Quote from: Marleycat;770076I don't get this attitude. The other side of the coin is well I better craft a bunch of wands. With them having all of 10 or so charges that slowly recharge it means that magic item is important not something just disposed of or just manufactured like 3e. The better response is to actually control the aquististion of magic items not just "nope". Because it affects everything else in the setting like what is your illogical reason wizards aren't pumping out wands if they're so disposable to start...?

Just slow down the recharge rate if it makes you uncomfortable much like you could do that with the healing rates and not rebuild the game from the ground up.

Players like to acquire loot. I like to think of ways to separate PCs from their loot in order to keep them hungry for more. So recharging wands costs time and money, like crafting scrolls or potions. It makes the wand charges a precious thing, spending days and weeks recharging them helps justify downtime between adventures, and it skims off some of those thousands of GPs the party acquires.

I really dislike the way a typical level 1-12 campaign, where the PCs go from incompetent and inconsequential nobodies to lordly powers of the land who crush all before them, takes place over two months. I like campaigns to last years in game-world time. So I like downtime. A week healing from wounds here. Two weeks recharging wands and crafting scrolls there. It gives a campaign a more sensible pace than one where they explore dungeons and defeat enemies 24/7 for weeks on end until they save the world or die.

Quote from: Haffrung;770070Daily recharge of wands.

Nope.

I assume this is something from the Starter Set (since the Basic Rules don't have any magic items in them).

How does this "daily recharge of wands" work, exactly?

Tinkering with Mutants and Masterminds (which is d20ish), I contemplated a system where you take wounds that did stuff, like slow you down or whatnot.

Then I hit Fate and realized if I wanted that, I should go play that.

So, yeah, now I just play with hit points when I play D&D.

Although I sometimes contemplate treating combat the same way as other encounters... just make some rolls and roleplay it.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;770153Or you just say "Fuck it" and go off and play Rolemaster.

That's what we did when we decided that D&D's hit points weren't "realistic" enough. We skipped the entire second edition because of that.

These days we just handwave it and accept hit points for the abstraction they are.

This.  Except with me, it was GURPS.

Quote from: Will;770156Then I hit Fate and realized if I wanted that, I should go play that.

So, yeah, now I just play with hit points when I play D&D.

And this.

I started playing D&D again instead of GURPS because I wanted to skip the minutae and said "screw it, I'll just deal with the things that don't make sense because they make a fun game".

Quote from: Will;770144I think it's worth looking at why people had baskets of wands... generally they were CLW wands (or lesser vigor when allowed), because they were the easiest/cheapest way to stay healed up during an adventure.

What should be drawn from that, IMO, isn't that 'we should make wands harder to recharge' but 'our adventure pacing is messed up.'

My takeaway was "probably unwise to give healing abilities to a rechargeable, small, multi-use item" and in 3e my fix was to not let wands do touch-range spells, so there's that I guess.

Quote from: Marleycat;7700842e was pretty rough about magic item crafting and the like. I think on the ridiculous side because it made no sense to actually craft anything under those rules.

It effectively left crafting magic items to NPCs. The idea is PCs have better things to do, like going adventuring.

Quote from: Raven;770139The random recharge idea is good though I would take full overnight recharge vs people carrying around basketloads of cheap wands like I have read about 3e players doing.

If you don't want PCs carrying around loads of wands, don't make them available commercially. Thankfully, 5E isn't presuming magic items shops as a default part of the game.

IMHO, wands should be a scarce resource to augment a wizard's power in times of special need. They should not be an easily-renewable, default augmentation of their power. I find few things more irksome on D&D forums than the LFQW debates. But one of the genuine sources of the problem is the lavishing of renewable magic power on wizards in addition to their class abilities.

Quote from: Will;770144Either people should heal faster in downtime, or longer downtime should be ok, or there should be a firmer outline of expected pace.

Well, if a full night's rest gets you to full, healing is certainly a lot faster now!
(Personally, I like "You heal (Hit Dice + Con modifier) per hour of rest". Quick and simple.)

Quote from: jadrax;770147My favorite way of handling Wands was actually in an earlier play test packet. Holding it meant you could cast the spell in it with your own spell slots. So you got an extra prepared spell but it didn't allow you to cast more spells per day. But, that obviously did not feel like D&D to most people. C'est la vie.

That would be awesome!
Though I suppose if a Rogue can tease out a charge on a wand, it would become game-breaking (a Rogue with a brace of wands, might be more effective a spellcaster than a normal Wizard!)...

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;770153Or you just say "Fuck it" and go off and play Rolemaster.

That's what we did when we decided that D&D's hit points weren't "realistic" enough. We skipped the entire second edition because of that.

These days we just handwave it and accept hit points for the abstraction they are.

trouble with switching to rolemaster or RQ is you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. You get rid of all the really good stuff as well as HP which as I noted are easy to tweak.
Going entirely "don't worry about it" is also fine but then you run into stuff like full overnight heals and so on which cause all the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth and my worst gripe.. those guards with crossbows cease being any sort of threat.

Quote from: Imp;770159My takeaway was "probably unwise to give healing abilities to a rechargeable, small, multi-use item" and in 3e my fix was to not let wands do touch-range spells, so there's that I guess.

The problem isn't the wand per se its the way healing works that means magical healing is all but essential

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;770155I assume this is something from the Starter Set (since the Basic Rules don't have any magic items in them).

How does this "daily recharge of wands" work, exactly?

Wands have 10 charges, and they fully renew after a long rest.

Quote from: Haffrung;770194Wands have 10 charges, and they fully renew after a long rest.

10 shots per day/journey/adventure? That seems like a lot, depending; how much of a kick do these wands have?

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;770155I assume this is something from the Starter Set (since the Basic Rules don't have any magic items in them).

How does this "daily recharge of wands" work, exactly?

From what I remember in the playtest, you have like... 7 or so charges and regain 1d6+1 charges per night. If you ever run out of charges you roll to see if the wand's dead or if it'll get a couple charges back tomorrow.

Quote from: Haffrung;770161If you don't want PCs carrying around loads of wands, don't make them available commercially. Thankfully, 5E isn't presuming magic items shops as a default part of the game.

I don't. I don't like item shops either. The occasional item can pop up for sale here and there, via shady pawn shops, high-end antique dealers, etc but they're really expensive, in limited quantities and sometimes come with strings attached (it's stolen property).

ACKS has what looks like a pretty good set of guidelines for handling that stuff.

I'm hoping that removing/limiting magic items works way better than it does in 3e.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;77019910 shots per day/journey/adventure? That seems like a lot, depending; how much of a kick do these wands have?

Like usual the first level the spell is usable so it's basically an emergency option if your cantrips don't have the range or are being resisted like 3e. Or for some reason it isn't in your spellbook.