Divining dev intent: spell trigger vs spell completion

[Zaq]

So let's be honest: the distinction between spell trigger and spell completion baffles me.

Not in the sense that I don't know how it works, mind you. I can read those rules just fine and use them. (Spell trigger doesn't provoke and simply requires that the spell be on your list; spell completion provokes and requires both that the spell be on your list and that you be high enough to cast it and/or that you make a CL check. Any of these requirements can be obviated via UMD. Trust me, I get that much.) What I mean is that I do not understand why the devs felt the need to draw this distinction.

Does this... make the game more fun? I feel like "verisimilitude" isn't that convincing an argument given that, you know, these are fictional magical devices that only exist in fiction and have no real-world equivalents, but maybe that comes down to the difference between verisimilitude and realism. Still, though, that seems like a stretch, so hopefully I'm not just making a strawman here.

Like, I can see that this does have effects. Scrolls are just plain harder to use than wands, for instance, meaning that it's less reliable to try to activate an above-level scroll found as loot than it is to activate an above-level wand (or staff). Okay. Great, I guess? I don't really get why that's worth book space.

I'm not trying to solve a specific problem, per se. The rules are functional, though a bit clunky. I'm not proposing a houserule or anything (though if I were, it would just be to simplify things). My goal in this discussion is just to see if we can collectively come up with some plausible explanations why the devs felt like this was an important distinction to codify.

Rereading DMG 213, it says that you must identify the spell in a spell trigger item in order to use it, but it has no such language for spell completion. Interesting. Seems like one of those forgotten rules to me that no one would bother to use, but I suppose the world is vast and there are many GMs who have many customs. Now, the specific rules for scrolls specify that you have to go through the process of deciphering the scroll first, but the general spell completion rules don't say that. The reverse is true for wands/spell trigger. Go figure. Then there's the "activate blindly" function of UMD, which seems like it would presumably get around these requirements, but which doesn't specify if it takes a separate check or a separate action... UMD itself technically takes no action, but still.

[Tzardok]

I can imagine two possibilities.

One: It's something that was grandfathered in. Some things in D&D, like the fact that rings are their own category of magical item, have been that way forever, so they keep it. It's not like it hurts the game, so why not continue?

Two: Scrolls are treated differently by the game in some ways. There's the fact that you can scribe a scroll into a spellbook, but not a spell from a wand. Also, scrolls are more for situational spells that are needed once or twice in a campaign, while wands are for spells that you need a lot of times. Maybe they felt that they needed to be treated differently.

You know, the more I think about it, the more number two sounds right. A wand holds a ready spell. It is made for ease of use. A scroll, on the other hand, holds the complete description of the spell. That makes it possible to learn from the scroll, but at the same time harder to actually use it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

In the meta, scrolls offer the actual spellcasters a -very- cheap option for expanding the spells they have available at any given time in exchange for having to cast it at minimum level. For a low-level sorcerer, cleric, or particularly a wizard; it also buys them just a little staying power since they don't have much in the way of magical oomph before they're leaning on equipment.

Now, on making that caster level check. It's actually pretty trivial. The DC is caster level +1 not CL +11. A 1st level wizard that somehow gets ahold of a scroll of a 6th level spell has even odds of activating it. Something more his own budget, like a 2nd or 3rd level spell has a 95% or 80% chance of activation. By the time you can actually afford to start considering wands, you can easily have an extra +1 or +2 to your CL for some category or other of spell and actually be able to activate a scroll of a level higher than you can cast without a check at all.

Then you look at wands and staves; there's no check at all to activate them, sure. They're nothing approaching cheap though. Unless you're an artificer or other dedicated crafter, you're buying wands of spells several levels lower than you can cast for either staying power or for something that comes up too often for scrolls to be practical but not so often that you want to actually dedicate slots or spells known to it, like knock for example.

Now at a certain level, the guy with UMD hits +19 on his check modifier and can activate spell trigger items without having to make checks anymore but that's not an insubstantial investment unless that level is like 13ish. Until then, scrolls are longer odds but they're still a lot cheaper for one-time or once-in-a-while effects. It might blow up in your face but if it doesn't you can really come in clutch with the right spell.

In either case, neither spell completion nor spell trigger is a realistic option until you're doing at least better than even odds for activation by UMD, around +11 or so, unless the wand or staff in question isn't an effect that you need -right now- when you need it. Attempting to UMD a scroll without decent odds is just a bad plan. The point here is that both are under a degree of role-protection for the actual casters until around middle level.

in a nutshell, spell completion lets you reach beyond your normal level of power in exchange for a chance of failure beyond that baked into the spell while spell trigger buys you staying power or versatility in lower level magic for a pile of gold. The same is true whether you're an actual caster or a UMD skill-monkey. The latter just does it a not-insubstantial number of levels later.



In my opinion, this host of considerations around the two methods very much does contribute both to a sense of verisimilitude, you can't use caster tools without pretty substantial training whether you are a caster or not, and it's an entertaining little aspect of the resource management game that is inherent in the system and one of its major draws when other editions of the game and its competitors either simplify or dispense with such concerns.

That said, schema from Magic of Eberron and both eternal wands and runestaves from Magic Item Compendium make for solid alternatives to either standard scrolls, wands, or staves; respectively; although each tweaks the considerations a bit too.

[Akal Saris]

I feel like it was an effort to transpose over the way that certain magic items worked in past editions.

[Tiktakkat]

Does this... make the game more fun?

Looking back, the original "intent" was:
"As mentioned previously, the MAGIC ITEMS table is weighted towards results which balance the game. Potions, scrolls, armor and arms are plentiful. Rings, rods and miscellaneous items of magic represent only a 25% occurrence on the table. This is so done in order to keep magic-users from totally dominating play. They are sufficiently powerful characters without adding piles of supplementary goodies. What they gain from the table will typically be used up and discarded."

In other words:
Scrolls are single use items, wands (and rods and staves) are multi-use items. (And most rods and staves could be recharged in AD&D making them VERY multi-use.)
Scrolls were 15% of all random treasure (with potions another 20%, so about 1/3rd or all found items were singe use), while rods, staves, and wands were 5% of all random treasure.
Too many "extra spell slots" for spellcasters was considered "unbalancing" (which, going by some optimization guides, is spot on), so rarity and use limitations were piled on them. (Finding command words for rods, staves, and wands was supposed to be a task in addition to just looting the body, and require dangerous and unreliable divinations if you did not overhear it or find it recorded in a spellbook or the like. Identify would not suffice, and also shut down adventuring for the day.)

As for whether or not the spell completion and spell trigger limitations achieve any such power balancing effect in 3.X, and how much fun that is, is somewhat (optimization guides say scrolls suck but wandificing is a functional build) objective but more subjective.
The later addition of workarounds (cheats) like eternal wands, schemas (effectively "eternal" scrolls), and the various feats (including the little known "Enhance Item" non-epic feat hidden in the ELH) to get around the limitations rather suggests the designers were not that happy with the gameplay of "traditional" spell completion and trigger items, and so they introduced alternatives.

[Fizban]

Scrolls have a whole reading thing that makes them obviously seem caster-only. Wands are supposed to be easy point and shoot, but there are downsides to having everyone capable of using them. So you get a weird rule where wands are easy to use, yet also somehow require specialized knowledge that only spellcasters have, despite their complete lack of any such knowledge.

If it was phrased as simply "requiring magical ability," and further that "their magic must be compatible with the spell in question," before explaining the way the rule works, I think it would be easier to swallow. As it is, they're command word items that only work for spellcasters because reasons.

[nedz]

In my experience random Scrolls are mainly consumed by Wizards to expand their spell books.
Secondarily they contain spells which are never used, randomised ones at any rate.
Only thirdly do they provide the expanded options to characters.
They are occasionally placed for plot reasons - to allow a party a means to solve a problem in a scenario.

[Zaq]

In my experience random Scrolls are mainly consumed by Wizards to expand their spell books.
Secondarily they contain spells which are never used, randomised ones at any rate.
Only thirdly do they provide the expanded options to characters.
They are occasionally placed for plot reasons - to allow a party a means to solve a problem in a scenario.

Cool, so why did they need a separate mechanic from wands then?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Cool, so why did they need a separate mechanic from wands then?

Because UMD is a thing, role protection fairly leaps to mind. It's a lot harder to UMD a scroll than a wand if you're just finding it rather than intentionally buying it.

In the early levels, a rogue would have to make -3- pretty stiff UMD checks to activate a lot of the scrolls found; one for deciphering the scroll, one for emulating the ability score, and one for treating the spell as being on your list.

If you actually are a member of the same class that scribed the thing though, odds are pretty good you'll either need no check at all or a fairly trivial CL check.

Such distinctions start to fade as levels and wealth increase and so too with optimization until, at medium to high level and high to medium optimization, they eventually disappear completely. At low levels and mid level with low-optimzation, each class has its role and there is equipment best suited to each class. Scrolls are generally meant to be a castery thing if not an outright wizardly thing.

And as I said in my big post above; if you -are- getting a scroll deliberately then you can reach beyond your current limits as a caster for a bit of gold and a modest increase in the odds of failure. A rogue trying to emulate this too early in his career is liable to blow his own face off and will almost certainly fail even if he doesn't.


You gotta look at the -whole- meta not just the triggering method in isolation.

[nedz]

Cool, so why did they need a separate mechanic from wands then?

They don't, but then why do they need to use the same mechanic ?

Vancian casting works fine — so why do we need Sorcerers — or the other way around ?

[HouseRules]

In General,

the Base Line Wizard is equal to a Fighter with 5 bonus feats per level
the Sorcerer is equal to a Fighter with 7 bonus feats per level

Thus, a Wizard needs to add 2 additional spells per level to their spell book to balance against a Sorcerer.
The process is only available through scrolls or spellbooks.