[SoP] Help me understand the point of wands

[MrSandman]

I've been looking through the rules for magic items in Spheres of Power, and wands seem to be both extraordinarily expensive and nearly useless.

So, basically, the most basic wand has one base sphere and one spell point. I need the base sphere (though not the specific talent) to activate, and I can't use my own spell points to activate it. So, unless I've got Use Magic Device, I cannot gain additional spheres with it and I can't really do much with it. I assume I can use it without spending spell points as much as I want, but that gives me rather underwhelming effects for its price. Then, maybe once or twice I can use some cool effects that spend spell points. Then, if I want to ever use that wand again, I need to recharge it by spending one of my own spell points, and I can only put one every day, so wands with a big amount of spell points (which would be like 5) take quite a bit to be recharged.

I can't help but compare that to a wand of cure light wounds, which gives me 50x 1d8+1 healing points for 750 gp. A simple healing wand in SoP would give me 1x 1d8+2 healing points for 1,000 gp with the possibility to recharge it. This seems to me to be a lot worse for a higher price. If instead of healing I want a wand of blasting, it's pretty much the same, I can get 1x 2d6 for 1,000 gp or 50x 1d4+1 for 750 gp. Granted, in this case the blasting wand can make more than twice the damage of a wand of magic missile, but again, it's still one use against fifty.

And if I want a wand that can do something other than the basic power of a sphere, it gets ridiculously expensive very quickly without giving me very many more uses. If I wanted a blasting sphere that can make fire balls I would need at the very least 9,000 gp (Explosive orb + Fire blast) and that would let me either cast a proper fire ball or do 6d6 damage instead of 3d6 once/day (assuming I recharge it every day). If I wanted to do both at the same time or be able to do it twice (and wait for two days to recharge it completely), it would cost me 16,000 gp. A fire ball wand with 50 charges (and 5d6 damage) would cost me 11,250 gp.

So, the only real use I can think of for wands is to gain access to additional talents of a sphere you already possess, if said talents don't require spell points to be used. Even then, it's probably more than I'd want to pay.

So my question is this: What am I missing? Why does it make sense to buy a wand using the SoP system?

[exelsisxax]

Wands are not ever effective means of primary functionality. Just as a normal cleric is better than any item(BotE excepted, because they're stupid) for healing, and a competent sorcerer is better than any item for his chosen role, SoP wands are never the best at anything. Just like core, wands are backup. It is more consistent backup than core, because you can get 1 wand and keep it forever, upgrading it to keep pace with your party so that you don't have to buy a CLW wand to heal after every single fight. You give up dumping the ability to dump 50d8 of healing in 5 minutes to get infinite, limited per-day uses and better scaling - and at-will temp HP for free on the side.

They're better than core wands, they just can't replicate a class. I don't know why you think they should.

[Manyasone]

They're better than core wands, they just can't replicate a class. I don't know why you think they should.

Because people became used to low level wands bypassing entire classes eg. Wands of knock, wands of detect traps etc. etc.

[MrSandman]

They're better than core wands, they just can't replicate a class. I don't know why you think they should.

Thank you for answering to my underlying motives instead of my question. I appreciate that, but that's not what I was asking.

Let's look at your claim that they are better than core wands, maybe you can help me understand how it works.


Wands are not ever effective means of primary functionality. Just as a normal cleric is better than any item(BotE excepted, because they're stupid) for healing, and a competent sorcerer is better than any item for his chosen role, SoP wands are never the best at anything. Just like core, wands are backup.

Okay, wands are supposed to be a backup. I never said otherwise and I never said that they should be able to replicate a class, I don't know why you think I did.


It is more consistent backup than core, because you can get 1 wand and keep it forever, upgrading it to keep pace with your party so that you don't have to buy a CLW wand to heal after every single fight. You give up dumping the ability to dump 50d8 of healing in 5 minutes to get infinite, limited per-day uses and better scaling - and at-will temp HP for free on the side.

Except that I don't get infinite uses. I only get the spell points that come with it when I first buy it. Afterwards, I need to either put in spell points from my own pool or get someone else to do it. Oh, and I can only put one spell point per day. So I only really get them "for free" if I've got downtime or spell points left at the end of the day. Moreover, if my wand can do any powerful effects, I need to wait days before using them again. So what I get is a small spell point pool that I need to keep refilling out of my own resources at a painfully slow rate. I don't get infinite uses, I get a few uses and then take any further uses I may want out of my own spell points.

Regarding the at-will temporary hit points, I get them anyway because to use the wand I need Life as a known sphere, so I can give temporary hit points as many times as I want without using the wand, I really can't see where it helps me here.

I appreciate your reply, but if you want to help, I'd rather you give a couple of examples showing how owning a wand is well-spent money. Right now, I can only think of a situation in which you've got no spell points left and need a powerful effect (no more than one or two, though) and suddenly you happily remember how you've been dumping one spell point every day for the past four days into that 49,000 gp wand that you get to use once every month.

[denthor]

Wands give you spells so you do not have to use a spell slot.

Example

3rd level spells known

Fireball
Tiny hut
Gasous form
Lighting bolt
Summon monster 3
Dispel magic
Arcane sight

You can pick 3 per day.

If you had a wand of arcane sight. For the rare times you needed it you would not have to use your spell slot for the day. Tiny hut same thing 10 hour restin period.

[exelsisxax]

You need to have the base sphere if you want to avoid UMD checks, the wand can be recharged by anyone with spellpoints, and the wand increases the effective number of spellpoints you have. I don't understand what more you want - the wands do exactly what they are supposed to do. If you want maximum return on price, you'd buy a staff first if you had a particular focus.

If you're going to shift your goalposts to being "worth the price" you need to define what that means.

[Kitsuneymg]

Wands are fairly useless IMO in SoP until you get the feat to use your caster level instead of wand's level. Then they become a way to store spell points from downtime to use later during an adventure.

Core wands still exist. They are called "wondrous items" in SoP and can be either uses per day or 50 use items. As Wondrous Items, any clsss can use them. So no one needs life to basically do the CLW trick. They do cost more, however.

[exelsisxax]

Wands are fairly useless IMO in SoP until you get the feat to use your caster level instead of wand's level. Then they become a way to store spell points from downtime to use later during an adventure.

Core wands still exist. They are called "wondrous items" in SoP and can be either uses per day or 50 use items. As Wondrous Items, any clsss can use them. So no one needs life to basically do the CLW trick. They do cost more, however.

With that feat you can shenanigan drawbacks onto CL1 wands for all the at-wills you could ever want, and you could upgrade wands to full SP-battery mode. You could also buy duplicates - a destruction blaster could have 2-3 different wands spec'd to different blasts to simultaneously have more SP and talents than you could ever have from levels. It basically lets you buy spheres and talents with gold, and frees up your core talents. That feat makes them powerful, at the expense of eating most of your gold to make them turbocharged.

[Deophaun]

The point of these wands is the same as cognizance crystals: you sell them to NPCs for half their value in gold to buy real items.