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

[noffham]

Party resource for sure, either bought or found as treasure. In fact, they also pooled money to eventually get everyone a healing belt (from the MIC).

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Leif]

IMHO, not a slippery slope at all. I say buy from party loot with the condition that it only be used to heal wounds inflicted when the party's goals were being furthered. Fighters shouldn't carry these wands, unless they have cleric levels and can use them. You don't want an important party resource in the hands of someone who can't use it because it could be needed very suddenly. If everybody buys his own wand, then it seems to me that the party has wayyy too much treasure, which a quality DM [read: evil bast***] will fix at once!

 

[Vegepygmy]

Other (depends on the party).

I've been gaming with the same group of players for 6-7 years now, I think, and we've had parties where the PCs were hardcore mercenaries and everyone decided for himself how to spend his share of the treasure (and if you didn't anticipate that you might need healing at some point, or if you spent all your money on offense and little or nothing on defense so you were constantly in need of healing, then it sucked to be you), and we've had "communist" parties where everything was owned/shared by the whole party for the mutual benefit of the party, and we've had parties that were somewhere in between.

Personally, I prefer the hardcore mercenary approach, but I understand I'm in the minority. My reason is best illustrated by the following real-life example: one of our players was inspired by the movie "Troy" and wanted to play a light-armored spearman (fighter). As a result, he was constantly taking huge amounts of damage and expected to be healed at the party's expense. This quickly became very irritating to me, because of course that meant he was using up way more than his "fair share" of our group's resources, simply so he could play the archetype he fancied. Now, I have no problem whatsoever with someone else playing the kind of character he wants to play, but I don't think it's right for him to expect my character to pay for it. So my character told his character to buy some goddamn full plate and stop prancing around the battlefield like a half-naked twit, or start paying for his own healing wands.

NOTE: This experience isn't why I prefer the "mercenary approach," it's just the easiest way I can think of to explain its appeal.

 

[Nifft]

I'm surprised there's no "healer heals himself, everyone else buys a wand" option.

Expecting a Cleric to heal others and also expend his own cash to better heal others is ... rather inexcusably selfish on the part of those others.

In my games it's been a party pool item, and there wasn't much contention.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Starfox]

one of our players was inspired by the movie "Troy" and wanted to play a light-armored spearman (fighter). As a result, he was constantly taking huge amounts of damage and expected to be healed at the party's expense. This quickly became very irritating to me, because of course that meant he was using up way more than his "fair share" of our group's resources, simply so he could play the archetype he fancied.

Sounds like he was a victim of the rules; one of my quibbles with DnD is that it forces you to wear armor.

 

[Merkuri]

Wow, I'm surprised that NOBODY so far has voted for the healer to buy his or her own wands. That's not my vote, but having not a single person vote for an option this far in has to be some sort of EN World record.

Personally, I lean towards the "for the good of the party" point of view. When the healer can heal better or the fighter fight better or the tank protect better then we're all better off. We're a team, after all.

Though the people I play with don't always share that same point of view.

We play online, and our group went through a phase while playing the World's Largest Dungeon where we could not keep a scout/rogue character. The scout players kept spazzing on us and we kept needing to find a new one. The DM could not understand why we kept giving one of the party's most valuable magic items to the current scout character when the players kept letting us down and being general douchebags.

But the fact was, that item was most useful in the hands of a scout-type character. In a roleplaying sense, giving that item to the scout was the smartest thing to do. Our PCs didn't know the scout's player was being a douchebag, they just knew that a scout scouted better with this item. The DM didn't know why we kept rewarding sub-par players, but the PCs couldn't fathom why we wouldn't want this item in the hands of our scout, whoever that happened to be at the moment.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Sounds like he was a victim of the rules; one of my quibbles with DnD is that it forces you to wear armor.

Not really true for 4e, but every edition before that. Plenty of good options to go with light/no armor in 4e.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm surprised there's no "healer heals himself, everyone else buys a wand" option.

Expecting a Cleric to heal others and also expend his own cash to better heal others is ... rather inexcusably selfish on the part of those others.

In my games it's been a party pool item, and there wasn't much contention.

Cheers, -- N

Maybe you meant something different, but if you're implying that the healer shouldn't have to chip in his share for the party wand, I strongly disagree.

I like to just divide the cost evenly. Some people will need the wand more than others, but that's also because they're effectively taking hits for the people who don't need it. And yeah, a healer can provide his own healing hypothetically. Most likely, he'd rather not spend a spell slot to heal himself when the wand's there, though. And even if he is fine with it...I think absorbed damage is a "party resource." If he doesn't need to heal himself much, it's because someone else is taking the hits. In fact, if I was a melee warrior in a party with a cleric who refused to pay his share on a healing item because he "didn't need it for himself," I'd be less inclined to stand between him and a monster. I mean, he can heal himself, right? Why effectively waste the party's investment on each charge of the wand by taking the hits when that little bugger is self-sufficient anyway?

 

[Nifft]

Maybe you meant something different, but if you're implying that the healer shouldn't have to chip in his share for the party wand, I strongly disagree.

I'm implying that a poll with the option "healer should pay for everyone's healing from his own pocket" -- which is IMHO ridiculous -- should have an equally ridiculous option in the other direction.

What I meant was that each party member buys his own wand, but your way would work (as a poll option) too.

I like to just divide the cost evenly.

If you read the rest of my post, you'll see that I do the same.

Cheers, -- N