Using Multiple Wand Charges

[trav_laney]

A situation came up in a game last weekend, when one of our characters wanted to spend 2 charges of his wand of cure light wounds in order to boost the effect. I didn't allow it because I didn't have a rule for it (and I didn't want to pull something out of my ear that might come back to haunt me later.) But I gave it some thought, and it could be an interesting game mechanic.

Has anyone ever done something like this in their game? I apologize if this topic has already been covered in the forums...if it has, could you point me in the right direction?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Complete Mage has an item called the Metamagic Wandgrip. It allows the user to use their metamagic feats on the spell stored in a wnd, but drains an additional number of charges from the wand equal to the normal cost of that feat in spell slots. So if you used the feat Maximize Spell, the wand would be drained of four uses.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I'd allow players to do it without the need of burning one more feat or magic item on this. It could be a new use for the Use Magic Device skill, which could also allow the user to cast a spell from a wand using his own spell slots.

Cheers,

 

[TheLe]

A situation came up in a game last weekend, when one of our characters wanted to spend 2 charges of his wand of cure light wounds in order to boost the effect. I didn't allow it because I didn't have a rule for it (and I didn't want to pull something out of my ear that might come back to haunt me later.) But I gave it some thought, and it could be an interesting game mechanic.

Has anyone ever done something like this in their game? I apologize if this topic has already been covered in the forums...if it has, could you point me in the right direction?

Here's an option: when using 2 charges, there is a 20% chance of the wand critically exploding. Each additional charge used this way increases that by 10%. So,
1 charge = normal effect
2 charges = 20% chance of wand exploding
3 charges = 30% chance of wand exploding
4 charges = 40% chance of wand exploding

Damage is under your discretion.

That'll give you the option of using multiple charges for any wand, yet apply the same deadly penalty to each.

~Le