An answer to partially-charged wands

[Eladrinblade]

I've always thought that it's silly that you have to buy wands/staves at full price for 50 charges (and ammunition for that matter), but at the same time, you don't want to let people buy them with only a few charges for much less than scrolls of the same level. So, here is my simple solution.

A 1st level wand with a CL of 1 costs 750gp (with 50 charges). Therefor, each charge costs 15gp. A 1st level scroll with a CL of 1 costs 25gp.

With this fix:

40-50 charges - 2% each
25-39 charges - 2.5% each
11-24 charges - 2.7% each
6-10 charges - 3% each
1-5 charges - 4% each

(still needs some fine tuning, I know)

So, with a wand with 25 charges, each charge costs 2.5% of what a normal wand of 50 charges would cost. At 1-5 charges, each charge costs more than an equivalent scroll.

Yea or nay, playground?

[Ignominia]

We use partially charged wands at our table a fair bit, however I never allow someone to just say "Can I buy a wand with only 10 charges?" I roll a d% to determine whats available.

Ok, there is a wand of cure light that is 15% full... so it has 7 charges and costs $105

Or more charges...or less...

Its always worked for us in the past. Makes sense to me that shops would buy partially charged wands from adventurers and resell them at a discount...

[Captnq]

Or you can use the Magic Item Compendium's rules on partial charged wands. That could work too.

Wands come in 50, 20, and 10 charges, basically.
Full price, 40%, 20%

Or 2% a charge of full price.

[Slipperychicken]

I like the idea of using d% to determine how many charges a partial wand has left. Of course, I could see wand manufacturers creating partially-charged wands, depending on demand. Of course, one should be able to commission a partially-charged wand, although it would take some time to be made.



Or 2% a charge of full price.

An easy way to calculate it is as follows:

(N/50)*[Price when Fully Charged], where N = the number of charges remaining.

[Curmudgeon]

I've always thought that it's silly that you have to buy wands/staves at full price for 50 charges (and ammunition for that matter), but at the same time, you don't want to let people buy them with only a few charges for much less than scrolls of the same level.
Why exactly is that? A scroll has greater use for a Wizard, because it lets them add the contained spell to their spellbook; it ought to cost more than a 1-charge wand with the same spell. And if you're creating a character above 1st level, the rules explicitly state you can buy partially-charged wands with no change in the per-charge pricing (Dungeon Master's Guide, page 199).

Yea or nay, playground?
Nay. I don't see any reason for creating a house rule here.

[Chronos]

Quoth Curmudgeon:

Why exactly is that? A scroll has greater use for a Wizard, because it lets them add the contained spell to their spellbook; it ought to cost more than a 1-charge wand with the same spell.
You can do that, but you'd never want to, if you have access to a well-stocked magic shop. Spellbook pages work just as well for copying from (better, in fact, since they're not expended in the process), and they're cheaper. And it's not like you'd ever buy a scroll without knowing whether you're going to cast from it or copy it: You're going to buy it for one purpose or the other.

Meanwhile, scrolls require concentration, provoke attacks of opportunity, and require a minimum caster level and ability score to use reliably, while wands have none of those limitations. On a charge-for-charge basis, wands are definitely better.

[TuggyNE]

Why exactly is that? A scroll has greater use for a Wizard, because it lets them add the contained spell to their spellbook; it ought to cost more than a 1-charge wand with the same spell.

Ehhhhhh. Chronos is right; it's more expensive for learning spells, and more expensive for firing them off, which suggests something went wrong in the calculations somewhere. Only real advantage of scrolls is that you can put multiple spells on the same scroll and scribe it all at once, and unlike a wand, this can often be done in a single day of crafting and with an arbitrary selection of spells.

Well, OK, there's also maximum spell level, but that shouldn't affect the pricing of low-level spells.