Accessory - Dragon Magazine #111.pdf - Index of

Good stuff, for a spell
Magic focusing: a new dimension for possessions
by John M. Maxstadt
It is late Saturday night, and all the
players have gone home. The brilliantly
creative Scenario Designer and the eminently
practical Dungeon Master (who, in
this case, happen to be the same person)
remain behind to work out a thorny problem
in the campaign.
“I’d like to put in a magic item for the
magic-user," begins the Designer.
“High time, I’d say," replies the DM.
“The rest of the party has plenty of stuff,
and he’s got almost nothing.”
“Magic-users are hard to shop for. He
didn’t like that dagger +2 I got him last
time.”
“Well, he’s 6th level now — he doesn’t
melee much anymore. I think he’s about
had it with scrolls, too.”
“Some potions . . . ?”
“Potions are party treasure and go to
whoever needs them most at the time. Besides,
it costs almost as much to have them
identified as it costs to buy them outright.”
“True. Besides, I wanted to make this a
long-term character item. How about a
cloak of protection?”
“He’s already got bracers and a ring. You
want him to have a better armor class than
the fighters?”
“He’s an elf — what about magic boots,
or a cloak of elvenkind?”
“The thief'd get ‘em. He’s got more use
for ‘em.”
“Right again. . . . Well, how about a
wand?”
“Remember that wand of fire he had a
while back? Everything that moved, he
roasted. I thought the darn thing would
never run out of charges.”
“And when it did, it was just a pretty
stick as far as a low-level magic-user is
concerned. Why didn’t he conserve the
charges?”
“Well, he didn’t know how many there
were, and he didn’t know whether he’d get
a chance to recharge it, or when, or how.
Also, he might have lost it to a thief or a
disenchanter or something. With all those
unknowns, he probably figured the best way
to be sure he didn’t lose any of the benefit
of the item was to use it as much as he
could. Hard to blame him.”
“Sure — you don’t expect a fighter to
“conserve” his new sword + 3, do you?”
“Exactly. A wand boosts a character’s
power up very high, but only for a short
period of time. Then it’s a stick. It’s essentially
a game-balance problem, and you can
never depend on players to voluntarily
8 JULY 1986
maintain game balance.”
“What if we compromise the rules and
give him a wand with less than 81 charges
left?”
“That’s less powerful, but it’s even more
disposable. I thought you wanted a longterm
character item.”
“Yeah, yeah. Something useful, but not
too powerful. Hey, why don’t we give him a
wand of wonder?”
“Why don’t we just give him a cloak of
poisonousness and save him a lot of aggravation?”
“I see your point. Maybe we could design
an item that could be used only once
per day or so, like those special scrolls in the
DMG.”
“If it had charges, it’d still run out eventually.”
“No charges, then.”
“Well, that’s okay for you, but it makes
me look a bit arbitrary. I mean, here I am
as DM telling a player when and how often
his character can use his own magic item. I
like to leave things like that up to player
choice. Besides, I hate to think of him making
a point of using the thing every day so
as not to waste it.”
“If we could only run an item off the
characters’ own spell-casting powers . . . . let
the charges be his own daily allotment of
spells . . .”
“Hey, why not?” exclaims the DM. . . .
. . . And so, the magic-focusing item is
born, and the world is never the same
again.
Single-function focusing items
Basically, a magic-focusing item allows a
magic-user to cast a spell he has not memorized
by “focusing” the spell potential of
any memorized spell of the same level into
the desired spell (i.e., the spell that the item
“focuses”). A wand of fireball casting, for
example, would allow a magic-user to convert
any memorized 3rd-level spell (say,
clairaudience) into a fireball without spending
45 minutes poring over his spellbook.
Once the fireball was cast, of course, the
clairaudience spell would be lost and forgotten,
and the character would have expended
one of his 3rd-level spells for the day — just
as if he had cast the clairaudience spell
normally. This wand would have no power
of its own (although it would radiate a faint
dweomer if detect magic were cast on it). It
would be powered entirely by the magicuser’s
own spell abilities and therefore
would never run out of “charges.”
Right at the outset, it is advisable to
prevent misunderstandings by outlining
some of the things a magic-focusing item
will not do. It will not allow a magic-user to
cast spells of a higher level than he is able to
learn; for example, a magic-user would
have to be 5th level or higher to use a wand
of fireball casting.
It will not affect the range, area of effect,
duration, or damage of a spell except in the
special case of “magic-enhancing items”
detailed below. Therefore, for example, a
magic-focusing wand would be exempt from
the usual rule that wands function at the 6th
level of power — a 5th-level magic-user
would cast a 5d6 fireball through the same
wand of fireball casting that would allow a
12th-level magic-user to cast a 12d6 fireball.
A magic-focusing item will not “store
up” magical energy from spells cast the day
before or spells cast by other characters — it
is not a rod of absorption. Also unlike that
device, a magic-focusing item will not convert
one kind of magic (clerical, druidical,
etc.) to another.
In spite of all these limitations, and the
main limitation of having no power of its
own, a magic-focusing item can still be a
useful and desirable possession for a magicuser
character. A magic-user with a wand of
fireball casting has a fireball spell ready
whenever he wants it, as long as his 3rdlevel
spells hold out, and the same would be
true of any other magic-focusing item.
These items effectively increase the number
of spells a magic-user has to choose from at
any given moment — and the more such
items he has, the greater the choice. With a
wand of fireball casting and a wand of
lightning bolt casting, a magic-user will be
able to choose between these popular spells
at a moment’s notice (a handy thing in
itself) and will also be free to memorize in
their stead more esoteric and specialized
spells like gust of wind and water breathing
— spells which might not be needed at all
on a given day, but which might also be
needed desperately and without warning.
Thus, when the gorgon breathes or the
floodgates open and the water starts rushing
in, the magic-focusing wands will have
proven useful without even having been
used.
The greater the variety of spells available
to a magic-user at any given moment, the
greater the variety of spells he will tend to
cast over the course of an adventure. Many
game situations cry out for the creative
application of a particular, little-used spell,