[RPG] Offensive magic items besides wands

dnd-3.5emagic-items

Why don't wizards use the Craft Wondrous Item feat to craft a command-word activated item that would do the same thing as a wand, but with infinite charges? (e.g. a ring of fireball, instead of a wand of fireball).

A command word magic item costs

spell level x caster level x 1800 gold pieces

or 5 times less for an item usable 5 times a day.

A wand costs

spell level x caster level x 750 gold pieces

In other words, for a 2nd level spell, it would cost 10800 gp for an infinite-use wondrous item, or 2160 gp for a 5/day wondrous item, compared to 4500 gp for a 2nd-level wand with 50 charges.

Is this accurate, or am I missing something? Mainly I didn't see a ton of straight offensive spells for magic rings, amulets, or other items that aren't scrolls or wands. I was wondering if there was some rule against offensive magic items that are not of a certain type? I assume not, since there are some other offensive magic items, but I wanted to be sure.

Best Answer

You do not generally use wands or wondrous items for offense. The artificer class from Eberron Campaign Setting can make it work, but for pretty much everyone else it just costs too much no matter how you do it. Wands and wondrous items that use spells are usually used for utility, stuff you can do out of combat.

The reason why is because in combat, the most precious things in the game are actions. The vast majority of combats are decided in the first 2-3 rounds—many in the very first. You only have so many opportunities to do something to change the outcome of the fight. That means that your actions in combat have to be very, very potent. Spells can often do that—but they need to be reliable. That means high saving throw DCs, that means high caster levels, and so on, and magic items do not offer these.

In contrast, out of combat, you can take more time. If something only has caster level 1st and so only lasts one round: no problem, you can take the time to just keep using it. If something has a save DC of 11 because that’s the minimum for a 1st-level spell and magic items use the minimum possible value, that’s fine because it’s not an attack, it’s healing an ally or lighting a hallway or whatever.

So basically, your concern is rather moot: the real answer is that neither of these things is used for the purposes you’re imagining.

This does lead us to the more direct answer to your question: 50 charges is more-than-enough for a whole lot of spells. If you find a wand of magic missile with caster level 1st, you simply don’t care that it’s only got 50 charges: you are going to reach a point where caster level 1st magic missile is just not worth using at all because your actions are too precious. Might as well see the savings up front. After all, command-word items cost more than double what a wand does. That’s a really big deal.

TL;DR: Command word items cost double what the comparable wand does, and for most spells, 50 charges is more than enough as it is. Many spells just aren’t useful when cast from items, and that includes almost all you would attempt to use offensively.

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