D&D 3E/3.5 Wands in 3.5

[dcollins]

How is recharging it any different than just making a second one?

Example: Wizard has a depleted wand of charm person, and currently 50 gp. His standard tactics involve an item to cast charm person.

RAW: Wizard says, "Hmmm, I've got a tough choice to make. I could spend my cash now and make 4 scrolls of charm person at a higher price (12.5 gp/charge). Or I could save my cash and make a wand later on at a lower price (7.5 gp/charge)." A challenging in-game choice arises.

House-Ruled to Allow Recharging at Normal Price: Wizard says, "It's a no-brainer. I'll put 6 charges in my wand (7.5 gp/charge) and have cash left over! I'll never make a scroll of charm person again!" Challenging in-game choice has been removed.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The fact that you have to spend a lot of money on a brand new one. If you allow recharging at increments of 1, then you make scrolls totally worthless and even potions lose a lot of their importance (because they are so much more expensive). As SKR suggests there really must be a minimum for recharging or you need to make some other houserules to compensate. SKR's suggestion of packets of 10 is probably reasonable, especially in a low cash campaign. In a higher (normal) cash campaign, you might consider 15 or even 20.

If I had a player interested in this, I'd probably allow it without a feat, but require it be fully recharged. So there would be zero cost reduction, zero time reduction, but in the end you'd have the same staff, so thematically a PC could have the same Staff of Fire throughout his career, even if he was required to "buy a new one" three times.

I tend to make a lot of concessions to style, but do so by as few House Rules as possible. This one seems doable without any House Rules at all, just a small change in flavor text, as it were.

 

[Planesdragon]

In 3.5, can you recharge wands/staves/rods, anymore?

No, not really. Depending on how you read the rules, though, you CAN "create a new wand" using your current wand to deduct from the cost.

I fail to see how this in any way upsets the niches of the other spell-carrying items. Potions are used without casting, so it doesn't tie up a caster's action to use one. Scrolls are cheap and transferrable. Wands are powerful one-trick ponies, and Staffs are the ultimate mortal-crafted spellcrafting item.

(picture this--just as the runes on a scroll disappear and a potion is drank, there should be some physical evicdence of how much magic a staff or wand has. When new, thy should be clean and ideal. As they lose charges, they could become dirty and worn, until they're practically falling apart on their last 10 charges and disassemble into their component parts when the last charge goes.)

 

[Pyrex]

Example: Wizard has a depleted wand of charm person, and currently 50 gp. His standard tactics involve an item to cast charm person.

RAW: Wizard says, "Hmmm, I've got a tough choice to make. I could spend my cash now and make 4 scrolls of charm person at a higher price (12.5 gp/charge). Or I could save my cash and make a wand later on at a lower price (7.5 gp/charge)." A challenging in-game choice arises.

House-Ruled to Allow Recharging at Normal Price: Wizard says, "It's a no-brainer. I'll put 6 charges in my wand (7.5 gp/charge) and have cash left over! I'll never make a scroll of charm person again!" Challenging in-game choice has been removed.

Right, but that wizard already spent one of his precious few feats on Craft Wand. And, at some point in time, he did sink the large investment to make the wand in the first place (or he got it as treasure, either way, it's still counted against his personal wealth)

Crafting items requires a Feat, XP and materials.

Let's look at the other end of the scale, Bob the wizard has made a Wand of Magic Missiles. Over the course of a couple adventures he's used up 20 charges. He knows he's going to be going on an extended campaign soon.

What's so wrong with letting him "top off" his wand by restoring those 20 used charges?

 

[dcollins]

What's so wrong with letting him "top off" his wand by restoring those 20 used charges?

Same thing. The difficult choice between "pay for 50" or "risk it with just 30" is taken away.

Admittedly it is better (see also SKR) than allowing 1-unit gradients.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

One thing I've noticed about wands in 3E is that they've pretty much become buffing tools rather than offensive weapons (at least, that's been my experience). Wands just aren't strong enough on their own (unless you're creating them at higher caster levels and that seems pretty rare).

 

[Aust Diamondew]

IMC you can recharge wands a staves. You need the appropriate item creation feat and you need money and XP equal to 1/50th of the wands creation cost per charge. Its 1 day to recharge 2000GP worth of charges.

So essentially recharging allows a caster to spend less time but the same amout of GP/XP as creating a new staff/wand.

 

[Infiniti2000]

IMC you can recharge wands a staves. You need the appropriate item creation feat and you need money and XP equal to 1/50th of the wands creation cost per charge. Its 1 day to recharge 2000GP worth of charges.

So essentially recharging allows a caster to spend less time but the same amout of GP/XP as creating a new staff/wand.

Actually, that would cost the caster a heck of a lot more. Consider a wand of 1st level spells at CL 1. It's 750gp. Initially, this cost 375gp, and 30xp. If the wand were burned down to 0 (just for sake of argument), and the caster wanted the wand back up to full, it would cost 750gp and 750xp. Does this system work in your campaign? Do casters actually recharge anything given that it's so much more expensive (25 times the XP)?

 

[Pyrex]

Er, I think you may have misread him. As I understand what he meant was:

Creation cost for CL1 x SL1 wand = 375gp and 15xp. Each charge costs 1/50th of those costs or 7.5gp and 0.3xp.

 

[irdeggman]

Unearthed Arcana pg 158 has a house rule for recharging magic items. It is designed so that if more than like 50% of the charges are used it usually cheaper to make a new item.