3.5/PF destroying a wand question

[Mnemius]

I ventured out to a new gaming store! People trying to organize some new tabletop groups in the new year.

I had several people mention a rule I have never heard of before. Trying to figure out if it's some obscure bit of rules lore, or a house rule they've used for so long they think it's not a house rule.

Several people, while conversing, were convinced that destroying a wand sets off all remaining charges in the wand. Their example involved a character running up to a big bad and snapping a nearly full wand of fireball in their face, setting off 45+ fireballs all at once.

And that have a low charge count wand of cure light wounds handy to snap would instantly hit you with that many 1d8+1 healing.

So is this a house rule or obscure rule lore? (I know of several items with retributive strike like a certain katana, staff of power/magi, etc.)

[Wintermoot]

I don't think there is a 3.x/P rule around it, no.

However, I've been playing D&D through Basic (BECMI), 1st e, 2nd e all the way into 3rd e with several dozen different groups and its such a common occurrence/belief I wouldn't be surprised if it was detailed that way in one of those early editions and just made its way through to current due to amazing/fun stories.

[Telonius]

It almost sounds like a Scroll Mishap, or a Retributive Strike (on a Staff of Power or Staff of the Magi).

[tyckspoon]

It's a houserule extension of the 'Retributive Strike' on some of the more significant magical rods and staves, yeah. It has never been a general rule for at least 3rd Edition and its derivatives, and I do not recall it being a thing in the earlier material that I was familiar with (there is a clause on the Necklace of Fireballs that can make it chain-fire if you get subjected to a fire attack, tho, which may be where the 'it casts its spell X many times' idea comes from - normally if an item is going to do anything when it's destroyed, it's just a surge of unshaped magic energy expressed as a bunch of d6 of generic damage.) Normally if you break a magic item it's just.. broken.

[AnonymousPepper]

It a cool concept, but it's absolutely not something you would want to generalize though if you think about it. Take the most basic example possible. A brand new wand of Fireball costs 11250 market price and contains 250d6 fire damage over a huge radius. It will one hundred percent kill anything without some combination of SR, fire immunity, and evasion that has 250hp or less and is caught in its fairly sizeable radius. You can tailor the cost downward with the number of charges as needed.

There a dude you want dead for quest reasons? Planar ally or bind a CR2 Imp, with fire immunity and at will invisibility, to sneak up to the offending person and snap the wand in half. Goodbye to him and everyone else in the room. Very much worth at most 11k gold (potentially much less if you craft it yourself).

Even if your players would never do this, the possibility of things like this would dramatically alter settings. Anyone with an evocation or conjuration wand in particular is basically treated like they're carrying at best a pipe bomb with them everywhere.

[KillianHawkeye]

It a cool concept, but it's absolutely not something you would want to generalize though if you think about it. Take the most basic example possible. A brand new wand of Fireball costs 11250 market price and contains 250d6 fire damage over a huge radius. It will one hundred percent kill anything without some combination of SR, fire immunity, and evasion that has 250hp or less and is caught in its fairly sizeable radius. You can tailor the cost downward with the number of charges as needed.

There a dude you want dead for quest reasons? Planar ally or bind a CR2 Imp, with fire immunity and at will invisibility, to sneak up to the offending person and snap the wand in half. Goodbye to him and everyone else in the room. Very much worth at most 11k gold (potentially much less if you craft it yourself).

Even if your players would never do this, the possibility of things like this would dramatically alter settings. Anyone with an evocation or conjuration wand in particular is basically treated like they're carrying at best a pipe bomb with them everywhere.

Great, we just invented fantasy terrorism. :smallsigh:

[AnonymousPepper]

Great, we just invented fantasy terrorism. :smallsigh:

Fantasy terrorism was always possible - see Red Fel's amazing Collateral Damage Man build challenge thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?361628-Collateral-Damage-Man); I'm proud of my Control Weather Hathran build personally, but the entire thread is a riot (definitely check out Body of the Fun) - but the difference here is that those require specific builds. My Hathran Archivist has to go through 13 levels and a specific build path and acquire followers to throw down tornadoes at will, for example.

Whereas, having literally any wand of a damage spell be somewhere between a pipe bomb and a suitcase nuke is a very generally applicable thing and thus affects everyone at all times. A level 1 commoner could step on a funny looking stick by accident and level City Hall.

[thethird]

Well I would see it more as a way to get buffs without using UMD. You want partially charged wands but those are accessible (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?497918-Wandman-All-the-partially-charged-wands).

[ericgrau]

Yeah definitely not a rule. Also reminds me of a necklace of fireballs though which is extremely dangerous to carry for that reason. You almost want to put it on a fire immune or expendable minion to detonate it on purpose.