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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7113579" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Right, and preparing four extra spells per day (or leaving four spell slots open, to prepare later in the day) is different than recovering spells that you've already prepared, after you've cast them. One of those is pretty clearly better than the other. Anyone can use a potion, and not just anyone can use a wand.For practical purposes, the difference in utility does not justify the cost disparity. The wand is mostly going to be used between fights, where the slow healing rate and spell list requirement aren't important. If it takes a standard action to use a pearl, then for practical purposes, that means you aren't supposed to use them during combat. It's only between encounters, when you have a few minutes to spare, that you would bother spending several standard actions to chain-use four pearls; and under those conditions, you would probably be better off with the option to just prepare slots that you'd left open.So yeah, a bunch of pearls are better than a ring, because they're significantly less than half of the price for significantly more than half of the utility (especially if you convince the DM that it doesn't take a standard action to use), in much the same way that a wand is better than a bunch of potions.  In both cases, it's due to a weird price scaling formula in the face of the expected wealth table. In neither case is it likely to wreck your game, simply because the game wasn't all that balanced to begin with. Twenty pearls would let you recover all of your level 1 spell slots between each fight, all day long, but level 1 spell slots aren't really a big deal past level 6 is or so (due, in part, to the way that saves scale); likewise, cheap wands let you recover all of your HP between each fight, completely derailing the whole HP attrition mechanic. The latter is far more disruptive to gameplay than the former, and (effectively) gives the cleric a ton of extra spell slots every day. If you're going to worry about how overpowered the pearl is, then you should look to get rid of the wand first. If you're fine with the wand, then don't worry about the pearl.Edit: I should say that level 1 wizard spell slots aren't worth as much at high levels, because of the way that save DCs scale. Even if you gave a wizard infinite level 1 spell slots, they wouldn't be all that much more powerful because of it, even if it means you're throwing out 5d4+5 damage every round forever.</blockquote>

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