Recharging items, particularly staffs

[Lopke_Quasath]

Are there any official rules about recharging magic items, particularly staffs?

This is more for flavour reasons, but also to put back in limited charges if money or time is a factor.

Would a rough guide of 1 charge = cost of staff divided by 50 be appropriate?

Cheers

 

[Infiniti2000]

Would a rough guide of 1 charge = cost of staff divided by 50 be appropriate?

No. Not unless you get rid of scrolls and wands.

Should you think about some rule like this, require an alternate minimum (like 'blocks' of ten), and preferably with a slightly higher cost, like maybe +5-10% (perhaps non-linear increase) per block of ten less than 50 total charges (so +10% for 40 charges, +20% for 30, etc.)

 

[Jack Simth]

Are there any official rules about recharging magic items, particularly staffs?

This is more for flavour reasons, but also to put back in limited charges if money or time is a factor.

Would a rough guide of 1 charge = cost of staff divided by 50 be appropriate?

Cheers

If you put at least one caveat on there, yes, that works. Some appropriate caveats...

1) You have to have made the staff (complete, with a full 50 charges) in order to recharge it.
2) You must always recharge it to the full 50 charges (so if you've burned 25 charges, you have to replace 25 charges - 1/2 the cost of the full item).
3) You can only put charges in over some set (largish) increment (such as, say, 10 charges - 20% of the construction cost of the full item).
4) There's a severe inefficiency involved - you lose a few charges every time you put more in (five "feels right", but 2d4 or similar also works).

 

[Lopke_Quasath]

Thank you for the suggestions.

So, the reason a recharge wasn't included in the core rules is because it's easy to abuse?

It seems odd, though, that a magic staff out of magic (charges) is a useless piece of wood (metal, stone, whatever). I can't imagine that a powerful wizard would have old staffs stacked like cordwood in the corner of his tower.

Any other ideas for a staff that keeps going and going? I.e. a wondrous item (in the shape of a staff) that has spells 1-2/day, etc.

Cheers

 

[Hypersmurf]

Any other ideas for a staff that keeps going and going? I.e. a wondrous item (in the shape of a staff) that has spells 1-2/day, etc.

Check out Eternal Wands in the Magic Item Compendium.

-Hyp.

 

[irdeggman]

Unearthed Arcana pg 158 has a sidebar House Rule: Recharging Magic Items - that is the closest to an "offical" rule on how to handle it.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I agree that there should be recharge rules.

In my opinion, you shouldn't save a lot of money recharging an item , but you should save a lot of time.

Ken

 

[Storme]

I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember reviewing the section mentioned earlier in Unearthed Arcana and I'm "Pretty Sure," that those rules did not apply to recharging magic items, such as refilling a wand or staff with that has half its full charges. My memory however is not reliable by any stretch though. I would check the book yourself to confirm.

According to Magic Item Compendiu and DMG, recharging items are expressly forbidden. This rule is wildly stupid, and I see no logical reason for it. I believe it involves WoTC's violently failed attempt to "Balance," magic items by tacking price tags to it--such as saying a level X character should only have X gold worth of gear, then pricing useless or weak items in the tens of thousands (which they finally ponied up and admited doesn't work...that dreadful concept will disappear in 4.0).

However, most DM's I know that have any stretch of common sense allows recharging items. Your character's long term cost will be the same if he uses, say, wands frequently, and will only avoid the chump change costs of actually carving a staff or wand, etc.

Talk to your DM. I'm sure he'll allow it. By simply pricing the cost to make the item (minus the cost of the non magical materials materials, which I think is 300g off the top of my head for a staff, and nothing for a wand), and divide it by 50, then multiply that number by the number of charges need to make it full.


Storme

 

[irdeggman]

I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember reviewing the section mentioned earlier in Unearthed Arcana and I'm "Pretty Sure," that those rules did not apply to recharging magic items, such as refilling a wand or staff with that has half its full charges. My memory however is not reliable by any stretch though. I would check the book yourself to confirm.

Storme

Nope, no limit on how many charges are left before recharging. There is a 10% up front charge before calculating the costs and a note saying that if it has less than 10% of its charges left it is almost always cheaper to simply make a new item.