Magic items aren't commonplace in my setting. You can't go to the corner magic shop and buy a wand of cure light wounds. That said, I do want to provide the players with a reliable source of healing. Since they already have magic amulets which boost their AC, I'm thinking of enhancing them to possess healing magic too. A single use of the amulet would heal damage equal to the PC's Hit Die plus their Constitution modifier. For example, a sorcerer with 14 Con would heal 1d6 + 2. A paladin with 16 Con would heal 1d10 + 3. Each amulet would have a number of uses per day equal to the character's level.
What do you think? I want the amulets to be weak enough that cure spells and such are still valuable, but powerful enough to be useful. Thoughts?
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That wouldn't be too bad a thing, but the real question is, are these items for use after the fight or during? If they are for after-fight healing then you could also add a 10 minute healing time to each charge. If they are meant to be used in combat... that much spamming might be an issue. But you could easily make it a standard action to cast, or even a move action if you're a generous DM.
So, magic is rare thus access to wand of cure light wounds is limited/non-existent. However, they have access to amulets that give them an AC boost and you intend to give the amulet a scaling amount of uses for healing depending on the user levels.
Let's assume you have an average party of 4 level 4 players.
Your are trading 50 unique charges of 1d8+1 healing usable by only a few select characters, for 16 daily charges of medallion healing usable by anyone. The the player will soon figure out they can switch around their respective amulets to heal the people of the group that most need it.
This is assuming that all the players have one of these amulets.
The wand of cure light wounds look OP at first sight but remember that they are an after combat item, you will give your player theirs level worth in potion of cure light wounds usable IN combat, it's even better than a potions of CLW, because since the amulet is equipped it does not need to draw the potion to activate the healing effect.
I would just have my players find a wand of cure light wounds if I where you, you can call it a stick of wound removal if you are very against using pre-established and balanced magical items and have it being usable by everyone.
To clarify, using the amulet is a standard action. Because each one is specifically attuned, they cannot be used to heal anyone but the wearer.
So let me get this straight. You have a low magic setting. A stick that heals people a finite number of times is too high magic for you. So you want to give them a magical amulet that's not only more powerful than the magic stick, but also endlessly useable. I'm not following the logic here.
You could just give them potions that cost the same as a single wand charge.
Various alternatives:
* soup up the Heal skill so it does something useful
* magic berries that heal 1d8+1 damage, but don't eat too many too soon or you'll be sick (Fort DC 10 + 2/berry that day or Nauseated 10 minutes)
* Blessed bandages that speed natural healing, stop bleeding, prevent disease, etc
* Drink the blood of an [insert monster here] to heal damage
...and so on. It's a matter of what you're trying to avoid. I'm guessing you just want to do away with Ye Olde Magick Shoppe and the rather non-fantasy Healing Stick.
To answer an earlier question, the party includes a ranger, paladin, and alchemist, so they're not without other sources of healing.
Also, the setting is not low magic. When I think of low magic, I think of a setting where powerful magic simply does not exist. In this case powerful magic certainly exists, but it isn't something you can buy on a shop corner.
I can understand why my rationale could be confusing. I just don't like what wands of Cure Light Wounds would say about this setting. To me, they say anyone with enough gold can go to the local magic shop and pick up a wand that mends injuries with a touch. They're cheap enough that heroes can purchase several at once and possess an effectively limitless supply of healing. In short, I don't want my setting to be one where adventurers carry around sacks of magic wands and never consider the cost of battle.
Instead, I'd like them to have a source of healing that's reliable and effective, but no so plentiful that they never think to conserve it or worry about running out.
While a magic amulet that can heal a limited amount of damage each day is arguably more miraculous than a wand with a finite number of charges, that's by design. The heroes received them from a mighty wizard at the beginning of their journey. There's literally nothing else like them. So while they're certainly powerful, they're hardly commonplace (like wands of cure light wounds so often are).
I recognize the issue described above could probably be more easily resolved by simply increasing the cost of wands or making their supply scarce (or both), I doubt my players would have liked that very much. It's also a solution that, frankly, bores me. Coming up with an alternative is more fun for me and (hopefully) less frustrating for the players.
I hope my explanation answers the questions some of you have raised. In retrospect, I probably should have left out those sentences about the setting in the first post. I'm not here for feedback about the setting. I'm specifically here for feedback on these amulets as an alternative to wands of cure light wounds.
I am concerned that my original idea for the amulet is too powerful. What if, for example, it could be used a number of times per day equal to 3 + 1/2 the character's level? Fewer uses means it wouldn't scale as well, but maybe that's a good thing?
I'm still pretty new to this whole thing, but at higher levels particularly it seems like you might end up with a lot of excess healing. Rather than healing a whole lot (ie potentially all their HP) in one go a few times a day, maybe you could do a few die of healing at a time? They can heal a number of die equal to their level each day.
For example, a level 8 character could heal 5x(HD+con) at one stage, 2x(HD+con) a little later and 3x(HD+con) later still. This uses all their level (8) in (HD+con) heals for the day.
Versatile, but still limited in use, and scales with level.
Of course, I'm still new to this whole thing so maybe this won't work as well as I think it might...
why not just have the wizard give them a wand?
This may be killing a mosquito with a cannon, but have you seen Evil Lincoln's Strain-Injury houserule? It separated PC hp loss into 2 categories that are recovered differently. Strain is based on the abstract nature of hp and recovers completely with a moment's rest after combat. Injury is actual bodily maiming that must be actually healed. This makes the amount of damage actually needing to be healed a much smaller portion of damage taken and i love how it addresses the abstract nature of hp. It adds an extra number to track, but i think it would be exactly what it appears you're looking for.
Instead of introducing what you're proposing, you could just use a "second wind/healing surge" mechanic to compensate for reduced healing item availability. Between the two systems I've seen and used (4th edition and Star Wars Saga with optional rules) I preferred the SWSE version, which I've used in Pathfinder when running a campaign which had no healers (no one wanted to play them that round).
why not just have the wizard give them a wand?
Wands of Cure Light Wounds don't interest me much. I thought it would be more exciting for the players to receive unique magic items rather than something that's fairly commonplace in most other campaigns. I do agree that it would have been easier, though.
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My suggestion would be to make an altar, brazier or something that can do Mass Lesser Vigor (3.5 Spell Compendium) a number of times per day. Perhaps start with 1/d and increase as they increase in power.
Or just give them eternal wands of Lesser Vigor (3.5 Magic Item Compendium, 3.5 Spell Compendium). Rare magic items that are much more useful in the long run than 750gp money sinks.
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Allow me clarify why I criticize the amulet.
The problem statement is "How can my PCs get healing items in a world where they cannot buy them from a store?" The solution should ideally solve this problem without having other (potentially unfavorable) consequences. There's lots of simple solutions. The PCs could naturally find consumable healing items as they adventure. The PCs could hire a broker. Their wizard NPC could offer to sell them items on occasion. Maybe they could encounter mysterious traveling salesmen. All of these are elegant solutions. An amulet that heals X times per day is not an elegant solution.
See, you need to stop thinking about the game in terms of what's "balanced" and what's "overpowered." Every change you make in the game has consequences in how the game plays out. Even something that seems weak could break the game. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes you want to break the game to make it operate differently. But if this is not a conscious decision, you could end up changing the game in a way you don't want to.
This is why I suggest keeping the solution simple. The amulet turns healing into a freely replenish-able resource. That makes healing much easier to obtain than being able to buy wands. And they can basically heal to full every day with no long term consequence on their wealth. The amulet would also reinforce the 15 minute adventuring day. These and other unforeseen consequences may not be what you want for your game.
What Cyrad said.
Keep the essential mechanics of the wand (ie, a lot of healing, but it is finite and not very fast to apply) but change the presentation. Instead of a magic stick, it's a rosewood keg of unguent made from the rarest ingredients. 100 doses. Apply with the Heal skill: DC 10 to heal 1d8 damage, +1 per 5 by which you make the roll, +1d4 per extra dose you slap on at the same time. Full-round action, attracts an AoO. And it stinks.
There's 1 keg. It weighs 10 lbs (5 lb when empty). That's all there is, you can't buy more at the corner shop, and you'd better not lose it. The wizard could conceivably get more, if the PCs want to bring him the ingredients. But that would be a quest in itself, and beyond their current abilities.
What I do is I use the healer's belt from 3.5 (not sure which splat book it's from), although I change it to be glove slot to not compete with physical stat belts.
750gp, comes with 3 charges a day, used as a standard action on yourself or another. 1 charge heals 2d8, 2 charges heal 3d8, 3 charges heal 4d8.
It sounds crazy cheap, but if you compare it to the healing of a wand of cure light, it's pretty well balanced. Over its lifetime, a CLW wand will heal an average of 275 damage. An efficiently used healer's belt (assuming the PCs resist the temptation to blow all the charges in one go in a rough fight) heals an average of 33 damage. Basically, the PCs would need to completely expend the belt every day for 9 days straight to get more out of it than a wand.
Anyway, I usually drop one or two as treasure in the campaigns I run instead of CLW wands. Less bookkeeping, too, since the PCs don't have to track every charge and make plans to run back to town when they get low.
Thanks for the clarification, Cyrad. I'm definitely thinking twice about my handling of this.
When folks say "I don't want PCs buying items at ye olde magic mart" and then go to great lengths to create unique magic items, I wonder why. If the point is not to have them buy from a magic shop, just don't provide one.
You've got a guy in the group who can potentially brew potions. If he got that bonus feat, make him use it. Add lots of alchemy shops, but they're all run by NPC Experts. This not only means the alchemist shines as a special hero but also that they're in charge of making all the healing potions. They can still buy all the stuff to do so, but they have to devote the time/resources to it themselves.
Also as Cyrad suggests, find alternatives to the magic shop. I personally favor the Junkmangler's Guild in my own homebrew. They are the disgruntled cast-offs; kobolds, goblins and gnomes (gnomes are an NPC race in my world due to ties to the fey). These vaguely-magical creatures sometimes are dragged into civilization, slaves/minions of adventurers. Over time some of these creatures have been released from service but have domesticated to the point that they no longer wish to return to the dungeons of their race.
These retched refuse have banded together to form the Junkmangler's Guild. These traveling tinkers go from town to town using Mending, Prestidigitation and a host of crafting skills to transform junk into gear. The items they make are crafted with care and skill, so most are useful in some way. However the best Junkmanglers can infuse real magic into their creations. This in turn makes them powerful and unstable.
The magic items they make have the Fragile condition. They are like junk sculptures; a wand of CLW might be half an axe handle fitted with a wyvern's stinger and iron-shod, witch sigils burned into the butt. The players are free to buy from these merchants and can net good deals but the items they buy might break at a moment's notice or malfunction; using a Junkmangler's items in public can also have social implications.
The point is: consider the natural talents of the PCs as well as the expectations of the players before removing or severly hindering a resource commonly available by RAW.
Using the item presented, how about it heals the wearer's level in points. It replenishes during sleep or meditation, only once in a day(24 hours normally). To make it easy to add to an amulet, make it a magic chain, attachable to any medallion or amulet. I'm a big fan of augment items.
Also, consider eliminating the ability items entirely. Lots of good topics on that. I've got a nice ritual that burns such items putting their power into the characters bodies permanently. You could just offer characters a + to a stat, +1 deflection, or hit/damage every other level. The cloak of charisma is a worse cliche than the wand of CLW.
You may find this thread (Evil Lincoln's Anti Christmas Tree Effect) as useful as I and others have.
I don't use it as written, mind you, but with a few tweaks for our playstyle.
1. What do you do if nobody wants to play a divine caster?<--Rhetorical question
2. I would give the PC's a built in healing mechanic. That way you don't have to create a new magic item in place of the wand, and nobody is ever forced into a healing role if they don't want to do it.
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I realize that you may not actually care about the side-effects, but I would seriously recommend against messing with or removing access to WBL and the ability to spend it on whatever item you want.
This isn't because I feel entitled to crazy awesome gear, or because I dislike settings with lower magic item availability or low magic settings. I really like Conan, for instance.
Unfortunately, Pathfinder doesn't handle it well when you mess with WBL and item accessibility. Mundane Classes get screwed even more, widening the gap between them and the classes that don't rely on much equipment. Yes, you're also hurting wizards, but all of the other spellcasters do pretty well without gear, and Druids and Summoners are even more awesome, since they largely rely on pets who usually don't have any gear anyways, and the pets' stats from gear are baked-into the pet itself.
If you ARE going to remove WBL as a major thing, I would strongly suggest replacing them with something so as to maintain the game balance that exists, such as some variant of Kelso's Alternative System to Replace Magic Items.
If I were to go into a game not knowing this and a DM sprung it on me I would be very upset with the DM, as I would feel he secretly house-ruled away the game balance of many classes, particularly the weaker classes, making them much worse. If I knew about it in advance, The only classes I would build would be Druids, Summoners, or perhaps another full spellcaster that is not wizard. WBL is a big deal in the game balance of this RPG, and throwing it or the magic mart by the wayside does bad things to the system.
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@boring7
I've played in lots of games like you describe, in the past. It's only been the last couple years we started really tracking WBL and giving people free access to magic gear, after reading some posts Sean K Reynolds made about WBL.
Having tried it both ways, giving people access to the magic items they want and the money it takes to get them according to the guidelines in the book does a great deal to shore up some of the gap between tier 3 and 4 types and tier 1 and 2 types. Or, putting it another way, Ignoring the WBL and Item Assumptions the system makes significantly increases the gap between top tier classes like the druid and oracle and sorcerer and wizard and lower tier classes like the fighter and rogue and monk.
But as a GM Myself, I understand that keeping up with WBL and giving them access to a magic mart is a pain. You have to put up with them spending a session shopping rather than doing anything interesting, it detracts from how engrossed everyone is in the plot, and it takes real effort to keep track of where everyone is at for WBL, because the players aren't directly tracking it on their character sheets in a way thats easy to glance at and evaluate.
That's why I'm a fan of Kelso's idea, and why I tweaked/expanded on it a bit Here. It keeps the game balance almost the same as using WBL, except now my job as GM is easier. Players dont start unevenly lagging behind in their ability to handle encounters, and now it's just part of levelup. Once they hit level 3 and I've given them 6K Gold, they've got all the basic equipment they will need for the rest of the campaign. And I can freely Sunder o Steal the player's equipment without them getting very upset that I'm crippling them long term. Worst case scenario, they can get their gear fixed or replaced for cheap next time they go to town, and they're not permanently set back by ~20k gold for the rest of the campaign or anything like that.
Next time I go to run Pathfinder, I'll be expanding the section I put together further, probably with an actual list of effects you can get with CAPs and how much they cost.