What's the point of wands? Does anyone actually use them? Furthermore, does anyone actually track their charges?
I can understand wanting to be prepared, but I feel like wands are essentially just multiple use magic "grenades" and that feels really shitty to me. Obviously this is a D&D issue, I can't really think of examples from other systems and I never played M:tA.
TL;DR I don't really sweat my players on spell slots or uses (we use a homebrew mana system with poker chips anyway). Should I even bother giving them wands as loot?
Jaxson Hernandez
dumpin some mana hungry sluts
Gabriel Jones
would it just sap fun from your games? if yes, don't use them
Elijah King
OP, if you want a cheesecake shitscribble thread, just say it directly. No point tying yourself in knots trying to justify it with a convoluted question
Tyler Carter
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David Lopez
I'm pretty new to the rpg scene, I've played but never DM'd. My players know 3.PF pretty decently but I'm just trying to cut down on what I think is some superfluous material.
Chase Gray
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Ryan Mitchell
Pretty handy for UMD gifted classes like the Bard and Rogue. I think just about every group should have at least a cure x wounds wand and a fly wand.
Brandon Robinson
Just use a fucking booru if you want reposts of reposts of weebshit sluts.
Isaac King
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Tyler Garcia
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Christopher Stewart
>I don't really sweat my players on spell slots or uses (we use a homebrew mana system with poker chips anyway). Should I even bother giving them wands as loot?
If you're not keeping track of spell slots then yeah, wands/staves are only useful to classes without magic. (No point in playing one though in your game).
This seems pretty obvious though, why make a thread about it?
Wyatt Sanchez
Just trying to get some input from more experienced players.
Why, is there a monopoly on threads during summer? You have to let virt and the "elf slave wat do" posters have their due?
Isaac Davis
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Evan Sanchez
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Tyler James
The point of wands is letting people churn out spells constantly. You're already doing that.
Just replace each wand you would hand out with two or three (different) scrolls.
Adrian Johnson
>Not banning Fly in your games outright.
Leo Sullivan
>(No point in playing one though in your game).
What do you mean by this? I assume martial characters can still be useful, even with a homebrew mana system.
Christopher Jackson
>Banning my favorite spell
Get out.
Jackson Flores
Why? There are so many spells that unbalance the game that Fly doesn't even register.
Landon Foster
Because Fly is available far earlier and far easier than most of those game-breaker and turns the entire session into retarded DBZ with swords animu crap.
Nathaniel Gray
Oh. You're one of THOSE people.
Got it.
Cooper Mitchell
Consumable magic items fall under the heading of "solves a problem that's usually glossed over." The point of a wand is to enable you to expend "stuff" resources to either access a spell when you're out of spell resources or to access a spell that you either don't know or don't have time/desire/ability to prepare.
Since most "modern" games take rest times for granted, don't bother with challenges that aren't already solvable by a character at the table, and scale the type/intensity or encounters the group resources, consumable wands as they were known aren't terribly useful anymore and that's okay.
Personally, I like where 5e went with this moving the concept of consumable magic over to scolls and letting wands be durable or self-replenishing items that let non-casters have access to an existing spell (Wand of Polymorph,) cast a unique spell-like effect (Wand of Secrets) or provide pure casters with an "enchanted weapon" slot (Wand of the War Mage +x.)
Jaxson Sullivan
Is there a specific term for these kind of clothes where it looks like you can just kind of peel them off from the boobs
Justin Sullivan
5E does pretty much EVERYTHING better. But yeah, self-replenishing items are infinitely better than charge-based consumables that can allow the party to stockpile hundreds of spells with hardly weight sacrifice or casting investment.
I suppose you could do the same thing with the self-replenishing ones too though, depending on the GM handles attunement slots.
Luis Cruz
Wand are for Out of Combat healing or minor utility/buffing since healing in combat is a waste of time, and it's better to not waste slots on the little stuff if you can help it.
>turns the entire session into retarded DBZ with swords animu crap. Please user, that would imply Martial getting nice things and being useful instead of the Wizard just flying up to nuke/charm/anti magic/drop summons/polymorph/drown in mud or quicksand/teleport away/ otherwise magic the enemy from relative safety
Christopher Peterson
Yeah, well, martials love picking up magic items with Fly and zipping around like superheroes too. It's not quite as broken as Wizards, but it still sorta shits on the feel and atmosphere of the game.
Dylan Green
for you
Anthony Jenkins
I like charge based items that act as augmentations to your existing magic pool, so they're both useful and you don't have problems with stockpiling so much.
David Brooks
Personally as someone who grew up with all kinds of wizardry and magic stuff in my imaginative mind as a kid; I always found it weird that magic in DnD is just done with hands and wands are a secondary, alternate option.
I never liked this. Instead; >Spells require either a fetish or an incantation to be cast >Wands are useful for ranged magic and subtle, intricate work. >Staves are more AoE based and better at combat magic and shields >Magic rings are useful for aura-bearing or constant effects, the circular nature of the ring is symbolic power to the aura's effect >Magic necklaces are useful for things involving the caster only >Magic clothes are useful for things related to the clothing's primary job or purpose. (boots make you travel faster, cloaks hide you, scarves keep you warm in a harsh blizzard, etc.) >Geometric shapes are useful for divination spells. Orbs for the present, Cubes for the past, and Pyramids for the future
This is a basic list of ideas for this magic concept, involving various magic foci and their uses.
Naturally as stated above you NEED these to cast spells, but can still cast spells if you incant them from a spellbook, scroll, or on anything engraved with it.
It's a bit like Harry Potter on crack, and I will assert that it is 99% better then traditional DnD Vancian magic.
Nicholas Nguyen
I mean. I can't really rebuff that. I know when I play a fighter or a Rogue I do whatever I can to get things like a flying cape.
I mean. It's so much fun. It's really satisfying to have a character soar high in the sky, and diving like an eagle to swoop down from the sky and impale someone on a sword.
Or just fly away from tougher enemies and shoot them from a distance.
Mostly the Eagle thing though.
Jaxon Morales
Harry Potter might be the only magic system worse than most D&D editions.
Also 5e uses focii by default.
Christian Sanders
This is horrifyingly impractical. I can't imagine that she's not cold, it doesn't look too comfortable, and it would only become a tangled mess in a fight.
Even Vindictus, which literally had the resident Squishy Mage just use whatever the fuck she wanted to because "why bother changing out of my nightie when you're just gonna Mana Shield forever", drew the line somewhere.
Ryan Martin
Bullshit. Show me the text and passage.
No way the new edition throws away many years of tradition to force Wizards to lug wands around.
Liam Kelly
Pretty much every spell has a spell focus. It doesn't have to be a wand. Jesus.
Henry Taylor
You must hate fantasy. Do you complain too when Rand and the Asha'man start blowing shit up too?
Blake Perry
I prefer wants as non consumable spell foci. Fighters buy better swords, casters buy better wands. Fighters chose between one or two handed weapons, casters chose between wands and staffs. Things like Orbs and Books are "Offhand" implements.
Unarmed casting is possible, but it's less effective.
Easton Morgan
It's called fashion, look it up sometime.
Charles Barnes
>fashion
more like BDSM fantasy
Elijah Gutierrez
Wands are amazing. Be creative
Michael White
Wands, in my setting at least, are the magic equivalent of daggers. Easy to conceal and quick to draw, and easily best only having your bare fists to use.
Gabriel Phillips
>Whats the point of wands when I remove the point of wands?
Jaxon Richardson
>not being able to adjust to players getting new abilities
Levi Hill
Wands allow spam. They also allow spam of spells you don't know.
Jonathan Johnson
>What's the point of wands? Does anyone actually use them? Sorry but if you don't see the utility of being able to cast spells without using slots you're kind of dumb.
Charles Smith
>mana hungry sluts I don't know, she looks like she has a pretty bountiful mana pool
Christian Morales
Take a load of this guy.
Martials can be martials all day. The only thing that restrains(somewhat) casters is the slot/mana limit. While they have spells left, casters are objectively stronger than martials, the only downside is they run out. If you give them more mana than they can use, there's no point in playing a martial class at all. You're just gimping yourself.
Hunter Morales
Just stop playing D&D, Jesus Christ it's really that fucking simple.
Ryder Mitchell
>not allowing maritals to use mana to make kickass mundane attacks >not giving martials equal access to mana You dun goofed. no reason to go through all the trouble of homebrewing only to have Montey Cook influence the final result
Hunter Cruz
I use wands in my dcc games as ways of giving my players a spell that's not in the book but limiting their access to it in case it is imbalanced, it will just burn up or whatever wands do when they run out of juice.
Tonight I gave my players a wand with 5 charges of stone to flesh with d20+10 charges which I'll roll when they use it for the first time. I feel like it's a great spell that fits the gonzo style magic of the system.
Christian Ross
(OP)
I use wands in my dcc games as ways of giving my players a spell that's not in the book but limiting their access to it in case it is imbalanced, it will just burn up or whatever wands do when they run out of juice.
Tonight I gave my players a wand of stone to flesh with d20+10 charges which I'll roll when they use it for the first time. I feel like it's a great spell that fits the gonzo style magic of the system.
Christian Bennett
It's called an arcane focus, dipshit, that replace any material component that doesn't specify a gp cost. It can be a lot of things, and wand is one of them.
Not going to give you a page number, because it's detailed in every arcane class's spellcasting class feature.
Anthony Martin
Ah, you mean wands as secondary reloads of spells.
I haven't ever used any wands that did that.
Jacob Anderson
that fucking pic
Jaxon James
If it's anything like 4e's use of implements, then foci are also your source of enhancement bonus.
Zachary White
>A spell component and a HP style magic wand are the same thing because they have a similar name
Nolan Martin
>HP style magic wand is the default because I'm a 3aboo
Ian Gonzalez
They're good for spells that you need to use again and again and again
>Furthermore, does anyone actually track their charges? Honestly, I wish they didn't have a limited number of charges, just bugs me, didn't help that by RAW a wand with unlimited charges is just as expensive to make/buy as one with the default 50
Jackson Reyes
make wands be specialised in 1-4 spells and make them cast those more efficiently than casting by hand.
slap a bonus to maximum mana pool on staffs if you want to.
give staffs an enhancement to certain types of magic/damage like increasing the chance to set shit on fire
Cooper Price
Just assign a pool of chips to each wand (or to each player, to use with all his wands? maybe make it so they can bring in extra chips from their own pool, or UMD adds to the pool), and make them more like staves with a fixed caster level (multiple spells for each wand). Anyway, the only wands of any real use are cure light wounds (or that druid thing that does the same as regeneration) and possibly minor restoration (to avoid that, take a page from 4e, and give them a 'short rest' ritual that heals them between encounters), the rest are mostly useless and the players will just sell them as soon as given the chance, unless you make them somehow more powerful or more fun.
Hunter Clark
My mages always use a sword and a shield, channeling their magic through the sword. Because fuck not having defense.
Noah Roberts
I don't see how those are mutually exclusive
Isaiah Adams
>Being/Having a shit GM who can't handle Fly.
Jonathan Collins
>He thinks Fly allows DBZ >When all it do, is to equal skil checks of 250 in climing and roughly 400 in jump
Jeremiah Jackson
So what do they do? Are they catalysts to turn into Magic Weapons? Or do they allow quick casting without feats? Or something else entirely?
Cooper Taylor
why does she have diapers on
Blake Lopez
Do poofy pants look like diapers to you?
Charles Diaz
The bigger the mana pool, the more you gotta refill
Noah Thompson
why would being a 3aboo make someone consider Harry Potter wands to be the default? Wouldn't it make someone consider wands that work kinda like preloaded magic guns, like they are in 3.x, be the default?
Elijah Young
The garter and other free standing straps simulate ley lines and generate additional mana, but in order to function they must be exposed to the air in order to soak in ambiant energy from the ather. They also need to be in skin contact so that the mage's body can absorb the energy.
Nathaniel Moore
Sexy.
Juan Martinez
I use wands currently. Because my class can act as a secondary healer, we have no cleric, and we definitely need the extra heal spells. And yes, I keep track of the charges.
Gavin Foster
He's an edgy troll trying to make nonsensical arguments to seem 'smart' because somebody disagreed with him.
David Bailey
>banning fly >he doesn't know about the fairy fortress dragon encounter damn shame
Samuel Martin
They basically allow spontaneous style metamagic
William Walker
What's the difference between a wand and a gun?
Wyatt Cooper
Metamagic rods are already a thing though
Cooper Walker
>Elf was nowhere in this doujin
What a disappointment.
Joshua Baker
Flying is hugely important for certain things, and it can be a good idea to make sure everyone in the party has some way to do it. Casting the Fly spell, using scrolls/wands/potions, having a flying mount, growing wings, etc.