Wands/Staves

[Nysan]

Precision forge has bumped up metal and gem trade. New teaching system has revived the scroll/potion business. This got me thinking about wands/staves. Never sat right with me how underused wands are and spell-staves are almost non-existant. Would love to see a wand/staff market open up between players in addition to the metal, gem, scroll, and potion trading. Always valued coins gained from player interaction far more than what I looted off that bandit over there.

The last post I could find about the skills was dated last year. So, looking for any update. Coming attraction? Or still back burner with herbism?

Wishful thinking, but never hurts to ask.

[Selveem]

Meh, I don't know about for others.. but I don't use wands anymore because of the annoying backfire the often give..

Staves have something like that too..

[Nysan]

Meh, I don't know about for others.. but I don't use wands anymore because of the annoying backfire the often give..

Staves have something like that too..

That is a lvl of character vs lvl of item conflict. Unless the helpfile is misleading:

---
Backfire
========
Magical items (pills, potions, staffs, wands) which cast offensive spells have a chance of backfiring if the character using them is much lower in level than the spell level on the item.

For example, a level 15 character trying to invoke a wand with level 50
fireball may injure themselves when the spell backfires.
----------

The NPC generated wands in-game always run the risk of different lvl than the user, no doubt. But, I highly doubt a wand/staff you just crafted would have a large lvl different from you, so backfire should be a non-existing problem from crafted goods.

If I am way off and backfire happens all the time anyways, I would still like to see wands and staves see more of a role in-game. Risk is worth the reward, in my eyes.

[Erwyth]

Wands and staves suppose to be a wizard's bread and butter. They use these, in place of their REAL spells, along with other magical trinkets. I realize though that wands, staves, brew are coded for level 40+ and therefore cannot truly help a wizard in leveling... But... It does help their offensive capabilities for those higher levels

I agree that seeing wizards use more would be nice.

Perhaps to combat the level differences, a wizard could have UMD, like in PnP? The higher the skill, the less chance of backfire?

[Alvirin]

Also one of the problems that I see with wands/staves is that they have hard to find a place in FK where everyone can medidate each five minutes and having their spells back.

[Nysan]

Also one of the problems that I see with wands/staves is that they have hard to find a place in FK where everyone can medidate each five minutes and having their spells back.

Hard to find NOW. When the wand/staff crafting skills are made live, they will become a bit more visible, much like potions and scrolls.

As for meditate and get everything back... Yes, but how many spells can you memorize? I know on many of my caster-characters I have to make tough choices at times regarding which spells I want to have at hand and take only a few because I can only memorize XX number of spells. Thats a big part of wands/staves, filling in the blanks you could not memorize at the time.

Something I have been tossing over in my head is which system staves/wands will go with? No level restrictions, like scribe. Or only up to XX spell level, like brew. Guess that is something to ask closer to 'coming attractions' date. *shrug*

[Timaeus]

Back when I was more active the problem with Staves and Wands was one of balance and abuse. While much of the coding was done there was still much needed discussion on how to implement the skills without it becoming a flood of disintegrate staves on every other mage and rogue. I imagine this is still a good part of the delay in these skills being made live. They are meant to suppliment a wizards arsenel but should not become a mainstay of how a wizard combats. Though the inevitable use by classes with Use Magic Device will also need to be considered and evaluated so that these items do not become abused. Self-policing is not really a solution to this so the balancing needs to be figured out before they can be brought in responsibly with some measures to prevent wide abuse.

[Nysan]

Thats why I started thinking it over.

On the one hand, unlimited list like scrolls would be neat... but extremely difficult to balance. Brew's restriction is more balancing, but thats a low bar to place the limit. Was thinking of splitting the difference and suggest a lvl 5 or 6 spell level limit as well as barring some of the more balancing impairing spells of the lvl 1-6 spells from being wand/staff usable (insta-death spells come to mind).

Also considered usage... Add usage to the concentration skill check (failure still drains a charge, similar to current spell restrictions). A usage-lag, similar to mining lag or something, so wand/staves cannot be spammed. Had an idea regarding backfire, but without knowing how that is coded, its hard to iron that one out.

[Nysan]

Yep, I'm bringing it back up. Been doing some thinking and this is what I came up with...

General Points:
1. Concentration skill checks on wand/staff usage, failure leads to loss of 1 charge.
2. No spell higher than level 6 usable in wands/staves. Level 7+ spells are just too questionable when considering balance.
3. Wand/staff making skill level determines what spells and what spell level usable and number of charges.
4. Number of times spell is memorized, with avaliable components, determines number of charges as well. Basically, if you have 6 armor memorized, your crafted staff will have 6 charges of armor if you skill-level allows it.

Went a bit further and did my own lists for spells allowed for each skill. Seperated the spells between 3 catagories. Wands are for offensive/utility spells. Staves are for defensive/travel/stat spells. The last catagory are spells I kept out of both due to balance or other reasons (like they don't make sense as wands/staves). I realize some in-game NPC wands have spells like shield, but character-made stuff differs from NPC stuff now and then, roll with it.
I intentionally kept all crowd-control abilities, like Hold Person or web out specifically due to balance issues.

Wands:
-- 1. Burning Hands, Chill Touch, Color Spray, Detect Hidden, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Magic Missiles, Shocking Grasp, Weaken
-- 2. Acid Arrow, Blindness, Detect Invis, Fumble, Infravision, Glitterdust, Locate Object, Snowball Swarm
-- 3. Blazebane, Charged Beacon, Clairvoyance, Deep Slumber, Fatigue, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Lightning Bolt, Razorbait, Swordbait, Vampiric Touch, Winter Mist
-- 4. Curse, Dimensional Anchor, Earth Reaver, Enervation, Fear, Ice Storm, Orb of Acid, Orb of Cold, Orb of Fire
-- 5. Acid Blast, Cone of Cold, Feeblemind, Nightmare, Waves of Fatigue
-- 6. Chain Lightning, Circle of Death, Illusory Pit, True Sight, Undeath to Death

Staves:
-- 1. Armor, Comprehend Languages, Enlarge Person, Shield, True Strike, Reduce Person
-- 2. Bulls Strength, Friends, Levitate, Mirror Image, Mnemonic Enhancer, Resilience, Sagacity, Slink, Stone Bone, Spider Climb, Trollish Vigor
-- 3. Alertness, Dispel Magic, Dragonskin, Fly, Fury, Heroism, Mass Armor, Nondetection, Resilience, Tongues, Valiance, Water Breathing
-- 4. Fireshield, Globe of Invulerability, Iceshield, Mass Enlarge Person, Mass Reduce Person, Polymorph, Remove Curse, Shockshield, Stoneskin
-- 5. Acidshield, Animal Growth, Break Enchantment, Mass Fly
-- 6. Antimagic Shell, Greater Heroism, Mass Bulls Strength, Mass Friends, Mass Mnemonic Enhancer, Mass Sagacity, Mass Slink, Mass Trollish Vigor, Shadow Walk

Balanced Out:
-- 1. Charm Person, Daze, Floating Disc, Identify, Sleep, Ventriloquism
-- 2. Daze Monster, Invisibility, Knock, Summon Mount, Web
-- 3. Animate Dead, Change Sex, Ethereal Flyer, Halt Undead, Hold Person, Magic Weapon, Preservation, Shadow Binding, Witch Light
-- 4. Black Tentacles, Charm Monster, Confusion, Crushing Dispair, Disease, Magic Mirror, Phantasmal Killer
-- 5. Dismissal, Dominate Person, Faithful Hound, Hold Monster, Major Image, Pass Door
-- 6. Animate Object, Continual Light, Disintegrate, Monster Summon, Phantom Steed

Rough ideas mind you, but maybe it'll inspire someone. Thoughts?

[Erwyth]

Maybe for more balance make staves / wands half the spell level of the creator? Or perhaps make spells cost XP?

[Nysan]

Still working on what skill-level the wand/staff spells would be related to the crafter. Sort of hung up cause I am not completely sure backfire and item-level is coded and I feel wand/staff spell level should impact item-level and thus backfire.

Was think along the lines of crafter needs to be at least journeyman in the spell they mean to make into a wand/staff and go along a table like...

Crafter Spell Level --- Wand/Staff Spell Level
Journeyman --- Amateur
Adept --- Novice
Expert --- Apprentice
Master --- Journeyman
Grandmaster --- Adept

Definately would hate to see wands/staves with GM quality spells in them filling packs and bags around the realms. The balance concerns are scary. Wands/staves with Adept spells, easier to swallow. Also, I feel a wand with amateur level spells shouldn't be too high in item-level so it allows wands/staves to be used by low level characters as well. Granted, this is all brain-storming and I have no idea how code would work with any of this, but no harm in tossing it out there.

By the by, why cost exp? I don't understand the reasoning, please explain.

[Oghma]

I'd make them cost stamina each time crafted like in most trades, though more than any other trade because of the skill involved in making something and then applying spells to it. Also affect the mental state, make the wizard hungry and thirsty.

[Nysan]

Oh, definately a stamina drain. The only trade or crafting skill that doesn't take stamina, to my knowledge, is appraise. No reason not to keep with the trend, works well so far.

Would it really have to be a huge stamina drain? A crafter would be limited by their memorized spell slots already. Even a GM meditate character takes longer than most natural stamina regen cycles to replenish multiple spell slots and I cannot see someone crafting 1-charge wands/staves constantly.

Would keep up with the crafting lag seen in similar skills/trades as well, maybe incorperate the food/drink drain in the lag through an echo. On the fense about a craft failure effect like brew's explosive damage to self and equipment. Self damage, I have no problems with... but I never liked seeing a spell pouch in perfect condition turned to scraps and emptying its contents after one or two bad attempts.

[Oghma]

I like to see wizards forging items of renown suffering for their art so that when they go to sell or use such things they can appreciate the effort that went into making them. More or less.

[Nysan]

Ahh, I get what you are aiming at. Something that scales then like 20% of a character's stamina pool or a set amount?

Along the "great task" lines, perhaps a debuff. Something that lowers some stats like con, str, and int for a set duration to show the drain the task takes on the wizard. Duration determined by level of spell used in crafting: level one spell = short duration, level 6 = much longer duration.

[Oghma]

Oh, that might be too much, the craft is not life threatening, I mean, certain trades do harm you, but I think something along the lines of 20% is fine without lowering stats.

[Nysan]

Better use for the debuff... Use it for failure effect like brew has explosive damage, keeps with a negative effect of failure without having to get into a copy-cat pattern. Keep the 20% stam drain as a constantly, failure or success.

[Erwyth]

Feraael recently gave a wand to a newbie wizard and the wizard told him it blew up in his face after its use. So I suspect coding of wands blowing up is in the game, or the guy RP'd it?

I like the idea of it draining you A LOT. Are wizards not literally enchanting something, that normally takes weeks, and in the case of powerful items YEARS? So the idea of a very large drain on their movement, with maybe a small hit to con for a few hours(which won't affect long term movement, due to fly).

Another COOL thing to do for effect, though I'm dumb when it comes to coding is, perhaps for instance:

Mika creates staff
Mika memorises fireball
Mika gains the ability to cast fireball
Mika enchants a staff with fireball
Mika fails

Mika looks at the staff, its magical?
Mika identifies the staff, it has 2 charges of fire arrow on it

Maybe something to that effect? Random spells being imbued?

Also to RP it a bit. The skill spellcraft should be a HUGE part of creating wands / staves. Having a form grasp on the arts should be needed. As well as perhaps concentration? (I believe there should be another way to gain concentration other than casting spells in combat, though thats another thread)

My reason for stating the loss of XP when crafting these items, is to balance out the game. That way you can't mass produce because you have to go get back that half of level? (This could also account for the drain on the caster)

Just a few ideas I had.

[Nysan]

The blowing up thing is the coded backfire effect. Think I copied the backfire helpfile eariler in this thread. It has to do with the item level compared to the user's level. NPC wands have a rather high item level. In theory, player crafted wands should have varying item level, depending on the spells used in crafting and the skill level of those spells, so low level players should have a range of wands to use if/when wand/staff making it finished.

Random spells on failure, interesting idea but two hiccups. One, not sure if thats even codeable. Two, I cannot recall any source material where something like that has happened. Wands/staves is one of the areas I would like to see close to 'cannon' as possible. Just my opinion of course... *shrug*

Exp loss just doesn't make sense. Look at the in-game similar abilities: scribe and brew. They GIVE exp when used. Far as I can tell, there is no problem with mass-production of potions or scrolls flooding the game either even though flasks are dirt cheap to buy. Moreso, brew and scribe are accessed by two classes: priest and wizards. Wand/staff making are wizard only skills, level 40+ skills on top of that, I highly doubt they would be mass-produced like metals or arrows. *shrug*

[Erwyth]

The XP thing was just an idea... *shrug* I believe as long as their is a *suitable* delay in the using a wand / stave then it shouldn't be a problem... Though how about a power user who creates multiple wands / staves of the same type and just switches them out to blast away? There are what six different types of wood? Thats six different staves of the same spell, six different wants of the same spell. Easily triggerable / aliasable. This is why I suggested an XP loss.

I don't understand this term cannon, though I am guessing it means "by the book". Then the XP loss thing should apply if your going for cannon. *wink*

The random spell effect on a failure would be pretty neat. I thought it was a better idea than stuff just blowing up in your face. Though thats pretty cool too!

Another idea I have just thought of. Instead of the stuff blowing up, how about the spell is generated. For example:

Mika creates staff
Mika memorises and obtained the ability to cast ice storm
Mika attempts to imbue staff w/ ice storm
Mika casts ice storm and takes dmg.

Dunno how hard that is, feel free to shoot it down