A staff with the ability to be recharged

[iwatt]

In DnD blood loss is better modelled by Con loss (vamps, stirges, weasels). If you use this mechanic instead of hitpoints, you'll pretty much controll rampant item recharging, since con is a lot more limited than hps.

 

[calypso15]

That's a great staff Calypso15 - I just might use it in my campaign. I like the idea of mixing moondust with blood and drinking it... kind of nasty

I agree with Patryn, that if you are playing in the Realms, recharging an evil staff would be more appropriate in the time of Shar - a moonless night.

Thanks And, right you guys are, I changed it to a moonless night instead of a full moon, thanks.

I'm not sure about the con-damage though... I mean, how can a longsword to the stomach cause 1 hp of damage, yet, a small slice to get a few drops of blood can cause con-loss and from 9-20 hp loss?

Calypso

 

[iwatt]

I'm not sure about the con-damage though... I mean, how can a longsword to the stomach cause 1 hp of damage, yet, a small slice to get a few drops of blood can cause con-loss and from 9-20 hp loss?

Calypso

A longsword to the stomach doesn't do 1 hp. A longsword to the stomach is a killing blow, or a critical hit. If you start believing that hps are health, you come into the problem that a lev 20 human barbarian can withstand being dismembered. HPs are an abstraction that represent survivability (i.e luck, dodging, etc..) At most you can describe a hit with a longsword as a scratch.

 

[JimAde]

It's a kind of magic.

Seriously, it's not the physical blood loss, it's channeling your essence into the item that causes the con damage. Seems reasonable, and since the item only holds 50 charages you'd still be able to recharge about 20% of them per month without killing yourself.

 

[calypso15]

It's a kind of magic.

Seriously, it's not the physical blood loss, it's channeling your essence into the item that causes the con damage. Seems reasonable, and since the item only holds 50 charages you'd still be able to recharge about 20% of them per month without killing yourself.

Alright, I can live with that So, either they take a point of con damage per charge, or, another thought I just had, if it was HP-only damage, it could not be healed by magical means, only through rest and time. Because with the con-damage one, what's to keep a cleric from just casting restoration on them?

Calypso

 

[iwatt]

Alright, I can live with that So, either they take a point of con damage per charge, or, another thought I just had, if it was HP-only damage, it could not be healed by magical means, only through rest and time. Because with the con-damage one, what's to keep a cleric from just casting restoration on them?

Calypso

In short....Nothing. But that is a "problem" with the way DnD works (extremely fast healing sop that you can have dungeon crawls).

Anyhow, I'm not trying to make it more balanced or what not. But if you use Con damage, even with acces to restoration, PCs will be slightly more reticent than if it was HP damage. Anyhow, the only real limitation you can impose in DnD is time. And you have that covered with the fact thta you're limiting the time period to 1 day a month. If you add in the fact that It's con Damage and you have a friendly enough cleric ready to cast restorations (after the ritual is completed to avoid unfortunate interruptions ) your wizard will probably be able to recharge from 10 to 14 charges at best (unless we're talking of my Gnome Wizard who with a judicious use of Bear's endurance would be able to to recharge 23 charges ).

 

[bweenie]

If you were going to make a staff that would allow the bearer to add charges to it, without knowing the requisite spells, what would you do?

Calypso

I suspect that this will sound like heresy to most people. It totally 'unbalances' the game mechanics, but I don't think that they're very well balanced anyway. Here's how I do staves:

I give them a +# rating (as is done with swords and other weapons). Those + can translate into a magical weapon bonus, or a level of spells. For each level of spells, the staff holds one spell of that level. For example, a +4 staff could be a +1 weapon, and hold a spell of level one, two and three. Alternatively, you could take larger number of lower level spells (in the example above you could hold three level one and a level three).

Now for the really terrifying part: the staff has a number of charges equal to ten times the spell level. Each spell uses it's level in charges, and the staff recharges its spell level every day. Using the example, that staff would gain three charges a day.

I have used this rule in an epic style (not dungeon crawl style) campaign and it has posed no problems to me yet. At the same time, my style of DMing is to kill or save characters occaisonally by fiat for dramatic purposes, so the rules serve the story, not the other way around.

I have just introduced a staff of this type into my dungeon crawl style campaign, so we'll see how unbalanced it gets there.

The point of this is that it's a staff! A staff is supposed to be an awesome thing, at least according to all the stories and lore. I think that they really messed up the way that they did staves in the rules, and I wanted them to be something really awesome. That's why I introduced this house rule.

 

[TDRandall]

Perhaps I'm just "vile", but...

Well, my first thought is that you would use gold and XP to recharge the staff. (well, duh!)

The twist is that you can also directly use another living, corporeal being's life force to "pay" for XP costs (perhaps same amount or some multiple/fraction to gold costs as well). Requiring a sacrifice would help explain while the baddies seem to have so many charges available, while the good guys always seem to be running short. And that gives more time for the baddies to work on their plots rather than make/recharge items and gives you a game reason for all those terrible rituals that need to be interrupted.

You'd want to play with the equation to get it right for you, especially depending on how much you want each sacrifice to "count" (e.g. would the death of one commoner refill a staff completely or would it take 200 of them?), but to skew the balance so that evil is always a great(er) threat you should get more XPs from more powerful beings (CR?), higher sentience, alignment, and perhaps "extraction method"?

Off the cuff, CR (min 1) * CR * Int bonus (min 1) * Chr bonus (min 1) * Wis bonus (min 1) * alignment (1 for evil, 2 for neutral, 3 for good), * extraction method (1 for "give 1 negative level [which must be saved normally against 24 hours later]", 2 for willing, 4 for "syphoned", 6 for "gruesomely killed outright") would give (If I calculate correctly):

5 * 5 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 3 * 1 = 75 XPs for an average mind-statted 5th level fighter who (hopefully) temporarily donates a level to his wizard friend's needs. (Seems low, but perhaps the average stats is misleading.)

4 * 4 * 1 * 1 * 4 * 2 = 128 XPs for an average (except wisdom) 4th level druid who donates his ebbing life essence to one of his circle members use. (Seems low, but again average stats?)

1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 3 * 6 = 18 XPs for each average good aligned commoner that goes under the knife at the evil cleric's altar

1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 4 = 4 XPs for that poor kobold whose life is syphoned off by the desperate wizard.

8 * 8 * 4* 3 * 3 * 1 * 6 = 13824 XPs for the "average" mind flayer betrayed and "donated" to their society's cause. (Wow OUCH that is high!)

To avoid going around and sticking your staff in the corpses of the defeated after a battle, I would throw in other flavor reasons like time, place, and situation.