Talk:Disposable Crystal Wand (5e Equipment)

So basically, you can get two 9th-level upcasted spells out of this and nuke some fools. Knowlessman (talk) 14:05, 16 January 2017 (MST)

Attunement

"adding attunement back as without it, you can use 10+ of these in a single fight to upcast all spells you cast to ridiculous levels"

The above was copied from a recent edit summary. Allow me to respond.

In what campaign would you be getting 10+ duplicates of the same magic item? The only one I could see is where you're deliberately choosing 10 of these over items that are otherwise far more useful.

The current version only lets you "upcast" to the highest spell slots you could cast anyway, which hardly seems "to ridiculous levels." With very few exceptions, increasing spell level does little more than add a bit more damage per level—and rarely is it as much damage as a normal spell of that level.

Few if any limited use or "expendable" magic items in the SRD require attunement, so it seems particularly out of place that this one would require it. - Guy 13:47, 15 September 2018 (MDT)

In campaigns with a large cities and/or with significant use of magic(and magic items), the buying, selling, and making of magical items can easily be done with enough gold. The problem I see with this consumable item compared to others is that multiples of it could make every spell you cast be more powerful, in turn making it so you have a much higher impact in a fight compared to using other single use items like spell scrolls(plus higher level spell scrolls are much harder to come by/buy then an uncommon item). On the topic of upcasting spells with this item, it realistically provides at least 10d6 additional damage on your spells and also it doesn't impact your action economy when used compared to other consumable items. Because of these reasons, I changed the item because of what I saw was a very real potential for multiple copies being abused by high level spellcasters.--Blobby383b (talk) 14:34, 15 September 2018 (MDT)

The question remains: in what campaign would you be getting 10+ duplicates of the same magic item? Who would waste all that time and money on getting 10 of these when there are other options? Even a single uncommon wand of the war mage would be more useful for the same kind of character in the long run, let alone magic weapons or armor for members of the party that benefit more from magic items.

"Provides at least 10d6 additional damage"? On what spell? I'm not aware of an SRD spell that provides 2d6 extra damage die per level above normal. The most you can do is burn 8 of the charges on upgrading a 1st level spell to a 9th level spell, which would only be eight additional dice—and you'd need to use an action, need to be 17th level, and burn a spell slot just to use up the majority of this item to do that. The most optimum options would be mid level spells like fireball or cloud of daggers anyway.

But maybe that's all beside the point. If we're really discussing about how much or how little this limited-use item increases damage, then we should talking about rarity—not about attunement. I could see this being a rare minor item instead of an uncommon one. That seems like the more reasonable nerf to me. - Guy 14:57, 15 September 2018 (MDT)

Changing this to a rare item does seems like a more eloquent way to address the issue of this being too good/common as a consumable item that doesn't require attunement. As for the damage, I meant the item can add 10d6 bonus damage minimum to the spells you cast, but as you said that seem irrelevant.--Blobby383b (talk) 15:53, 15 September 2018 (MDT)