Saeviomagy
Adventurer
And if I control f the word "correct" it doesn't show up in any of your posts! See how easy a strawman is?You know what's funny? If I ctrl + f the word 'never' on this thread, it only shows up in the part of your post I've quoted here.
Your original stance is that somehow needing an attack roll makes a spell/item/ability worse. There's a lot to suggest that is not the case.If you can't even accurately restate my stance, I really don't see how we can have a meaningful conversation about it.
No, what you started out with was "needing an attack roll is a balancing factor", followed by "it's not too likely to work on something with legendary saves because they have a high AC". You continue on with "it's rare for characters to max out their primary casting stat", and "most parties can't/won't boost hit chances".Here's some help regarding what I actually said: assuming a singular build-strategy or a singular party composition is never going to get an accurate sense of what is or isn't balanced well enough to work for the game.
Assuming a singular party composition is exactly what you are doing here - you're assuming a party composition that has no interest in hitting a monster with a powerful magic item.
According to what precisely? If you're not expected to hit the max, why are there multiple cases where the rules raise the cap when you get a bonus to a stat? All the WOTC pregens that I've seen start out with a 16 or better in their primary stat. You really think that players are not expected to raise that 2 times out of the 5 raises they get (bearing in mind that feats are optional)?You assuming that a character with this wand is going to have a maxed-out casting ability score by 9th level doesn't mesh with the game, which actually doesn't assume you have maxed-out an ability score at 20th level.
If the item required a save instead of an attack roll, then it would be significantly less exploitable, whilst not reducing it's power in typical situations at all. Niche cases are ignored at your peril... especially when the 'niche' case is such a broad range of situations requiring basic character abilities and the most straightforward build strategy you could possibly have, and a goal that benefits the majority of typical characters....but items aren't, and shouldn't be, balanced assuming the party configuration that can be a problem party in the first place. There are plenty of parties that can't, or simply won't, be the problem party you describe.
That is actually fairly limited in how many uses you can get out of it, and takes up an attunement slot for exactly the reason that it is extremely powerful.
As I think it is silly to assume a party of players doing everything they can to squeeze every drop of power out of this one item as the point at which the item should be working as intended, since such a party isn't guaranteed (or even likely) to be present so the item would appear to be under-performing in any party not completely optimized for it's usage.
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