The Gaming Den

Hello

I am having difficulty trying to find a nice balance point with respect to consumable magic items. I can find two main problems inherent in the issue and would like your help finding a solution (hopefully there is one). What I want to accomplish is to find a balance point with respect to how many consumable magic items a character should have, and then I could introduce my own rules to that end.

Before that though, I should address the wish economy versus authorial assumed wealth expenditures. Both are problematic at different ends of the balance spectrum.

I’ll be using the DMG wealth guidelines as a base, and assume you have the appropriate wealth at each level for the first problem, and the wish economy for the second problem.


Problem 1: Burning a hole in your pocket.

Under assumed D&D wealth expenditures you spend some of your gold on consumable magic items. So, for example, a 10th level wizard might have bought many rarely used, but situationally life-saving scrolls. This leads to a few possible outcomes:

-If he doesn’t ever use the scrolls at the level, then for that level he is essentially wasting money. He should have invested it in something else.
-If he runs out about 1/10th of the way to the next level, he is also essentially below his level appropriate wealth guidelines. Since the scrolls only helped him through 1/10th of the level, it would almost certainly have been better for him to have spent the money on constant non-consumable magic items that would have helped him through 10/10ths of the adventure.
-Maybe he uses the consumable magic items at a rate so that it is exactly as useful as non-consumable magic items. (I don’t know if it is possible to find this out)

So. It seems that the pace at which any particular party uses consumable magic items can vary greatly over what is assumed to be the number of encounters required to level up. I would say that this problem is unsolvable. The wish economy fixes this issue but creates another problem.


Problem 2: Nuke everything. All day. Every day.

Under the wish economy a mid-level UMD rogue (or any character really) can use a 9th level scroll every round, of every encounter he is ever in. I put forward that this is broken. How do we fix this?

Should we go with the following assumption? : A character should have non-consumable magic items equal to the wealth level guidelines in the DMG, and a limited periodically refreshing supply of consumable magic items? (so in effect they would function like spells)

My questions:

How powerful should the consumable magic items be with respect to ones level?

How often should consumable magic items be refreshed?

So, for example, should a rogue be limited to using X number of scrolls per day/encounter/adventure/etc? How powerful should they allowed to be relative to an equivalent full wizard? Do we want to limit it to the same maximum spell level as a wizard? More? Less?

Thoughts?

Consumables just don't work in the current set up of 3rd edition. They're power now for permanent gold loss later. I advise not having them be purchaseable or PC creatable.

Replace wands with Eternal wands and just get rid of potions and scrolls.

It generally makes things easier.

Potions and scrolls can be replaced with X/day or X/encounter wondrous items.

Interesting fact: paper doesn't actually burn when you read it.

You can totally have scrolls be "at will" or "X/day" (the item contains magic that needs to recharge). Or you could use them as Knowstones (items that grant extra spells known as long as you own them, but you need to provide the spell slot).

As for potions, have the bottle be magical. That way, once per day or whatever you pour in some water/orange juice/wine/Bebelith venom and you gain one potion out of the deal.

You could just keep consumables a spell level or two down (compared to what the party is capable of casting) and not even care. That way they can be somewhat useful, but not overpowering.

In actuality, though, the wealth by level and encounter by level have some give in them, specifically for consumables. They call it out at some point in the DMG, and the difference between wealth by level and wealth by encounter accounts for the amount you're 'supposed' to spending each level.

Once per day scrolls/potions would be interesting. As long as they remained intact they would restore the vanished text or refill (if closed) 24 hours later.

One shot items started their lives as random treasure, and that totally worked. PCs only had as many consumables as the DM felt was appropriate and everyone was happy*. If you can get your players to agree to "you can't craft or wish for consumable items because it breaks the game." then the problem just goes away.

x/day scrolls and x/day magic potion bottles are good too if people specifically want scrolls and potions for thematic or nostalgic reasons.

*unless your DM was a dick

You might wanna read this.

The wealth by level rules say that if your players currently have less swag than their alotment that you should throw more money at them. They alsoo say that if your players currently have more swag than their alotment you should crank down the rewards.

So really by the guidelines consumables are awesome. They cost less than non-consumables for the same effect, and when they are gone the DM is supposed to throw more treasure at you in the future.

Basically you get more power now and more power later, and the cost is that there will be short periods in between where you may have less power. Or heck, you may not, because the discrepency in power vs. cost between consumable and non consumable items is vast. A CL 8 wand of GMW costs 360 gp per charge, a +2 Sword costs 8 grand.

-Username17

Don't try to balance consumable items to non-consumables. Just say that every character should have some fixed number of once-ever abilities which refresh every adventure (or periodically at downtimes/when you feel like it). If you don't get a chance to use your Potion of Extra Hair Growth, that's just the same as if you never encountered a wall to use your grappling hook on.

Hand out consumable items as you see a need to. If your players are going to be/have been massively hurt, throw in some healing potions. If they've been poisoned, maybe some neutralize poison potions, antivenoms, or scrolls of restoration.


At will (I can use this wand as much as I like), once per day (if filled with clear water and left out over night, the magical crystal infuses moon essence into the water to make a potion of cure light wounds), other special ability use-activated (The sword of Kel-Amn gains its power from the energy of a cleric's Turn Undead) items are great. They shouldn't, however, be considered replacements for single-use abilities (The Orb of Destruction which can destroy the multiverse 1/day).

What's with the magic bottle thing? Why's that better or worse than limiting the number of accessible or imbibable or expiry date or whatever?

If it's a magic potion bottle, why doesn't it just refill itself?

The major thing is if you can use the item again later (and I don't really care if you can or not - some items are pointless to have limits, while others are pointless not to. How often do you need to destroy the universe?), if you can 'stock' up on the item (and that's probably a control point), and if you can use all of the items at once (which you probably shouldn't be able to).

-Crissa

Thanks for the replies. I like the imagery of the magic bottles for potions especially.

RandomCasualty wrote:Eternal wands

What are these?

Catharz wrote:Hand out consumable items as you see a need to. If your players are going to be/have been massively hurt, throw in some healing potions. If they've been poisoned, maybe some neutralize poison potions, antivenoms, or scrolls of restoration.

I'm not sure about this. This always seemed really hokey to me. Not that I dislike video games or things that are videogamey, but I dislike how the "cure" for the monster attack was always on his person or in his chest. I think it may be necessary at lower levels however.

Catharz wrote:Just say that every character should have some fixed number of once-ever abilities which refresh every adventure (or periodically at downtimes/when you feel like it).

I'm leaning towards this idea. So would you do something like standard Dmg wealth for non-consumables and say an extra 10% of standard wealth in consumables that refreshed every adventure?

Eternal Wand is Eberonese for a 2/day spell trigger wondrous items shaped like wands.