Rune Staves and Wyrd Wands

[poizen37]

I'm looking to create a dataset for Super Genius Games "Rune Staves and Wyrd Wands" and I'm looking for some help.

Background on how these items work:

A Wyrd Wand (Rune Staff works the same way) works like a magic weapon/armor in that you select a bonus (+1 -> +5) and have the option of adding a special ability, or even multiple special abilities (Which would also have to be added to the data set)

With two types of item, with five levels of bonus each, and 23 different types of abilities, that's over 200 entries before we even get to the possibility of multiple special abilities. So it needs to be an item where it gets built much like a magic weapon, which means I'm probably not going to enter it under the wand tab.

The question is: what's the best way to go about this without inundating the magic item list with hundreds of options?

[ShadowChemosh]

Pretty sure your best bet is to make them a Weapon. That gives you the flexibility of making them +1 to +5 and to adding all these different special abilities also.

[poizen37]

That's the conclusion I'd come to as well, but since it wasn't optimal I thought I would at least throw it out there to see if those more experienced knew of anything that might work better. Your response helps me feel like I'm starting to figure this stuff out...

:-)

[Silveras]

I have an interest in this, as well. I love the concept and the book.

The problem is that, while they are built like weapons, they are not weapons. The +1 --> +5 bonus refers to bonuses to spellcasting effects in addition to attacks.

The wands grant bonuses to caster level checks, attack rolls, damage rolls, and maybe another effect. The staves affect a wider variety of things, but all related to spellcasting.

As with weapons, the items can have up to a +5 enhancement bonus. Additional special abilities are priced as being equivalent to additional +x to the enhancement, similarly to weapons (although the cost table is different). Wyrdwands may have only one additional ability, while Runestaves may have any number up to an effective total bonus of +10 (again, patterned after how weapons work).

While the patterning is the same, the prices and what they effect are not. A +2 Wyrdwand used to cast acid arrow, for example, adds +2 to the ranged attack roll, +2 to the first die of damage, and +2 to any caster level checks required.

The "fiery" property, when added to a Runestave or Wyrdwand, adds +1d6 fire damage to all fire spells the wielder casts.

With the effects being so different from those of a weapon, and the pricing being based on a different scale from either weapons or armor, I am not sure that using weapons or armor is going to be the "right" way to implement them.

What gets truly interesting is when they are mixed with weapon enhancements (on a staff, specifically). It is not clear from the book whether they would "stack" with normal weapon enhcement bonuses, or would be separate effects. Because the pricing is different, I cannot see them being mixed in a "stacking" manner.

Weapon +'s are priced at [total bonus squared] x 2,000 gp
Armor +'s are priced at [total bonus squared] x 1,000 gp

These are priced at [total bonus squared] x 1,500 gp

Hope that helps frame the discussion.

[Southern Man]

Any progress on this?

I'd like to add the stave/wand properties, but i haven't found how to add a new Applies To property.

[poizen37]

I haven't found a way to adjust the money, so it would have to be done manually.

And no, if you wanted your staff to double as a magic weapon, the enhancement bonus would be handled completely separately from the rune staff bonus, which would make it VERY hard to do in Hero Lab. You're best bet at that point would be to create a unique magic weapon and put the rune staff abilities in the item description.

How would I go about setting up a weapon property to only be valid on two specific weapons?

I let this project falter because I was stymied. It may be time to start up again once I'm done with vol 3 of 110 spell variants.

[poizen37]

I suppose if the item was handled as a wondrous, you could have two selectables, one for bonus and one for ability. then you just have to create the selectables.

I don't have the skills yet to figure out how to go about that, though. And that would preclude the ability to set up the rune staff to double as a weapon.

And again, the cost would have to be handled manually since it would depend on which selectables were chosen.

It would would also make it virtually impossible to have an item with multiple properties.

Oi... this is not an easy one.