I'm home brewing a world and considering making it a requirement for Wizards and maybe Warlocks to have to use wands. This is as much for flavour as anything. Would this create any issues do you think?
Depends what kind of requirements wands we are talking about.
If they are just in terms of Arcane Focus at creation, it won't be much different than what is available right now, if not for the mandatory wand instead of a staff or an orb or a crystal. If it is mandatory for them to have it in order to cast spells at all, much like in Harry Potter, i.e., I think you might need to take some more things into consideration. While the absence of a wand because it has been taken away is not much more of an issue than have a current wizard/warlock tied and gagged, if not for the need to then find it (which hopefully won't be too difficult), the destruction of a wand could prove to be quite more problematic and potentially rendering the character quite useless until they procure a new one. Depending on how easy or difficult procuring a new wand is, you have more or less chance that this houserule backfires, imho.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
The wand requirement will hurt gish types. Otherwise? Almost all spellcasters get a magic wand or staff at some point in their career. You'll almost never see it come up. I mean, in theory, you can disarm the fighter and force them to drop their weapons, but how often does that ever happen? Same thing here.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I see no issue (beyond what has been said) in choosing wands to be the only form of arcane focus in your game. But if your players are less inclined to enjoy such visuals, you may want to consider developing some story reason for only having wands. For example, you could look into the wandlore of Harry Potter for inspiration. Or if you rather things be simpler, explain that wands are the Goldilocks Zone of arcane focuses. Where after much testing and experimentation over the years, they have proven to be "just right" in there magical output and reliability. And thus have become the industry standard, leaving other focuses to fringe groups. Which you could then have some fun with by occasionally having your players come across such casters. Randomly applying a metamagic or something off the wild magic surge table any time they do a spell illustrating just how comical, dangerous and unpredictable other types of focuses can be. Assuring that your players never complain about only being able to use wands, unless they're crazy enough to want the randomness. Haha!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I'm home brewing a world and considering making it a requirement for Wizards and maybe Warlocks to have to use wands. This is as much for flavour as anything. Would this create any issues do you think?
Depends what kind of requirements wands we are talking about.
If they are just in terms of Arcane Focus at creation, it won't be much different than what is available right now, if not for the mandatory wand instead of a staff or an orb or a crystal.
If it is mandatory for them to have it in order to cast spells at all, much like in Harry Potter, i.e., I think you might need to take some more things into consideration.
While the absence of a wand because it has been taken away is not much more of an issue than have a current wizard/warlock tied and gagged, if not for the need to then find it (which hopefully won't be too difficult), the destruction of a wand could prove to be quite more problematic and potentially rendering the character quite useless until they procure a new one. Depending on how easy or difficult procuring a new wand is, you have more or less chance that this houserule backfires, imho.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
The wand requirement will hurt gish types. Otherwise? Almost all spellcasters get a magic wand or staff at some point in their career. You'll almost never see it come up. I mean, in theory, you can disarm the fighter and force them to drop their weapons, but how often does that ever happen? Same thing here.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I see no issue (beyond what has been said) in choosing wands to be the only form of arcane focus in your game. But if your players are less inclined to enjoy such visuals, you may want to consider developing some story reason for only having wands. For example, you could look into the wandlore of Harry Potter for inspiration. Or if you rather things be simpler, explain that wands are the Goldilocks Zone of arcane focuses. Where after much testing and experimentation over the years, they have proven to be "just right" in there magical output and reliability. And thus have become the industry standard, leaving other focuses to fringe groups. Which you could then have some fun with by occasionally having your players come across such casters. Randomly applying a metamagic or something off the wild magic surge table any time they do a spell illustrating just how comical, dangerous and unpredictable other types of focuses can be. Assuring that your players never complain about only being able to use wands, unless they're crazy enough to want the randomness. Haha!