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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7114122" data-attributes="member: 4937">Pearls are a bargain.  Like any bargain, they become broken when PC's have fungible wealth (can convert any magic item into any other magic item).The pearls aren't quite as good as you think they are because they take up an action, but they are excellent solutions to the Wizards low number of spells per day.  They are most underpriced as 1st level spells because of the price scaling that they used (square of the spell).  The reason that the Pearl is underpriced is that it doesn't price in not taking up a slot, which is huge especially at higher levels of play.The important thing to understand is something I've said before, which is that 'Wealth by Level' doesn't work, because it's a form of point buy chargen and point buy is almost impossible to balance.  It's doubly true that 'Wealth by Level' is poorly balanced in part because no really strong effort was made to ensure balance because the designers I think poorly understood that they were implementing a point buy chargen system and it would be used as such by many tables.  So yes, it's more than possible if you have fungible wealth to reduce wealth while increasing utility, just as in any point buy chargen system there are more efficient ways to spend points. The question becomes, how much is a spell slot worth?  This is a non-trivial problem especially for an item as complex as a Ring of Wizardry or a Pearl of Power or a Ring of Spell Storing.  Many factors come into play.  The only really valid test is what is the break even point for a person with system mastery when they would be reluctant to turn one into the other or would be for the most part equally happy to receive one of equal value.As far as wands go, the fundamental problem is that prior to 3e, there were no clerical wands.   3e introduced both clerical wands AND introduced crafting for those wands.   This had unexpected side effects that have nothing to do with the problem of cost balance.   A CLW wand is broken at almost any price.   The fact that it was an efficient cost only made it more broken.   To be honest, in my game, I long ago banned all clerical wands.</blockquote>

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