About Alkenstar and Mana Wastes

[Reidenblackx]

Hello Everyone. So my group is 3 - 4 sessions away from finishing AV and we started discussing our next campaing.

This quickly leaned to start a homebrew campaing on Alkenstar. Everyone really likes the lore and setting and me ( DM ) and my friend who is running AV right now are discussing the best way to play the lore of the zone. He also wants the challenge of playing a wizard.

So we want to use the bronze time / mana surge rules over the books of secrets of magic but we have some things im not sure how to rule.

First.. Magic items... so magic items and potions work on Smoke Side ( the zone of the city with no magic ) ?? or you need a bronzetime surge zone for them to work ?? Also things like alchemist reagents.

Second, things like Exemplar Spark / paladin lay on hands / kineticist impulses .. do they have power there ?? or its the same ?? even in surges, they need to do the checks every time they use a "magic" ability ??

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

There are no clear rules for that. The Alkenstar Outlaws AP assumes that you can cast in the city, but get issues outside of it.
Our DM used wellspring magic outside the city, but only for spells consuming a spellslot, everything else was fine unless there was a dead mana zone. Which should be used very sparingly, casters without casting are quite sad.