Why is it a bad thing if topping up between fights is free?Because Pathfinder's entire system, and indeed adventure design, is based on resource expenditure as the primary thing fights cause. Things that get around that radically alter the fundamental calculus of how the game functions.
They could theoretically change that in PF2, but it would no longer feel like the same game, so they're better off fixing it.
In PF1 hit point loss is entirely too random a resource to use for that. A single unlucky hit can take you from full hit points to dead. They are working on it not causing instant death (via the changes to stabilization), but I'm not sure if they have done anything to prevent the swings in damage.
If they even out the damage so you can approximate how badly hurt you are and if you can afford to continue, then your argument might stand. Considering they have made critical hits an even bigger part of the game, I'm not sure that is the case.
Why is it a good thing that people will have to stop for the night just because of injuries?In short? Right now people stop only when they run out of offensive resources (ie: the Wizard is out of spells), having to balance those with defensive resources (ie: how much healing they have left) is both more interesting and more mechanically balanced, as well as making the character's choices feel more urgent and relevant (since there's a greater element of risk in going onward when low on healing).
That is the case in PF1 for other types of healing -- specifically condition removal. There it does take more resources to accomplish and I do see people having to back off because they have accumulated too many penalties from conditions.
I can see story reasons for wanting to control the ability to heal, but in most of those cases I think you can handle it by just causing it to take longer than the PCs can afford at the moment. Make game time the resource spent on healing and you don't have to dump treasure on the group just so they can continue operating.This is using an in-game issue to solve a metagame problem and does not work in all situations. The game works better if the actual rules solve problems like this without the need for GM intervention.
Dumping treasure into the game just so people can heal isn't GM intervention? Seems to me dumping money into the game can cause way more problems than it resolves.
The game works better if the rules actually solve the root problems and creates a framework that helps the story.
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In short? Right now people stop only when they run out of offensive resources (ie: the Wizard is out of spells), having to balance those with defensive resources (ie: how much healing they have left) is both more interesting
It's not more interesting - it's the same math problem with some of the factors moved to the other side of the equation. The result is the same.
and more mechanically balanced,
How so? Not the 'mechanically balanced' part - that's possible to do in any system - and things being 'mechanically balanced' has never been shown to make a system more 'fun' - in fact usually it makes it more 'bland' that's an opinion - but borne out by the failure of 'mechanically balanced' systems like 4e, *edit* the more part - I don't see proof how this is 'more balanced' - you can say so but it's opinion not fact (from what I can see).
as well as making the character's choices feel more urgent and relevant (since there's a greater element of risk in going onward when low on healing).
Making someone feel like a character death or party wipe was their own fault for not resting for the night doesn't add urgency, it adds stress - that's not the kind of stress I think is right for the game.
Well in order for resource management old school style of play to work the design has to account for it. Its easier to blow the lid off the design once its in place. Like a dial set to 1 and goes to 11. Everybody wins then.
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I think my second biggest issue is that, they already solved the "CLW" problem is a very good way. The did it in Starfinder with being able to heal your stamina back to full, and having it be a separate pool from HP, and requires a resource expenditure which is linked to being able to do other cool stuff, and while limited doesn't feel too limited.
It's a great solution IMO. And magic can still heal HP, if you take HP damage. And there are basically no options to heal stamina aside from the rest.
I guess they're trying to reign in magic item spamming in general by introducing resonance...but honestly my experience was that it was only specific items that tended (in PF1) to be broken and not any generic type of magic item. And those could probably be addressed on an individual basis.
I think part of the problem is we have a faction of players who want grim dark challenging dungeon crawls where you're very likely to have your character die, and others like to be super heroes were there are challenges but they are rare (comparatively speaking). And 1 system doesn't really support both types of play very well, so you kind of need to choose.
I think part of the problem is we have a faction of players who want grim dark challenging dungeon crawls where you're very likely to have your character die, and others like to be super heroes were there are challenges but they are rare (comparatively speaking). And 1 system doesn't really support both types of play very well, so you kind of need to choose.
Not necessarily need to choose, you can design for the former while leaving room for the latter with a modular design.
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The more I think about the resonance the more issues I have with it.
The heaviest users of hp are front line fighters, it seems especially punishing for a class that traditionally dumps Cha to depend on it for healing, leaving less resonance for actual magical advantages.
Next it hurts the cleric because everytime they use any spell that isn't a heal the party tank is going to grumble that it's one less heal and they'll need to compensate for it with their limited resonance pool.
In comparison the wizard often skips the hp mini game leaving more room for magic items, doubly so because many magic items they will bypass with spells.
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The more I think about the resonance the more issues I have with it.
The heaviest users of hp are front line fighters, it seems especially punishing for a class that traditionally dumps Cha to depend on it for healing, leaving less resonance for actual magical advantages.
Next it hurts the cleric because everytime they use any spell that isn't a heal the party tank is going to grumble that it's one less heal and they'll need to compensate for it with their limited resonance pool.
In comparison the wizard often skips the hp mini game leaving more room for magic items, doubly so because many magic items they will bypass with spells.
Well, using a Wand costs Resonance from the person who uses it, not the person who benefits, so I think this'll even out more than you seem to be implying.
Additionally, it seems likely that Fighters probably can't use most items like Wands or Staffs that cost Resonance per usage, so their Resonance will actually be about the same comparatively even with their greater need to use it to heal.
And all that assumes you need items to heal, which evidence suggests you often don't.
Oh, and, per the demo games, the Cleric has an entirely separate pool for healing that doesn't cost their normal spell slots, so that's less of an issue than you're assuming, too.
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The more I think about the resonance the more issues I have with it.
The heaviest users of hp are front line fighters, it seems especially punishing for a class that traditionally dumps Cha to depend on it for healing, leaving less resonance for actual magical advantages.
Next it hurts the cleric because everytime they use any spell that isn't a heal the party tank is going to grumble that it's one less heal and they'll need to compensate for it with their limited resonance pool.
Well, using a Wand costs Resonance from the person who uses it, not the person who benefits, so I think this'll even out more than you seem to be implying.
Additionally, it seems likely that Fighters probably can't use most items like Wands or Staffs that cost Resonance per usage, so their Resonance will actually be about the same comparatively even with their greater need to use it to heal.
But Fighters do use potions and now they can't do that as much.
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But Fighters do use potions and now they can't do that as much.
How often do Fighters use potions, in your experience? In mine, with a few weird circumstantial exceptions, it tends to be no more than once per fight or so, and usually no more than once per day.
That's not that many times and you get to it pretty quick as you level.
I can't find the quote anymore but Gygax explicitly based the D&D economy on Gold Rush towns. So some goods are weirdly on point and others are obscenely expensive. This has been inherited down the line. You're never going to be able to do a one-to-one comparison with Pathfinder and the economy because it's not based on a functioning economy (or one that exists anymore?).
Ah yes the good old days of 40 dollar apple pies. Also it is hard to really model an economy in something like pathfinder because most of the economy is going to be pretty local as the majority of people are not traveling around much and so money made in an area likely tends to stay in that area. So adventurers tromping around with pouches of gold coins probably skews everything just by their presence like the old gold miners. They didn't have the local currency but they had literally bags of gold so you got weird things where some stuff is so cheap as to be almost worthless and other minor luxuries going for insane prices.
The more I think about the resonance the more issues I have with it.
The heaviest users of hp are front line fighters, it seems especially punishing for a class that traditionally dumps Cha to depend on it for healing, leaving less resonance for actual magical advantages.
Next it hurts the cleric because everytime they use any spell that isn't a heal the party tank is going to grumble that it's one less heal and they'll need to compensate for it with their limited resonance pool.
In comparison the wizard often skips the hp mini game leaving more room for magic items, doubly so because many magic items they will bypass with spells.
Well, using a Wand costs Resonance from the person who uses it, not the person who benefits, so I think this'll even out more than you seem to be implying.
Additionally, it seems likely that Fighters probably can't use most items like Wands or Staffs that cost Resonance per usage, so their Resonance will actually be about the same comparatively even with their greater need to use it to heal.
And all that assumes you need items to heal, which evidence suggests you often don't.
Oh, and, per the demo games, the Cleric has an entirely separate pool for healing that doesn't cost their normal spell slots, so that's less of an issue than you're assuming, too.
So they're making healing entirely divorced from the rest of the clerics resource pools. Which I like in the sense that you don't need a player to invest resources into healing or choose between preparing a healing spell or some other spell.
HOWEVER, it still makes having a cleric a requirement. Which is still something I'm strictly against.
Every time I learn more about PF2 the less I like it.
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So they're making healing entirely divorced from the rest of the clerics resource pools. Which I like in the sense that you don't need a player to invest resources into healing or choose between preparing a healing spell or some other spell.
HOWEVER, it still makes having a cleric a requirement. Which is still something I'm strictly against.
The primary healer in one of Mark Seifter's playtest games was a somewhat atypical Barbarian. This apparently worked fine.
So no, a Cleric is not required.
Every time I learn more about PF2 the less I like it.
Based on this and some of your previous posts, I think some of that is you leaping to conclusions based on incomplete information. In several cases conclusions that are factually wrong.
But Fighters do use potions and now they can't do that as much.How often do Fighters use potions, in your experience? In mine, with a few weird circumstantial exceptions, it tends to be no more than once per fight or so, and usually no more than once per day.
That's not that many times and you get to it pretty quick as you level.
In a D&D 3.0 campaign many years ago, 4 players, including me, lived in Maryland, and 2 players and the DM lived in New York. The GM decided to do a side adventure with the 2 local players and a third guest player: sorcerer, barbarian, and druid.
In the next session with the full 6-player party, the left-behind four caught up to the other two. On the way, they stopped a village to restock supplies. The rogue tried to buy a healing potion. I played the cleric, but the rogue liked to sneak across the battlefield to provide emergency healing with a potion. She discovered that the other half of the party had been through already and had bought out the shop's entire stock of healing potions. Because they were adventuring without their cleric.
In a Pathfinder game soon after the Advanced Player's Guide was published, I played an alchemist. The fighter was not doing as well as the alchemist or the summoner in combat, so I switched strategies. My alchemist made infusions (extracts that other characters can use) good for combat buffs and handed them to the fighter every morning. That balanced the party better.
Using potions depends on the party and the circumstances. Those might count as "weird circumstantial exceptions", but those circumstances do occur, so Pathfinder should provide the tools to handle them.
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I absolutely agree that the game should provide solutions to handle that sort of situation.
But why should that solution be potions? I mean, as mentioned above, you can apparently handle the party's healing needs as a Barbarian now. Is stocking up on huge numbers of potions inherently and necessarily the only solution to the situations you mention? Isn't the important thing that there be some solution, not necessarily that it be that one?
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And if stocking up on potions is the new answer, how is potion spam any different from CLW spam.
And if stocking up on potions is the new answer, how is potion spam any different from CLW spam.
Under the PF2 rules we have heard so far, drinking a potion requires resonance from the drinker, so it would be a terrible long-term healing method for fighters and barbarians. However, the drinker can make a check (I forgot the details, I would guess a Charisma roll) to force the potion to work without resonance, so it simply becomes slower and more expensive to spam.
If potions did not have a partial resonance limit, they could be stocked up like PF1 wands. But potions are three times as expensive and many times heavier. With the resonance limit and also the check to bypass the limit, the same applies but the party would need twice as many. Either way, add the cost of a small bag of holding to the cost of the potions.
Using potions for healing would be slightly more elegant than using wands. Instead of one expert in Use Magic Device tapping each person with a wand, the party would pull potions from the bag and everyone would drink until healed. They could toast each other on their victory with healing potions.
However, buying a PF2 wand of Cure Light Wounds and using it until the UMD expert was out of resonance would be cheaper. A non-spammed quantity of potions would be a backup plan, in case the UMD expert was unconscious or out of resonance. And a cautious fighter would carry a few in case he was separated from the party. My bloodrager in my current campaign does.
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There are many, many rebuttals against each of these stated problems, and one might claim that they're fairly minor, but evidently the designers believe that this problem needs to be solved.
They certainly seem minor to me, and to the degree, these are problems, there a lot of potential fixes short of the very dubious sounding Resonance system.
I don't know if it's been mentioned here or elsewhere (it's hard to keep up with all the playtest threads), but I found this comment by Logan Bonner to be deeply troubling,
I really dislike the classes in the Occult guide and their clunky, non-D&D feeling mechanics. The fact that this work has inspired Resonance is a huge concern to me.
There are many, many rebuttals against each of these stated problems, and one might claim that they're fairly minor, but evidently the designers believe that this problem needs to be solved.They certainly seem minor to me, and to the degree, these are problems, there a lot of potential fixes short of the very dubious sounding Resonance system.
I don't know if it's been mentioned here or elsewhere (it's hard to keep up with all the playtest threads), but I found this comment by Logan Bonner to be deeply troubling,
I really dislike the classes in the Occult guide and their clunky, non-D&D feeling mechanics. The fact that this work has inspired Resonance is a huge concern to me.
Your logic is flawed. Its just like the people that are comparing PF2 to 4th edition because it has one thing in common.
but if you mean that it is a mechanic not before seen in D&D that is partially true however their has been sub systems and source books for items that take an investment of energy to function (weapons of legacy for example.) Their will probably be other new things in fact the new action economy is new although ti does have similarities to the unchained action economy. If you aren't down for new the easiest thing to do is to just keep playing what ya got.
Your logic is flawed. Its just like the people that are comparing PF2 to 4th edition because it has one thing in common.
I would argue that it is not. My concern/logic is as follows. The occultist book and classes represent a design approach and philosophy that I dislike and which I feel added an unnecessary level of complexity and mechanics to the PF system. To the degree that Resonance comes out of what I see as a flawed approach, I am concerned that it itself is flawed. It appears that Resonance will be a significant feature that will have a major effect on the way the game is played. Therefore, I think it's legitimate to look at the roots of this approach as a way of trying to understand whether or not it's likely to be a positive addition to the game. So far based on the evidence provided, I have not seen anything that supports adding Resonance to the game.
My concern is not whether or not something is "new" but whether or not it adds something useful to the PF system. I see the new action economy as an evolution of the existing system and a positive evolution at that. I don't see anything evolutionary about Resonance or any basis for it in any pre-PF2e material (other than the occult dreck), and I don't see it as adding anything positive to the system or fixing any clearly articulated problems.
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Some people would find giving charisma more use and adding in a mechanic to reduce the healing old low level healing wand thing a positive effect of resonance. Also it works to eliminating the big 6 which a lot of people have complained about in the past. I think it is at least an interesting mechanic and am interested in it. Of course I actually like occult adventures for the most part. except for the occultist and mesmerist, but that was more because the occultist was very hard to understand I have no trouble understanding what they have said about resonance so far.
Both could easily have been done without that sort of radical change for example something just saying you can only have equipped ‘x’ many ‘points’ of magic item then give each item a point value.
Change the math in healing wands.
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Some people would find giving charisma more use and adding in a mechanic to reduce the healing old low level healing wand thing a positive effect of resonance. Also it works to eliminating the big 6 which a lot of people have complained about in the past. I think it is at least an interesting mechanic and am interested in it. Of course I actually like occult adventures for the most part. except for the occultist and mesmerist, but that was more because the occultist was very hard to understand I have no trouble understanding what they have said about resonance so far.
In itself resonance does nothing to eliminate the big 6. If the big 6 still exist then that is what people will use resonance for.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.
Lacking further information, and thinking positively - it could just be that magic items in general are less emphasized to focus more on personal power, thus you don't need charisma unless you want to play a character with lots of magical trinkets.
(I'm not saying this is guaranteed, just that we don't know.)
Some people would find giving charisma more use and adding in a mechanic to reduce the healing old low level healing wand thing a positive effect of resonance. Also it works to eliminating the big 6 which a lot of people have complained about in the past. I think it is at least an interesting mechanic and am interested in it. Of course I actually like occult adventures for the most part. except for the occultist and mesmerist, but that was more because the occultist was very hard to understand I have no trouble understanding what they have said about resonance so far.In itself resonance does nothing to eliminate the big 6. If the big 6 still exist then that is what people will use resonance for.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.
Especially when "Resonance helps people not dump Charisma" kind of....goes out the window when you introduce classes/abilities that change that.
Like the Alchemist, who uses Intelligence.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.Lacking further information, and thinking positively - it could just be that magic items in general are less emphasized to focus more on personal power, thus you don't need charisma unless you want to play a character with lots of magical trinkets.
(I'm not saying this is guaranteed, just that we don't know.)
That may be true, but again, Alchemsits use Intelligence for Resonance, so the whole "Personal power for magic items" gets shot right in the foot.
Some people would find giving charisma more use and adding in a mechanic to reduce the healing old low level healing wand thing a positive effect of resonance. Also it works to eliminating the big 6 which a lot of people have complained about in the past. I think it is at least an interesting mechanic and am interested in it. Of course I actually like occult adventures for the most part. except for the occultist and mesmerist, but that was more because the occultist was very hard to understand I have no trouble understanding what they have said about resonance so far.In itself resonance does nothing to eliminate the big 6. If the big 6 still exist then that is what people will use resonance for.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.
Especially when "Resonance helps people not dump Charisma" kind of....goes out the window when you introduce classes/abilities that change that.
Like the Alchemist, who uses Intelligence.
Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.Lacking further information, and thinking positively - it could just be that magic items in general are less emphasized to focus more on personal power, thus you don't need charisma unless you want to play a character with lots of magical trinkets.
(I'm not saying this is guaranteed, just that we don't know.)
That may be true, but again, Alchemsits use Intelligence for Resonance, so the whole "Personal power for magic items" gets shot right in the foot.
I was worried about that as well. Use X instead of Y stuff was my least favorite of PF1. Though, Alchemist may be the exception. Gives the class a little something of its own. If they open that up to all casters (and more), than its a problem.
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Lack of opportunity cost due to the low cost of the wands; Allegedly breaks Wealth-by-level due to a lack of expenditure on consumables.
This just needs to go away - it's opinion that is wrong based on the published rules:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
So - in PF1 - even if you changed the way cure light wounds wands worked - it would not change the WBL - usable items like this aren't supposed to reduce your wealth over time - they are just supposed to represent a transient investment.
It's a 'mandatory magic item'. 'Mandatory magic items' are bad.
They are less bad than mandatory rules that make characters more MAD.
, but evidently the designers believe that this problem needs to be solved.
Nothing is set in stone - nothing is 'off the table' - looking at the issue as a problem that needs solving will produce systems to solve it - there is no such problem today. Again I'd rather have them make cure wands no longer available in the game than add another needlessly complex system onto the game that makes playing your character more of a chore.
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Every character needing charisma for resonance is an even bigger flaw for me than everyone dumping charisma. It does not feel like a fix to me. It feels kludgy.Lacking further information, and thinking positively - it could just be that magic items in general are less emphasized to focus more on personal power, thus you don't need charisma unless you want to play a character with lots of magical trinkets.
(I'm not saying this is guaranteed, just that we don't know.)
That may be true, but again, Alchemsits use Intelligence for Resonance, so the whole "Personal power for magic items" gets shot right in the foot.
The way they maybe should have handled this with the Alchemist, especially since the class is apparently supposed to get /bonus/ resonance, is just say:
"Alchemists also add their Intelligence bonus to their Resonance pool."
That keeps the overall in-setting flavor of what they're trying to do with the mechanic, and also promotes the flavor of the Alchemist instead of raising weird questions about the whole thing works.
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Regardless of our opinion on Resonance or whether HP being topped off after every combat is a good thing... [b[Can we agree that CLW wands are badly designed?[/b] Because they are undeniably the best option, there's little reason for other options to exist as traps. (Barring having a couple potions on hand for when the wand wielders are down.) Having it recover 1d8+1 on each casting forces players to roll and track the castings in a way that just isn't fun. Also, the PF1 conception of a wand doesn't seem to intersect much with the idea of what a wand is for in popular culture. PF wands are 50 charge expenditures of the same spell and nothing else. Harry Potter wands (probably the most iconic use of wands in current popular culture) serve as an arcane focus for any spell, closer to a cleric's holy symbol.
Possible improvements:
--Create items that grant a set number of hit points rather than a die roll. You can use this one item to restore 100 hit points before it is depleted. You could have it as an item that recharges or an item you use up and throw away. The math is a lot quicker to figure out at the table. (We sort of have that with Infernal Healing wands, but they can be problematic for a few reasons, and I don't really think they should exist alongside wands of CLW.)
--Make bigger healing items more cost effective. Resonance is one way they are trying to do that, but simply adjusting gold costs would be another. We invest in stronger potions as we level rather than massive quantities of smaller ones. That also can add more weight to the decision to expend consumables. If my "unit" of healing is 1d8+1 it is very easy to tell when I should stop using charges-- probably between 3-10 HP of max health, depending on what that max is. But if it is 3d8+5, when do I want to do it? When I fall below the average damage healed? Or am I going to think more about what I expect the rest of my day to entail?
-- Better non-magical healing. Maybe this is short rests, maybe this is healing kits, maybe it is some expanded rules for the Heal skill. If we want to move away from the need for a dedicated healer, why do we need specific classes (or a high UMD) to make healing happen?
--Stop making all spells something you can put in an item. Honestly, the more I hear about old systems which didn't do this, the better this sounds. Just have magic items do the thing you want them to be able to do. Surely we can have items be more interesting than "more castings of a spell you could already cast?"
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But Fighters do use potions and now they can't do that as much.How often do Fighters use potions, in your experience? In mine, with a few weird circumstantial exceptions, it tends to be no more than once per fight or so, and usually no more than once per day.
That's not that many times and you get to it pretty quick as you level.
My own experience runs counter to this; though I will say it's due to group and setting.
Iron Gods - Alchemist and all the faster to use potion tools? Drink up boys! We still have a wand but that's forgotten until after a real bad beating.
Strange Aeons; We had 2 Alchemsits. We quickly stock piled as many bonuses as we could due to that and how hard th AP was. Sure we found the CLW but the Remove disease potions were the grander prize to us.
Skull and Shackles; not my game but a friends, the were able to get into the Alchemists room and loot it for potions. Those got a lot of use.
Mummy's Mask; I have a cleric and a Warpriest. Why do they need a CLW wand? And the potions they find are still good(Honey based salves actually but it's a flavor thing)
So yeah my experience is we eithe have enough potions or healers to not need CLW wands. Now if you want to argue say Bless or Mage Armor l, which I feel are netted in this new edition.
Actually no, filp the question. How many times have you seen someone use a Wand and it's not the same 5 or so spells?
--Create items that grant a set number of hit points rather than a die roll. You can use this one item to restore 100 hit points before it is depleted. You could have it as an item that recharges or an item you use up and throw away. The math is a lot quicker to figure out at the table. (We sort of have that with Infernal Healing wands, but they can be problematic for a few reasons, and I don't really think they should exist alongside wands of CLW.)
A similar item already exists in PF1, the Martyr's Tear. This 6000gp magic item can be charged with up to 18 hit points during downtime. With a standard-action touch, it can heal a creature with the stored hp. If always fully charged, it always heals exactly 18 hit points.
I learned of this magic item when the fighter in my Iron Gods campaign wanted to buy one. The argument with the rest of the party declaring the item to be not worth the price resulted in the party dividing the treasure into individual shares so that the fighter could buy whatever he wanted with his share. And he spend his money on other stuff without buying a Martyr's Tear.
Curious, I added a Martyr's Tear as treasure in a 9th-level adventure and he kept it. He charged it up and never used it in the following 45 game sessions. He wanted to save it for in-combat healing, and used the standard Wand of Cure Light Wounds between encounters until 11th level. At 11th level, the skald learned Greater Skald's Vigor and healed people with her raging song, which changed the healing dynamic.
How many times have you seen someone use a Wand and it's not the same 5 or so spells?
Which five? I guess Cure Light Wounds is one.
The skald in my Iron Gods campaign learned Craft Wand and she makes wands of Cure Light Wounds and also makes wands for the magus. The magus uses a wand of Snowball at caster level 5 (5d6 damage) and a wand of Lightning Bolt. Before that he was given a wand of Magic Missile at caster level 3 (two missiles) as a reward. The main reason he started using offensive wands was because he could not cast spells while accepting the skald's Inspired Rage raging song but he could use wands.
How many times have you seen someone use a Wand and it's not the same 5 or so spells?
At a guess, those would include:
* Infernal Healing* Cure Light Wounds
* Endure Elements
* Mage Armor
* Comprehend Languages
My own list also includes spells such as:
* Bless Weapon if I have good UMD
* Air Bubble
* Caster Level 5 Burning Hands
* Shield
* Lucky Number
* Lesser Restoration (found as a partial wand)
Not all of these are on the same character.
I also have a friend who is very fond of Residual Tracking as a wand.
I would actually swap Snowball and Infernal Healing with "Insert gernal low level attack spell here". Burning Hands and Magic Missle come to mind.
Burning Hands is an area of effect, making it a little more important given the prevalence of swarms in Paizo modules and APs.
Just because one class can make an exception doesn't throw out the whole concept btw. Some classes being able to not use chr for resonance could be interesting when it fits thematically. kind of like people pushing dex to hit for melee weapons or monks getting wisdom to AC.
Also I think resonance is a bit more sleek then your suggestion of putting point value on wands which could actually still be fixed by buying multiple wands then couldn't it? which would still be the same problem. but whatever I like the concept and have no problem with it from what I've seen so far. Its possible I may get more info that changes it sure.
If you don't like it well I doubt we can come to an agreement because their is just not enough info have a good analysis of it so its kind of an emotional reaction and their really is no way to reconcile that.
Regardless of our opinion on Resonance or whether HP being topped off after every combat is a good thing...
Can we agree that CLW wands are badly designed?
Because they are undeniably the best option, there's little reason for other options to exist as traps.
No. There is no agreement that CLW wands are badly designed. That's the entire point of this thread.
But it is another problem that can be floated.
"They are undeniably the best option [for out-of-combat healing]."
Whether that they are "best option" - or whether that is a bad thing - is of course up for debate.
What's the defense for CLW wands being well designed then? Why is tracking 50 charges of 1d8+1 good? Does anyone actually enjoy that level of minutia? Especially at higher levels when it could take 10+ rolls to get someone back in fighting shape. Does anyone enjoy rolling and adding up that dice X times in a row while also tracking how many X is? Surely even a very basic step like making the wands heal in flat amounts instead of die rolls would make our lives easier.
The arguments people ACTUALLY seem to be having is whether Resonance is a good idea or if this game works better with a consumable HP safety net. But regardless of where you fall on the spectrum for these two questions, the wand itself could surely do with some tweaking.
They're too cheap for the # of charges a wand gets. 750 for a wand vs 2500 for 50 potions of clw. Thats why they're a problem.
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They're too cheap for the # of charges a wand gets. 750 for a wand vs 2500 for 50 potions of clw. Thats why they're a problem.
Then halve the cost of healing potions and scrolls. "Somebody discovered and widely distributed a means of crafting more efficiently with healing magic" is a lot easier to explain within the setting than "Suddenly, ALL magic items became unreliable, and nobody knows why." If "too cheap" is the issue, then the fix is just as simple as that.
They're too cheap for the # of charges a wand gets. 750 for a wand vs 2500 for 50 potions of clw. Thats why they're a problem.You have just pointed out the problem with potions as a whole. Well done.
The reverse actually, wands are too cheap.