good play pattern is to Conjure Animals on turn one, then once your animals have been killed, toss a Fireball to clean up the mess if you don’t think your normal attacks will do the job.

Very Rare Items:

Animated Shield (Attunement): This item fixes that shield problem I mentioned earlier, which is very helpful thanks to our aforementioned weak defenses.
Cloak of Arachnida (Attunement): This is basically a better Wand of Web, assuming you won’t need the Web spell more than once per day. It lets you walk on walls and resist poison damage as well, making this feel like a bunch of magic items at once.

Legendary Items:

Cloak of Invisibility (Attunement): At will, unbreakable invisibility is quite strong, even if many foes at this level have the ability to see invisible creatures.
Topaz Annihilator (Attunement): This firearm is probably the only gun that most DMs will allow without argument, on account of its magical nature. If you’ve stuck to bows this entire time, this will be a damage upgrade plus a once per day Disintegrate. A hand crossbow plus Crossbow Expert will outperform this however. Also note that you need firearms proficiency to use this, which can only be gained from the Artificer class or the Gunner feat. This should honestly be a Rare item, it definitely doesn’t earn the Legendary status, but it might be right for your build.

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