Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Man, if you follow the DMG magic wands have some serious juice (never mind recharging). Curious how many tone down the number of charges found wands have? Also, the DMG mentions wands are pretty delicate and fragile, so I'd make them save vs. area of effect spells, cave ins etc. but otherwise, how often do you typically check (for instance, if an MU is fighting in melee and a sword is swung at him, or if an arrow gets shot at the little robed fellow, do you check to see if the sword or arrow don't hit the wand or that the MU might drop it? I wonder if thats not the intention of that statement (so that wands over-used tend to break when MUs push their luck). On the one hand, I like the idea of wands not running out and being just bad ass, on the other hand as a DM they can really make mince meat of otherwise bad ass challenges. Also curious how wands in 1E differ from those in 0E.

Thanks

I never had any game balance issues with wands. They cast at what, 6th level, for the most part? Your typical 50% magic resistance opponent gets 11-6=5, x5 =25, so 75% chance to ignore a wand attack.

I had a pertinent discussion with Gary once, concerning the potency and proliferation of magic items in AD&D, and admitted to him that I sometimes replace magical loot with monetary treasure when running the classic modules..

He disagreed; he described PC's magic items, in games he ran, as "ephemeral". Whether by breakage (item saving throws, always), theft, or running out of juice, he'd see to it that PCs could not "make a career" out of a particular magic item. That changed my perspective somewhat.

No, I don't think wands are a problem. AD&D without some bling is .. I don't know .. just a fight club?

TRP wrote:No, I don't think wands are a problem. AD&D without some bling is .. I don't know .. just a fight club?

Very true. Still I remember that online game (you also played in) when P&Ps Yellow Wizbo MU found a wand of Lightning and proceded to blow the living shit out of every fucking thing (I recall him ricocheting a bolt across the path of a dragon doing astronomical damage.

Don't get me wrong, as a player I love wands, as a DM I love them too, and it wouldn't be the same game without them (players tend to die fast enough regardless). Still, if a PC walked into say one of the classic TSR mid-level modules (espl. if it was the first run) it might take some of the fun out of it. Now when it comes to home made dungeons, or middle of the road published ones, its usually great fun. Basically just tends to up the number and power of monsters the party can take on. Once that hand phaser is drained, you just stash it and keep going.

Sure, a wand of lighing bolts will get you through many a tough fight, and fortunately, D&D isn't a wargame, and a lighting bolt will do damned little good when it comes time to negotiate a situation where there's nothing to fight.

TRP wrote:Sure, a wand of lighing bolts will get you through many a tough fight, and fortunately, D&D isn't a wargame, and a lighting bolt will do damned little good when it comes time to negotiate a situation where there's nothing to fight.

Or falling in a trap.

Yeah, in the interest of "balance" I've toned the wands in my OD&D game down to d100 charges when found. (2d100 for staves.)

The only thing I do different from the books is I never let the player know how many charges their items have. They use them until they sputter out.

If they made the item they would know the charges, and by careful record keeping could keep track, but I have never actually had a PC make anything.

Cheers!

MJW

AxeMental wrote:Still I remember that online game (you also played in) when P&Ps Yellow Wizbo MU found a wand of Lightning and proceded to blow the living shit out of every fucking thing (I recall him ricocheting a bolt across the path of a dragon doing astronomical damage.

That sounds pretty damn cool.

Wands have charges, and not enough to use on every group of goblins you run into, so ... I'm cool with them.

outlander78 wrote:

AxeMental wrote:Still I remember that online game (you also played in) when P&Ps Yellow Wizbo MU found a wand of Lightning and proceded to blow the living shit out of every fucking thing (I recall him ricocheting a bolt across the path of a dragon doing astronomical damage.

That sounds pretty damn cool.

Wands have charges, and not enough to use on every group of goblins you run into, so ... I'm cool with them.

True, but he had enough (though it didn't save the group, we still had a good number of deaths as I recall. I can't remember if he brought that wand into the game or found it in the dungeon. I like the above mentioned idea where there's no way to detect the number of charges left. May start doing that (presently we allow PCs to hire a high level wizard to determine this).