Do wands destroy the 3.x adventure paradigm?

[FireLance]

Sunder < Wand

Is that inequality the right way around?

 

[airwalkrr]

Just like that, the party can craft a couple of wands - one of Fireball and one of Cure Serious Wounds. With those two wands, the entire 3.x encounter paradigm is tossed out the window. The party wizard/sorcerer can now cast his most powerful attack spell 50 times without resting, and the party cleric can now cast his most powerful healing spell 50 times without resting.

Such a wand costs the wizard 5,625 gp to make, over HALF the suggested wealth for a 5th level character (the 450 xp isn't easy to drop either as it represents almost 10% of what he needs to reach his next level). For this to even be viable, the wizard has to save a lot of cash, and be willing to drop it all when the time comes. And then at 6th level, it is no longer his most powerful spell since he can do more damage if he casts it himself.

 

[Cabral]

Also remember that wands tend to have minimal caster levels.

 

[billd91]

Such a wand costs the wizard 5,625 gp to make, over HALF the suggested wealth for a 5th level character (the 450 xp isn't easy to drop either as it represents almost 10% of what he needs to reach his next level). For this to even be viable, the wizard has to save a lot of cash, and be willing to drop it all when the time comes. And then at 6th level, it is no longer his most powerful spell since he can do more damage if he casts it himself.

There's also a significant time component to making magic items as well. The sorcerer in the campaign I'm running spent a whole winter making wands for the party. While often that's easy to deal with, in some campaigns, it can be prohibitive. It can also make replacing wands very difficult because they usually run out just when you have no time to make more...

The sorcerer player is currently debating getting Craft Staff as he next feat because he's starting to find that even his more powerful wands (such as the 9-die fireball metamagicked with energy substitution: acid) are getting lower yield than his own spells because of the wands' minimal save DCs.

 

[pallandrome]

Is that inequality the right way around?

Probably not. I always suck at this sorta thing. See Mom? THIS is why I was an English major!!!

My point remains. If a fighter sees the enemy slinging wands in combat, he is sure as heckfire going to sunder them as soon as an opportunity presents itself.

As for using wands out of combat, I'd much rather the cleric in the party have something to do other than feel like a healing battery. Also, burning charges off a wand is definately absorbing some of the parties resources, so how is this out of line? As a GM, you should try to adapt to this by throwing repeated encounters at them without allowing them downtime (the "waves of enemies" approach). If the only way you challenge the party is to wear down their hp, you need to branch out anyways.