Recharging charged items...

[Pbartender]

This is a house rule I'm contemplating for my next campaign...

Charged magical items (esp. wands, rods and staves) would be able to be recharged by casting the appropriate spell into them in a manner similar to a Ring of Spell Storing.

The primary caveat is that the charged item can only hold the spell it was meant to store... You cannot put a Magic Missile spell into a Wand of Fireballs, nor can a 1st level Wizard recharge a 5th-caster-level Wand of Magic Missile with a 1st-caster-level Magic Missile.

And also, of course, this will increase the cost and decrease the availability of such items.

I'm not really certain what kind of advice I'm looking for here , but I'd welcome any suggestions or comments you've got.

 

[Technik4]

I would think about adding an exp cost. The biggest reason this is "broken" is that conceivably one could keep a wand recharged forever. Perhaps if your game does not have a lot of downtime, this will not be an issue, but in most games you get the odd week or month to create items you need inbetween adventures. It is therefore no difficult feat to "recharge" all your expendable items.

Furthermore, I would require a feat, like this:

Replenish Magic [Item Creation]
You are adept at recharging certain magical items.
Prerequisites: Any item creation feat which has rechargable items, Ability to cast 3rd level spells.
Benefit: You may replace charges in wands at the rate of 3 exp per level per charge replenished (0-level spells are 2 exp per charge). The cost is multiplied by 5 for staves. You must cast the spell you wish to replenish as a full-round action and you must be holding the item. If you are recharging an item with more than one use for charges, you must cast the highest level spell to recharge it. You may only recharge an item 50 times.

Special: This feat may be taken more than once, each time it applies to a different Item Creation Feat.

Examples:

Recharging 5 charges of a wand of light. Requires 5 castings of Light and 10 exp.

Recharging 10 charges of a wand of dispel magic. Requires 10 castings of Dispel Magic and 90 experience.

Recharging 20 charges on a staff of frost. Requires 20 castings of Cone of Cold, Ice Storm, or Wall of Ice and 1,200 experience.

I just came up with those formulas roughly, but they demonstrate why recharging items should cost experience (at least).

Technik

 

[Pbartender]

Oh hey!

The feat is a great idea... I'd think I'd classify it as a an Item Creation feat, though.

Let me look over the xp costs for creating charged items, and I'll see what I can do with that.

Thanks!

 

[Pbartender]

Ok. So, if you do it by charge, a wand costs (spell level x caster level x 0.6) in xp per charge (30 xp for 50 charges of a 1st spell level, 1st caster level wand).

Scrolls cost (spell level x caster level x 1) in xp per spell... which is essentially a singly charged item.

Now the question becomes... Do I give them a discount, since the actual work of creating the item is already done for them, and make it (spell level x caster level x 0.5)? Or do I make it tougher, and set the xp cost equal to that of a scroll?

 

[Technik4]

I think the costs get larger the better spells there are within. While the item has already been created (with commensurate gold cost and exp cost) you are essentially letting them recreate the item, without any gold cost at all. This is why I worked off of higher exp costs.

Before you decide on a formula, make sure you like how it works for different items. The 3 examples I gave come out on spending a little more exp per charge than it cost to originally make the item in exp, I think thats a good place to aim for with a formula.

Technik

 

[Spatzimaus]

Original Post:
I'm with Technik. Make it a Feat.
His version is good, except that I'd say remove that "may be taken multiple times, each time applies to a different Feat" part. After all, there's just Wands and Staves. Okay, a few Wondrous items or Rings have depleting effects, but not enough to make an extra Feat worth it. Letting this apply to all item creation Feats the caster has taken won't be too bad.

IMC, we made an Artificer Prestige Class. One of the class abilities was Salvage, which lets you take a certain percentage of the item's value (starts at 10% and can scale up to 50%) and apply it towards a new item of the same type. One of the obvious benefits of this ability is that it allows wandmakers to "recharge" depleted ones by using the old one to make a new one.

Now, for this to make sense, you need to know that we house-ruled that wands and staves are worth (50+charges)% of their original values. A wand with 10 charges remaining is worth 60% of its original value this way.

Why? Side rant:
Here's the strange thing. A wand has 50 charges. When it runs out is it totally worthless? No, because it's still got all the raw materials it started with, worth 50% of the original value. They may be a bit worse for the wear, but it's not worthless.
Then, you have all the people that want to buy Wands of Some Rarely-Used Spell, so that they don't have to waste a slot memorizing it. (If you have Master Wand, Master Staff, or Master Dorje, you only ever need 1 charge in the item for it to be useful). They don't want a 50-charge item, they want one with maybe 5 or 10 charges left. Out of sheer utility, this shouldn't only cost 10-20% of the original price.

 

[Pbartender]

No, because it's still got all the raw materials it started with, worth 50% of the original value. They may be a bit worse for the wear, but it's not worthless.

Not necessarily, it depends on who your ask. Some would say the wand itself is simply a stick, and the expensive components get "burned up" upon creating the wand. Not that I'm saying that you've got a bad idea, there, but it simply not how I ever thought of it. Doing it that way make the wand itself expensive, but the charges very cheap.

By the way, what are "Master Wand, Master Staff, or Master Dorje', I've never heard of them.

Anyway...

Recharge [Item Creation]

You are adept at recharging certain magical items.

Prerequisites: Craft Wand.

Benefit: You may add charges to any wand that has already been created. The base price of adding charges is (15 x spell level X caster level x the number of charges added). The spellcaster must meet all prerequisites for creating the type of wand he is recharging. He must spend 1/2 the base price of the desired number of charges in materials and 1/25th of the base price in XP. The process takes 1 day for every 1000 gp of charges added. The spellcaster can add as many charges as he desires, but a wand may never hold more than 50 charges. Any extra charges added past 50 are simply lost.

The other idea I just had is to simply have charged items, like wands and staves, slowly recharge themselves... Perhaps 1 charge/day? If, however, a staff or wand is reduced to 0 charges, the staff or wand is burnt out, useless and can never be recharged again.

 

[yennico]

The other idea I just had is to simply have charged items, like wands and staves, slowly recharge themselves... Perhaps 1 charge/day? If, however, a staff or wand is reduced to 0 charges, the staff or wand is burnt out, useless and can never be recharged again.

I do not have my DMG handy, but IIRC there are some items which recharge themselves at a rate.

If a wand gets e.g a automatic recharge of X charges and a PC carry this wand for several days without using it, he will have a recharged wand. If he waits several further days the wand is full charged and cand be sold at a high price. So the PC keep all wands and staves they find, recharge them and sell them at higher value as they have found them.

I do not like the idea of recharging wands and staves without any cost. Recharging a wand or staff should cost a least
spells, xps, and spell components.

I like Technik´s feats.

A wizard who owns a wand of lighning bolts had prepared for that day a lighning bolt as one of his spells. At that day no fight occured, so if you allow recharging of wands he can use this spell to charge his staff.
How about a Sorcerer who knows the spell lightning bolt and has not cast any spell at that day.

One problem with recharging will be that after an adventure, after the final fight, the PC will rest, perhaps several days, so they can recharge all the charges they used in the last combat (if they are not disturbed .

A User of a Wand/Staff will use his wand till the last charge, because using the last charge is a big disadvantage for him (he can not recharge the wand/staff and use the recharged staff in further fights). In a critical fight the user of a wand/staff will certainly use the last charge to win the fight, etc. if he can not recharge the item.

Recharging Staves:
A Staff has several spells at several levels which uses different numbers of charges.
e.g. staff of charming: charm person 1 charge charm monster 2 charges.
If the wielder has used 2 charges to cast a hold monster, can he recharge the staff with casting 2 charm persons spells ?
A high level wizard will have several level 1 spells.... so this is a cheap way to trade spell slots (2 first level slots for one 5 level slot ).

Further question
e.g. Full charged Staff of defense wielded by a cleric. The cleric uses a charge of the staff to cast "shield". Can he recharge the staff or this charge? He normally can not cast arcane shield.

Just my 2 cents
yennico

 

[Spatzimaus]

By the way, what are "Master Wand, Master Staff, or Master Dorje', I've never heard of them.

Master Dorje is a Feat in the Psionic Handbook. Dorjes are just psionic wands. The Feat lets you cast a spell from the wand using your own power points, for a cost of 2 extra points, without depleting the dorje itself.

Translation: if you were a Sorcerer, it'd say "use a slot of level X+1 to cast a level X spell from a wand". The idea is, you keep around a bunch of nearly-depleted wands of the lesser-used spells, and just use the Feat as needed. It really gets around the class' limited spells known. You're not actually using up any charges from the items, so 1 charge is as good as 50 for these purposes.

Master Wand and Staff are the arcane equivalents. I think they're in the Epic Level Handbook, although they shouldn't be Epic feats themselves.

 

[Pbartender]

If a wand gets e.g a automatic recharge of X charges and a PC carry this wand for several days without using it, he will have a recharged wand. If he waits several further days the wand is full charged and cand be sold at a high price. So the PC keep all wands and staves they find, recharge them and sell them at higher value as they have found them.

Not really. All wands would simply have a fixed cost, rather than one based on the number of charges. After all, if a PC can wait until the wand is recharged, then so can the merchant. It really makes no difference.

A self recharging wand essentially becomes a "per day" magic item (You know, items that say things like, "activate item to cast levitate 3/day)... If you have a wand that recharges one charge per day, then on average you can use it once per day without reducing the total number of charges. You could feasibly use it seven times in a single day, but then you'd have to wait a week to recharge those seven charges. One charge/day is a long wait... a wand with only one charge left would take nearly two months (7 weeks) to fully recharge.

Also, recharging Staves using feats or spells is a big pain... Multiple spells that use varying charges, and the staff has a total cost that does not necessarily reflect the spell/caster levels that went into it. Making them self-charging saves a lot of paperwork.

Master Dorje is a Feat in the Psionic Handbook. Dorjes are just psionic wands. The Feat lets you cast a spell from the wand using your own power points, for a cost of 2 extra points, without depleting the dorje itself.

Translation: if you were a Sorcerer, it'd say "use a slot of level X+1 to cast a level X spell from a wand". The idea is, you keep around a bunch of nearly-depleted wands of the lesser-used spells, and just use the Feat as needed. It really gets around the class' limited spells known. You're not actually using up any charges from the items, so 1 charge is as good as 50 for these purposes.

Master Wand and Staff are the arcane equivalents. I think they're in the Epic Level Handbook, although they shouldn't be Epic feats themselves.

So essentially you get a wand with a spell you don't know, and use an empty spell slot to power the wand, instead of the wand's charges. Neat idea.