| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Speaking only for myself, I find the Resonance mechanics, as well as the reasoning behind its introduction, to be deeply problematic.
I'm therefore looking at house rules I could introduce which would allow me to remove it from the games I run. I've come up with the following, and would welcome constructive comments and suggestions for improvement.
1) Resonance will not be used.
2) Wands and Staves have 7 uses/day.
2a) That's 7 uses/day per item, not per user - you can't hand the healing wand to the next player for another 7 uses.
2b) Where a Stave has a cantrip power or similar level ability (e.g. Staff of Fire), this becomes a [[2A]] ability usable at will.
2c) I'm open to arguments in favour of a number other than 7. My first thought was 3, but that seemed overly restrictive.
3) Alchemists will get an "alchemy pool" equal to their Intelligence modifier plus their level with which to construct alchemical items. This replaces all references to Resonance in the alchemist class entry.
3a) If anyone can come up with a more elegant alternative (that doesn't nerf the alchemist) I will gladly hear it.
4) A character capable of Channeling Energy may expend 2 uses of Channel Energy in a Ritual that takes 1 minute and restores 5 hit points per caster level to all allies within 10 feet. The Ritual automatically succeeds.
4a) This Ritual may not be used to cause damage. If used in that way it fails.
4b) I'm toying with the idea of allowing characters who channel negative energy to use this healing Ritual as well. After all, Evil deities need to heal their followers on occasion!
5) Any character may, as a Free Action, spend 1 Hero Point on their turn to recover 10 hit points per level. The character must not have the Unconscious or Dying conditions.
5a) Any character may spend 1 Hero Point and take 1 minute to restore 10 hit points/level to another character.
6) In my view, consumables (magical or alchemical) are already governed by cost and by being 1-shot items, so removing Resonance doesn't require additional house rules to compensate.
7) Trinkets, magic armour and magic weapons are not 1-shot items; but they aren't cheap. In my view any character who wants to spend money to acquire them should be allowed to do so. I therefore don't see any need for a house rule on these items to compensate for the removal of Resonance.
I look forward to any constructive comments to improve on the above.
Thanks - I'm trying to cut down on the number of things players have to track, so I'd much rather not go back to magic item slots. How about:
8) A certain amount of common sense is required when selecting magic items: a character can use only 1 pair of boots/gloves/1 cloak/usw at a time. If there is any doubt on whether two items can be worn simultaneously, the GM's ruling shall be final.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How about just hear me out here. Removing all the charges once per day limits on items instead giving them one big pool (like probably 4-6 at 1st level and have it scale with level I'll leave it to your individual needs if that number isn't high enough.) You can maybe do something different with consumables but I think if the pool is large enough you can lump them with the others. but things like wands or flame tongues scorching ray would just do the spell when you use a point from your pool.
I guess you could make worn items reduce the pool as well but once again that might not be something you want.
Yes I know its real similar to resonance in fact these are my proposed changes to resonance.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you remove resonance, the consumable issue becomes worse than in PF1 - unless you brutally remake every single piece of treasure, item price, and expected equipment.
Not kidding, check the equipment values. There has always been an exponential scale to PF's wealth (it's a way to stop you from buying higher level gear) but it was nowhere as steep.
By the time you get up just four or five levels, you can buy wands for loose candy. Beforehand, it'd take you at least twice as long to even think to have that much disposable cash.
I'm not saying not to touch it, but be very very careful with this.
If you're curious, you can get a rough estimate of money equivalence with P2sp=P1gp x LV / 20. I use it for on-the-spot mental calculations, it's not very accurate but it'll get you in the right ballpark (at least until level 14-15. Higher than that and it gets way off).
@Ediwir - thanks for your constructive comments, and especially for that useful rule-of-thumb converter.
I have always found however that very, very few of my players have ever been inclined to spend significant resources on consumables. I think part of this is a reluctance to "throw away" money on a 1-shot item, as well as the action economy working against it: time spent drawing and consuming a potion is time not spent bashing the BBEG with your magic weapon (or casting a spell to defeat the BBEG).
For the games I run, therefore there is not and never has been a "consumable issue."
I don't see that changing just because consumables become relatively cheaper in PF2. Of course, I could be wrong, in which case I will have to reconsider.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The notion of combining consumables with resonance is ridiculous. How does going from one method of tracking to TWO methods of tracking make this easier?
To use Erik Mona's favorite argument, I can't think of any fiction where a hero downed a potion only to lament that he had no resonance, so it wouldn't work.
I do agree with Ediwir, that the removal of Resonance allows spammable low level consumable abuse. Now, there are those who do not view that as a problem, but others including the devs do.
Here is how I suggested fixing the problem. Essentially is ensures characters even with very low Charisma will have access to resonance. It addresses low level consumables by removing resonance from oils and trinkets and making potions bolstered. For additional effects a character needs to expend resonance. It addresses healing by though the consumalbe tweak, and by allowing Hero Points to be spend for some healing. This necessitated a tweak to Hero Points as they currently were written.
Thanks for your thoughts - it's interesting that we're going in similar directions in some ways (although I'm from the "nuke Resonance from orbit" school of thought).
I'm not inclined to award more Hero Points as of right, but I do agree that they should permit healing. My hope is that because they can be used that way, my PCs will be more willing to perform heroic acts to try and gain Hero Points.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally I want to curb low level consumable abuse, so I support the goal of resonance.
I have to ask: is this genuinely a 'thing' in your experience? If so, does it occur in your PbP games, tabletop, PFS, or what?
I'm not trying to be rude, or suggest your experience isn't genuine - I'm genuinely curious. I've played PF since it came out, and it just hasn't been an issue for me. I'm wondering where it occurs.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I am marking this thread to come back and read in detail later this evening, but I have PCs to kill another playtest session to run in about 10 minutes - but I did want to throw out a quick comment.
1) Resonance will not be used.
2) Wands and Staves have 7 uses/day.
2a) That's 7 uses/day per item, not per user - you can't hand the healing wand to the next player for another 7 uses.
2b) Where a Stave has a cantrip power or similar level ability (e.g. Staff of Fire), this becomes a [[2A]] ability usable at will.
2c) I'm open to arguments in favour of a number other than 7. My first thought was 3, but that seemed overly restrictive.
Our group discussed turning wands into 'mini-staves', but incorporating the SEML levels of crafting - the eternal wands of late D&D3.5 bloat being the inspiration. A standard wand might have 2 uses per day, an expert 4, master 6, legendary 8... or something like that. We hadn't really done anything more than note it down as an idea to explore later, once we figure out if we are moving to 2E, or cannibalizing what good ideas we can and starting the heavily-housruled era of 1E.
Hey random idea what if we made potions not count as magic items but as their own alchemical thing. keep them on a Different track.
@Requielle - that is a really good idea, I like it a lot. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing what else you have to say once you've disposed of your luckless PCs!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally I want to curb low level consumable abuse, so I support the goal of resonance.I have to ask: is this genuinely a 'thing' in your experience? If so, does it occur in your PbP games, tabletop, PFS, or what?
I'm not trying to be rude, or suggest your experience isn't genuine - I'm genuinely curious. I've played PF since it came out, and it just hasn't been an issue for me. I'm wondering where it occurs.
It hasn't been terrible, but it definitely is a thing. I can't tell you the last time I've had players buy a higher level potion without me doing supply and demand "they've run out of those lessors, try buying a superior." etc. Have you ever seen a player buy a higher level healing wand? In 3.5 it was wands of lessor vigor. It's always been wands of cure light wounds etc.
I like the idea of incentive's players to actually purchase and desire higher level healing items. And with the scaling of economy, the idea of watching the pc chug a dozen minor healing potions instead of having paid for a major healing potion because it costs only 51gp instead of 25gp is annoying, to say the least.
I agree that my players have always gone for the wand of CLW rather than anything more expensive, but I am not convinced that it is a 'problem' which needs a solution.
Nevertheless, let us suppose that it is a problem. Resonance is still a bad 'fix' for all sorts of reasons, like adding another resource to track, and you still have to track wand charges! Poor.
If you change wands to being x uses/day, where x depends on whether the wand is lesser, normal or greater (stealing this idea from Requielle), you are giving the players a meaningful choice: do they spend less for a wand that has fewer uses/day or do they spend more for something that will keep them in the fight, come what may?
It also avoids the need to play 'Economics Police' ("Sorry, they're all out of CLW wands, you'll have to buy something more expensive").
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
No, characters will just buy more lesser wands in your scenario.
And I'm 100% ok with them doing that. I'm afraid I don't subscribe to the idea that players are playing the game "wrong" by buying lower-level magic items and consumables.
We may just have to politely agree to disagree :-)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't want to say badwrongfun, but it certainly is playing the game against its design intentions. Explains why I'm ok of the "hard rails" resonance puts on behavior I see as "abuse".
I would like to argue with that, but I can't - because I have no idea what it means.
What are the "design intentions"? How is it that you seem to know them, and I don't? Is there a memo that never got to me? Or are they inscribed on stone tablets in a location that only the 'true believers' know about?
And what does "abuse" mean, in this context? People who are playing the game differently from you? That's a pretty strong word to use, in my view: priests molesting small children is abuse.
Buying a wand of CLW...not so much.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
@Zman0 - HL Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy" and I'm beginning to think the same about the pro-Resonance faction. You are in a thread that is specifically about removing Resonance and looking at possible house rules, and you are - to put it bluntly - thread-jacking.
I was willing to engage with you up to a point, but now I would like to suggest (politely, and utterly non-abrasively) that you find another thread to post in so that we don't derail this one any further.
@thflame - I agree entirely that there needs to be other sources of healing, as I have suggested in my original post. I'm not sure that healing up to full between fights is the answer, though. I dislike attritional play, but at the same time the 'boss-fight' needs to feel appropriately climactic, like maybe one blow going the other way is the difference in the outcome.
If PCs know that they will automatically be at full hit points for the boss fight, it would take some of the drama out of it (in my opinion).
I'd be interested to know how going unconscious if you run out of Resonance/Mojo affects the run of play - does that just encourage players to hoard their resources rather than using them?
Our group discussed turning wands into 'mini-staves', but incorporating the SEML levels of crafting - the eternal wands of late D&D3.5 bloat being the inspiration. A standard wand might have 2 uses per day, an expert 4, master 6, legendary 8... or something like that. We hadn't really done anything more than note it down as an idea to explore later, once we figure out if we are moving to 2E, or cannibalizing what good ideas we can and starting the heavily-housruled era of 1E.
I've given this some more thought now, and I think it definitely works for Staves, because you've already got the lesser/normal/greater versions statted out. Giving them 3/5/7 uses/day (or however much) is straightforward.
Wands don't have that, and I'm not sure how to house-rule it in (or even whether PF2 really needs another layer of complexity). One possible way of doing it though would be to give higher level wands more uses/day.
That way it becomes an absolute no-brainer to get the more expensive version once you can afford it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd like to chime in, if may on some issues about these new systems.
Since the point here is to spitball house rules for replacing Resonance, I'll not go into the reasons I think Resonance is stupid sounding as described and counter intuitive in execution.
On the topic of potions, I honestly don't think there is any good reason to limit their use with resonance. You craft it or buy it and you drink it. Done. If a player wants to hoard a bunch of minor healing potions instead of a single better potion, then so what? Limiting the things you can carry is the job of the bulk system.
Oils are basically the same deal, you spend money to buy the damn things and it takes action economy to use it. No need to add resonance on top.
Trinkets are about the same in my book. Consumables have no need to require an extra resource. If the effect of a given trinket is a bit too good once you remove resonance, then just up the price.
If an extra restriction is really needed for these consumables, then one idea I had is to give them a cool-down like bolstered, but to a lesser degree and with better sounding fluff.
For instance, we could say that the magical energies contained in these items interfere with those of other items with identical effects. This requires you to wait a number of rounds/minutes/etc before you can use that specific effect again. (Think of it as magical radio wave interference.) If you do try to use another item with the same effect before enough time passes you have to make an appropriate check. Success: The effect works, but only at half strength. Critical Success: The effect works as intended. Failure: The effect is nullified. Critical Failure: The effect is nullified and you take ability damage of an appropriate sort.
Wands and staves should be reworked entirely.
Scrolls should be the basis for all three types of spell-casting items. Scrolls work pretty damn well as is. You create a scroll or buy it and you use it to cast the spell, then it gets fried from using up the spell energy it contains because paper.
Wands and staves should work basically the same, except they are not consumed. They simply have a small number of uses per day. Wands can only have one spell. Staves can have multiple spells. To offset this simplification they should also be astronomically expensive. After all they are a hand held repertoire expansion.
Bulk should take care of limiting how many of these can be carried by any one person.
On a side note:
If I were going to use resonance at all, this is where I would do so. Scrolls, wands, and staves are basically just receptacles of magical knowledge. They contain minimal magic of their own, having just enough to record and maintain the spells they describe. To cast a spell from any of these items you spend resonance (which is now a measure of your ability to channel innate magic from the world around you using your willpower) equal to the level of the recorded spell. This way no matter how many wands and staves you have, you are only tracking one resource to use them.
Other equipment such as wondrous items, shields, armor, and weapons should not require resonance or any other restriction beyond uses per day and cost. As my co-GM put it, how is it a magical item if you have to put the magic into it yourself? I agree.
And just re-institute the equipment slot system to restrict how many a character can use. I have no idea what the point was in removing this system. I have played rpgs for over 30 years and have played them with many other people in both table top and video form.
One thing is sure:
"The equipment slot system in my game is too much for me to keep track of and is causing me confusion." Said no one ever.
@LordVanya - those are good suggestions, and food for thought. Thanks.
The issue I think item slots create is not complexity (I agree nobody gets confused by the PF1 system) - it's "item bloat."
After all, if you create e.g. a "wrist" slot in distinction to a "hand" slot then you suddenly need a bunch of items in that slot for players to choose from. Multiply that by the number of slots and a number of different item costs (or levels, for PF2) and you get what we have in PF1: literally more wondrous items than I can keep track of, and the good ones get lost amid the feather tokens (or what have you).
I'd much rather just have a 'common sense' rule that e.g. you can't have 2 pairs of boots, or 2 cloaks, where the GM is final arbiter in case of doubt.
The idea I had a while back was:
1. Remove Resonance from characters baseline.
2. Items can be equipped in slots, or just equipped if slotless, and their "Invested" bonus will be active.
3. Let gold be the primary limiter on consumables.
4. Give Alchemists exclusively a Resonance pool for their class features that use it, resized appropriately.
5. Everyone gets a charisma based UMD skill for Wands, Scrolls and Staves. No spell caster needs to roll UMD for these.
The hard one:
6. Items that have an RP requirement for their activated abilities will instead be usable 1/day.
7. 1/day per 4* levels you can make a UMD check to regain a single item's 1/day charge. *Adjustable based on expected number of Resonance uses outside of potions and investment per day at different levels.
I think potions would be better served by some Bolstering mechanic. It would probably require some changes to what Bolstering means because as present it is always a 24 hour effect. The only present 'choice' is that while most bolstering only blocks a certain specific 'source'. However, it does make a mention of some cases like Blindness, where Bolster blocks application from any source doing the same thing.
I think potions bolstering the ability to use the same type of potion for a time, potentially determined by the level of the potion effect. Thinking that first level items would likely start with a 1 hour bolstering, with higher level bolstering shortening the bolstering time. (My first inclination however would be to instead of drinking the potion during that time, instead of the potion having no effect, it would instead impart the minimum effect, or shortened duration if no die roll involved)
I'd also make drinking a potion while still under the active effect, might cause some sort of side effect. (sickened, or something else perhaps)
I wonder about if I view Oils as being more like potions or other activated magic items.
As far as activated type magic items, I'm not certain that resonance isn't a reasonable mechanic, so if we continued to remove it from those items I'd have to evaluate the goals. However, some form of bolstering might be workable. The issue I get is that while I find tap heal, tap heal, tap heal a bit out of genre. I however do not find someone with a wand of magic missile using such a wand, round after round targeting the big bad, out of genre. That makes making a simple rule as an across the board solution admittedly harder for me.
Staff's I'm perfectly happy being rechargeable items. It isn't a giant deal to me if they have uses/day that fully recharge each day if being used by an appropriate user, or charges that the caster is able to slowly recharge over time. I lean towards the latter as being more interesting/exiting story-wise, allowing for more situation developments and achievements. I also like the ability to spontaneously cast spells contained in it using your own spell slots. I'd be fine with some sort of cooldown on using a staff's charges. I'd offer that if using it to channel your own spell slot have it bypass the cooldown count, only having the cooldown affect use of built in charges.
Wands, I'll admit I've gotten used to them eventually getting burned out, and so I like them being a form of consumable. I don't like the original 3.x concept of a wand being able to have 50 charges that could potentially be used in five minutes time. honestly, one option I'd considered anyway pre-pathfinder 2.0 was considering putting something like a 5x day limit on the charge uses (still leaving the overall charges). You could give wands a cooldown period, similar to my suggestion for potions, but allow wands to be used prior to their cooldown, but at a cost. [if you keep overall charges, have it cost 2x charges, if instead of overall charges you define a 5x day, you could have a chance per use that that quantity gets reduced, and not abiding by the cooldown would increase the chance of burnout significantly. (DC2 flat check normally for degrade if used normally, DC5 + number of uses used that day flat check for degrade if activated while still in cool down period) Failed check reduces the number of charges per day the next (and subsequent days) Any item getting to 0/day is burnt out. Might allow non-burned out wands to perhaps allow casters to channel their own spell slots through the wand. Perhaps make it not cause burnout when used that way outside of being in the cooldown process, but activate a cooldown. Channeling a spell slot through a wand while in cooldown might instead of the normal DC to cause burnout, would perhaps only trigger the DC2 flat check or DC2 + #of spells channeled during that cooldown, for instance.
Scrolls, are probably the items most able to be mini-nova abused. You could have a cooldown for casting scrolls, but unlike the wands/staves that seem to naturally be per item. Scrolls would naturally need to be limited on the caster if we don't want a caster to be stocking up on scrolls and then casting 20 spells in a couple minutes. I am mostly inclined to allow a caster to bypass a cooldown and read another scroll once during the cooldown relatively easily. Perhaps making a successful caster check of some sort that is reasonable, likely extending the cooldown period. Doing it another time however, I start imagining wanting it to become something more akin to very difficult to even potentially impossible. I don't know what sort of impact to put on a caster to make them want to avoid, but allow them to accept to push their limit. Perhaps casters might be allowed to
I personally always like daily uses magic items. Especially with lower daily limits, they are limited enough that they probably only get to be significant issues if you allow collecting a lot of them. But they could have a cooldown associated with them if necessary to build consistency.
Personally, I think potions are the thing that most needs a different mechanic than resonance.
Also, as far as healing goes. I think that the non-magical means of healing should only bolster damage that was treated at that time. If they later in the day take additional damage, I think it is perfectly reasonable for treatment to heal those wounds, but you couldn't use excess on the next attempt to heal the pre-existing damage still there after the first treatment attempt.
@Loreguard - I certainly agree that Bolstering need not be a 24-hour thing.
On the other hand, I am not sure that giving wands both a uses/day and charges is an improvement. It just adds to the number of things that need to be kept track of.
@Loreguard - I certainly agree that Bolstering need not be a 24-hour thing.
On the other hand, I am not sure that giving wands both a uses/day and charges is an improvement. It just adds to the number of things that need to be kept track of.
Note, I'd said I'd considered placing a per/day on wands in 3.x/pathfinder 1. I suggested for those who don't like that (and potentially for P2) one could make wands semi-consumable, making them charges per day, but where per use, there is a roll that brings a chance of the number per/day being permanently dropped for the following day. Meaning individual wands can't be super-nova'd and the cost of mini-nova them is likely discarding them. Otherwise with a once per day usage an average wand might survive up to 100 days of use. If you get cornered and are forced to use the wand five rounds in a row, the probability is that it lost at least one or maybe more uses per day. If you were extremely unlucky you might have it becomes 0/day the next day (i.e. burnt it out). You would be tracking each use rolling a flat die to determine if it gets damaged in its use determined by the casting circumstances.
Tracking master charges and daily uses isn't a concern of mine, but I can understand/respect someone's concern for it. The idea of wands slowly getting burned out seems reasonable for me. It leaves the taste of them being semi-consumable such is sort of precedent in the world, so I like that. It actually makes them slightly longer life if not abused, which is kind of nice as well.
I also wish there were examples of wands that were less activation items and were instead for metamagic purposes, or to boost spell DC or range, or to hit for instance. I'd also be curious to see them be able to take the form of more variety of objects, including perhaps things such as a small dagger, in addition to the traditional ornamental stick.
I suggested for those who don't like that (and potentially for P2) one could make wands semi-consumable, making them charges per day, but where per use, there is a roll that brings a chance of the number per/day being permanently dropped for the following day. Meaning individual wands can't be super-nova'd and the cost of mini-nova them is likely discarding them. Otherwise with a once per day usage an average wand might survive up to 100 days of use. If you get cornered and are forced to use the wand five rounds in a row, the probability is that it lost at least one or maybe more uses per day. If you were extremely unlucky you might have it becomes 0/day the next day (i.e. burnt it out). You would be tracking each use rolling a flat die to determine if it gets damaged in its use determined by the casting circumstances.
That's an interesting thought. Thanks for the clarification.
I also wish there were examples of wands that were less activation items and were instead for metamagic purposes, or to boost spell DC or range, or to hit for instance. I'd also be curious to see them be able to take the form of more variety of objects, including perhaps things such as a small dagger, in addition to the traditional ornamental stick.
Very much this. One of my previous posts was on exactly this point: that if you want a spell effect that's what scrolls are for, while wands should actually be magical. I never expanded on that, but maybe it's something I should think about some more.
Idea: instead of using Bolster, put the cooldown on the wand. 10 minutes, or 1 hour, something like that. You can use a cooling-down wand again, if needed, by spending Resonance.
For potions, I don't know. I'd probably not have them use Resonance at all.
Edit: I realized that this doesn't stop people buying 20 wands of Heal 1 and spamming them anyway.
I'll keep the post so that new ideas can spark from mine, maybe.
Edit 2: The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that a Bolster-like effect could be the solution.
It should be spell-based, so if you get Heal from any consumable, you can't get another Heal again for a while unless you spend Resonance.
What about that?
Just.
Reduce.
The.
Damn.
Charges.
And.
Keep.
The.
Price.
The.
Same.
Seriously at 15 charges a wand they still might be worth crafting but you're going to chew through them like candy healing up at mid to high levels.
Simply making wands more expensive per charge only removes wands from being viable items for use by proper level adventurers and simply makes them economically viable for people once they are a high enough level that that cost isn't significant any longer. So actually that just makes encourages the use of sublevel items at higher levels. Your suggestion of reducing the number of charges to 15, probably just makes the the same price as potions, assuming you were talking about he old P1 version of wands and their prices and charges, since you mentioned the P1 number of charges for a wand.
In that sense, a long as your presume that higher level characters are supposed to have a higher priced lifestyle and higher cost items, you're going to be stuck in a situation where simple control only by Price probably isn't going to solve the concern of higher level characters just buying low level items from SamsClub.
Granted, they improved things some so that the cost of the higher level healing doesn't escalate quite so fast, so it wouldn't take quite as much of a second axis of resources to make characters have a reason to at least consider the slightly more expensive per HP, higher level items.
A completely separate idea, if one wants a completely different way to bulk stoking up and carrying of multiple wands or potions of the same thing, you could rule that having more than one wand/potion/scroll of the same thing carried by the same person has a chance to interact, causing it to have a chance of more than x potions of healing 1, being carried by the same person, without being in heavy lead lined vials, risks a chance of one potion going inert each day. Potentially allow more powerful potions less subject to such a limit, allowing a greater number before the risk occurs. If you have wands of the same spell together, without being separated by heavy lead box, each risks the chance of burning a charge.
The potential issue with the above is that it might overly punish even the first level adventurer if they may need more than one healing potion due to lacking a cleric as an example. It also creates a situation where it could impact proper treasure acquisition, since you shouldn't be able to discover a lost pack of 6 healing potions sitting in a sack, unless they are in heavy lead separators.
And also, although I'm not completely against resonance for all things, but the point of this thread was, if someone hoped to remove it, but replace it with something that would meet some of the original intents, without some of the negatives associated with the mechanic... what options are there. So my posts are trying to give options that might be viable, not arguing to just keep resonance as they end up having it. I'm accepting as a supposition for this thread that it is being removed by the OP, or at a minimum being significantly removed. [I think I mentioned as an aside, utilizing something else to prevent going nova with potions, one might reconsider if a resonance concept might be viable for the rest, but also explained options for other types of items. [and came up with a new one I hadn't thought of before, for this post]
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just chiming in again to point out that there's nothing inherently wrong with high level characters using low level items. In fact, being able to do so helps drive home the difference between high level and low level play.
It's also okay to have different concerns at different levels. At low levels the wand is a significant cost. At high levels scrolls for inter-planar travel are the source of budget concern.
Simply making wands more expensive per charge only removes wands from being viable items for use by proper level adventurers and simply makes them economically viable for people once they are a high enough level that that cost isn't significant any longer. So actually that just makes encourages the use of sublevel items at higher levels. Your suggestion of reducing the number of charges to 15, probably just makes the the same price as potions, assuming you were talking about he old P1 version of wands and their prices and charges, since you mentioned the P1 number of charges for a wand.
Which doesn't matter when placed as treasure, only when crafting.
How about this? Wands cost 5 times as much, require the Invest an Item action before use, and don't have charges. Instead they merely cost one Resonance point per use.
Examples:
A Wand of Lesser Healing costs 135 gold and lets you spend 1 Resonance point to cast Heal as if you'd spent a level 1 spell slot.
A Wand of Moderate Healing costs 360 gold and lets you spend 1 Resonance point to cast Heal as if you'd spent a level 2 spell slot.
A Wand of Greater Healing costs 900 gold and lets you spend 1 Resonance point to cast Heal as if you'd spent a level 3 spell slot.
A Wand of Critical Healing costs 2025 gold and lets you spend 1 Resonance point to cast Heal as if you'd spent a level 4 spell slot.
With this change, one Moderate wand is clearly better than having two Lesser wands. Players will want to get better wands, just as they'll want to get better weapons and armour. It removes the long-term drawback of losing your magic item, while ensuring that characters cannot 'spam' Cure Light Wounds between every battle.