TOPIC: Wand question(s)

I don't know that they were meant to replace, but it's nice to have build options.

I agree that one wand per room turned in seemed like a nice compromise. I don't know where that went away, if it did.

I think turning in the highest rarity wand is definitely the correct plan.

I love Brad's suggestion of the Wand of Cure Light Wounds being treated as a UR for that purpose. Heck, let's count it as a legendary, in case we ever print a UR or Relic Wand (doubtful given the turn in clause).

I agree there isn't a need to use wands.

Wade Schwendemann wrote: I don't know that they were meant to replace, but it's nice to have build options.

I agree that one wand per room turned in seemed like a nice compromise. I don't know where that went away, if it did.

I think turning in the highest rarity wand is definitely the correct plan.

I love Brad's suggestion of the Wand of Cure Light Wounds being treated as a UR for that purpose. Heck, let's count it as a legendary, in case we ever print a UR or Relic Wand (doubtful given the turn in clause).

I agree there isn't a need to use wands.

It seems to me that everyone is making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. Just clarify that you can use the SAME wand as your standard action and mystic mouth free action. Done, only one wand consumed. If you use more different wands, those also get consumed.

It actually doesnt affect me either way, i have a mystic mouth and never intended to use a wand as my standard action - i will always be burning one wand per combat regardless how this gets ruled.

I think the best way to keep the cost of using the mystic mouth down and keep the sleaze is to remove references to the second wand from mystic mouth.

New wand rules says you can use a wand unlimited times per room.

Make a rules change to mystic mouth that allows you to use your wand as a action and a free action. I’m not sure the best way to word it for rules but that’s the idea.

If that wording was changed then any time a player changes wands the new wand would be consumed. So if I figure out cold damage was ineffective so I changed to shock the second wand would need to be consumed as well.

I see a lot of value in having MoMM and the Ioun Stone even if the rules don't allow one wand to cover both it and the regular action. I'll bet a ton of Wizards will cast spells on their regular turn and use the wand as the Free Action. If a combat goes four rounds, that could be around an additional 40 points of damage for the cost of one consumable rare token, which is really amazing.

Ugh. Thanks for pointing this out, stoner. I had totally missed it. (Odd that the rule edit would be buried in an edit to the first post of an old thread that is now 12 pages long.)

Let’s look at three different scenarios.

1. The MoMM user who will only use a single unique wand type per room and will never use that single unique wand type more than once per round. (So always as a standard action or free action (with MoMM), but never both.)

2. The MoMM user who will use a single unique wand type twice in the same round (with a standard action and free action/MoMM).


3. The MoMM user who will use more than one unique wand type in the room with standard actions and free actions.

For scenario 1, my interpretation is that the new rule edit doesn’t really change our prior understanding. Only a single wand token will be burned at the end of the room. In round one, you cast magic missile with your standard action and use Wand of Thor’s Fury with your free action/MoMM by placing the wand on the table - understanding that you will lose this token at the end of the room. In each subsequent round, you can re-use that same Wand of Thor’s Fury with either a standard action or free action (with MoMM), but not both. Correct?

For scenario 2, my interpretation is that the rule edit means that you will have to burn two copies of the same wand instead of just one. In round one, you use a Wand of Thor’s Fury with your standard action by placing the token on the table - understanding that you will lose it at the end of the room. If you want to blast Thor’s Fury again in that same round using your free action/MoMM, you must place a second Wand of Thor’s Fury token on the table - understanding that you will lose it too at the end of the room. Then in each subsequent round, you can re-use the two wands on the table with your standard and free actions without ever needing to produce another copy. Correct? If so, it is a bummer that the room will cost the MoMM user two identical wands instead of one, which is roughly $2 per combat room instead of $1 (assuming a $1 cost for current year rare wands, which is roughly Kirk’s current list price for Thor’s Fury and may end up being on the low side) and $8 per run instead of $4 (assuming four combat rooms). As has been discussed at length elsewhere, adding any cost to wand use still feels awful since the chargeless wands rule of 2018 induced a lot of players to buy expensive UR tokens (MoMM and IS Fluorite Cube and maybe Charm Bracelets to replace the dropped Charm Necklace) and now players will have to spend additional money every run just to keep using those expensive tokens going forward. On top of ticket price increases, it is particularly upsetting. While I still hated the outcome, I appreciated Jeff’s compromise in his FINAL Notes (pre-edit) that seemed to cap the number of unique wand copies a MoMM user would have to burn at one per room. This latest rule edit completely undoes the compromise, though, and doubles the cost to MoMM users in scenario 2. It is a very bad result that exacerbates the wand/MoMM/ISFC bait and switch feeling.

In scenario 3, in round one you cast magic missile with your standard action and use Wand of Thor’s Fury with your free action/MoMM by placing the token on the table - understanding that you will lose it at the end of the room. In round 2, you re-use the Wand of Thor’s Fury with your standard action (no additional token required) and use a Wand of Lava Blasts with your free action/MoMM by placing the Lava Blast token on the table - understanding that you will lose it at the end of the room. In subsequent rounds, you can re-use the Thor’s Fury and Lava Blast tokens on the table with your standard and free actions without having to produce additional copies - as long as you don’t use the same token twice in the same round. But if you want to double up the Thor’s Fury, for example, in the same round with both your standard action and free action/MoMM, you would have to place a second Thor’s Fury token on the table. Correct?

So if I understand this correctly, the rule is that if you use any unique wand type once in a round (with either a standard action or free action), one copy of that unique wand must be on the table and will be burned at the end of the room. If you ever use the same unique wand type twice in a round (with both a standard action and free action/MoMM), two copies of that unique wand token must be on the table and both will be burned at the end of the room.

For me, it would be far simpler and more fair to simply require a single copy of each unique wand used in a room to be placed on the table (and burned at room end). That single copy of each unique wand can be used for any combination of standard and free actions (with MoMM) for the duration of the room without getting into any further complexity. The job of the DM is super simple, then. Caster wants to use a wand? Don’t worry about how many times it is being used in a round or a room. Just make sure a single copy of the wand is on the table and bucket it at the end of the room. This solves the inequity of scenario 2 above. And it also solves the UC/R wand sleaze concern raised in this thread.

(By the way, I am sure we all are still painfully aware of the fact that the 2019 rule change is still particularly unfair to owners of charged wands. Consider the 2017 three charge Wand of Hornets. If combat lasts fewer than three rounds or if you don’t use the wand three times in that combat, you forfeit remaining charges at the end of combat. And you can no longer conserve the last charge to mulch a partially used wand into a Philosophers Stone. That really, really stinks, but I fear the ship has long sailed on this point.)

In any event, if the edited wand rule sticks, I agree with the suggestion that Jeff should allow players to trade in their MoMMs and Fluorite Cubes for UR replacements.

kurtreznor wrote: It seems to me that everyone is making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. Just clarify that you can use the SAME wand as your standard action and mystic mouth free action. Done, only one wand consumed. If you use more different wands, those also get consumed.

+1 (ninjaed)

Have people been using Medallion of Mystic Mouth to double-cast the same wand in a single round?

Boilerplate wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: It seems to me that everyone is making this WAY more complicated than it needs to be. Just clarify that you can use the SAME wand as your standard action and mystic mouth free action. Done, only one wand consumed. If you use more different wands, those also get consumed.

+1 (ninjaed)

That was the revised rule, and it looks like Jeff deleted it. There must be some complication with that approach that made it unworkable, or at least undesirable from a TD perspective.

Mike Steele wrote: I see a lot of value in having MoMM and the Ioun Stone even if the rules don't allow one wand to cover both it and the regular action. I'll bet a ton of Wizards will cast spells on their regular turn and use the wand as the Free Action. If a combat goes four rounds, that could be around an additional 40 points of damage for the cost of one consumable rare token, which is really amazing.

I’m not sure I agree with this analysis, Mike. The cost is really one consumable rare token (or two, with the latest rule edit) PLUS $200+ in UR tokens purchased at a time when the rules stated that wands were not going to be consumable at all. Doesn’t seem like a very good deal to me.

Boilerplate wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I see a lot of value in having MoMM and the Ioun Stone even if the rules don't allow one wand to cover both it and the regular action. I'll bet a ton of Wizards will cast spells on their regular turn and use the wand as the Free Action. If a combat goes four rounds, that could be around an additional 40 points of damage for the cost of one consumable rare token, which is really amazing.

I’m not sure I agree with this analysis, Mike. The cost is really one consumable rare token (or two, with the latest rule edit) PLUS $200+ in UR tokens purchased at a time when the rules stated that wands were not going to be consumable at all. Doesn’t seem like a very good deal to me.

I'm certainly not arguing that the new ruling isn't as good as the wands being non-consumable, but I do understand why Jeff made that change. I still see value in the two tokens, but totally appreciate that others may have different opinions.

Druegar wrote: Have people been using Medallion of Mystic Mouth to double-cast the same wand in a single round?

Absolutely. Every single run. (But not every round.) I primarily do this in two situations: (1) when I want to conserve spells but still do a little damage (especially useful in Grind), and (2) when I don’t want to blow the lid off combat with spells too soon. This is particularly useful in early rooms and when playing with newer, less equipped players - I don’t want to spoil their fun by doing too much spell damage too soon, and double blasting the same wand token serves as an easy way to keep the lid on my damage without sitting out a round (which can be offputting to new players who often don’t understand why you aren’t contributing). Way easier to moderate damage by double blasting a wand than trying to figure out how to dial back spell damage.

EDIT: it is also way FASTER to double blast a wand because the damage calculations are so much simpler for the DM than spells, so I have also used this approach when there is a real premium on doing damage quickly (even if the overall double wand damage may be less than spell damage).

Boilerplate wrote:

Druegar wrote: Have people been using Medallion of Mystic Mouth to double-cast the same wand in a single round?

Absolutely. Every single run. (But not every round.) I primarily do this in two situations: (1) when I want to conserve spells but still do a little damage (especially useful in Grind), and (2) when I don’t want to blow the lid off combat with spells too soon. This is particularly useful in early rooms and when playing with newer, less equipped players - I don’t want to spoil their fun by doing too much spell damage too soon, and double blasting the same wand token serves as an easy way to keep the lid on my damage without sitting out a round (which can be offputting to new players who often don’t understand why you aren’t contributing). Way easier to moderate damage by double blasting a wand than trying to figure out how to dial back spell damage.

EDIT: it is also way FASTER to double blast a wand because the damage calculations are so much simpler for the DM than spells, so I have also used this approach when there is a real premium on doing damage quickly (even if the overall double wand damage may be less than spell damage).

This tactic was only okay for one round under the original “one use per room” rules, and only if you had multiple copies of said wand, because you were technically swapping them in and out.

But since MoMM puts the original (used) wand back in your hand, and it takes a free action to swap it for an unused one, you could only use two wands every other round, and only if you didn’t wand in the off-rounds.

If you only had one, not so much.