Making Wands Useful Again

[ckdragons]

Has anyone come up with a house rule that makes wands damaging spells more useful in combat again? It used to be a cool item to find, but the DC rules as they are, wands with damaging spells are not really effective in combat because of their low DCs.

[Cavall]

There are a few archetypes and abilities that use higher DC for item usage.

So someone heard you and filled the need.

Bard magician, magus wand mastery...

And Wand and wizard are best friends...staff like wand could be for you.

You got options

[blahpers]

It looks like Paizo valued this ability very highly, as the only means I know of that isn't a house rule is Staff-Like Wand, which requires you to be an 11th-level wizard with Craft Staff. (Edit: Hey, Cavall found a couple more options!)

A cursory search for published house rules on d20pfsrd.com turned up Wand Casting, which kicks in at fifth level but requires you to burn a spell slot each time. Nice thing is that it doesn't use up a charge on the wand, so it sort of turns wands into pages of spell knowledge that work for both prepared and spontaneous casters. With UMD, you could probably break it wide open.

[River of Sticks]

If you have Mythic options available, most paths get an "Enhance Magical Item" path ability early on to add half of your tier to the CL of spell trigger/completion items. EDIT: Just realized you were looking for DC improvements. Oops.

[avr]

Some damaging spells use attack rolls rather than saves, scorching ray being the obvious one. Rogues have been usng these for a while now.

The house rules I've seen generally revolve around making wands entirely different things, like devices which give bonuses to casting certain classes of spells. Not so much making them better at storing 50 fireballs.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I miss the 2e wands, many of which did not just blow things up or buff everything in the party. Some were just fun.

[Mark Hoover 330]

An expensive wand at low level might be a Wand of Extended Acid Splash. Using a flask of acid you give Acid Splash a 1 round duration. Using the alchemical power component Sulfur you add +1 damage. Finally, using Extend Spell, you double the 1 round duration.

This is a CL 1/Level 1 spell so baseline 750 GP, then you have to add another 500 GP for the Acid Flasks and finally another 25 GP for the Sulfur for a final cost of 1275 GP; more expensive than a CL1/Level 1 wand, less than a CL3/Level 2 wand (like Scorching Ray).

When used each charge fires a blob of acid as a 30' Ranged Touch attack dealing 1d3 +1 Acid damage. This damage injures the victim immediately, then continues to affect them for another 2 rounds for a total avg damage over 3 rounds of 9 damage/charge.

Compare that to the typical CL1/Level 1 wand which deals 3.5 energy damage (or an unerring 3.5 Force damage for Magic Missile)/charge and this wand is exactly what it seems; slightly more damaging/charge than any Cl1/Level 1 wand, slightly less so/charge than a CL3/Level 2 wand such as Acid Arrow which, over 2 rounds would deal an average of 10 damage with longer range.

TL/DR; the bottom line is if you want wands to deal damage, pick spells that target single foes with a Ranged Touch attack or look into some of the classes/abilities mentioned above.

[Java Man]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

I miss the 2e wands, many of which did not just blow things up or buff everything in the party. Some were just fun.

Many of those were relabelled as rods.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Java Man wrote:

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

I miss the 2e wands, many of which did not just blow things up or buff everything in the party. Some were just fun.

Many of those were relabelled as rods.

That's true. I need to go through my 2e Magic Item Compendiums and see what wasn't and what would be fun to insert into my game.