It's a Wand! It's a Crossbow Bolt! It's a Floor Wax!

[Spatzimaus]

Brute force isn't pretty, but it always works, at least.

To paraphrase a quote from the Vietnam eta:
"If brute force doesn't solve your problems, you're obviously not using enough."

 

[ARandomGod]

I think you have this a bit backwards. I would counsel against raising the median above 50. In fact, the original 20-12-10-8 seems about perfect. It is hard to have a 'very bad' wand experience, but almost all of them will be above 50, and some way above.

Very bad and very good will be, of course, equally unlikely. However excatly 50% of in infinite amount of them will be below 50, some way below.

Not quite. The odds *are* exactly even with the 20-12-10-8 method; that means that the PC's will eventually come out....exactly even. By adding a D6 and D4, that means that the PCs will eventually come out...20% ahead. (60 charges per wand.)
20-12-10-8 means that most will be in the 40-50 range, some a little lower, some a lot higher, eventually balancing out to 50.
20-12-10-8-6-4 means that most will be in the 50-60 range, some a little lower, some a lot higher, eventually balancing out to 60.

The original method makes it a bit of a gamble, but still a very fair gamble. The second method makes it a no-brainer, and the PC's will almost always come out ahead, and on average quite a bit ahead.

That was my point, actually. The original method... well, it's better odds than going to Vegas, certainly. The odds are stacked in favor of the house there. My proposed method makes the PC's the "house".

And the way gambling works, as meantioned above, is that if you have a set amount of resources, and the "house" has an unlimited amount, then even with exactly even odds the house will eventually have all your money.

Well, I think you have the 'quickly' part a bit off, but I do think it 'speading up' is part of the fun. You have to be careful when you are on the 'last die'

I like the speeding up part too. It's a large part of what makes this method fun.

Edit: Got the d6 numbers. Took a little under three hours to run, so there's no way I'm spending two weeks working out the d4 numbers.
10 or less now only happens 0.14%.
20 happens 3.6%.
30 happens 14.5%
40 happens 31.0%
50 happens 48.5%
60 happens 63.8%
70 happens 75.7%
80 happens 84.1%
90 happens 89.9%
and you have just under a 6% chance to make it past 100.
Median was 50.894. Mean was 56.

So actually, the 5-die progression ending with the d6 seems best to me; the mean's slightly higher than before, the median is right on 50, and the chances of a really short-duration wand go way down without drastically increasing the top end. Adding the d4 would be a bit much, IMO, pushing the median to 54ish and the mean to 60, but you COULD do it.

Ah, well, the poor D4 gets left out, but this does look closer to what I personally wanted to see. The D4 probably is taking it a little over the top. Mainly I just thought it would be a good idea to favor "the house" a little, and assume that the wand users ARE "the house". Or else why are these wands made rather than the standard charged ones? (Ok, because the standard ones are removed, of course. But still).

Do you really have the million? Are you prepared to put it in escrow? Because you are offering better odds than any lottery, and millions of people buy tickets in million-dollar lotteries every week.

It's true, they do. Of course, in my statistics class we referred to that as "Tax on the mathematically impared".

d6 = price of three scrolls of the spell. (Yes, at this point I'd start treating it as a semi-scroll)
d4 = price of two scrolls of the spell

Those last two are good buys!

Turns out wands in general are good buys. That d6 one is too good (I'm personally mathematically impared too) it should be the same as five scrolls. Pricing them as scrolls instead of as wands would be siginficantly more than a 10 charge wand for the d6/d4 and more than 4 charges for the d4 wand.

Edit:
Of course, I've now been convinced to drop the D4 in my "slightly better odds" version of the wand.
And I'd be unlikely to have the lower end wands available for the PC's to buy. But you still have to figure out prices, because you know they'll be offereing to sell some of those sometime.

 

[Coredump]

Very bad and very good will be, of course, equally unlikely.

Not quite. For example, it is more likely you will get 70 charges than 30 charges, and more likely to get 100 charges than 20 charges.

However excatly 50% of in infinite amount of them will be below 50, some way below.

Sort of.... assuming you are talking about the 20-12-10-8-6 version... you will have a lot more way above compared to way below. It is not an even distribution about the median. Sticking with the 20-12-10-8-6 method is almost always going to lead to an overall power up. Again the 'winners' will be higher than the 'losers are low. So if 4 of 10 are betwenn 45-55, then one will be at 42 and one at 39, one at 35, and one at 65 and one at 85, and one at 95.

Ah, well, the poor D4 gets left out, but this does look closer to what I personally wanted to see. The D4 probably is taking it a little over the top. Mainly I just thought it would be a good idea to favor "the house" a little, and assume that the wand users ARE "the house". Or else why are these wands made rather than the standard charged ones? (Ok, because the standard ones are removed, of course. But still).

I would still recommend looking at the 20-12-8-6-4 method. It will give 50 charges per wand (on average), and give you the 'last minute' edginess of having the D4. While it is likely not a game breaker, I don't see why folks want to give out more than 50 charges per wand.

It's true, they do. Of course, in my statistics class we referred to that as "Tax on the mathematically impared".

Study it as economics, and not math. The 'opportunity cost' of a dollar just isn't that much, but the potential payoff.... Now, the ones I don't understand are those spending 50-100-150 dollars a *week* on lottery tickets.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I would still recommend looking at the 20-12-8-6-4 method. It will give 50 charges per wand (on average), and give you the 'last minute' edginess of having the D4.

Agreed. The two options that give the best numbers are 20-12-10-8 and 20-12-8-6-4 (i.e., replacing the d10 with a d6+d4). In both cases you have a mean of 50 and a median of 45ish, and of the two, I like the latter better. Using five dice instead of four greatly reduces the chance of a really lousy (<20 charges) wand, and the 6 and 4 really help give that feeling that the wand's about to run out. Plus, as was pointed out, they're the Platonic solids!

Study it as economics, and not math. The 'opportunity cost' of a dollar just isn't that much, but the potential payoff.... Now, the ones I don't understand are those spending 50-100-150 dollars a *week* on lottery tickets.

Absolutely. When you're spending a small amount, the impact on your lifestyle is negligible. A few bucks a week is nothing for that, even when you total it up over several years, and if you were to actually WIN, you'd be set for life. And there are a couple thresholds to that, too; for many people, winning 100 million dollars isn't 10 times as good as winning 10 million. In both cases, you move into the "set for life" category. So it's clearly not a linear function.

 

[ARandomGod]

Sort of.... assuming you are talking about the 20-12-10-8-6 version...

Actually, I was talking about the 20-12-10-8 version, when I said you'd be just as likely to get way fewer charges... the 20-12-10-8-6 you should be statistically more likely to get more than 50 charges than less than 50. Which is something I'd want in this for two reasons

1) Few people in my game groups buy/use wands. It just feels like you're throwing money away when you're buying something that you know will be gond soon

2) In general the people I play with would look at the "break even" wand and be even more leery. Because the odds are good that you're going to get less than 50 charges out of any single wand. Sure, the odds are also good that you'll get MORE than 50. But that's not so much the point. First Rule of Gaming: Avoid the negative. Second Rule: Seek the positive.

I would still recommend looking at the 20-12-8-6-4 method. It will give 50 charges per wand (on average), and give you the 'last minute' edginess of having the D4. While it is likely not a game breaker, I don't see why folks want to give out more than 50 charges per wand.

Cause it's only a few more, and it's enough to make the gamble 'worth it'. Plus I'd want to encourage wand useage. Other gaming group's opinions of wasting capital on charged items might be extremely different, and so this extra incentive to take a risk might not be needed.

Study it as economics, and not math. The 'opportunity cost' of a dollar just isn't that much, but the potential payoff.... Now, the ones I don't understand are those spending 50-100-150 dollars a *week* on lottery tickets.

I don't know... economically speaking you're rather foolish to NOT be the one running the lottery. And just because buying fifty tickets is 50x as foolish as buying one ticket is, that doesn't mean that each purchase of a ticket isn't a little foolish.

But yes, I'll admit that with enough effort an educated person can make a reasonable (or at least reasonable sounding) justification arguement for just about anything.

 

[ARandomGod]

Absolutely. When you're spending a small amount, the impact on your lifestyle is negligible. A few bucks a week is nothing for that, even when you total it up over several years, and if you were to actually WIN, you'd be set for life. And there are a couple thresholds to that, too; for many people, winning 100 million dollars isn't 10 times as good as winning 10 million. In both cases, you move into the "set for life" category. So it's clearly not a linear function.

It's true. And I understand the arguement. Still, comparing my friend J and myself, he's bought two lottery tickets a week for the past 5 years. (sometimes more) I have never bought one.

He's occasionally won small amounts. Probably as much as 150 all together. In that time I've "won" 520. So far I'm ahead 370. And the odds are I'll keep getting farther and farther ahead.

 

[Spatzimaus]

He's occasionally won small amounts. Probably as much as 150 all together. In that time I've "won" 520. So far I'm ahead 370. And the odds are I'll keep getting farther and farther ahead.

There are two possible outcomes.
1> He wins the big jackpot, and becomes a millionaire while you're still struggling to pay the bills.
2> He doesn't win the jackpot, and loses about half the money he's invested (state lotteries pay out 40-60%), but it doesn't actually impact his lifestyle until he starts gambling money that should have been going to essentials.
In situation 1, he clearly wins. In situation 2, it's a marginal enough difference as to be irrelevant. $370 over several years is nothing; most hobbies cost far more than that. So while in theory you come out ahead, in practice it's a tie (especially if he enjoys the gambling aspect, making it like any other hobby where you lose money).

Anyway, to your wand-related points:

Few people in my game groups buy/use wands. It just feels like you're throwing money away when you're buying something that you know will be gond soon

Be careful on this. "Gone soon" can mean completely different things depending on which wand you're talking about. Some spells, like cure light wounds, might be used often, but it's only "throwing money away" if you use those entirely in place of adequate healing, instead of treating them as a supplement for when spells are scarce. In my last campaign, each member of the party bought one of these for the healers to borrow in emergencies (after all, people carry healing potions, right?), plus we had wands of detect magic and such so that people didn't need to fill every single slot with the same spell.

Other spells you only really need once in a blue moon; will you ever use all 50 charges in a wand of knock? But then there are those spells where you might not need them that often, but when you do, you need several charges, like invisibility. How many times have you ever memorized multiple invisibility spells without knowing you were going to need them? Never.

 

[genshou]

I am loving this and wish Elements of Magic - Mythic Earth had a 50-charge item creation method like Elements of Magic (Revised) did. You can bet I would use this mechanic if that were the case.

 

[Coredump]

I mentioned this alternative to my players, and they thought it would be more fun.

I just mentioned it to some other friends that play in a different campaign, and they say they are going to try it.

I think it is more fun... and I think it has more 'flavor'. I never liked the exact charges counting down, like a machine gun from Aliens. Now the wand holds a 'lot' of magic, 'goodly amount' magic, 'some' magic, 'little' magic, 'barely' magic. (Or whatever you want to give it.)

 

[Agback]

So it's clearly not a linear function.

The non-linearity of the marginal value of income is crucial to explaining risk-taking behaviour. Unfortunately, risk-averse behaviour is consistent only with a diminishing marginal value of income, and risk-loving behaviour is consistent only with an increasing marginal value of income. Which suggests that a rational person would not both insure and gamble unless their marginal value of income were increasing for values of income above their actual income and ecreasing for values below it. I can't think of any reason why such a great many people should be stuck near the minimum of their marginal-vlue-of-income curve. So i am reluctantly forced to consider such hypotheses as a systematic mis-perception of risk.