Manual Rod of Wonder

[ThinkMinty]

How powerful is a Rod of Wonder...if you could choose which power to use each time?

[noob]

It would be very powerful because you could create 10-40 po per turn and so in eight hours of work create at least 48000 PO.

[ThinkMinty]

It would be very powerful because you could create 10-40 po per turn and so in eight hours of work create at least 48000 PO.

Please don't abbreviate things before-and-instead-of not abbreviating them.

[noob]

You could create from ten to forty gems worth one gold coin each per use and so in eight hours create at least forty eight thousand gems worth one gold coin each.

[Novawurmson]

Ignoring the infinite money for a second, the biggest value to me seems to be at-will enlarge person, invisibility, and stinking cloud. Most other things are fluff/RP-only or have low saving throws. Lightning bolt/fireball is potentially useful at low levels for the spammable AoE. Summoning infinite elephants, mice, and rhinos has uses. No-save detect thoughts is interesting.

[ThinkMinty]

Ignoring the infinite money for a second, the biggest value to me seems to be at-will enlarge person, invisibility, and stinking cloud. Most other things are fluff/RP-only or have low saving throws. Lightning bolt/fireball is potentially useful at low levels for the spammable AoE. Summoning infinite elephants, mice, and rhinos has uses. No-save detect thoughts is interesting.

Infinite money? It's more like you have a renewable, reliable source of finite money. It's like the hydroelectric power plant of money; a revenue stream, if you will.

[noob]

No rule says only one person can hold a given item and use it so you could have 50 small people holding that thing and using at the same time and so get 50 times faster that money.
Then if the cost is anything reasonable for a level 30 character you can probably build another one with the money you get with one in one day.
After that you can start mass producing and potentially make tons of money and after some time buy stuff like a +50 to all saves cape of resistance and other stuff of this kind.

[legomaster00156]

No rule says only one person can hold a given item and use it so you could have 50 small people holding that thing and using at the same time and so get 50 times faster that money.
Then if the cost is anything reasonable for a level 30 character you can probably build another one with the money you get with one in one day.
After that you can start mass producing and potentially make tons of money and after some time buy stuff like a +50 to all saves cape of resistance and other stuff of this kind.
This kind of stuff gives economists headaches.

[ThinkMinty]

This kind of stuff gives economists headaches.

And being the Chaotic Good guy that I am, I'm only giving them a headache if they had it coming, and I'd do it with a sap rather than by flooding the gemstone market.

Heck, that's a good restriction on endless gem creation: They'll stop being worth anything if you keep making them.

[Uhtred]

And being the Chaotic Good guy that I am, I'm only giving them a headache if they had it coming, and I'd do it with a sap rather than by flooding the gemstone market.

Heck, that's a good restriction on endless gem creation: They'll stop being worth anything if you keep making them.

There was a book where a group of people discovered a diamond mine and had to stop themselves going crazy and trying to sell all of their diamonds at once. They lived quite comfortably by varying the trade ports they visited and only selling a bucket's worth at a time, and by keeping the mine's existence a complete secret.
So you create your Scrooge McDuck Money Bin full of gems on a private tropical island, and every month you visit a new port on your luxury yacht and sell enough gems to support your extravagant lifestyle, gradually emptying the money bin of gems and filling it with gold in which to swim.
That being said my players just love the crap out of gems; I have a player in each campaign I run who forgoes part of their share of loot in favor of all the gems that have been looted. This use of the Rod of Wonder would cause them both to have kittens.

[ThinkMinty]

There was a book where a group of people discovered a diamond mine and had to stop themselves going crazy and trying to sell all of their diamonds at once. They lived quite comfortably by varying the trade ports they visited and only selling a bucket's worth at a time, and by keeping the mine's existence a complete secret.
So you create your Scrooge McDuck Money Bin full of gems on a private tropical island, and every month you visit a new port on your luxury yacht and sell enough gems to support your extravagant lifestyle, gradually emptying the money bin of gems and filling it with gold in which to swim.
That being said my players just love the crap out of gems; I have a player in each campaign I run who forgoes part of their share of loot in favor of all the gems that have been looted. This use of the Rod of Wonder would cause them both to have kittens.

Wow. I'm the kind of guy who takes a diamond or two, leaves the way I came, and doesn't tell people about the diamond mine. Granted, travelling companions might be greedier, but I don't want a cure for adventure.

[noob]

Well flooding the market is not possible in dnd since there is an infinite number of creatures and that if it was possible the precious materials dimension(There is one and there is even trees which gives +5 inherent bonus to one stat when you eat its fruit) would have made the value of precious materials fall to 0.
You can flood a local market but you then just have to teleport to the next one and you can flood thousand and thousand of separated markets and get a fair amount of gold from each one.
Then there is stuff like items which gives you teleport some times per day.
Buy them all for faster teleporting everywhere and since there is an infinite universe you will never run out of market-places to flood with gems for getting money and magical items.

[Uhtred]

Well flooding the market is not possible in dnd since there is an infinite number of creatures and that if it was possible the precious materials dimension(There is one and there is even trees which gives +5 inherent bonus to one stat when you eat its fruit) would have made the value of precious materials fall to 0.
You can flood a local market but you then just have to teleport to the next one and you can flood thousand and thousand of separated markets and get a fair amount of gold from each one.
Then there is stuff like items which gives you teleport some times per day.
Buy them all for faster teleporting everywhere and since there is an infinite universe you will never run out of market-places to flood with gems for getting money and magical items.

...and at the end of the day, you return to your castle on your private tropical island and swim in your Scrooge McDuck money bin full of cash. There is also a luxury yacht filled with Aasimar bikini models wearing Belts of Charisma +6 and little else. What good is infinite money without living the high life?

[Psyren]

Aside from the gems, you also get the following exploits:

- Infinite stone to flesh has applications in siegecraft, or just squicking out your neighbors.
- Turn all your enemies' weapons, armor and other gear ethereal; there is no protection even for attended objects other than the weight restrictions.
- You may be able to combine the "stone to flesh" and "make objects ethereal" functions as well; If you stone to flesh a large object (like a stone wall), it will only affect a cylinder of it. That cylinder is no longer part of the larger stone wall and therefore arguably counts as its own object. So zap it to flesh and then make it vanish to the ethereal plane, and the end result is that the enemy has a gaping hole in their fortress. Repeat until your army can waltz right in the following morning.
- Infinite rain will eventually let you terraform a desert.

[Jack_Simth]

How powerful is a Rod of Wonder...if you could choose which power to use each time?

Well, going through The List (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rods/rod-of-wonder):

Slow, DC 15 negates: Pretty much useless, except at very low levels.
Faerie Fire: Useful at almost any level if only a few people in the party can see invisible things.
Delude Wielder: You'd never pick this.
Gust of Wind, DC 14: Pretty much useless except in specialized circumstances.
No-save Detect Thoughts: Stupidly useful in the right campaign, slightly useful in most, completely useless in some.
Stinking Cloud, DC 15 Negates: Pretty much useless, except at very low levels.
Heavy Rain: useful in the right campaign (desert ones), otherwise pretty useless.
Summon an Animal: Assuming it acts as a normal summon, the CR 4 Rhino and the CR 7 Elephant are useful as cannon fodder and meatshields up until about level ten or so. This is more valuable than a Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals (100k)
Lightning Bolt, DC 15 half: Useful up until about level 4-ish.
Butterflies: Blindness for 2 rounds, Reflex DC 14 negates? Pretty much useless except at very low levels.
Enlarge Person, DC 13 Negates: Useful buff for the meatshield of the party.
Darkness: Very situational spell effect, but can be useful.
Grass: Useful for making sure your horse can always graze. Otherwise, not so much. Well, unless you consider "wheat", "Oats", and similar to be "grass" for the purposes of the effect, then very useful to farmers. Even if it really is just grass... Hay is useful sometimes.
Turn a nonliving object Ethereal: This is a superior version of Knock. You make the door go away. There's no noted save, so it's also useful for disarming or disarmoring people.
Reduce Wielder: Stupidly useful for a sneaky type or a caster.
Fireball, DC 15 half: Useful up until about level 4-ish.
Invisibility: Really nifty. This alone makes the rod more valuable than the 20k Ring of Invisibility.
Leaves grow from target: Very situational. You'll probably never invoke this use.
Gems: Neigh-infinite money, as noted by many people. Stupidly useful.
Shimmering Colors: Blindnesss for 1d6 rounds in a big area, Fort DC 15 negates. Useful up until about level 3 or so, then you've got much better things to do with your actions.
Color Change: This is an RP effect only, so it might be useful in RP heavy campaigns, otherwise, you'll probably never pick it.
Flesh to Stone / Stone to Flesh: DC 18 Negates. Useful up until about level 5 offensively, it's a handy fix-it pretty much forever, and has some creative uses at any level.

Note that some of these increase in usefulness with spam. If you have, say, Leadership, and bring 40 followers along, supplying each of them with such a controlled Rod, then it's stupidly powerful vs. anything not immune to the associated effects - example: unless it has evasion or is immune, the fireballs & lightning bolts will kill most things with 40 iterations (half of 240d6 damage averages 420 points of damage); 40 Flesh to Stone attempts or 40 Stinking Clouds will disable most non-immune targets due to the nat-1 clause on saves; 40 Shimmering Colors will render most sighted opponents in dire straights due to the nat-1 clause on saves; and so on.

For comparison, the Ring of Invsibility is worth 20k (and only lasts 3 minutes, this lasts 10), and the Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals is an essentially at-will CR 7 summon (same CR as the elephant) for 100k. This is more useful than both of those put together, as it has more than those two effects that you will actually use regularly, and there's no restriction on the number of summons at once.

So a fully controlled Rod of Wonder should be a very late game item, based on usefulness and comparing to items that have similar functions.