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Opinions on a homebrew prestige class

Griffonsec

First Post
I'm new here, so I hope this is the right forum.

One of my players has asked to build a prestige class for his wand specialist wizard. We don't use Eborron (though one of the potential feats is from there), so there are no artificers or canath wand masters. Anyways, after going back and forth a bit here is what I'm working on. Does it seem ok?

The Wandler

The Wandlers believe in solving problems in advance. They create large amounts of wands so they do not need to depend on personal power later. They are the boy scouts of the casting world, and tend to wear their wands in easy to reach locations for fast usage. Wandlers like to savor the use of their power, sometimes using little force until all hope is lost and then pound their enemies with great stored magic.

Requirements
To qualify as a Wandler, the character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Craft (Wands): 10 ranks
Knowledge (Arcana): 4 ranks
Spellcraft: 4 ranks
Craft Wand [Item Creation]: The character must have the craft wand feat.
Spellcasting: Must be able to cast fourth level spells.
Special: The character must have created a Wand

Class Skills
The Wandler’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Knowledge (any) (Int), and Spellcraft (Int).
Skill Points at Each Level: 2 + Int modifier
.
Class Features
All of the following are class features of the Wandler prestige class.

Hit Die: d4

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The Wandler gains no new ability to use weapons and armor.

Craft Reserve: Each time a Wandler gains a level he receives a pool of points that can be spent when crafting wands in the place of experience points experience points. Each time the character gains a level he receives a new Craft Reserve. Left over points from previous levels do not carry over, and unspent points are lost.

Increased Spellcasting: When a new Wandlers level is gained, the character gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if he had also gained a level in whatever arcane spellcasting class in which he could cast spells before he added the prestige class level. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained. If a character had more than one arcane spellcasting class in which he could spells before he became a Wandler, he must decide to which class he adds each level of Wandler for the purpose of determining spells per day.

Spellslinger: Beginning at 1st level the character gains the benefits of the Quick Draw feat when drawing a wand.

When the character reaches 4th level he also gains the Double Wand Wielder feat, even if he does not meet the requirements.

At 7th level, the character gains the Wand Mastery feat, even if he does not meet the requirements.

Finally, at 10th level the character may use his Double Wand Wielder feat without expending an extra charge from the second wand.

Master Crafter: Beginning at 3rd level, the Wandler’s understanding of wand making is unmatched. After expending all the charges in a wand that he himself has created, the Wandler may salvage the magic and materials from the wand to use in future creations. This process takes a full day to complete, but allows the character to add 10% of the experience cost to create the item to his Craft Reserve. Like all Craft Reserve points these must be spent before the character increases in level or be lost forever. Further, he recovers enough materials from the wand to salvage 10% of the gold that the item cost to create.

At 6th level the character’s mastery of wand building allows him to “over charge” his wands, allowing him to build wands able to store spells of up to 5th level. This process is not without a price, however, and wands built using this method cost 10% more in experience and materials than normal.

Once the Wandler gains 9th level he may use this ability to create wands of up to 6th level, but doing so costs 20% more experience and materials.

The Wandler Advancement Chart
Lvl Attack Saves Craft Spells per Day Special
Bonus Fort Ref Will Reserve
1 0 0 0 +2 100 +1 lvl of existing class Spellslinger (Quick Draw)
2 +1 0 0 +3 150 +1 lvl of existing class
3 +1 +1 +1 +3 200 +1 lvl of existing class Master Crafter (Salvage)
4 +2 +1 +1 +4 250 +1 lvl of existing class Spellslinger (Double Wands)
5 +2 +1 +1 +4 300 +1 lvl of existing class
6 +3 +2 +2 +5 500 +1 lvl of existing class Master Crafter (5th level)
7 +3 +2 +2 +5 700 +1 lvl of existing class Spellslinger (Wand Master)
8 +4 +2 +2 +6 900 +1 lvl of existing class
9 +4 +3 +3 +6 1200 +1 lvl of existing class Master Crafter (6th level)
10 +5 +3 +3 +7 1500 +1 lvl of existing class Spellslinger (Decreased Cost)
 

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biggest thing to consider...

basically 1 spell per wand and it has limited spell level.

so as the class reaches spell caster level 9 or so and wants to use the higher lvl spells, they can't be added to a wand. so they buff up the lower lvl spells like fireball and such. but they can't even add a cone of cold to a wand until level 6th of the PrC

by then they already have spells higher than lvl 5.

edit: b/c minimum lvl is taking the PrC at level 8. say 7 lvls of wizard first... that means by Wandler 6 they are caster lvl 13.
 
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I think 10 ranks in Craft (wands) is a bit specific and limiting. I think it would work better as Craft (x) where x can be any medium useful for making wands. This would preclude something like Craft (beer) or Craft (weapons) but would allow Craft (carpentry) or Craft (carving) or something like that. Craft should be something the character could make a living on normally, and I just don't see Craft (wands) as something that would enable someone to get a franchise and set up shop.
The Craft requirement is currently set up to be the big weeder requirement. It's a very limited skill and it requires the character to be at least 7th level. I have not qualms with weeder requirements in general, but this one seems particularly weak.

I notice the the prestige class requires the character to be able to cast 4th level spells (no type specified), but it advances only arcane caster levels. Why not allow advancement in divine casting since there's no restriction when it comes to making wands whether the caster is arcane or divine. Or if you really want to limit to arcane caster progression, make the prestige class just for arcane casters in the prerequisites.
 

Starting with the prereqs... The only real cost for taking this prc is the super-specific craft (wands) skill. Everything else is just the same gravy that a would-be wand wielder would take anyway.

In fact, this guy gains a lot of cool abilities without really giving anything up. If he's a sorcerer, he loses absolutely nothing except familiar advancement (which is my biggest problem with the sorcerer, personally) and gains quite a few cool abilities.

I think what I'd recommend is to drop a couple of levels of spellcasting ability- for instance, 1st and 7gh- and increase his ability to put higher-level spells in wands.
 


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