There are many items that can produce effects similar to magic, from fire damage to poison damage, and there are also many objects that are elemental in the process of casting spells such as spell foci or spellbooks. This often causes people to wonder, if such items count as magic items.

However, special rules apply for *magic items*: they can be detected by *detect magic*, they cannot be activated by the Use an Object action, if they are weapons they can overcome resistance to non-magical weapons, etc.

Because of this, is important to understand by which criteria we can separate items that could potentially be considered magic items but are not from items that are actual magic items. What is a method to test this?

When does an object count as a *magic item*?