I recently started a thread over in PF2 Homebrew on the idea of porting PF1-style 50-charge wands to PF2. The general consensus, which I have come to agree with, is that it was not one of my better ideas. However, in the course of conversation I hit on something that I though might be better. Before I get into the details, a little preamble about the perceived issue I am attempting to address: Both PF1 and PF2 have their near-mandatory post-combat procedures, which are different but both can be kinda annoying in their own ways IME and IMO.
PF1's version is the "happy stick dance": Tapping away with a wand of CLW (or occasionally infernal healing) after each fight. This is fine at lower levels, but it gradually gets more ridiculous as levels and hit point totals rise, and the number of wand activations balloons, which is not a problem mechanically but feels kinda weird. Higher-level wands would be better for this, but unfortunately the way costs scale make them much worse mechanically. The cost per hp restored is massively higher. But if you made them massively cheaper (apart from potentially breaking non-healing wands) you risk inverting the problem - everybody just buys whichever level of wand is now the most efficient.
TLDR: The "happy stick dance" is kinda annoying.
So how does making wands rechargeable help? It allows higher-level wands to have a higher up-front cost, keeping them out of the hands of lower-level parties, while keeping the cost per hp around the same. This is an idea I have had before, but I could never figure out the specifics before - now I think I might have. What I am currently thinking is this:
Chargeable wands are still "spells in a stick" and work in exactly the same way when activated. But a fully charged wand only has 30 charges, and cost more upfront, but obviously it is possible to add charges to them. And the recharge cost is considerably less than the upfront cost. Restoring any number of charges takes two hours (you can do four wands per day if you have nothing better to do).
Initially I was thinking that the upfront cost should double the standard wand, but 42k for a level-4 spell feels like a tough ask even if it works out well in the long term. Maybe 500x the spell level, so costs would range from a nice round 1000 gp for CLW to 2200 for CCW (assuming minimum caster levels). That seems pretty reasonable to me.
The cost to add charges would also be linear with spell level rather than quadratic. Noodling around in Excel, SL*15 gives the same cost per hp as a standard wand for CLW (about 2.7 gp) falling to 2.4 for the higher level wands - that feels about right to me (although that's ignoring the upfront cost of the wand, of course).
The other question is who can add charges. At a minimum, you'd need the spell on your spell list and known/available to cast, and a CL equal to the wand. It feels like it should be a bit more restricted than that, but restricting it to people with Craft Wand seems a bit too restricted.
Making them in the first place does require Craft Wand, of course. And if you have that feat, you can also convert a standard wand into a Rechargeable wand by sacrificing 20 charges and paying the difference in price.
So what do you think? Any flaws with my cunning plan that I have missed? What do you think about the "who can charge" question? Any ideas what to call now to contrast them with these?
In creating it, I thought of something I meant to say here: Although I have concentrated on spells which restore HP in the post, I was not intending to limit Chargeable Wands to those spells only. I don't think there are any spells that would be particularly broken under this paradigm, that would not be already with normal wands. Unless you folks can think of one?
On the subject of a retronym for normal PF1 wands, how about "battery wands"?
The cost to add charges would also be linear with spell level rather than quadratic
This is a bad idea.
You're analyzing this with the presumption that action economy doesn't matter. That will usually be true for out-of-combat healing, where the difference between 5 rounds and 20 rounds to heal up the party will rarely matter. However, this analysis is completely inappropriate for spells that see use in combat where action economy matters. A 3rd level buff spell is way more than 3 times better than a 1st level buff spell, and a lot of the time you will only have one round to prebuff. If balance your wand pricing around CCW, you're going to end up with overpowered Wands of Haste.
Part of what makes CCW so bad is that it was designed around being a combat spell. You're getting less overall healing because you can do it in one round, which would actually be very meaningful if this were a good combat spell. But as 4th level spells go, there are just better options. It's usable, it can absolutely save a PC's life, but it's more of an emergency option if you have to use it rather than something that gives good value. But if you start buffing it, it might become a more tenable combat option. Once action economy enters the picture, comparing it against CLW is completely inappropriate.
Now, on the other hand there is some truth to the fact that high-level wands are overpriced. Wands of CCW are bad not just because CCW is an understatted spell for 4th level, but also because 4th level wands are overpriced for what they offer. They aren't unusable, but there are better uses of your wealth in most cases. When looking at a wand of CCW, we are looking at the intersection of two underpowered things.
I don't think there's a great solution here. CCW is just not designed as an out-of-combat option, and buffing it on the basis of making it good as an out-of-combat option risks breaking other parts of the game balance to force something to fulfill a niche it was never designed for. Yes, it's kinda silly to be spending 5 minutes poking someone with a wand and then pulling a new wand out of the bag, but if you make the healing sufficiently fast it will start being used in combat and then it needs to be balanced according.
The cost to add charges would also be linear with spell level rather than quadratic
This is a bad idea.
Possibly, but not because I am doing this....
Dasrak wrote:
You're analyzing this with the presumption that action economy doesn't matter.
I am really not. Making wands of CSW and CCW more usable both in and out of combat is very much the goal.
At the moment IME, one of two things happen if they find one: Either, it is immediately added to the "to sell" list with all the other vender trash, and liquidated at the earliest opportunity. Or, someone will say "I'll take it, we might need it in an emergency" and then never use it.
Dasrak wrote:
If balance your wand pricing around CCW, you're going to end up with overpowered Wands of Haste.
IME haste is just that good that most casters who can take it, will take it. And if you cast it yourself it will likely affect more targets and last longer.
And you typically only need to cast it once per fight, so even if you are using a wand, it will take a very long time before you start to see any savings - you could buy a normal wand for less up front and then be good for 50 encounters. That is at least a quarter of the campaign (more like half for many campaigns) before you even break even. Obviously, if you do shell out for a second conventional wand, then you will have spent more. But you will also be at a level where 45 gp instead of 225 gp per charge is nice but not earth shattering. And when you had to pay out money matters as much as the total spent at the end of the campaign.
There may be spells which break this idea, but haste does not appear to be one of them.
I am not 100% sure that I am understanding your intentions or desires. For me, it seems most logical to just create a magic item to not just recharge wands, but transfer charges. While, thematically having a 'battery wand' makes sense, mechanics-wise, it probably would be a rod (thus require Craft Rod, but you can always let them find or buy one).
You just need to come up with a workable, relatively simple mechanic for moving charges. Obviously you can get as complicated or detailed as you wish. If I were to try and whole-cloth something up quickly on the fly (and again, apologies if this is way off what you're looking for):
Space Saver:
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It would likely be a rod ('Battery Rod' or 'Charge Rod' or 'Pizza Lord's Preeminent Rod of Power Manipulation'. For this purpose, lets go with 'battery rod', because then I can make a cursed version called 'Assault and Battery Rod' that animates and attacks the user, possibly burning stored charges to create mishap effects, but that's neither here nor there.)
Battery Rod – (magic school, CL, command word) This magical rod can hold up to fifty spell levels of charges which can be drawn from wands. The user can touch the rod to a wand and draw one charge from it, to add a number of charges to the battery rod equal to the spell level contained in the rod. They can touch the battery rod to another wand and, with a second command word, transfer a number of stored charges from the rod equal to the spell level in the target wand to add one charge to the wand. If there are not enough stored charges to equal the wand's spell level, nothing happens. If this would take a wand over its maximum charges roll for mishap and those excess charges are lost. The user must know the command word or other activation for a wand they are drawing from or transferring to, otherwise they must make a Use Magic Device check as though activating blindly. The battery rod can transfer a total of 50 spell charges before it crumbles.
So, the premise here, is that you can draw charges from a wand that you are unlikely to use, like cure critical wounds and move them into a wand of cure light wounds. Using the rod on the wand of cure critical wounds would net four spell charges (and reduce that wand's charges by one. Then, using the battery rod on a wand of cure light wounds would move one stored charge (since cure light wounds is 1st-level) from the rod to the wand (as long it was below max), leaving three spell charges in the battery rod, which could either continue to be added to the CLW wand over following rounds if it's below max (one charge at a time), or added to another wand. The battery rod would be able to absorb 46 more charges before crumbling. Or you could take the four charges from the wand of cure critical wounds and put two into a wand of cure moderate wounds for one Cure Moderate Wounds charge (since it's a 2nd-level spell) and have two left over or move them into a 4th-level spell wand, which will use all for stored spell charges from the wand to add one charge to that.
The requirement to know the command words on the affected wands is to prevent the rod from draining enemy wands, it can be done, of course, if you know their command words, possibly because their user said them while attacking you, or you can activate blindly to do so.)
At least that's what I've considered as a possible option. Say you found a 1st-level wand of ki arrow with five charges or something, you could move them to your wand of magic missiles.
That's the easy stuff. That's just me quick, brainstorming. There's problems and such that would need to be addressed, caster level of the wand most especially.
1. Wands with costly ingredients. You don't want them taking base charges from a wand and adding charges to another wand that would have cost more per charge because of components.
2. Caster level of the wand. A wand of magic missile (CL 1) and a wand of magic missile (CL 5) work very different. It would be overpowered to move charges from the one to the other.
3. 0-level wands exist, and would be half a charge, which can get complicated. But easily fixed if you say it pulls two charges from 0-level wands to add one stored charge.
For Issue #1, you could just require components of value equal to the charge of the wand with the additional cost. ie. charging a wand of bless water could require 5 pounds of powdered silver worth 25 gp or just 25 gp worth of arcane/divine components.
For Issue #2, you could just say it only charges wands that are baseline CL for their spell (that's the easiest way, just say that's how it works). It can still draw charges from a wand with a higher base CL than needed for the stored spell, but those don't transfer.
Also, maybe you don't want a straight one-to-one transfer. You could add a gold piece cost (for magical components) to transfer, say 1 gp x spell charge moved or 10 gp x spell charges expended when charging a wand. Because you also don't just want them taking four charges from low, cheap wands and adding one to a 4th-level wand. Basically, a 1st-level (CL 1) charge is worth 15 gp, while a 4th-level wand's charge is worth 420 gp, so giving up four 1st-level charges (60 gp) to add one 4th would be very careless and abuseable.
So really, if you're in charge of things, you can personally prevent the players from doing this just by telling them not to be [whatevers] or you can come up with your own limitations or consequences. Like, requiring checks or having a chance to just blow up or fail depending on the spell level of the wand (losing the charges). A 1st-level wand is easy to charge (low risk), a 3rd-level harder. A 4th-level one more so.
You could also lower the battery rod's storage, to 30 or 15 or 10, meaning they'd have to purchase or craft a new one, and that could mitigate some attempts at 'merchandising' or 'profiteering' through loopholes, since they'd have to factor a new rod into their plans (I am not bothering to do the math on profitability margins).
Or you could lower the stored charges that are gained. You could just make it one stored charge per charge drawn from a wand. So drawing 4 charges from a 1st-level wand gives the same stored charge to the rod as taking four from a 4th-level wand. Or you could make it half per wand spell level (in which case only 4th-level wands would give two, unless you said 'rounded up', in which case a 3rd-level wand would, but again, make sure 0-level wands still lose two for one stored charge).
It's not polished or perfect, just a thought exercise I was working through.
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Could give your party one with 10 or 15 charge capacity remaining and see what they do. If they immediately try and abuse it, start adding the mitigators before putting a new one in play..
I am really not. Making wands of CSW and CCW more usable both in and out of combat is very much the goal.
As I mentioned, this problem is an intersection of both CCW and wands being underpowered. A big part of the problem is CCW itself, not just that wands are overpriced.
You could literally double the healing of the CCW spell without making it imbalanced. It would end up as an appropriate mid-point between CLW at 1st and Heal at 6th. But doing this would drastically alter the game balance at mid-level play. A lot of mid-level beatstick monsters just would have no answer to that kind of healing that can utterly shut down their damage output.
glass wrote:
IME haste is just that good that most casters who can take it, will take it. And if you cast it yourself it will likely affect more targets and last longer.
CL 5 is already letting you target 5 creatures for 5 rounds, which is usually enough for a typical party to last an entire combat encounter. Sure, you can cast it yourself and if you're a Sorcerer with spontaneous casting you probably will. But for a prepared caster like a Wizard this is just win-win; he can prepare all the other utility spells he wants and can still use Haste every single encounter.
The up-front charge is significant, yes, but if the party pools together then this is affordable by 5th level and having such cheap Haste at 5th level is broken even if the party had to pool together a lot of their collective wealth to do it.
I am not 100% sure that I am understanding your intentions or desires. For me, it seems most logical to just create a magic item to not just recharge wands, but transfer charges.
I want to create a new type of wand which works mostly like existing wands, except that it is more cost effective for spells you might want to cast a lot of (like cures and direct attack spells), especially at higher levels. Thereby making wands of CCW and wands of fireball a lot more useful and viable.
Preferably while leaving standard wands with the niche of "spells you want to cast a bunch of time over the course of the campaign, but not usually a bunch of times per encounter". Like haste
Pizza Lord wrote:
While, thematically having a 'battery wand' makes sense, mechanics-wise, it probably would be a rod (thus require Craft Rod, but you can always let them find or buy one).
Interesting idea, albeit different from what I was going for. One concern, which you touch on yourself, is that what a charge represents in terms of costs is is highly variable, even at the same spell level. My other concern is in the opposite direction: If you do put enough restrictions on it to avoid abuses, is there enough utility left?
Dasrak wrote:
glass wrote:
I am really not. Making wands of CSW and CCW more usable both in and out of combat is very much the goal.
As I mentioned, this problem is an intersection of both CCW and wands being underpowered. A big part of the problem is CCW itself, not just that wands are overpriced.
CCW is not a great spell, but in the CotCT game I am playing in, the witch casts it from spell slots fairly often. To the best of my knowledge, she has never cast it from a wand, despite having carried one around for the last several levels.
If it was economic to use it, she could use the wand for OoC healing, and she'd be more likely to use it in combat too.
Dasrak wrote:
glass wrote:
IME haste is just that good that most casters who can take it, will take it. And if you cast it yourself it will likely affect more targets and last longer.
CL 5 is already letting you target 5 creatures for 5 rounds, which is usually enough for a typical party to last an entire combat encounter.
Maybe, but it's tight. Five targets is not enough for every party, and those five rounds will run out occasionally so you have to track them every time. Whereas at full CL you will quickly reach the point where the former is a non-issue, and eventually not have to worry about the latter either.
Dasrak wrote:
The up-front charge is significant, yes, but if the party pools together then this is affordable by 5th level
If they can pool their wealth to buy a chargeable wand of haste at 5th level, they can pool their wealth to buy a standard wand of haste at 5th level. And have 750 gp left over.
Dasrak wrote:
and having such cheap Haste at 5th level is broken
But it not cheap haste at 5th level, it's more expensive haste at 5th level in exchange for cheaper haste at maybe tenth level, by which point the cost is pretty trivial either way.
That's why I say that getting a chargeable wand of haste is not broken - arguably, it's not even good!
I am not 100% sure that I am understanding your intentions or desires. For me, it seems most logical to just create a magic item to not just recharge wands, but transfer charges.
I want to create a new type of wand which works mostly like existing wands, except that it is more cost effective for spells you might want to cast a lot of (like cures and direct attack spells), especially at higher levels. Thereby making wands of CCW and wands of fireball a lot more useful and viable.
It kind of sounds like you want a magic staff. Like a staff of curing. Certainly they're more expensive, but you can put as many spells as you wish on it (or less to keep it cheaper), it functions at user CL, and you can recharge it. If you're GM allows custom building, just make one with cure light wounds and then a bigger spell, like cure serious or cure critical for emergency combat use (or higher charge cost to cut costs). Other than the higher level cost for the creation feat, you might be trying to rebuild the wheel (or usurp what magical staves are intended to do, which is something we're not supposed to allow other feats to do, invalidate other ones. Like making a 'wondrous item' that is basically a magic ring or staff without needing to take Craft Staff or Forge Ring.
[ Not that this has much to do with the OP, but... ]
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Back in 2016ish an audience member asked James Jacobs on A Panel Forum what little aspect of gaming bugged him, got on his nerves, made him wish he could change something -- a little pet peeve rather than a large, wholesale issue.
He said he would eradicate the Happy Stick (and that he does not allow them in his Homegames) because they have no analogue -- even close -- to fantasy fiction or Swords-and-Sorcery tradition and, on top of that, are pretty stupid in-game: "Just tap me with the Happy Stick five times and I'm ready to go!" kinda bull $h*I+!
As an audience member, listening to the panelists in the Forum and anticipation my turn to ask the Designers a question, I paused to think about his answer.
And I agreed wholeheartedly!
Starting in my Homegame The.Very.Next.Session I eliminated ALL happy Sticks (I had *Never* allowed Stupid-Crap-Bag-Infernal-Healing!!!!) and made a 'Staff of Healing' a little easier for my group to get. So now at early and mid Levels Potions and such are coveted by the PCs and starting around 9th or 10th or so the PCs get a Staff.
.... I would create an exception of course, in my game, if the group only had maybe three PCs and there's no Healer. You know, if the group is a Fighter a Sorcerer and a Monk -- I ought to make sure they have a Happy Stick, silly as those are.
It kind of sounds like you want a magic staff. Like a staff of curing.
I don't know about a staff of curing, but I have the staff of healing; it right there in the CRB (and on AoN). Clearly, I do not see that as sufficient.
Pizza Lord wrote:
Certainly they're more expensive
Which is the issue. Staves are high-level items, and they also tend to be one-per-character items. Which is very appropriate for them, but leaves a gap.
Also, staves are capped at ten charges IIRC.
Pizza Lord wrote:
Other than the higher level cost for the creation feat, you might be trying to rebuild the wheel (or usurp what magical staves are intended to do, which is something we're not supposed to allow other feats to do, invalidate other ones. Like making a 'wondrous item' that is basically a magic ring or staff without needing to take Craft Staff or Forge Ring.
My proposal functions exactly like a normal wand, except that the GP costs over time are different. The use cases and practicalities are much more like a wand than a staff. I am confident that Craft Wand is the correct feat.
That said, I would not be opposed to some extra requirement to make them, if we can think of something that would help balance them but not be too onerous.
W E Ray wrote:
Starting in my Homegame The.Very.Next.Session I eliminated ALL happy Sticks (I had *Never* allowed Stupid-Crap-Bag-Infernal-Healing!!!!) and made a 'Staff of Healing' a little easier for my group to get. So now at early and mid Levels Potions and such are coveted by the PCs and starting around 9th or 10th or so the PCs get a Staff.
All I can say is that it seems like a good job for both of us that I was not at your table. Playing under that house rule would be bad enough, but apparently having it sprung on me mid-campaign with no warning or prior discussion? Just no. EDIT: No other fantasy media has characters downing half a dozen healing potions after each fight either - I don't get how that is better than the wand.
Starting in my Homegame The.Very.Next.Session I eliminated ALL happy Sticks (I had *Never* allowed Stupid-Crap-Bag-Infernal-Healing!!!!) and made a 'Staff of Healing' a little easier for my group to get. So now at early and mid Levels Potions and such are coveted by the PCs and starting around 9th or 10th or so the PCs get a Staff.
When you and James Jacobs say that you eliminate "Happy Sticks," are you saying that you eliminate wands completely, or that you somehow eliminate the way wands can be used repeatedly outside of combat for cheap healing/buffing?
Just the Happy Stick. The other Wands (that show up in my game) are fine, don't seem to be silly or lame.
And you'll notice at the end of my post I did allow for an exception -- I mean, if the group really needs something like that just to survive, of course. I mean, sometimes when my buddy and I are just doing a one-shot together without the group and there's only one PC for the DM to worry about, we'll give that PC a little Lantern Archon or something with a Happy Stick just to keep the game session going.
But in general, NO Happy Sticks!
....
In the game I was DMing at the time of that Convention years ago, it was a large Group of PCs that included a Life Oracle as well as a Druid and Paladin; they were already 8th or 9th Level.
In reply to the comment "Glass" made earlier -- I would never have done something so arbitrary like that if it would've really caused a problem.
