Wands of healing: individual purchase or party purchase (please read before voting)

[Umbran]

If the party pays for it, they can reasonably expect that it'll get used for the good of the party.

If the cleric pays for it, the party can expect it to get used as the cleric sees fit.

If they are the types to make the cleric pay to keep their hides in one piece, they can expect that how the cleric sees fit may eventually not include keeping their hides intact.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Other. Wands of healing spells do not exist in my campaign. Wands are for magic users, not clerics.

 

[Grymar]

Party resource 90% of the time.

However in one campaign I was the only warforged in the party. I spend my money to get a wand of repair and then asked the artificer to carry it for me. Since it was unusual healing, it came out of my own pocket.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Most groups I've been in, we do it BOTH ways.

Long story short, if you bought it with "party" funds (we pooled money to get it) then it's a "group" item, whether it be wands, scrolls, suits of magic plate armor, etc.

If you bought it with your divvied share, it's yours. Use it, hoard it, feed it to the Tarrasque, whatever you want.

Pretty obvious, really.

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This.

 

[Starfox]

Definitely a party resource. Around here, even healing potions are considered party resources paid from a common fund. The "potion fund" generally gets half a share of the loot.

If I played a healer, and people expected me to pay for heal wands, I would not do so. I'd offer each player to "deposit" a healing wand with me for me to use on them between fights. I might use my own wand on people in a fight, but not between. More likely, I'd rely on my spells for combat healing and a cheap wand to heal myself between fights.

Basically, as a spellcaster, a healing wand is bad. It increases the durability of nonspellcasters (whose main consumable resource is hp) without increasing my main expendable resource (which is spells). There is no reason for me to expend money to make this situation worse.

In 3E (which I assume this is all about) its much more common to pull back because of lack of spells than lack of hp in our groups. Still, this happens very rarely - we do not subscribe to the 15 minute adventuring day.

 

[Blackbrrd]

In 3.x it's a party resource because regular healing can't keep a party topped up with hp and still have healing left for in-combat situations.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Really, everything is a party resource. In D&D we usually make the conceit that the same group of people stays together and generally helps each other out. Thus, if the fighter uses an expensive adamantine sword to destroy the golem that was about to kill the wizard, that item is serving everyone. If the rogue's Ring of Invisibility helps him to scout out an enemy threat and avoid harm to everyone else, it's serving everyone. And certainly, a healing wand given to the cleric but used on everyone should be bought with that in mind.

 

[gilthan3]

With the way my group's healers are, if you don't pitch in the money to buy the wands...then you're last to get healed! If at all!

 

[Dice4Hire]

Party resource. In 3.X the mage can fall behind if he is making a lot of stuff, and the cleric will too if he is buying too many of the things. Plus, they are dirt cheap from about 5th level on up, whether made or purchased, so in our groups, they get automatically refilled before treasure is divvied up.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

My group was in the (apparent) minority and didn't buy healing wands. At least not very often.

When we found them as loot, though, they were party treasure.