A Book of Wands

Recently there has been some talk about wands.

Timrod over at Unfrozen Caveman Die-Chucker fired the first salvo sometime going into the holiday season with Degrading Wands. Its a good idea that follows one of my game simplification axioms (reduce book keeping) to go against one of my others (reduce die rolling). The comments are good as Brendan and 1d30 offer up some cool alternatives that work if you are alright with adding more rolls to your game.

Speaking of Brendan the keeper of Untimately- He entered the mix with his post entitled Basic Wands just a bit ago. His post is full of pretty cool ideas. Initially I didn't think I would go with the elemental thing- then he cites a darn good post by Delta, but the target rolls a save to avoid 1d6 damage is complete gold. It gives MU's some kick in a fight. Somewhere the complexity gets out of hand but that's okay as you can pick and choose what you like here.

Next up was the first "unification post" by C over at Hack & Slash. Lots of good ideas there. Some decent stuff in the comments. The fact that he missed Timrod's post is pretty much the reason this post exists.

Now class, turn in your copy of Playing at the World to pages 198 and 199 for a description of the source material for wands and staffs from sources in Appendix N. The most interesting thing here is how Sword and Sorcery literature in specific and Fantasy literature in general does not really distinguish between a wand and a staff. They are simply sticks; with sticks being a requirement for working any magic.

This is something I would use as part of the argument that magic items should not be classed by form, but rather by function (a.k.a. the hat/cloak of invisibility problem from 3e). That is a history and argument for another time. 

Since ideas are free here are some more ideas about wands from our labs here in the steam tunnels:

• Wands permit a MU to cast the last spell cast using the wand indefinitely.
• Wands permit the magic user to cast any spell memorized without burning a slot.
• Wands associated with a spell (like a wand of fireballs) can be used by any magic user that has learned that spell, and the magic user does not have to have memorized the spell.