Is purchasing partially charged wands RAW?

[Endarire]

To my present understanding, partially-charged wands (ones with less than the maximum of 50 charges) are available for PCs to purchase from merchants, even during character creation. I don't recall where I read this, but I recall partially charged wand purchasing being RAW and core.

What do the rules specifically state on this?

Thankee!

[Segev]

The RAW do not directly permit this. There is nothing expressly forbidding it, either.

It is up to individual DMs to decide if it’s something that comes up in his setting. If you’re permitting it at chargen, ask yourself if it represents a wand he bought full and this is just where it is down to.

Remember in that latter case to ask when he got it and how he afforded it back then.

[Gusmo]

I don't recall the rules ever talking directly about this. Conceptually it's entirely reasonable, and access to any particular wands with any particular amount of charges would be subject to DM discretion, the same as all other gear.

Edit: Does any anyone else remember the thread with someone who was claiming monks were just as good as casters, and a huge chunk of their example build relied on the ability to afford and use partially charged wands?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't recall where I read this, but I recall partially charged wand purchasing being RAW and core.

The DMG never mentions buying partially-charged wands either way, or even selling them, as Segev noted. It only mentions valuing them in treasure:


If such an item is found as a random part of a treasure, roll d% and divide by 2 to determine the number of charges left (round down, minimum 1). If the item has a maximum number of charges other than 50, roll randomly to determine how many charges are left. For example, a random ring of three wishes has 1d3 wishes left.

Prices listed are always for fully charged items. (When an item is created, it is fully charged.) For an item that’s worthless when its charges run out (which is the case for almost all charged items), the value of the partially used item is proportional to the number of charges left. A wand with 20 charges, for example, is worth 40% of the value of a fully charged wand (with 50 charges). For an item that has usefulness in addition to its charges, only part of the item’s value is based on the number of charges left (DM’s discretion).

...and generating them as part of starting gear:


You’re free to limit what magic items characters can choose when they create characters of higher levels, just as if you were assigning those items to treasure hoards in the game.

[...]

Charged Magic Items: A player may select a partially used magic item for part of his character’s starting gear. Such an item’s value is proportional to the charges left compared to the charges in a newly created item (half price for a wand with 25 charges, 20% of full price for a wand with 10 charges, and so on).

So whether a given DM allows buying and/or selling partially-charged items is entirely up to them.


Edit: Does any anyone else remember the thread with someone who was claiming monks were just as good as casters, and a huge chunk of their example build relied on the ability to afford and use partially charged wands?

By "the thread" do you mean "every single thread even tangentially mentioning monks that said person posted in"? :smallamused: "Monks are balanced because partially-charged wands!" was quite the meme around here back in the day.

But the specific thread you're thinking of is probably this one.

[Gusmo]

There it is! Ah, that takes me back.

[Kurald Galain]

To my present understanding, partially-charged wands (ones with less than the maximum of 50 charges) are available for PCs to purchase from merchants, even during character creation.
In Pathfinder Society at least, this is explicitly forbidden (in the PFS Field Guide) unless you have access to that specific wand on a chronicle sheet.

[Particle_Man]

So cheesy time: Could someone claimed that they made a fully charged wand, then sold the use of some of the charges until the wand paid for itself? Rinse and repeat for infinite partially charged wands?

[Segev]

So cheesy time: Could someone claimed that they made a fully charged wand, then sold the use of some of the charges until the wand paid for itself? Rinse and repeat for infinite partially charged wands?

I'd make them play that out.

[icefractal]

Partially charged wands are ok down to 10 charges or so - they're a better deal than three potions / six scrolls, but you don't always want that many of something and it can't be split up between party members, so there is some trade-off.

Single-charge wands are pretty cheesy though. At less than the price of a single scroll and much easier to activate, they're obvious out of balance with other options. That said, consumables aren't all that powerful, IME, so this wouldn't break the game.

There's kind of a staff equivalent, btw, with custom staves. If a spell uses multiple charges to use, its cost is divided proportionately, including the material component cost. So for example:
Staff of Big Wishing: Wish (10 charges)
(400 * 9 * 17 + 25000 * 50) / 10 = 131,120 gp
Still quite expensive, but it's unlimited wishes (slowly) for the price of five.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, this is one of those few cases where "Ask your GM" is, in fact, the RAW. As are most things to do with item availability, actually. There are some rules for generating items in towns but they're pretty loose, and theoretically anything is available in any given city if the GM says it is.

I would imagine partially charged wands aren't exactly rare, at least for niche spells, but the most common ones a PC would want (like a Wand of Cure Light Wounds or Infernal Healing), people tend to use those all the way up. Depending on the city I don't think it would be unreasonable for the GM to say "Yeah, there's a shop here called Bob's Discount Used Wands", but on the flipside in a small enough locale partially charged wands are going to get rarer and more specific; Adventure Paths include them as common loot in many urban environments, and they're usually something like "You find a wand of Gentle Repose with 13 charges remaining in the basement of the coroner's office".

[Elysiume]

The rules for magic items in settlements are already, in my opinion, bad for verisimilitude. RAW, a settlement with a base value of Xgp has 75% of items that cost less than that. It works okay for basic items when you're trying to grab a Cloak of Resistance +5 or a Belt of Incredible Dexterity +2, but it gets weirder when you get into more customizable items like a +1 Keen Spell-Storing Falcata or consumables. Consumables in particular get ridiculous, especially for smaller settlements. A village populated by 100 people with a base value of 500gp has, RAW, access to scrolls up to 3rd and potions up to 2nd. They have 75% of everything, putting the net worth of that tiny village somewhere in the stratosphere. Obviously it's up to the DM to adjudicate it, but the base rules don't give you much to work with, so if you want to handle the party rolling in, asking for 100 scrolls, and buying 75 of them for a total of tens of thousands of gold spent in a tiny village, you need to go off-RAW.

Introducing partially-charged wands exacerbates this problem. That village doesn't have wands unless the DM rolled for them (excluding cantrip/orison wands which I've yet to see someone ask for), but the introduction of partially-charged wands gives you two options: use the base value of a wand (e.g. a partially-charged Wand of Black Tentacles is still treated as costing 21,000gp for base settlement pricing) or use the purchase price of a wand (e.g. a 1/50 Wand of Black Tentacles costs 420gp). As others have noted up-thread, low-charge wands are significantly more efficient than scrolls. Throw in the fact they're easier to use than scrolls (flat DC 20 vs. 20 + CL) and can't backfire as badly (failure never does worse than waste your action, with the standard "rolling a 1" caveat of UMD), and it becomes more viable to try to grab a high-level, low-charge wand.

In the last campaign I ran, partially-charged wands were available, but the players had no control over it. If they went to a 1000gp base value settlement and asked for a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, I would (1) roll to see if a wand was available, (2) roll to see how many wands were available (something I did for all consumables), and (3) roll to see if any were partially charged and how charged they were. If they specifically asked "is there a low-charge wand of X," I would basically go through that same process and the answer could be "no," "no, but there are some fully charged wands of X," "no, but there's one wand at 24/50 and one at 37/50," or "yeah."

tl;dr: Introducing partially-charged wands worsens the already-bad verisimilitude of the magic mart and can have serious balance implications if there aren't safeguards around what wands are available.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

A village populated by 100 people with a base value of 500gp has, RAW, access to scrolls up to 3rd and potions up to 2nd. They have 75% of everything, putting the net worth of that tiny village somewhere in the stratosphere. Obviously it's up to the DM to adjudicate it, but the base rules don't give you much to work with, so if you want to handle the party rolling in, asking for 100 scrolls, and buying 75 of them for a total of tens of thousands of gold spent in a tiny village, you need to go off-RAW.

You don't, actually. I assume by "base value" you're referring to the "ready cash" amount, since 500 gp is the ready cash amount for a Hamlet of 100 people, and that applies when buying items as well as selling them:


To determine the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any given time, multiply half the gp limit by 1/10 of the community’s population. For example, suppose a band of adventurers brings a bagful of loot (one hundred gems, each worth 50 gp) into a hamlet of 90 people. Half the hamlet’s gp limit times 1/10 its population equals 450 (100 ÷ 2 = 50; 90 ÷ 10 = 9; 50 × 9 = 450). Therefore, the PCs can only convert nine of their recently acquired gems to coins on the spot before exhausting the local cash reserves. The coins will not be all bright, shiny gold pieces. They should include a large number of battered and well-worn silver pieces and copper pieces as well, especially in a small or poor community.

If those same adventurers hope to buy longswords (price 15 gp each) for their mercenary hirelings, they’ll discover that the hamlet can offer only 30 such swords for sale, because the same 450 gp limit applies whether you’re buying or selling in a given community.

So the adventurers in your example who are trying to buy scrolls would find that the hamlet in fact has no 3rd-level scrolls available, since those are 375 gp a pop and the gold limit is 100 gp, and only has at most two 2nd-level scrolls (200 gp each). There can be a bit of DM adjudication involved for the fine details (for instance, whether "any given item" means "scrolls" or "arcane scrolls" or "2nd-level arcane scrolls" or "2nd-level arcane scrolls of this particular spell" or... and thus whether there are 25 or 12 1st-level scrolls available after they buy a 2nd-level scroll), but in general RAW handles the supposed "magic mart problem" in small communities just fine.

[Elysiume]

Is that from 3.5 or PF? I can't find anything like that in the PF GMG (PF doesn't have a DMG), and it doesn't mesh with the rest of the rules on what items are available in a given settlement. Either way, that's cool to read about; thanks for posting it.

e: Yeah, if an analogue to that rule exists for PF, I can't find it (admittedly I haven't had the time to look all that hard). It helps in some regards, but tracking down the full 3.5 rule indicates that there's a 100% chance of availability under the base value (instead of a 75% chance) which resolves the "okay, we buy 75% of all extant scrolls" problem but adds the weirdness of "okay, they had that one specific item I wanted and are now out of stock of everything else." With some tweaks you could apply the 3.5 rule to PF, but it doesn't seem to be PF RAW. There's also a pretty hefty value disconnect: a settlement with population 300 gets 500gp in PF and 100gp in 3.5; a population of 300k gets 16kgp in PF and 100kgp in 3.5. If that rule exists in PF (or if someone where to houserule it for PF), it resolves some verisimilitude issues in exchange for adding some others.

I'll also be clearer about the "we buy 75% of all extant scrolls" problem. That was really just a theoretical thing, and you have an inverse issue with the 3.5 rules. If the party is in a small town (base value 500gp) and are interested in two third-level scrolls (375gp each), in PF there's a 75% chance that each scroll is there, rolled independently. If 3.5, there's a 100% chance that one scroll is there, and it's whichever one they ask for first — even if it's not guaranteed, you know that buying one scroll means that the other scroll isn't available. Is it better to have the n+1 issue where the party can always ask about another item and get access at a 75% chance, or is it better to have the issue where the town has what you want right up until everything vanishes? You can add/tweak rules to make that less wonky (or even just fluff, like "they still have other stuff but don't want to have more cash on hand right now so they're not willing to sell" for the 3.5 version), but my overall concern was that RAW settlement item rules are wonky, and I don't think this is a silver bullet.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It helps in some regards, but tracking down the full 3.5 rule indicates that there's a 100% chance of availability under the base value (instead of a 75% chance) which resolves the "okay, we buy 75% of all extant scrolls" problem but adds the weirdness of "okay, they had that one specific item I wanted and are now out of stock of everything else."

Note that while the ready cash limit for selling items applies to the community as a whole (because it represents all the cash in the community), the limit for buying items is per specific item or category of items, so if you buy 33 longswords in a hamlet with a ready cash limit of 500 gp, that doesn't mean they're out of horses and potions and everything else. (Though as I noted, it's up to the DM to determine whether buying 33 longswords means they're out of "longswords" or "any swords" or "martial melee weapons" or whatever else, depending on the community in question.)

And while that could theoretically lead to some weirdness where a party could e.g. go down the PHB equipment list and buy the limit's worth of everything if they had enough gold, the DMG leaves room for the DM to limit that (saying that "anything having a price under that limit is most likely available," emphasis mine, and that "exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought)") and A&EG adds some rules regarding good scarcity and availability, so the DM has RAW options if the PCs try to abuse the gold limit rules or otherwise don't operate in good faith.


If 3.5, there's a 100% chance that one scroll is there, and it's whichever one they ask for first — even if it's not guaranteed, you know that buying one scroll means that the other scroll isn't available.

As noted, it's not a 100% chance that the first scroll is there (any given item is only "most likely" available, not "definitely" available) and not a 0% chance that the other scroll isn't available (if the DM decides that "a given item" means "2nd-level arcane scrolls" instead of "any scrolls" then you can buy the one available arcane scroll and still be able to pick up 1st-level arcane scrolls or 2nd-level divine scrolls).

And of course the ready cash and gold limit rules are there as general caps, not item-specific or shop-specific rules; the DM is well within his rights to use the random magic item tables to stock an apothecary's shop in a hamlet or the like, or to hand-pick the scrolls being sold by Jane the Evoker 3 (prohibited schools Abjuration and Conjuration)/Cleric 2 (domains Fire and Destruction).

[Elysiume]

Is there somewhere I can read the full 3.5 rules on this? I don't want to derail this thread any further, but that doesn't address the specific scroll example — it's like you're collapsing a wave function by observing it (by buying one of the two scrolls).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I edited my last post in response to your second edit, so take a look at that. But the full rules regarding ready cash/gold limit are on DMG 137, and more rules for generating, buying, and selling magic items are in the DMG's magic items chapter, several places in MIC, and chapter 2 of A&EG.

[Elysiume]

I don't play 3.5 and own zero of those books — is this info collected somewhere on the SRD or am I out of luck?

e: also apologies because I have a tendency to edit a lot; the edit where I wrote this is actually the second edit I made to this post

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't play 3.5 and own zero of those books — is this info collected somewhere on the SRD or am I out of luck?

Pretty sure it's just in the books, unfortunately. Only stuff that's necessary to run the game (and wasn't considered "product identity") went into the SRD, so major portions of the DMG that were considered more guidance or advice than rules didn't make the cut.

[Segev]

To be fair, if adventurers and such sell off partially charged wands, some merchants might make quite the business of traveling to smaller hamlets and selling them to the local adept or hedge sorcerer. Or passing low-level adventurers.

[Ashiel]

To my present understanding, partially-charged wands (ones with less than the maximum of 50 charges) are available for PCs to purchase from merchants, even during character creation. I don't recall where I read this, but I recall partially charged wand purchasing being RAW and core.

What do the rules specifically state on this?

Thankee!
Nothing states explicitly one way or another, in much the same way nothing states that a +1 flaming longsword can be bought outright.

What the game does say is that players can find magic items worth up to X-gp in Y-settlement size 75% of the time when looking, and the game also tells you the value of partially charged wands; ergo unless specified otherwise you can buy partially charged wands as long as their values fall within the limits and you get suitably lucky with the generation (avg. 3 per settlement if you're GM is lazy like me).

The same would be true for things like a luck blade with its wishes burnt out, or any other item with a finite amount of charges.

From an in-world perspective, it seems more than reasonable that there are actually far more partially charged wands floating around than not, simply because casting a specific spell 50 times is not something that's going to be necessary in many cases and you can hawk a crafted wand to recoup 100% of the unspent resources to apply to something else. For example, if you crafted a CL 5 wand of fireball before setting off on a journey, and only used 33 charges from the wand, you can just hawk the wand at a merchant to recover 100% of the material costs for the remaining 17 charges, which you could then put towards creating new magic items or scribing spells into your spellbook, or whatever.

Similarly, there's a lot of classes that can craft wands floating around but there's also lot of classes that can't use them or would rather sell them. You can find wands of most healing spells and a wide variety of good offensive and utility spells crafted by adepts (who as NPC classes have high caster levels for their CRs thus are very good at crafting wands and the like), so it's probably very common to find wands scattered about dungeons, bandit camps, and more. Many of these wands will be hawked off to merchants and traded around in the same way any other unwanted magic items are hawked off to merchants. Swapping and bartering them is probably pretty practical as well (swapping for equal or similar value items or for the difference).

It's actually harder to believe from an immersion standpoint that you can't buy them, because you can certainly sell them and it's not like the merchants are going to toss their new purchases into a wood-chipper or something. Given the sheer quantity of wands that you can expect to find in your typical adventure (partially charged wands are a staple of NPC gear in adventures, along with scrolls, potions, oils, etc), it's pretty likely that they're pretty ubiquitous. You'd probably be able to find a few near-burnt out wands of minor power even in the smallest communities.

EDIT:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.playbuzz.com%2Fcdn%2F96311093-2823-4b86-ad5f-6de9cb5de62b%2Fdaeb4f94-6944-4ee5-853e-e50a47225e2c.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

[Crake]

One thing that I think is rather interesting to note, is that on page 199, the DMG says that for one-shot adventures, single use items should cost 5x as much, and charged items should have 1/5th the charges, so in this case partially charged is the requirement! (even though the price actually remains the same :smalltongue: )

[Segev]

One thing that I think is rather interesting to note, is that on page 199, the DMG says that for one-shot adventures, single use items should cost 5x as much, and charged items should have 1/5th the charges, so in this case partially charged is the requirement! (even though the price actually remains the same :smalltongue: )

Huh. I don’t remember ever reading that. So, good find!

[Ashiel]

One thing that I think is rather interesting to note, is that on page 199, the DMG says that for one-shot adventures, single use items should cost 5x as much, and charged items should have 1/5th the charges, so in this case partially charged is the requirement! (even though the price actually remains the same :smalltongue: )

That's probably because consumable items (while often under appreciated, under-rated, under-purchased, and under-crafted by the majority of the playerbase) are actually really good. The 3.x DMGs also mention that most players will never get through all 50 charges of most wands during a campaign, so with the exception of exceptionally spammy spells (e.g. cure light wounds or magic missile or something) having 50 charges is pretty functionally close to having an at-will item for most spells.

Something that a lot of people under-appreciate (especially in Pathfinder where you can craft items above your level with increasing difficulties) is that consumables are available at different caster levels, and that can often give a pretty big advantage at low levels if used wisely. For example, a potion of shield of faith (CL 20) is 1,000 gp, and provides a +5 deflection bonus to your AC for quite a while. A bonus that large can turn the tables on a particularly harrowing boss battle. Similarly, an elemental gem (found in core) is about 2,000 gp and summons a large elemental under your command. At low levels, that's basically an "I win" emergency button, and such items are not that expensive when everyone in a party chips in (only 250 gp / player in a 4-person party, or 125 gp if someone is capable of crafting it, which in Pathfinder you can do as early as 3rd level).

I legitimately think that all people interested in D&D should play (and get decently good at) Baldur's Gate (the 1998 PC game) and perhaps its sequel Baldur's Gate II. Those games can really teach you the value of consumable items. There are lots of battles and encounters in those games that can feel completely impossible, which are made into cakewalks by actually using the consumables you find or casting things like dispel magic.

[Zancloufer]

I legitimately think that all people interested in D&D should play (and get decently good at) Baldur's Gate (the 1998 PC game) and perhaps its sequel Baldur's Gate II. Those games can really teach you the value of consumable items. There are lots of battles and encounters in those games that can feel completely impossible, which are made into cakewalks by actually using the consumables you find or casting things like dispel magic.

Can confirm that chucking stupid amounts of limited and expensive items in BG1 can be stupid helpful. Wands of Summon Meat-shield (Monster), Arrows of Detonation (Fireball) and a few of the super potions really help you clear out the end-game. Also helps that you know (at least on play through 2+) that this is the last chance to use any of these things. BG2 it's a bit less essential, though it's more so because that game becomes a bit of a buff (stripping) war with some SR removal and IK + save debuff rocket tag along with the price of magic items going exponential.

Also if anyone wants to play Baldur's Gate you can get all three games at GoG for ~$20 and I would say it's (almost) mandatory to install the Trilogy (or Tutu) mod so you can play BG1 in BG2's engine and use the same rule set/character build the whole way through. Big QoL improvements there.

On partially charged wands/items: I think letting a small town have any item who's full price is more than 2x the town GP limit would be a bit silly. On the flip side partially charged wands or burnt out limited use magic items should be common place if they are either super useful for everyday life and/or there is a hedge wizard/second hand shop on a well traveled road. I could see a general second-hand store on a well traveled trade route in all but the smallest of hamlets should have some general use items.

[Ashiel]

Can confirm that chucking stupid amounts of limited and expensive items in BG1 can be stupid helpful. Wands of Summon Meat-shield (Monster), Arrows of Detonation (Fireball) and a few of the super potions really help you clear out the end-game. Also helps that you know (at least on play through 2+) that this is the last chance to use any of these things. BG2 it's a bit less essential, though it's more so because that game becomes a bit of a buff (stripping) war with some SR removal and IK + save debuff rocket tag along with the price of magic items going exponential.
Yep. That's why I said perhaps BG-II. Railroading aside, BG-II is usually considered by most to be the definitive BG experience (though I actually still prefer BG-I using Tutu), but it can pretty rapidly devolve into wizard tag (which is why I modded the heck out of it). BG-I is a little less rock-paper-wizard and more of a varied experience I think. I do appreciate that BG II actually tells you during loading screens to use your consumables, to counteract the hoarder mentality most players have.

A lot of players seem to view consumable items as wastes of money, rather than being competitively priced super tools that they are. Perfect example is the humble elixir, such as those like the elixir of hiding. 250 gp gets you a slotless +10 competence bonus for 1 hour. A permanent item of such would cost you 10,000 gp and an item slot, 15,000 gp to add as a secondary (e.g. shadowed), or 20,000 gp for a slotless version. You can craft these for 125 gp. The next time your party's warrior says he can't go on a stealth mission because of his armor, slap his PC with one of these and him out of character. :smalltongue:

From one small tangentially related subject into another, given how flexible the magic item creation rules already are, allowing players and NPCs to craft wands at sub-max charges would not be difficult at all. In much the same way that creating an infinite wand is very easy to do (double the price). This is assuming of course you feel like the cost of a fully charged wand seems too high to justify NPCs crafting them on the regular. Just offer the option to craft wands in batches of 10 charges (1/5 regular price per 10 charges). You can still even have partially charged wands as usual. So a "freshly made" wand of cure light wounds with 10 charges would be 150 gp, but you'd still never find more than 3 charges available in a thorpe (50 gp limit in Pathfinder).

Example
Wand of Fireball (10) = 2,250 gp
Wand of Fireball (20) = 4,500 gp
Wand of Fireball (30) = 6,750 gp
Wand of Fireball (40) = 9,000 gp
Wand of Fireball (50) = 11,250 gp
Etc.