| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So there is a long tradition in D&D of wands being spell batteries that give you X amount of castings of a spell and then becoming trash.
This allowed some fun things.
It let casters have a wider range of spells they could choose in a day because there was less of a need to use all of your low level spells to memorize as many of the same few spells as possible.
Eventually, wands became ways of basically condensing entire party roles into a stick that gave parties more flexibility in what different kinds of characters could adventure together instead of demanding each play one of a very specific role.
It gave non-casters a way to have access to some magic that it was assumed that every party would have access to in adventure design.
But it also had some less fun consequences:
It exacerbated complex buff chain shenanigans by removing spells per day from the equation and made almost everything accessible to everyone for gold, gold that became easier to justify spending the higher level you got.
As pathfinder spell lists grew outward, the ability to find "perfect combos" of low level spells grew too and were so cheap it took a fairly observant DM to stay on top of what would and would not be accessible to their players for purchase or manufacture.
This made wizards the ultimate in flexibility because they can learn new spells so cheaply, and stock pile scrolls and wands of each depending upon frequency of usage, for a relatively trivial amount of gold, especially at higher levels.
For me,
I think the fun of the wand as spell battery has run its course. I think moving potions away from mimicking spells and towards specific desired effects was a good move. I think wands need to do the same so that spell bloat doesn't instantly = universal magical resource bloat (as every character gets too easy access to every spell regardless of list.)
I liked 4e use of wand as implement. This is basically what has happened with Staves, so I get that wands need to be something a little different, but what if the wand was a hyper focused implement giving specific attack, damage and effect bonuses to specific spells instead of just spamming their casting. This would leave scrolls as the only limited charge spell in a can, and letting that be controlled by resonance makes sense enough to me.
For the issue of healing, I suggest that the developers push three tones of play and make sure each is supported decently by a mechanic that has nothing to do with learning how to game the magic economy:
Gritty: healing is limited, lower resonance pools, more expensive magic item healing, and nothing spammable.
Heroic: pretty much the system as is being developed as far as resonance and magical item healing.
Mythic: have an item that lets players turn gp directly into HP for a flat ratio, and make it clear that this item is not accessible at other tiers.
I'll be honest, in the current system I see absolutely no reason to differentiate between Wands and Staves.
In 3.X/PF1 Wands were defined by being batteries for low level spells, while Staves were batteries for high level spells. In PF2 we're already seeing low level spell staves... so what's the point of Wands? Especially since all of the talk about resonance has been about ending CLW Wand Spam, I don't expect we are going to see Wands showing up as big batteries with 50 charges, I have a hard time picturing what a Wand will do that is significantly different from a Staff.
I'd rather just lump Wands/Orbs/Staves/Tomes/Whatever into a single "Implement" category, and let them work more or less how Staves were described in the blog (preferably without the limited charges though. Having Resonance and items with limited charges simultaneously I feel like is one of the worst decisions of the playtest)
As far as we know that's exactly what wands are, big batteries of single-spell charges (I'm not sure how many exactly, have seen both 50 and 10 as possibilities) that then also use your internal battery to run, and become a worthless stick when you run out.
Personally, and I stated this back in the magic items blog on Monday but I think it might have been after the Devs jumped ship, I think Wands should just become staff lite.
Staves have X many charges (recharging with investment each day equal to highest spell level the investor can cast,) multiple spells, and a passive effect when invested. While invested you can also burn a charge (or charges?) (and resonance, still eh on that one) or spell slot (and resonance again) to cast one of the staff's multiple spells. Now that we have that recap on staff mechanics here's my idea for wands:
Wands have X many charges (recharging with investment each day equal to highest spell level the investor can cast) and a single spell. While invested you can burn a charge (and possibly resonance, depending on whether staff's "+ resonance" cost thing makes it through to final edition, personally I'd hope not but not up to me, but at least should be consistent with staff) or slot (see last parenthesis) to cast the staff's spell.
It keeps the same niche of single-spell battery for casters that it had in PF1e, with the limited charges per day it reduces if not flat eliminates the spamming issue that (in the sake of acknowledging both sides I'll add a 'supposedly' here) plagues low-level wands in PF1e, and with the daily recharging stops making the higher-level ones feel like a waste of money when you 'run out' of battery on your stick. And since it's an obviously lesser effect than the staff a wand can cost less while staves can retain their niche of being the caster's 'big guns' magic item.
|
I liked spells in a can to a point, but eventually it broke the resource attrition game. Resonance could solve this. Need to see how it plays out. Though I do like your idea of a modular slider for game type.
I know the OP probably didnt intend to make it sound like you are unheroic without being super, but a lot of folks make this distinction. This is just my personal hang up and I now return you to regularly scheduled thread.