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Having returned to D&D 3.5 after a long hiatus in the World of Darkness and Mutants and Masterminds, I'm trying to add a degree of in-game elegance to the wonky magic system. Mechanically it works fine, but thematically it's difficult to defend, especially to new players. The sorceress and bard in my group had a little giggle fest at the idea of permanently spent magic items, piled high like bejeweled kindling. It's old hat.
The characters in my RotRL campaign are currently 4th level so, if I'm going to introduce a new system, I need to do it soon, before they become used to the old ways.
I'm stopping short of using a spell point system, but I would like some advice on balanced ways to introduce a recharging system for magic items; something that makes sense from a "magic and mana as an ephemeral yet tamable energy source" perspective, or maybe just a new system for charged items altogether.
I've thought about just making wands, rods and staves conduits that allow improved spontaneous casting of a single spell (or in the case of staves, multiple spells) and improved school casting. Fore example:
Wand of Magic Missles: Allows the user to cast Magic Missle spontaneously at +2 caster level. Uses one first level arcane spell. Adds +1 to caster level of all Invocation spells (not cumulative with +2 for Magic Missle).
A possible drawback could be a dependency system, where the caster has a penalty when denied use of the item.
I'm not sure yet how to integrate Use Magical Device or the ubiquitous (and lame, imho) dependancy on wands of cure light wounds.
Any suggestions?
Well, if the exhausted items cruble to dust, you get rid of the "bejeweled kindling" problem. Besides, not all wands, etc. have jewels on them, some are quite simple.
Tell those tittering fools to shut it!
Yeah, I've never been a huge fan of the Vancian "Fire and Forget" magic system. Yet I always play wizards instead of sorcerers in 3.5 for the versatility.
Recharging items is a tough call. There are a lot of possible game balance issues to mucking around with the system that I'm not even willing to think to hard on.
I always hate buying wands, because although the per charge cost is low, a minimum 50 buy can be steep. I have a gnome wizard who bought a wand of magic missles at 2nd or 3rd level because at low level a wizard runs out of juice pretty quick, and I was tired of bouncing small light crossbow bolts off of the bad guys AC. I thought I'd burn through the thing pretty quick, but the character reached 13th level with half the charges unused.
However, a wand of cure light wounds is a great investment. Totally the PC crack pipe of choice.
I would never have a character create a staff, because although the versatility is kind of cool, it just seems like too big an investment of xp and gp for 25 charges that you might be burning 2 at a time(or more). But if I could gas it up after every adventure, that would rock. But it might make my wizard too powerful.
I always liked the Rolemaster magic system with spell lists and power points. As you went up in level, you could learn more and more spell lists. But each list you knew had spells of all levels, so you gained access to new spells everytime you went up alevel whether you added a list or not. Your power points were based on a stat, but you could get an item that multipled your PP total. It's been a long time, so I don't exactly recall the magic item creation rules, but I don't think you had to give up XP.
I hate giving up xp to make an item, especially since the Artificer class doesn't have to.
I guess at the end of the day, you just have to balance for your own game. It depends on how long the fights are in your game, and how many fights per day the PCs get into.
An extreme example: If your party of four 4th level PCs routinely face two dozen CR 4-7 fights every day, the fighters and rogues will be able to hack it as long as the healing (from all sources) holds out. But the spellcasters are going to get tired of using their backup weapons most of the day if they run out of magic or try to save it for the BBEG.
So you want to allow the spellcasters to recharge things easily enough that they don't have to hide behind the meat shields for most of the fights during the day.
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The Eberron Campaign Setting introduced the idea of the eternal wand (which reappeared in the Magic Item Compendium) - it is, in essence, a 2/day casting of any spell you could ordinarily cast from a wand. You could easily replace standard found wands with eternal versions of the same spells - they don't run out, and they have the traditional daily use limit.
Another option, also in the MIC, is a runestaff - rather than having charges like traditional staves, runestaves let you channel spell slots into producing specific spell effects. Runestaves could easily replace the traditional staves as well. Pricing on runestaves seems a little wonky, but I imagine that fairly low-level versions wouldn't be too pricey. If I recall correctly, they are traditionally cheaper than traditional staves, because they still use spell slots rather than charges from the wand itself.
It would seem fairly simple, and not too risky, to give a 10% cost break for recharging an existing item instead of buying a new one. After all, the material component is already crafted.
We tend to ignore/rewrite rules that cause making a new item to be better than fixing up an old one, because it's sad when a PC has to throw away a well-used and beloved item and replace it. So we prefer to upgrade magical swords and so forth rather than replacing them. The same could be done with wands. If you want nearly zero game-balance impact, just flavor, you can figure out what the PC would have to spend if they sold the old item and bought the new one, and then charge about that much to upgrade the existing item. Or you could give a small discount to encourage this.
This only really works if your PCs either enchant items themselves, or have ready access to someone who does. This was a problem for us later in RotRL (it looks like much less of a problem in CotCT) as the PCs would be away from base for many levels in a row. I don't yet have a good solution for that situation. It made treasure tricky in general.
Mary
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Contributor
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I've always liked the idea of wands et al. being spell matrices that allowed you to cast a spell you didn't know. Your spontaneous casting system is interesting in that regards, but I've never tried it out.
Another option is to use Eberron's Infinite wands (I don't remember the official name offhand). IIRC they cost the same as a normal wand and get 3 charges per day. These are less useful for some spells (like cure spells) but a better value for some utility spells.
Another option would be to have mechanism for manually reloading wands. Off the top of my head, how about a metamagic feat, Charge Wand, +1 spell level to cast the spell into a wand and charge it back up. In fact the spell level modifier may not be needed, since you are already using a feat to do it.
EDIT: I see I was beaten to the punch on Eternal Wands while typing.
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Yes but the reason I like reserve feats is that they are limited. One feat, one at-will attack. The new addition looks like it will add one or more different ones per level and that they will cover many differing options. That makes a big difference to me.
Also I have "Combat Wands" in my campaign which are this:
Combat Wands
I think this concept works better for a spellcaster than having a wizard using a crossbow. It fits them more, flavor-wise, in my opinion. Attacks with Combat wands are ranged touch attacks.
These wands are made by saturating the wand in rare resins and alchemical substances that are infused with the energy type of the wand to be made.
Although they channel arcane energy, most wands are not magical themselves. For purposes of further enchanting them, they are considered masterwork weapons which are limited to only being able to receive enhancement bonuses (+1 through +5) and not the special abilities of weapons.
Special- For every 3 points the wielder’s concentration check exceeds the wand’s DC, the wielder may add 1 point of their ability bonus (of their primary casting ability, determined by highest caster level) to damage. So a wizard who exceeds the DC by 9 may add up to +3 points of his/her intelligence modifier to damage.
Special- Combat wands are considered one handed weapons for the purposes of two weapon fighting. They require great mental training and focus to use.
Special- Any effect that applies a penalty of bonus to the wielder’s attack, is also applied to the concentration check. Examples: Two weapon fighting penalties, being prone, recipient of a Bless spell.
Special- An attack with a Combat wand is treated as a ranged attack for determining things like attacks of opportunity.Combat Wands:
Wand Type/ Base Cost/ Base Damage/ Concentration DC/ Range
1 / 750gp/ 1d4/ 10/ 40ft
2 / 1000gp/ 1d6/ 15/ 40ft
3 / 1500gp/ 1d8 / 20 / 60ft
4 / 3000gp/ 1d10 / 25 / 60ft
5 / 5000gp / 1d12 / 30 / 80ftEnergy Type / Multiplier Cost*
Fire / 0gp
Cold / 50gp
Electricity / 50gp
Acid / 75gp
Sonic / 100gp
Force / 500gp(* multiply the energy cost by the wand’s type, and add this cost to the wand’s base
cost to determine the overall price. So a Type 5 Combat wand of Force will cost 7500gp.
5000gp (Wand type 5) + 2500 (Price of the Force energy type time the Wand type: 500X5)The format got a bit screwed up in the transfer but oh well!
Added this to my campaign, no need to recharge.
I'm stopping short of using a spell point system, but I would like some advice on balanced ways to introduce a recharging system for magic items; something that makes sense from a "magic and mana as an ephemeral yet tamable energy source" perspective, or maybe just a new system for charged items altogether.
I use Spellbound from Living Imagination. It adds ritual magic to D&D 3.x in a way that's a lot of fun and not (in my experience) unbalancing (as long as you stick to its core rules instead of the optional extras).
There's nothing in the rules preventing a character with one of the magic item craft feats from recharging or even upgrading partially depleted charged items. Upgrading other items is specifically allowed in the rules and provides a cost savings, since only the "new" magic needs to be paid for (for instance, making a +1 weapon into a +2 weapon costs 6000gp or 3000gp and 240XP, not the full 8000gp or 4000gp and 320XP). Also, the rules for buying or creating items with less than maximum charges are in the DMG as well (spell level x caster level x number of charges x 15gp for spell-trigger items such as wands).
The only drawback to recharging and upgrading is that you can't change the enchantment to something different. No switching a +1 frost cold iron greatsword into a +2 bane (fey) cold iron greatsword.
I let PCs recharge charged items in 10-charge increments. It's a big enough investment that it doesn't exploit the (VERY) cheap per-charge cost of wands and such, but keeps you from having to run the item down to 0 charges and then pay for a full recharge.
The cost is proportional to the number of charges added; 10 charges added to a wand (normally 50 charges) costs 10/50ths of a full wand.
I let PCs recharge charged items in 10-charge increments. It's a big enough investment that it doesn't exploit the (VERY) cheap per-charge cost of wands and such, but keeps you from having to run the item down to 0 charges and then pay for a full recharge.
The cost is proportional to the number of charges added; 10 charges added to a wand (normally 50 charges) costs 10/50ths of a full wand.
That's a decent compromise, but I would be tempted to try to abuse it as a player. If you can get a hold of a lot of wands with very low charges for cheap, you would be able to keep a lot of magic on tap at a low price.
A wand costs 15 x spell level x caster level per charge, while a potion is over 3 times as much at 50 x lvl x lvl. Wands balance out with poitions (I guess) because of caster rules and the 50 charge minimum makes a wand an investment. If you can buy spells at the wand price in 10 charge chunks, the savings over a handfull of potions would add up quick.
Obviously, your PC can't take direct advantage of this unless you're a caster or rock the UMD. Also, if you can't get a hold of a dozen useful wands with one charge left, then you can't go crazy.
{That's a decent compromise, but I would be tempted to try to abuse it as a player. If you can get a hold of a lot of wands with very low charges for cheap, you would be able to keep a lot of magic on tap at a low price.}
Yes, that's the wand's role in the game: super-cheap consumable.
{A wand costs 15 x spell level x caster level per charge, while a potion is over 3 times as much at 50 x lvl x lvl. Wands balance out with poitions (I guess) because of caster rules and the 50 charge minimum makes a wand an investment.}
Mainly because of the caster rules, but the investment is a part of it.
{If you can buy spells at the wand price in 10 charge chunks, the savings over a handfull of potions would add up quick.}
Yep. Potions will still have their place, though, because the fighter can't use the unconscious cleric's wand of cure light wounds to save someone (such as the cleric) from dying.