Working on my next adventure. A wizard has taken over a goblin tribe, using Alter Self & deception, to look for a missing wand from the previous Goblin War. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), there is no such wand. The book he got the infomration from is a forgery created by another wizard to impress the father of a girl he was courting. Unfortunately, his ruse failed - but the book survived & came into the possession of the current wizard, who decides to go track the wand down.
I'm leaning towards something like a wand of fireballs, or something simiar that would be useful in combat for a wizard. My question is if it is possible to recharge a wand after the 50 uses are expended? If not, I might go with a Staff of Fire instead - reason being, the item might have run out of charges, making it worthless if it can't be recharged. It would be worth retrieving if it can be recharged. This, of course, is actually a moot point, since there is no item. Although, having him find it at the last minute to use against the pc's, only to discover all it's charges are gone could be fun....
Wands cannot be recharged unfortunately. Go with a staff, and maybe make it small enough that he can wield it as a wand even though it's really a staff. Alternatively, you could make it a magic rod that functions similarly to a wand, though with uses per day like eternal wands in Ebberon.
Also realise that unless it's a really low-powered world that a wand of fireball isn't very good. Wands use the minimum caster level and minimum ability score to calculate saves and damage etc. That would make it a DC 14 for a wand of fireball I believe. A normal caster would probably have something in the area of DC 18-20 by that time.
Sure in a world where only very very few wizards ever get high enough to cast fireball on their own a wand of it would be great, or if you want to rule/fight a tribe of goblins with it, since even the saved-against damage would be high enough to kill one of them.
Staffs use the users caster level and stat, so that alone makes a staff far more valuable and better for offensive spells. And of course they can be recharged.
Well, the big decision now seems to be whether or not the item actually exists. In the module I'm running, it doesn't (per the info I gave above). However, I'm not above altering a module to fit my needs.
The party is 2nd-level, & includes both a summoner & a magus. One possibility would be to have a real item that either has a some charges left or needs recharged. After they defeat the bad wizard, it then becomes part of the reward/spoils.
Actually, as I think about it, I think it would be pretty funny/appropriate if it turns out the item the wizard is searching for doesn't exist, but the group discovers something else of use he missed because he was so obsessed with finding the nonexistent item. The newly found item then becomes part of the treasure, & the magus can copy the wizard's spells into his own spellbook as part of his reward. In this case, the wizard is looking for a magic staff, & the goblins he's overtaken end up throwing aside a magic wand because "it's not the right size...."
