I have a player (Wizard Class) who wants to be a wand maker. He has a very high Arcana skill (+12) as well as proficiency of wood working tools, so in theory he should be able to do this. My real question is about time, materials and such... generally i use a gold or material principle.... so if a player is creating something they can actually spend the time and energy to gather the materials in game to craft it ... or pay the gold (like hiring someone else to gather the materials.) My questions is about crafting mechanics ... is there any chart that breaks down like cost by spell level or anything?
None of my players have ever really showed an interesting in crafting before so im basically winging it with the info from Xanathar's.
Any advise ?
P.s. i know he really wants to make a wand of disintegration ... it seems like most wands are 3rd level spells (Fireball, Lighting bolt, etc) how much effort do you think it would take to create a level 6 wand?
You would use the same resources as the spell components (or gold equivalent) multiplied by the time invested (cast once per day for one week per rarity of the magic item). This is per the core books.
Then you have the Xanthar's approach to the crafting as well. Which as far as I can tell requires questing for the materials to craft the item.
Something as powerful as a Wand of Disintegration would rank up there as no less than a "Very Rare Item" since that's where 6th lvl spell scrolls are found. I'd lean toward Legendary since this would be a reusable item rather than a consumable like a scroll. So from there you look at the information from Xanthar's or the DMG to determine time, cost and effort.
As far as makeing a wand use what DMThac0 said, it's straight out of the rules. As for such a powerful wand the answer to that question is how prevalent is magic in your game?
If you were playing a extremely high magic game then I could see such a wand, and I agree it's legendary, being made. In a normal game world I would think it's a bit much, and would it could make that character a power house, with the potential to outshine other players.
It’s actually a relatively low magic setting .... but crafting the wand is the characters ultimate aspiration ..... so I’m thinking about having them crafts a wand of a level one spell .... then a level 2 spell so by the time the character can create the wand they will probably be level 17+ .... the way that he’s portraying the wand maker is actually pretty cool (almost like a con man)
Yeah keep it slow, make him build up, so you can keep it balanced foe your other players. Sounds good then. If you got a cool story and can make him feel like a part of it, and your all having fun, then your doing your job as a dm.
I have not read XGE but the Harry Potter-ish idea of using rare items with suitable abilities tied to the effect the player want sounds good to me. Perhaps require twice the challenge rating (or more) for the spell effect level? For disintegrate for example, how about a Beholder eyes tall as a core in the wand? Or even one unique eye stalk per daily charge? Killing a handful of those one eyed buggers for crafting a five charges a day wand is probably enough to keep them busy for a while 😊
Believe it or not, 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting has an Artificer class that can do exactly what he wants to do, and they lay out how much a wand costs very specifically. It also states it has to be a 4th level spell or lower, the base price is caster level x spell level x 750gp (or 15gp per charge). If you want to go beyond this, I would suggest adding some super rare magical item, like a feather of a phoenix, or the robes and a lich or something flavorful for the spell the player wants to create. I REALLY REALLY love this version of artificer, and i created a really cool Blastificer build back in the day.
11 x 6 x 750 for 50 charges, plus he needs to incorporate the hair from a Lich into the wand shaft to create this wand. He also should probably roll percentage die and take half the number rolled (so if he rolls 53, he gets 26 charges).
The way I do it in my games is, for the type of spell wand would require materials from creatures that have that spell or a similar effect, for example one of my players wants to make goggles of true sight, so they need to go kill a monster that has true sight, get it's eyeballs, get some material that would contain raw magic to supply the item, usually a very fine cut gem, and any old glasses. So for a face melting wand just kill a beholder or something and crystalize it's eyestock or just find those or similar parts in any other way.
Believe it or not, 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting has an Artificer class that can do exactly what he wants to do, and they lay out how much a wand costs very specifically. It also states it has to be a 4th level spell or lower, the base price is caster level x spell level x 750gp (or 15gp per charge). If you want to go beyond this, I would suggest adding some super rare magical item, like a feather of a phoenix, or the robes and a lich or something flavorful for the spell the player wants to create. I REALLY REALLY love this version of artificer, and i created a really cool Blastificer build back in the day.
11 x 6 x 750 for 50 charges, plus he needs to incorporate the hair from a Lich into the wand shaft to create this wand. He also should probably roll percentage die and take half the number rolled (so if he rolls 53, he gets 26 charges).
Sadly... things are much different in 5e. Not only are there simply NO items that have 50 charges... everything is much more expensive at this end of the scale. Just to buy a wand in this kind of category would cost you 5,001 - 50,000 GP for a Very Rare item or much more than that for a Legendary. I really don't think this upper level of wand would fit in to the Very Rare category.
I'm liking all the talk of components from everyone though... really good ideas... but there is going to be a significant gold expenditure even with the ingredients. Even at half cost you should be looking at 25,000 gold or more. I could certainly price out different ingredients as bringing the price down though... but you'll need to develop your own ingredient price list to help offset it. And you should include lots of monster parts in your list cause they could use the help in selling items if you have an NPC that helps deal in those kind of reagents. Just give them a good name and have a fun voice, cause I have a feeling you'll be using them a lot once the PCs pick up on what can be done. Maybe even have them be a quest hub for "Item of the Week" type hunts...
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I have a player (Wizard Class) who wants to be a wand maker. He has a very high Arcana skill (+12) as well as proficiency of wood working tools, so in theory he should be able to do this. My real question is about time, materials and such... generally i use a gold or material principle.... so if a player is creating something they can actually spend the time and energy to gather the materials in game to craft it ... or pay the gold (like hiring someone else to gather the materials.) My questions is about crafting mechanics ... is there any chart that breaks down like cost by spell level or anything?
None of my players have ever really showed an interesting in crafting before so im basically winging it with the info from Xanathar's.
Any advise ?
P.s. i know he really wants to make a wand of disintegration ... it seems like most wands are 3rd level spells (Fireball, Lighting bolt, etc) how much effort do you think it would take to create a level 6 wand?
You would use the same resources as the spell components (or gold equivalent) multiplied by the time invested (cast once per day for one week per rarity of the magic item). This is per the core books.
Then you have the Xanthar's approach to the crafting as well. Which as far as I can tell requires questing for the materials to craft the item.
Something as powerful as a Wand of Disintegration would rank up there as no less than a "Very Rare Item" since that's where 6th lvl spell scrolls are found. I'd lean toward Legendary since this would be a reusable item rather than a consumable like a scroll. So from there you look at the information from Xanthar's or the DMG to determine time, cost and effort.
As far as makeing a wand use what DMThac0 said, it's straight out of the rules. As for such a powerful wand the answer to that question is how prevalent is magic in your game?
If you were playing a extremely high magic game then I could see such a wand, and I agree it's legendary, being made. In a normal game world I would think it's a bit much, and would it could make that character a power house, with the potential to outshine other players.
It’s actually a relatively low magic setting .... but crafting the wand is the characters ultimate aspiration ..... so I’m thinking about having them crafts a wand of a level one spell .... then a level 2 spell so by the time the character can create the wand they will probably be level 17+ .... the way that he’s portraying the wand maker is actually pretty cool (almost like a con man)
Yeah keep it slow, make him build up, so you can keep it balanced foe your other players. Sounds good then. If you got a cool story and can make him feel like a part of it, and your all having fun, then your doing your job as a dm.
I have not read XGE but the Harry Potter-ish idea of using rare items with suitable abilities tied to the effect the player want sounds good to me. Perhaps require twice the challenge rating (or more) for the spell effect level? For disintegrate for example, how about a Beholder eyes tall as a core in the wand? Or even one unique eye stalk per daily charge? Killing a handful of those one eyed buggers for crafting a five charges a day wand is probably enough to keep them busy for a while 😊
Believe it or not, 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting has an Artificer class that can do exactly what he wants to do, and they lay out how much a wand costs very specifically. It also states it has to be a 4th level spell or lower, the base price is caster level x spell level x 750gp (or 15gp per charge). If you want to go beyond this, I would suggest adding some super rare magical item, like a feather of a phoenix, or the robes and a lich or something flavorful for the spell the player wants to create. I REALLY REALLY love this version of artificer, and i created a really cool Blastificer build back in the day.
So for disintigrate:
11 x 6 x 750 for 50 charges, plus he needs to incorporate the hair from a Lich into the wand shaft to create this wand. He also should probably roll percentage die and take half the number rolled (so if he rolls 53, he gets 26 charges).
The way I do it in my games is, for the type of spell wand would require materials from creatures that have that spell or a similar effect, for example one of my players wants to make goggles of true sight, so they need to go kill a monster that has true sight, get it's eyeballs, get some material that would contain raw magic to supply the item, usually a very fine cut gem, and any old glasses. So for a face melting wand just kill a beholder or something and crystalize it's eyestock or just find those or similar parts in any other way.
Sadly... things are much different in 5e. Not only are there simply NO items that have 50 charges... everything is much more expensive at this end of the scale. Just to buy a wand in this kind of category would cost you 5,001 - 50,000 GP for a Very Rare item or much more than that for a Legendary. I really don't think this upper level of wand would fit in to the Very Rare category.
I'm liking all the talk of components from everyone though... really good ideas... but there is going to be a significant gold expenditure even with the ingredients. Even at half cost you should be looking at 25,000 gold or more. I could certainly price out different ingredients as bringing the price down though... but you'll need to develop your own ingredient price list to help offset it. And you should include lots of monster parts in your list cause they could use the help in selling items if you have an NPC that helps deal in those kind of reagents. Just give them a good name and have a fun voice, cause I have a feeling you'll be using them a lot once the PCs pick up on what can be done. Maybe even have them be a quest hub for "Item of the Week" type hunts...
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