Recharging wands/staffs

[questionmark693]

Does anybody know of a way to make it happen? Any 3.x book is acceptable as a source, as is Dragon magazine.

[Nettlekid]

It's pretty hard, much easier to avoid using the charges in the first place by use of Unfettered Heroism and Wand Surge. But since you aren't asking about that, I'll suggest the Nishruu from Monsters of Faerun. When it's killed, any magic item touching it regains 1d6 charges. This is an Su ability. So perhaps you could have a creature activate an Item of Shapechange (that you'll recharge) or be a Spellguard of Silverymoon and cast Shapechange on another creature, have it turn into a Nishruu, stick all your wands and staves into it, and then kill it to regain 1d6 charges in each item. Not exactly practical and efficient, but it does what you want.

[questionmark693]

Actually those alternatives sound pretty appealing also. More so than what I actually asked for apparently :smallwink: where do I find those things?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Such an item's current value would be its normal fully-charged price, divided by fifty, multiplied by its current number of charges. This is of course after you subtract the price of permanent effects, such as if a magical staff is also a +1 weapon.

You'll need to find or be someone who can craft the item you want to recharge. You would go through the normal item creation process as normal, 'upgrading' it from a partially charged item to a fully charged item. The difference between its current value and its normal fully-charged price would be the price of recharging it. You would pay half of this in gold, and 1/25 in experience, plus whatever costs would be required if the spell(s) it contains have costly material components or xp costs.

[questionmark693]

Also good to know-I didn't know I could craft charges back in, thanks. So if I can craft, there's nothing stopping me from just putting charges back myself then, right? For the same price as crafting a base item with however many charges I need to refill?

[Nettlekid]

Such an item's current value would be its normal fully-charged price, divided by fifty, multiplied by its current number of charges. This is of course after you subtract the price of permanent effects, such as if a magical staff is also a +1 weapon.

You'll need to find or be someone who can craft the item you want to recharge. You would go through the normal item creation process as normal, 'upgrading' it from a partially charged item to a fully charged item. The difference between its current value and its normal fully-charged price would be the price of recharging it. You would pay half of this in gold, and 1/25 in experience, plus whatever costs would be required if the spell(s) it contains have costly material components or xp costs.

Where is this a rule? Here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041130a)it's listed as a sort of variant if you want to experiment with recharging, but the default seems to be that you can't. If you know of another book that says "Hey here's how it works" then I'd love to see that, because I've been dying for a way to justify having 1-charge items. :P


Actually those alternatives sound pretty appealing also. More so than what I actually asked for apparently :smallwink: where do I find those things?

What I mentioned is a trick for using one charged spell-trigger item every round without actually using its charges, and it's a very easy trick. Either craft a custom item of Unfettered Heroism (Races of Eberron), or manage to Persist it on yourself somehow. If you can cast it, you could do so, then activate a staff which contains the spell combined with a Schema (Magic of Eberron) of Metamagic Item (Eberron Campaign Setting). (A side note, that last part is a pretty easy way to Persist basically any Persistable spell, especially if you're using wands and staves the way you are.)

Anyway, Unfettered Heroism gives you one temporary (nonstacking) action point every round. Combine this with the feat Wand Surge (Magic of Eberron), which allows you to spend an action point instead of a charge when activating a magic item. Spending that one temporary action point that you get each round means that you can activate your item every round without actually using any charges (provided each activation only takes one charge. An activation that takes X charges will still drain X-1 charges, so don't use those.)

[questionmark693]

Beautiful, thanks :smallsmile:

[TuggyNE]

Does anybody know of a way to make it happen? Any 3.x book is acceptable as a source, as is Dragon magazine.

Can't Truenamers do some sort of a thing like that, or am I thinking of one of the Truenamer fix homebrews?

[Mithril Leaf]

Imbued Staff + Recharge Staff (ACF + feat) [Dragon #338 p58 + p60]
Lose your familiar. Gain a staff familiar. Take the Craft Staff and Recharge Staff feats. You can now recharge your staff at a rate of 5 spell levels for 1 charge. It's a way to avoid XP costs for some spells by burning leftover spell slots instead. It can also effectively convert 2 lower-level spell slots into a 9th-level one. You do the math.

From the wonderful Useful Dragon Magazine Stuff (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1583). You need to be wizardly inclined though.

EDIT:
Can't Truenamers do some sort of a thing like that, or am I thinking of one of the Truenamer fix homebrews?

Some crafting/fixing ability they get around level 11. You have to use spell tiles or skulls or stuff like that though.

[questionmark693]

Imbued Staff is pretty sweet, and so is that thread, thanks for the link :)

[Nettlekid]

Can't Truenamers do some sort of a thing like that, or am I thinking of one of the Truenamer fix homebrews?

You're thinking of the Utterance Rebuild Item, which completely restores one item that went to 0 HP within the last turn, with full magical ability intact. So yeah, as Mithril Leaf said, you'd need to be using Skull Talismans or other items that break to release a spell to make that work.

[TuggyNE]

You're thinking of the Utterance Rebuild Item, which completely restores one item that went to 0 HP within the last turn, with full magical ability intact. So yeah, as Mithril Leaf said, you'd need to be using Skull Talismans or other items that break to release a spell to make that work.

In that case, since I'm fairly sure I was thinking specifically of a staff recharge (and not merely rebuilding broken items), I suspect it was homebrew.

[Dalebert]

Apparently the easiest way to recharge a staff is to play PF.

[Rubik]

If you use Ancestral Relic on a staff, you can recharge it (and add new abilities) every level, since the value of the staff is the specific price for that level, and the cost of a staff is based on the number of charges it has, combined with whatever other abilities it's got.