Hating on the Wand of CLW


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

51 to 100 of 422 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | next > last >>

Kolokotroni wrote:
This is the whole problem I have. 'The party cleric'. The thing I like about the cure wand phenomenon is that someone doesnt have to be 'the cleric'. And if there is a divine caster, he doesnt have to devote a big chunk of his reasources to healing the party. He can save them for having fun IE being a divine caster, instead of a walking medkit.

Because of channel energy, I don't see this as a problem. As all PCs should be able to channel positive energy (don't get me started on evil PCs), they take the place of the CLW wand while still being able to fully participate in numerous ways as well as having a limited number of resources that need to be managed. I think your concern is only valid for 3.5.


First of all you dont have to be evil to channel negative energy, just not good, second, you are still requiring a very specific kind of character be present in the party, namely a cleric who channels positive energy (there are archetypes that change this even if you dont channel negative energy) or a life oracle. You shouldnt have to have any specific character in order for the party to function. With cure wands a bard, paladin, or ranger can handle the hit point healing and there doesnt HAVE to have a cleric around to keep everyone from dieing.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:


Most of the defenders of CLWW have been advancing some form of "well, without CLWW the game doesn't work! 15 minute adventuring day! things go too slow!" I don't actually think this is true. (Mind, if it is, I think that's pointing to a deeper structural problem in 3.x.) An adventuring party usually faces two constraints: erosion of hp and expenditure of resources (spells, per-days, and other consumables). The CLW reduces that to one constraint. It makes hp damage almost irrelevant. And it makes killing PCs with hp damage very difficult; unless you can bring the PC below -CON with a single blow (or separate him from the party), there'll always be healing to bring him back.

If you don't know how to kill players in the face of a device that heals 5.5 HP on average, I suggest you take encounter 101.

I honestly don't know anyone who uses CLW wands for in combat healing. If they are down to those, they are probably already boned (unless playing in Disneyworld).

I had thought your point was that CLW wands make healing between combats too easy. Yes, they do that. Alternatively, the PCs can retreat and refresh. That's what everyone used to do back in 1st and 2nd if they didn't have a death wish or a DM that drove them on to die.

I mean I can accept that once in a while you might want to tell a story where the PCs are desperately driven on a quest where resting is scant, and they are constantly worn down to a frazzle. Fine. However I'm not really sure players are overly fond of that motif more than once in a while.

Though the fact that you casually dismiss running out of other resources makes me wonder what kind of party we're talking about anyway. Don't you have casters? Barbarians? Bards? A lot of classes have resource management built in these days, not just casters. Yes, Rogues and Fighters don't have resource management beyond hit points, but everyone else does. If they aren't watching those resources their combat ability is going to hit a wall when it runs out and it won't matter if they are at full HP going into an encounter.


Joana wrote:

Why do you want to kill PCs? Not just defeat them, but kill them?

I don't want to kill PCs. I do want PC death to be a possibility. A game where my PC can't die is a boring game for me. The game is less interesting if there's no risk.

This is a question of aesthetics and play style, mind. Some people would disagree (and probably will).

Doug M.


Majuba wrote:
For an old-school campaign I ran, I simply made the minimum caster level on Wands 5th (and Potions 3rd). It's really just a trick of the mathematical progression that Wands of CLW are so inexpensive. Putting the minimum caster level on it fixes that nicely, and makes potions and wands a little more interesting to find as well.

I like this a lot! Great rule. I'll consider including it in my next campaign.

Doug M.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2009 Top 4

Doug, are you familiar with "eternal wands" from the 3.5 Magic Item compendium? That might be a solution worth looking into.

Another option that I am playing around with in a home game is to make wands behave like single-spell staves - they store a single spell of 4th level or lower, function at a minimum 5th caster level, and have 5 charges. You can recharge one at a rate of 1 charge per day. The cost works more or less the same as a staff, breaking down like this:

Level 1 wand (CL5) = 400 x1 x5 (2000 gold)
Level 2 wand (CL5) = 400 x2 x5 (4000 gold)
Level 3 wand (CL5) = 400 x3 x5 (6000 gold)
Level 4 wand (CL7) = 400 x3 x7 (11,200 gold)

What I've found is that the CLW wand was a game changer from 2nd to 3rd edition. I ran three long campaigns under those rules and they were always present.

With the shift to PF rules I've found that channel energy is the new game-changer when it comes to keeping the party near-full hit points. My Age of Worms game switched to channeled healing rules about midway through the path and the whole thing became a different game experience.

-eric

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You know what's more annoying than PCs who use CLW wands to heal up between combats?

PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.

"But that's how things went in 1E/2E and Gygax was right!" Yeah, but the game did change a lot from these times. Somewhere between things like hp inflation (cure light wounds in 1E/2E is not cure light wounds in 3E) and adventure writers being held up nowadays up to higher standards of logic and plausibility (rendering the good old "2d20 orcs in this room, they never poke their heads outside for whatever reason because of reasons" obsolete).

Situations like these (having to retreat or camp) are annoying for everyone. Not just for players, but for GMs too. A GM faced with half-cleared dungeon has suddenly to figure out just exactly how does the dungeon react to the fact that half its' population was put down.

In short: nobody benefits. The players get to feel more like a bunch of peasants and less like heroes, the GM has a ton of new work to do, and thanks to HappySticks none of this happens as often because The Party Can Go On!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

While I don't have any real issue with the CLW wand itself, I have never liked the D&D or PF wand mechanic at all. It's more or less the most lame mechanic I could conceive of. I actually prefer the 4e wand implementation where wands are to casters what weapons are to martial. In other words, they boost overall capabilities by a certain amount.

But then this goes back to my fundamental issue with magic items in PF which is that they can overshadow characters. My preference is for magic items to enhance character abilities, not replace them.

Just for instance, a wand might enhance the DC of spells by a certain amount. A staff might boost the caster level. etc.


Gorbacz wrote:
PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.

Couldn't this be said of any bad player choice?

I ran an aberration themed campaign and this was made clear to everyone up front. No player took knowledge (dungeoneering). Should I have changed the campaign and dropped information about aberrations into the PCs' laps because no one took it? Of course not*.

If the PCs know that swarms of insects are common in a jungle, but the casters don't prepare appropriate spells and the martials don't pick up appropriate gear and items, should the DM change the situation so they don't encounter swarms because they can't deal with them?

Not taking into account the need to heal seems to be the most common example of this form of being unprepared.

Also, the issue here is specifically CLW wands. I think potions of CLW are much more reasonable as each 'charge' costs about 4.5X a CLW charge. They represent a more reasonable expenditure of resources than CLW wands.

*At least as far as my playstyle goes.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:

While I don't have any real issue with the CLW wand itself, I have never liked the D&D or PF wand mechanic at all. It's more or less the most lame mechanic I could conceive of. I actually prefer the 4e wand implementation where wands are to casters what weapons are to martial. In other words, they boost overall capabilities by a certain amount.

But then this goes back to my fundamental issue with magic items in PF which is that they can overshadow characters. My preference is for magic items to enhance character abilities, not replace them.

Just for instance, a wand might enhance the DC of spells by a certain amount. A staff might boost the caster level. etc.

I Strongly suggest you check out the super genius guide to Runestaves and wyrd wands. It is a pathfinder version of implement rules. Wands and staves enhance spells sort of like magic weapons, with special abilities that work with specific kinds of spells.


Kolokotroni wrote:
Adamantine Dragon wrote:

While I don't have any real issue with the CLW wand itself, I have never liked the D&D or PF wand mechanic at all. It's more or less the most lame mechanic I could conceive of. I actually prefer the 4e wand implementation where wands are to casters what weapons are to martial. In other words, they boost overall capabilities by a certain amount.

But then this goes back to my fundamental issue with magic items in PF which is that they can overshadow characters. My preference is for magic items to enhance character abilities, not replace them.

Just for instance, a wand might enhance the DC of spells by a certain amount. A staff might boost the caster level. etc.

I Strongly suggest you check out the super genius guide to Runestaves and wyrd wands. It is a pathfinder version of implement rules. Wands and staves enhance spells sort of like magic weapons, with special abilities that work with specific kinds of spells.

Thanks, I will. Unfortunately I play with a bunch of ossified brain grognards and there is little desire to expand beyond the core rules... ;)


Kolokotroni wrote:
First of all you dont have to be evil to channel negative energy, just not good, second, you are still requiring a very specific kind of character be present in the party, namely a cleric who channels positive energy (there are archetypes that change this even if you dont channel negative energy) or a life oracle. You shouldnt have to have any specific character in order for the party to function. With cure wands a bard, paladin, or ranger can handle the hit point healing and there doesnt HAVE to have a cleric around to keep everyone from dieing.

I missed this comment for some reason.

Indeed, but neutral clerics who channel negative energy are generally a bad option in a party. Even with selective channeling.

As I have said in other responses in this thread, I believe potions of CLW wounds are more reasonable as they cost more per hit point healed (I posted a bit of math earlier). That way, you can supplement a party's healing without causing the problems CLW wands do. With training in heal, you can even scrape by without even needing second string healers.

It is also somewhat strange to suggest that a party shouldn't need certain types of characters. For instance, a party of 4 unarchetyped fighters are going to run into problems a party of more balanced classes will not. It's just a fact of the game.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.
Couldn't this be said of any bad player choice?

"Has finite resources" isn't a choice.

Whale_Cancer wrote:
Not taking into account the need to heal seems to be the most common example of this form of being unprepared.

"...and therefore we shouldn't let players have items that let them take into account the need to heal and prepare for it!"


Whale_Cancer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.

Couldn't this be said of any bad player choice?

I ran an aberration themed campaign and this was made clear to everyone up front. No player took knowledge (dungeoneering). Should I have changed the campaign and dropped information about aberrations into the PCs' laps because no one took it? Of course not*.

If the PCs know that swarms of insects are common in a jungle, but the casters don't prepare appropriate spells and the martials don't pick up appropriate gear and items, should the DM change the situation so they don't encounter swarms because they can't deal with them?

Not taking into account the need to heal seems to be the most common example of this form of being unprepared.

There is a difference between no one having a knowledge skill and no one having the ability to heal the whole party without significantly hindering their ability to do anything else. Being prepared, and having a cleric who channels positive energy should not be the same statement. Cure wands fix this problem to a degree. You can be prepared without having someone in the party be a cleric or spend all of their spells on healing.

Quote:

Also, the issue here is specifically CLW wands. I think potions of CLW are much more reasonable as each 'charge' costs about 4.5X a CLW charge. They represent a more reasonable expenditure of resources than CLW wands.

How is spending most of your wealth on cure potions a reasonable expendature of wealth? It goes back to forcing someone to play the 'healer' usually a cleric. If the party has to choose with having a cleric, or spending half their money on heal potions, then someone is gonna get shoehorned into the walking medkit role. To me a system with as many choices as pathfinder, forcing at least one player in a group to make a specific choice would be extremely poorly designed. Especially when every other thing that a party has to accomplish can be done a dozen different ways.


Whale_Cancer wrote:
(it is my opinion that) you are just advancing an opinion and not an argument.

I'm not sure why you think that, since I've given several of the exact same reasons that you're advancing as arguments below. But, whatevs; never mind. You've done a fine job of putting together a case.

Whale_Cancer wrote:

as to why CLWs are not a welcome, fun, or good part of Pathfinder:

* CLW wands are cheap. At 750 GP a pop, a level 2 party has enough resources to pool together and buy one early on. It is a better investment than +1 armor or +1 weapons (both of which cost more and only marginally benefit 1 character rather than the party).

Firm agreement. As you note, a CLW is a "duh" investment for a minimaxing party. Several people in this thread have said that they haven't seen wide use of CLWWs. But I have, and you have, and plenty of other people have. The CLWW is simply one of the best possible investments for a low level party.

"Duh" stuff is annoying and bad. Much of the fun in 3.x, and especially in Pathfinder, is that it presents you with lots of interesting choices. But when one choice is just clearly superior, then there's really no choice at all.

Whale_Cancer wrote:
Each wand will cure, on average, 275.5 hp. A CMW wand, on the other hand, costs 4,500 gp and cures, on average, 550 gp (0.367 an HP vs 0.12 an HP). Because of the way wands are priced, CLW wands are a steal...

Yes, and this is why you don't see me hating on CMWWs. I think you can make a case for the CMWW: sometimes, situationally, you really would prefer 2d8+3 instead of d8+1. If your PC is at -10 hp, the CLWW can't do anything but stabilize him, while the CMWW has a decent change of getting him back into the fight. At higher levels, you may not want to stand around for many, many rounds waiting to get healed. And so forth.

But the CMMW isn't nearly as good as good as the CLW, so it's not as unbalancing and doesn't provoke the same irritation.

Whale_Cancer wrote:


* PCs going into most encounters with fresh HP makes the game a lot easier and it makes martials too good at low levels.

Firm agreement. Part of the balance of the game has always been that casters burn spells while martials lose hps. The CLLW means that, hey, martials get those hps right back again. You end up with the casters down to 0 levels and pulling out their crossbows or whatever, while the fighters and rogues are still just as strong as ever.

Whale_Cancer wrote:
Aesthetically, I don't like the idea of PCs full healing between every encounter. It hurts a certain aspect of storytelling (the valiant heroes who advance despite injury and risk of death). This is entirely subjective.

I agree on the aesthetics. You don't always want to have the valiant heroes advancing etcetera, of course -- but the CLWW means that you almost never do.

Doug M.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Way back in 1e, healing was a fairly rare and precious commodity. It was clerics and the very occasional potion -- and clerics had to choose between cure spells and everything else. That's one big reason 1e was so lethal.

It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that in AD&D, the goal of the adventure as to GET LOOT, as that's what got you the most XP. The fights were something to be avoided.

chaoseffect wrote:


I could have used one when my Dark Tapestry Oracle was low level though; practically every last spell of my extremely casting focused Oracle went into Cures which mostly left me trying to be creative with Mage Hand and Create Water in combat.

You may have misread the class - the SRD says Oracles are supposed to get all the 'cure' or 'inflict' spells (your choice) for free. Definitely a bad situation to be in...

-------

It seems to me that CLWWs are just another symptom of the Old School vs New School debate - Old School D&D was more like survival horror with broadswords, with actively risk-averse PCs and steadily-diminishing resources. New-School is more shiny heroism, where the idea of PCs getting the the Big Bad alive with full HPs isn't inexcusably lax GMing.

Your mileage may vary.


Roberta Yang wrote:
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.
Couldn't this be said of any bad player choice?

"Has finite resources" isn't a choice.

Whale_Cancer wrote:
Not taking into account the need to heal seems to be the most common example of this form of being unprepared.
"...and therefore we shouldn't let players have items that let them take into account the need to heal and prepare for it!"

As I have said many times, I believe potions of CLW are more reasonable than wands of CLW because the wands are more effective by a factor of about 4.5X.

Maybe I should just repeat that to start every post I make to this thread, since this has entered TLDR territory.


Both of my current Pathfinder characters are semi-healers played in a party that treats healing as an emergency situation, not a constant activity.

That means we routinely go into combat at less than 3/4 hit points. We sometimes go into combat at less than 1/2.

For various reasons, neither party has invested much in CLW wands.

My druid will, if pushed hard, prepare some healing the next day if we are particularly beat up when we camp. This isn't a huge deal for her since her typical combat contributions are her bow and her animal companion, managing her spell resources is one of my fundamental gaming strategies, but even so it's pretty rare for her to prepare a healing spell. When we have some downtime she does cast a whole lot of goodberries with a lesser extend rod and then stores them in a box that doubles their viable period, so that they last 36 days, which is long enough for most excursions. It's surprising what having a bunch of goodberries can do for your party in a pinch. Plus they help for food management too.

But for the most part, we just do our best to avoid taking damage.

My witch is sorta similar. He CAN prepare CLW and he can make potions, so between the two of those he can provide some healing for the group, but usually he makes a bunch of potions between excursions so the party has some emergency potion healing available. He does not have the "heal" hex, so his healing is limited to the few CLW spells he can prepare and the potions he can make.

In both of these parties a CLW wand would probably be a "nice to have", but my player group just tends to take a cynical view of CLW wands and we rarely have one on hand. And we manage to get by.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Gorbacz wrote:

You know what's more annoying than PCs who use CLW wands to heal up between combats?

PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.

"But that's how things went in 1E/2E and Gygax was right!" Yeah, but the game did change a lot from these times. Somewhere between things like hp inflation (cure light wounds in 1E/2E is not cure light wounds in 3E) and adventure writers being held up nowadays up to higher standards of logic and plausibility (rendering the good old "2d20 orcs in this room, they never poke their heads outside for whatever reason because of reasons" obsolete).

Situations like these (having to retreat or camp) are annoying for everyone. Not just for players, but for GMs too. A GM faced with half-cleared dungeon has suddenly to figure out just exactly how does the dungeon react to the fact that half its' population was put down.

In short: nobody benefits. The players get to feel more like a bunch of peasants and less like heroes, the GM has a ton of new work to do, and thanks to HappySticks none of this happens as often because The Party Can Go On!

I definitely agree with that sentiment. A problem arises, though, with the unescapable fact that most new Paizo classes are very heavy on "limited use" abilities, giving incentive to resting more often. I'm not exactly sure how to combat that, although maybe shorter rest periods would be a good solution.

In any case I'd much prefer a party to clear a dungeon in one long run rather than have to figure out how the rest of the dungeon reacts when they find a mass slaughter.


Kolokotroni wrote:
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
PCs who get stuck in the middle of a dungeon without any healing, and either they have to retreat (if they're able to) or everybody needs to suspend their disbelief about the local population not tearing them a new one while they camp in some safe spot.

Couldn't this be said of any bad player choice?

I ran an aberration themed campaign and this was made clear to everyone up front. No player took knowledge (dungeoneering). Should I have changed the campaign and dropped information about aberrations into the PCs' laps because no one took it? Of course not*.

If the PCs know that swarms of insects are common in a jungle, but the casters don't prepare appropriate spells and the martials don't pick up appropriate gear and items, should the DM change the situation so they don't encounter swarms because they can't deal with them?

Not taking into account the need to heal seems to be the most common example of this form of being unprepared.

There is a difference between no one having a knowledge skill and no one having the ability to heal the whole party without significantly hindering their ability to do anything else. Being prepared, and having a cleric who channels positive energy should not be the same statement. Cure wands fix this problem to a degree. You can be prepared without having someone in the party be a cleric or spend all of their spells on healing.

Quote:

Also, the issue here is specifically CLW wands. I think potions of CLW are much more reasonable as each 'charge' costs about 4.5X a CLW charge. They represent a more reasonable expenditure of resources than CLW wands.

How is spending most of your wealth on cure potions a reasonable expendature of wealth? It goes back to forcing someone to play the 'healer' usually a cleric. If the party has to choose with having a cleric, or spending half their money on heal potions, then someone is gonna get shoehorned into the walking medkit role. To me a system with as...

Edit: To repeat again, potions of CLW can take the place of wands of CLW while making potions not an automatic choice for a party. It becomes a resource management issue. Even scrolls of CLW are more interesting than the wand, as they costs only a tiny fraction more than the wand but at least create resource management issues (since you can only craft one a day).

This all depends on the matrix of WBL vs encounters per day. I've run some fairly grueling campaigns and the wand of CLW lets the players to completely ignore HP loss over the course of an adventure, only to worry about it in a specific encounter.

I guess the next step is to analyze WBL while explicitly referencing a paizo adventure path?

Again, I am not against healing items; just the wand specifically.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Stuff

Let me scroll back and look through the thread. I might have confused you with someone else and hit you with my Fireball of Screw Wand of CLW.


Whale_Cancer wrote:

As I have said many times, I believe potions of CLW are more reasonable than wands of CLW because the wands are more effective by a factor of about 4.5X.

Maybe I should just repeat that to start every post I make to this thread, since this has entered TLDR territory.

Except your math is completely wrong - potions cost 50gp/each, wands cost 15gp/charge. The difference is a factor of 3.3, not 4.5.

And I don't see how you can rail against wands as completely obliterating all roleplayer skill or something and then turn around and say they'd be completely perfect in every way if you made such a slight tweak to the price.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Adamantine Dragon wrote:
In both of these parties a CLW wand would probably be a "nice to have", but my player group just tends to take a cynical view of CLW wands and we rarely have one on hand. And we manage to get by.

And that should last exactly as long as you don't go into an unknown combat with 1/2 HP and two or three PCs get gacked by a boss monster with a good attack and damage bonus. Then your players should get smart, realize that they are not NPCs with crappy treasure values and get some proper equipment to make sure that the group sees the end of the campaign.

Of course I am talking about my own view on how things should be, which doesn't exactly seem to square with your own.


speaking as one of DM's players here on the forums

I have no prob with the CLWW. Then again we have no cleric in our party...and I almost died early on.

Here are my thoughts. I think the wand is extremely powerful yes, but I think it is simply part of the game and I think encounters are scaled up a bit in response than they would be.

I know DM's are very challenging, our current one aside :P

I think having the wands allows for less optimizing and more creative characters which I thrive on.

And a side note for those giving DM grief...he is an EXCELLENT DM

that compliment might let me survive the next encounter.


I used to REALLY loathe the wand of cure light wounds, and a close cousin of it back in 3rd edition whose name escapes me. Subsequently I've learned that it's existence is one of the few things that helps balance combined arms groups (i.e. groups with 50% or more melees) vs groups that are pretty much all casters. That and the haste spell. And I really hate all-caster groups---it's terribly annoying even as a simulationist GM to see most combats become a flurry of SOD/SOS spells where resists are overcome through sheer volume.


Magnus, it's pretty uncommon for us to go into a boss monster encounter without knowing it. It has happened, in fact that is how one of our rogues died, but he would have died no matter how many hit points we had, he was one-shot critted from near full health.

But in general we do a lot of scouting and sneaking to avoid sticking our face into the nearest boss monster. That's part of our overall strategy of "trying to avoid getting hurt."

Now, of course, any GM can overcome any amount of scouting and sneaking through pure GM fiat, but our GMs, so far, have been pretty reasonable about it.

Of course we did lose another rogue WHILE he was sneaking/scouting.... but that's another story.


Roberta Yang wrote:
Whale_Cancer wrote:

As I have said many times, I believe potions of CLW are more reasonable than wands of CLW because the wands are more effective by a factor of about 4.5X.

Maybe I should just repeat that to start every post I make to this thread, since this has entered TLDR territory.

Except your math is completely wrong - potions cost 50gp/each, wands cost 15gp/charge. The difference is a factor of 3.3, not 4.5.

Thank you for the correction, but I said 'about' because I did the math in my head (based on gp per HP not per charge, per charge admittedly being much easier math) as I responded to this thread. I am not sure how I am 'completely wrong' when I said 'about' and wasn't far off the mark, but I guess I should expect that.

Roberta Yang wrote:
And I don't see how you can rail against wands as completely obliterating all roleplayer skill or something and then turn around and say they'd be completely perfect in every way if you made such a slight tweak to the price.

Yeah, because I said that. Nowhere have I talked about roleplaying, just that the CLW wand is too cheap. If you are talking about player skill, well yeah. Some people don't manage resources well and will die even with free wands of CLW.

I also never suggested tweaking the pricing of wands (early on I said I couldn't see how you could fix the problem without one of two bad options, one of which was to make an exception and modify how CLW in specific work). CLW is a specific problem for wands, wands in general do not have a pricing problem.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Majuba wrote:
For an old-school campaign I ran, I simply made the minimum caster level on Wands 5th (and Potions 3rd). It's really just a trick of the mathematical progression that Wands of CLW are so inexpensive. Putting the minimum caster level on it fixes that nicely, and makes potions and wands a little more interesting to find as well.
Brew Potion is, by default, 3rd level.

Yes, the feat requires 3rd level, and Craft Wand requires 5th. I meant require the caster level of the wands and potions be higher, and thus more expensive. Much like raidou's house rule. Makes a big difference.

Edit: EWHM makes a very good point about party balance (particularly applicable to PFS). Also, you can scribe multiple spells per day onto a scroll, as long as the total price isn't over 1K gp, and 8 of them per day in just 2 hours of scribing.


Majuba wrote:
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Majuba wrote:
For an old-school campaign I ran, I simply made the minimum caster level on Wands 5th (and Potions 3rd). It's really just a trick of the mathematical progression that Wands of CLW are so inexpensive. Putting the minimum caster level on it fixes that nicely, and makes potions and wands a little more interesting to find as well.
Brew Potion is, by default, 3rd level.
Yes, the feat requires 3rd level, and Craft Wand requires 5th. I meant require the caster level of the wands and potions be higher, and thus more expensive. Makes a big difference.

Ahh, my apologies.

This screws alchemists, however (free bonus feat they can't use). I think it also messes up costs too much to be a valid fix. CLW potion for 150 gp? Meh.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Firm agreement. Part of the balance of the game has always been that casters burn spells while martials lose hps. The CLLW means that, hey, martials get those hps right back again. You end up with the casters down to 0 levels and pulling out their crossbows or whatever, while the fighters and rogues are still just as strong as ever.

Ok, say we have the iconic party- Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard. They have one of the dreaded CLW wands, bane of every good GM everywhere.

They go through a couple of combats, and the spell casters have blown through everything they have for the day, but with the CLW wand have topped off the tank, so everyone is at max HP.

Do you even vaguely this party is of comparative effectiveness to what they started the day at? Yes, the rogue and fighter are at full speed, but half the party is spent, one of which is close to useless (Wizard), and the cleric is left with being a weak fighter with no buffs.

When I play fighters (and I like fighters, even if they really are sub par overall), I make sure I keep appraised of what the casters have left in the tank because I know I cannot solo appropriate encounters.

And let's keep it clear, there really are not many classes which have no daily limitations.

Fighters are about the only pure example. Even rogues can not grab Ki abilities which are resource depleting. Rangers are probably second to fighters, but they are dependent instead on which foes are faced (until they get to spells, then they too are resource dependent). Barbarians, Paladins, Cavaliers, and everyone else use up things besides HP to be at maximum efficacy.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Magnus, it's pretty uncommon for us to go into a boss monster encounter without knowing it. It has happened, in fact that is how one of our rogues died, but he would have died no matter how many hit points we had, he was one-shot critted from near full health.

But in general we do a lot of scouting and sneaking to avoid sticking our face into the nearest boss monster. That's part of our overall strategy of "trying to avoid getting hurt."

Now, of course, any GM can overcome any amount of scouting and sneaking through pure GM fiat, but our GMs, so far, have been pretty reasonable about it.

Of course we did lose another rogue WHILE he was sneaking/scouting.... but that's another story.

I commend you on your tactics, but IMO walking into a combat with only 3/4 or 1/2 HP is asking for casualties. And from your description I think I am not that wrong to infer that when your scouts find a tough upcoming battle and you don't have proper healing, you'd probably retreat and rest? Because that is not much different from simply using a wand of CLW to heal up, only that your GM doesn't have deal with difficult questions like why the dungeon inhabitants don't put up an ambush throughout the next day and bum-rush your party.

The Exchange

Unless you allow paladins to craft restoration wands on the cheap then HP is only a low lvl concern, beyond surviving battle. Ability damage/drain/negative levels/poison/ curses/resurrections/ fatigue/ running out of spells are the things that's slow down parties.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
drbuzzard wrote:

And let's keep it clear, there really are not many classes which have no daily limitations.

Fighters are about the only pure example. Even rogues can not grab Ki abilities which are resource depleting. Rangers are probably second to fighters, but they are dependent instead on which foes are faced (until they get to spells, then they too are resource dependent). Barbarians, Paladins, Cavaliers, and everyone else use up things besides HP to be at maximum efficacy.

One of the main sticking points I've only lately have begun to really comprehend is that the game design has been quite a bit schizophrenic.

On one hand you have Paizo clearly trying to move the game towards shorter adventuring periods per day, with their class design since the APG emphasizing classes which rock for X rounds/combats per day and then sharply drop in their effectiveness.

On the other hand we still have 24 hour resting periods to regain spells/powers and a good number of AP modules which seem to expect parties to clear long dungeons in one go.

I'm not sure how to fix that even in my own game, although I think shorter resting periods could be a good idea. Not everything which 4E did must necessarily be from the devil. ;)


On a related note regarding the differences between old and new school gaming, Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is probably the first module out there where the opposing force actually has a table of reinforcements and a moderately decent defensive plan besides ---stay in your rooms and obey the box text.
Most of the adventures with a dungeon or similar complex run that way when I'm GM'ing. The exception being the ones that are caverns or the like with tons of non-intelligent or anti-social monsters in them. But the complexes with the defense plans and combined arms are where the best loot is.

The irony of simulationist module/complex/dungeon design is this. It actually can take less preparation because you just have to write out the monsters' order of battle (OOB for you military types), and their doctrine and reinforcement schedule. Usually adventures like that start with intelligence gathering, evolve into a special forces strike, and escalate as soon as an alarm is raised into a running battle. Second bites at the apple get progressively harder as readiness is usually vastly lower the 1st time---let's face it, everyone gets sloppy if they've not been hit in a while.


magnuskn wrote:


I commend you on your tactics, but IMO walking into a combat with only 3/4 or 1/2 HP is asking for casualties. And from your description I think I am not that wrong to infer that when your scouts find a tough upcoming battle and you don't have proper healing, you'd probably retreat and rest? Because that is not much different from simply using a wand of CLW to heal up, only that your GM doesn't have deal with difficult questions like why the dungeon inhabitants don't put up an ambush throughout the next day and bum-rush your party.

Multiple answers to this, depending on circumstances. I will say that things have changed since the barbarian joined our party. We are much less inclined to go into combat without HIS BUTT fully healed now. My druid is still sorta smoldering about his impulsiveness....

But in general, yeah, if we scout ahead and see a reasonably difficult encounter that we can't figure out how to avoid, or split up (you'd be surprised how often you can "split the enemy" with some clever diversions...) then we will typically back up and that's when, at least, the goodberries come out. That's only 8 hp per character, but we only just last encounter hit level 9, so 8 goodberries was like a full night's sleep. We typically have a couple of CLW potions with us too, so yeah, we'd probably go from 1/2 to 3/4 or better hit points before starting the attack.

Depending on how low our hit points are also impacts our tactics. My druid is far more likely to summon animals when we are lower on hit points. We are far more likely to carefully plan our attack when we aren't at full strength.

And, yes, we are far more likely to retreat and try again.

Ambushes and bum-rushing our party isn't as easy as you make it sound. Seriously.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Whale_Cancer wrote:
Ahh, my apologies.

No problem at all, I should have been clearer.

Whale_Cancer wrote:
This screws alchemists, however (free bonus feat they can't use). I think it also messes up costs too much to be a valid fix. CLW potion for 150 gp? Meh.

I can't say as inconveniences to alchemists top my list of concerns (more a 'to do' list item).

The cost isn't too bad really - it is 1d8+3 after all, that's 20gp per hp instead of 9.1gp per hp. A lot more likely to be used in combat as well. And a CMW potion is 25gp per hp - much more closely aligned than nearly triple the CLW ratio.


GeneticDrift wrote:
Unless you allow paladins to craft restoration wands on the cheap then HP is only a low lvl concern, beyond surviving battle. Ability damage/drain/negative levels/poison/ curses/resurrections/ fatigue/ running out of spells are the things that's slow down parties.

I concur with this. I am far more concerned about these things than I am about hit point issues.


drbuzzard wrote:


Ok, say we have the iconic party- Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard. They have one of the dreaded CLW wands, bane of every good GM everywhere.

They go through a couple of combats, and the spell casters have blown through everything they have for the day, but with the CLW wand have topped off the tank, so everyone is at max HP.

"Blown through" is the operative term. Once you get a few levels in, there shouldn't be many situations where the casters don't have some resources left. Remember, wizards get scribe scroll for free so they can have backup spells and clerics are still competent combatants without their spells.

I think the only way we can progress in this conversation is to determine how many encounters without making camp is reasonable, how many resources an encounter should wear down, and how many of those resources should be HP and how many should be use per day abilities... not something we will ever agree on (and it would be hard as heck to figure out values if we were to do so).

Without figuring out that kind of crunch we are left with my experience in my playstyle has determined X.


Stockvillain wrote:
I guess we qualify as a "Low Healing Game." We prefer to not get hit in the first place, but that's just our playstyle.
Arbane the Terrible wrote:
It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that in AD&D, the goal of the adventure as to GET LOOT, as that's what got you the most XP. The fights were something to be avoided.

These two quotes share my perspective on this.

Lots of people are saying that without a Wand of CLW, one of two things are bound to happen:

1) PCs will spend days on end healing up between any encounter
2) Someone will be forced to play a healer and have their fun ruined because all their resources will be used on healing.

That seems--wrong. I mean, I understand that is one possible reaction, but it feels...I'm not sure what word I'm looking for here.

In my experience, players respond with tactics and caution. They become careful and look to avoid fights or at least tilt them heavily in their favor. This is my desired goal.

Having excessive healing available makes you feel as though you can just walk face first into fireballs and stomp on the enemies without consequence.

Anecdotal evidence:
I have a Tiefling Paladin archer at the moment, and I definitely feel that. There's no challenge because I can full heal myself three times over with just swift actions(assuming they can even hit my AC, which is highest in the party), never mind the wands we have for between combat. I sometimes walk right up to the bad guys before shooting because I can without essentially no consequence.

So, getting rid of magic items in general, as I generally do when I run D&D, does not lead to long down time, it leads to caution and far more non-combat scenes as people attempt to avoid fights instead of just "roll initiative."


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Adamantine Dragon wrote:
Ambushes and bum-rushing our party isn't as easy as you make it sound. Seriously.

But it is a vastly different situation to be expected than to catch the opponents by surprise. Yeah, given how maxing Perception is one of the most valuable player character survival skills and a lot of monsters don't really have a stealth score, setting up an ambush ain't that easy. However, I've really almost never seen a party check all rooms they already had cleared when they returned to a location for a second or third day, so I think it would not be that far-fetched for some even only semi-smart opponents to set up something and cut off the escape route.


With neither a CLW wand nor a healbot, the fighter runs out of steam faster than the wizard does, and takes far longer to recover.

That, to me, is all that needs to be said about CLW wands to justify their existence.


Whale_Cancer wrote:
drbuzzard wrote:


Ok, say we have the iconic party- Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard. They have one of the dreaded CLW wands, bane of every good GM everywhere.

They go through a couple of combats, and the spell casters have blown through everything they have for the day, but with the CLW wand have topped off the tank, so everyone is at max HP.

"Blown through" is the operative term. Once you get a few levels in, there shouldn't be many situations where the casters don't have some resources left. Remember, wizards get scribe scroll for free so they can have backup spells and clerics are still competent combatants without their spells.

I think the only way we can progress in this conversation is to determine how many encounters without making camp is reasonable, how many resources an encounter should wear down, and how many of those resources should be HP and how many should be use per day abilities... not something we will ever agree on (and it would be hard as heck to figure out values if we were to do so).

Without figuring out that kind of crunch we are left with my experience in my playstyle has determined X.

When we add a new player to our play group, one of the first conversations I have with that person goes something like this:

"Pathfinder is ultimately a game of resource management. We take resource management very seriously. In most cases we try to solve problems or defeat encounters with the least use of resources possible. When we prepare our strategy and tactics for our campaigns, we will do so at least in part from the perspective of resource management."

If I am part of the party and one of the characters is blowing resources, my character will have a talk with them.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
GeneticDrift wrote:
Unless you allow paladins to craft restoration wands on the cheap then HP is only a low lvl concern, beyond surviving battle. Ability damage/drain/negative levels/poison/ curses/resurrections/ fatigue/ running out of spells are the things that's slow down parties.
I concur with this. I am far more concerned about these things than I am about hit point issues.

What level are we talking about when we say 'low level'?

I would still hold that CLW wands eliminate out of combat HP as even a consideration at higher levels of gameplay. I don't consider this a positive design element.

As Doug said, "duh" options are bad.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

In my experience, CLW wands are rarely used in combat, and if they are, it's often a dire need. There's nothing wrong with that.

As for between combat healing, well, I've never liked the notion that adventuring parties were expected to do a few fights in a day, then retreat back to town to rest for a day or two before returning to the dungeon. That just breaks verisimilitude for me in a big way.

First, we have all of the fantasy and adventure stories that the game is based upon, like Lord of the Rings, in which adventurers press on. How would the story of The Fellowship have gone if, halfway through Moria, everyone said, "Hang on a moment, let's head back to town and rest for a day or two before continuing here," or, "Man, that last fight wiped me out, let's sit down and rest here for two days," when you've got intelligent creatures aware of their presence within the dungeon and making for their position?

Second, leading off of that last point, I see no reason for players to be able to go into a dungeon to clear the first 1/3 of it (let's say), go to town for a couple of days of R&R and then return to clear out the next third, without the first 3rd getting repopulated. If you're invading the lair of an intelligent creature or creatures, one would expect them to set up better defenses during those two days--some traps, barriers, or ambushes. Now you have a party clearing the first third of a dungeon 3 times until they have cleared out all of the denizens that continue to defend their home from the most defensible position they have. Then the players walk through the other 2/3rds sightseeing.

It makes any sort of time pressure either overly punitive, or irrelevant--either the players are running around on the brink of death (little or no HP), or they're playing D&D like a video game RPG, where time doesn't actually move, where when someone tells you that there will be a raid in two days that you have to head off, you then go performing side quests around the world for a while, because you know that raid isn't happening until you show up, whether you get there in 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, or 2 months.


magnuskn wrote:
Adamantine Dragon wrote:
Ambushes and bum-rushing our party isn't as easy as you make it sound. Seriously.
But it is a vastly different situation to be expected than to catch the opponents by surprise. Yeah, given how maxing Perception is one of the most valuable player character survival skills and a lot of monsters don't really have a stealth score, setting up an ambush ain't that easy. However, I've really almost never seen a party check all rooms they already had cleared when they returned to a location for a second or third day, so I think it would not be that far-fetched for some even only semi-smart opponents to set up something and cut off the escape route.

Heh, I think you underestimate my paranoia Magnus. Also, your example seems sort of "dungeon-crawl" biased. Our group rarely does dungeon crawls. The last one we did was a module that involved a lot of traps and ambushes. I would say that we avoided 90% of them through sheer paranoia.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

You could always tweak the rules. One house rule I read about (in Unearthed Arcana?) changed things so that cure spells converted lethal damage to nonlethal damage, and nonlethal damage could only be healed naturally. The intent was to create a slightly grittier feeling campaign. I've never played with that rule so I can't say if it worked well. Just a thought.


yeti1069 wrote:
First, we have all of the fantasy and adventure stories that the game is based upon, like Lord of the Rings, in which adventurers press on. How would the story of The Fellowship have gone if, halfway through Moria, everyone said, "Hang on a moment, let's head back to town and rest for a day or two before continuing here," or, "Man, that last fight wiped me out, let's sit down and rest here for two days," when you've got intelligent creatures aware of their presence within the dungeon and making for their position?

Half the story is about them finding places to hide and rest up, what are you talking about? The One Ring RPG has brutal healing rules where you can't recover from a wound at all unless you've totally rested up in safety, which takes multiple days.

Regardless, pressing on is not something you do only if you have full resources. You press on because you have to for story reasons (getting the ring to Mordor) or just because you're that awesome and that's just how you roll.

I object to the notion that in a game designed to incrementally wear your resources down (an enemy of equal CR to the party's level is supposed to take 20% of their resources) that you can't face an encounter without full HP.

And yeah, this also gets back to my point that avoiding encounters should be lauded and encouraged.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Roberta Yang wrote:

I too hate that players aren't required to play clerics anymore.

My ideal D&D game consists of going back to town and sleeping for two weeks after every battle, waiting for the incredibly slow natural healing to have an effect.

Exactly. Would you prefer the other side of the coin, where every combat has PC's near death, and they have to go back to town to rest for days or weeks, thus putting the campaign on hold? I know most players would bail on a campaign like this, me included.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
But anyway: CLW wands! I hate 'em. Am I the only one?

I don't mind wands of CLW. You either have them or:

1) Using Healing Surges to heal up. HS was my favorite part of the 4E rule set.

2) One of the PCs is a "healing battery" (one PC has almost all healing spells). With all my heart, I hate it when one of the PCs had to be a healing battery to make adventuring viable (beyond 1-2 encounters). Basically, one of the players had to sacrifice his fun so that everyone else could have fun. I do not miss those days.

If wands of CLW bother you, I suggest you make a house rule. Just say that wands of CLW do not heal PCs higher than 50% of their hp. Therefore, they can keep on adventuring when low on hps, but it's going to be a lot riskier. Eventually they will want to leave the dungeon to heal to full hp, just like you wanted.


I'm seeing a lot of straw man arguments here. "What, would you prefer NO HEALING? You want the party to retire back to town after EVERY encounter?"

Well, no. The issue is not whether the party should have healing; of course it should. The issue is whether the CLW wand provides /too much/ healing.

Guys: are you really saying that without this item, this one particular item, your game is going to suck? Absent the wand, you're condemned to high casualty rates? to fighters collapsing while the casters are still going strong? to trudging back to town to rest for "days or weeks"? Absent this wand, this special wand, it's just going to be a lot less fun?

Doug M.

51 to 100 of 422 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / General Discussion / Hating on the Wand of CLW All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.