Instead of charges....

[ubernoob]

If you pull out a wand and attempt to use it, and it explodes 50% of the time, then you start with (0).5, then 1/4 (1), then 1/8 (2) ect.

The wand disintegrates after working. Doom is correct on the mean result - the fact that a majority of people will get less than 10 uses is balanced (mathematically) by the few lucky people that get a much larger number of uses.

That is by definition not balance. Balance is when two things are equal. This is not equal.

[JonSetanta]

You are still retarded.

Shit man, you're an illiterate smegnugget. At least you didn't spell it "retarted" but maybe next time.



Instead of charges as an ever-declining value, how about items with per-day uses?
I think the gold price equivalency is something like... divide the charge total by 5, and that's how many uses you get as a refreshing item (it rests when you do)

[CCarter]

It seems like it's working quite well, and I'm rather curious if it would do much to fix the "CLW wand" issues of 3.5. Probably not, but I'm definitely finding the players more willing to use items now that the charges aren't set.

It seems like an interesting idea.
What would you define as the "CLW issue"? Beefs I have with these are
*excessive dice rolling just to track number of charges used
*different GP cost per HP healed between Cure Light and Cure Serious wands (i.e. cure serious sucks as a wand if you wound have no time limit to cast cure light between fights).
*plus they're a resource that increases linearly with character piggy bank size...as the expense becomes negligible they just become annoying to bother with.

The % chance of explosion method solves maybe the first one of those, if you had a table where you could just roll a d100 once to check the expected chance of your wand blowing up after [damage taken/5.5] uses. Still, you could also fix that just by having CLW heal a nonrandom amount of damage.

[Ghostwheel]

Just use wands of lesser vigor (or belts of healing in the long run) for the gold standard in HP healed per gp

[Doom]

It seems like an interesting idea.
What would you define as the "CLW issue"? Beefs I have with these are
*excessive dice rolling just to track number of charges used
*different GP cost per HP healed between Cure Light and Cure Serious wands (i.e. cure serious sucks as a wand if you wound have no time limit to cast cure light between fights).
*plus they're a resource that increases linearly with character piggy bank size...as the expense becomes negligible they just become annoying to bother with.

Well, I haven't formalized the issue, but one of the things that causes 3.5 to bust is the trivially created magic item issue, which causes problems on many levels (only mages make items easily and they already have plenty of power, ability scores skyrocket along with everything else once + items come into play, everyone has the same stuff, among a few other things).

AD&D is at the opposite end of the spectrum, where players really are reluctant to use their items, especially that 'last charge' (if they know what the last charge is, which they tend to also know in 3.5).

By using a roll every time, you kill the record keeping (very minor benefit, much as THACO vs BAB isn't much either, but still makes perfect sense), kill the 'don't blow the last charge' problem, AND items actually go away, sometimes even at an inconvenient point.

I definitely don't want to deal with "uses per day" nonsense...is that 24 hours? Does it reset at midnight (so you can use it at 11:59 and 12:01)? Just can't handle that except for plot device items.

I guess it's just ultimately creating a different set of issues to replace the old issues (hey, maybe now I'm qualified to be a 4e designer)...but using % failure really does seem like the players are more inclined to just USE the damn things instead of husband those charges for a critical moment.

There are actually a few items in the AD&D DMG that also worked this way (Book of Infinite Spells, and seems like one other thing, can't remember). Next time you put a staff with 20 charges in a chest somewhere, try it with a 5% chance of failure per use, and how it's treated differently.

[Doom]

Doom is correct on the mean result - the fact that a majority of people will get less than 10 uses is balanced (mathematically) by the few lucky people that get a much larger number of uses.

It's not that big a deal, really. For low charge items, the difference between the median and mean isn't much, obviously. Freaking out about 7 charges as opposed to 10 is ridiculous.

And even for items with a 1% failure rate (eg, a 100 charge item), about 30% of users will get 120 or more uses out of the item.

[CCarter]

Just use wands of lesser vigor (or belts of healing in the long run) for the gold standard in HP healed per gp

Aarrgh! I forgot about those. It sucks when standard items (the Cure Serious wand, or with vigour in play even the Cure Light Wounds wand) are basically n00b traps.

Unrelated to Doom's topic I'm pondering whether just having a set exchange rate (e.g. 1 Magic Point spent = x hit points back) is a good idea, with spell level just raising the cap on # magic points you can spend, a bit like how psions work. Then build healing items that work like staffs, where the number of charges determines what spell you get out (with what you can cast with one perhaps limited by caster level as well). If that makes any sense.


On the subject of other D&D items that had % breakdown, I believe the Wind Fan works similarly, though I'm not sure if it used to in 1st/2nd ed.

[Doom]

noob trap...exactly. This is what easily made magic items turn most items into. I sometimes wonder if there's a band-aid solution (eg, increase experience point cost by a factor of 100) that would make finding items more relevant.

[Roy]

This idea is one of the most stupid ideas I have ever seen, and that includes ones presented by the mouth breathing fuckwits over on Paizo. Doom, you should be ashamed you ever wrote that and should apologize to the Den as a whole immediately.

You do not change things in any meaningful way at all, you just introduce more bookkeeping and herp derp randomness.

[Slade]

AD&D is at the opposite end of the spectrum, where players really are reluctant to use their items, especially that 'last charge' (if they know what the last charge is, which they tend to also know in 3.5).

Depends on DM in AD&D so not relevant.

I definitely don't want to deal with "uses per day" nonsense...is that 24 hours? Does it reset at midnight (so you can use it at 11:59 and 12:01)? Just can't handle that except for plot device items.

Use the standard: did Wizard get his spells back: yes or no?
Pretty Binary.
Unless you are editing Wizards: it seems to be a pointless exercise to argue what an items per day is when Wizards use same system.

I guess it's just ultimately creating a different set of issues to replace the old issues (hey, maybe now I'm qualified to be a 4e designer)...but using % failure really does seem like the players are more inclined to just USE the damn things instead of husband those charges for a critical moment.

So arbitary and not a fix, but a new expereince. Okay, new experiences can be good. Granted Change for change sake isn't a good idea sometime.
I hope you give the characters a discount as this new schema of magic charges is weaker overall. 10% discount at least.
So a 2% fail wand of CLW (they start with 50 charges) cost 750 gp - 0.1x750 gp. Or about 675 gp.

Wait, a 2% chance of failure is really low.
2% -> 2.4% -> 2.88 -> 3.456 -> 4.1472%
And so on.

[name_here]

I'd think that it would simply make players more inclined to husband the use of the wand. After all, the next use could be the last.

[PoliteNewb]

Use the standard: did Wizard get his spells back: yes or no?
Pretty Binary.
Unless you are editing Wizards: it seems to be a pointless exercise to argue what an items per day is when Wizards use same system.

No, they don't use the same system.

Wizards need to sleep for a significant portion of time, then study for an hour. Do wands need sleep or study?

Things with a "per day" use are seriously supposed to have a time when they go "ding!" and you can use them again...and you need to determine if that time is after 24 hours pass, when the moon rises, when the sun sets, etc etc. But the wizard does not work that way, and never have.

[Kaelik]

"Kaelik, please do not post in this thread."

FYI, those only have force if stated in the thread title, not as the cap to an post repeatedly insulting someone for being right, and then declaring yourself the victor of the argument and banning your opposition.

Yes, it's not a huge difference. It's just funny that you are wrong by every single method of calculating averages. I mean, yes, if you had a system that actually did have a mean of 2, I would still tell you to make a less sucky system, and stop being Elennsar, and thinking that one person out of every billion getting to use a two charge wand for their entire career makes up for half of all people having spent X gp for an item that doesn't actually do anything. But that's besides the point.

If you pull out a wand and attempt to use it, and it explodes 50% of the time, then you start with (0).5, then 1/4 (1), then 1/8 (2) ect.

The wand disintegrates after working. Doom is correct on the mean result - the fact that a majority of people will get less than 10 uses is balanced (mathematically) by the few lucky people that get a much larger number of uses.

??? I mean, I suppose you could read the initial post such that it blows up after use, but I don't know why you would, seeing as I've explicitly stated twice that it blows up before it get's used, and Doom has never contradicted that, despite taking time out of his day to whine about how I'm so mean and don't understand math.

You are still retarded.

Shit man, you're an illiterate smegnugget. At least you didn't spell it "retarted" but maybe next time.

If you are going to call me illiterate, the least you could do is quote the part of my post that you think demonstrates this.

[PoliteNewb]

If you pull out a wand and attempt to use it, and it explodes 50% of the time, then you start with (0).5, then 1/4 (1), then 1/8 (2) ect.

The wand disintegrates after working. Doom is correct on the mean result - the fact that a majority of people will get less than 10 uses is balanced (mathematically) by the few lucky people that get a much larger number of uses.

??? I mean, I suppose you could read the initial post such that it blows up after use, but I don't know why you would, seeing as I've explicitly stated twice that it blows up before it get's used, and Doom has never contradicted that, despite taking time out of his day to whine about how I'm so mean and don't understand math.

Jesus. Why do you have to have shit rubbed in your face in order to stop denying it, when it's perfectly fucking obvious?

Doom, on the first page: (emphasis added)

Anyway, I think a proof for expected number of uses for general probability of failure after use is a bit much for here, but let's go with proving it for failure probability 1/2, since it's particularly easy, just for the simple pleasure of making Kaelik look like an ignorant loudmouth idiot in complete detail.

Is that clear enough for you? That you roll after, not before? So your crap about it blowing up before you use it is completely nonsensical, and has been from the beginning of this discussion?

Shit man, you're an illiterate smegnugget. At least you didn't spell it "retarted" but maybe next time.

If you are going to call me illiterate, the least you could do is quote the part of my post that you think demonstrates this.

He thinks you're illiterate because you're refusing to read the parts of this thread that tell you you're a jackass and wrong. I know you totally can read those parts, but you don't, because you're a jackass who doesn't like to admit when he's wrong.

[quanta]

Yes, it's not a huge difference. It's just funny that you are wrong right by every single method of calculating averages, all of which must, of course, give the same answer. I mean, yes, if you had a system that actually did have a mean of 2, I would still tell you to make a less sucky system, and stop being Elennsar, and thinking that one person out of every billion getting to use a two charge wand for their entire career makes up for half of all people having spent X gp for an item that doesn't actually do anything works only once. But that's besides the point. The point is that I have a small penis and compensate for it by being a dickhead myself. Fortunately, I mean this quite literally; my many years of being a figurative dickhead payed off when the god of dickheads saw fit to let me ascend to true dickheadedness, and it's why all the ladies say "Caelic doubles the stimulation of erogenous zones."

Fix'd that for you.

You do not change things in any meaningful way at all, you just introduce more bookkeeping and herp derp randomness.

Nah, he doesn't introduce more bookkeeping with a memoryless distribution, he just adds more rolling dice. Which is arguably worse, since it can take more time to roll some dice and check the result than to mark one usage off.

[Kaelik]

Doom, on the first page: (emphasis added)

Anyway, I think a proof for expected number of uses for general probability of failure after use is a bit much for here, but let's go with proving it for failure probability 1/2, since it's particularly easy, just for the simple pleasure of making Kaelik look like an ignorant loudmouth idiot in complete detail.

Is that clear enough for you? That you roll after, not before? So your crap about it blowing up before you use it is completely nonsensical, and has been from the beginning of this discussion?

And here is Doom on the first fucking post:

Instead, I just give the item a % chance of disintegrating with each use. So, the wand of fireballs with 10 charges before, now has a 10% chance of being done every time it's used.

Not every time but the first time. Every time.

I'm sorry for reading the first post. In the future, I'll just assume that when Doom contradicts himself after I point out he's wrong, he's actually using time travel to change the past except only I can see the original time line.

Fix'd that for you.

I am so confused. On the one hand, you say I am overcompensating for a small dick. On the other, you say I am have the best dick in the world. While generally speaking, these two things are considered opposites, I could perhaps see that you find small dicks to be more sexually stimulating, but then why would I be compensating for it?

As to your... um, well I guess exactly like Doom and Sigma, you don't actually have any content to your post to address, just insults. Also juvenile misnaming in an attempt to be funny. I have no idea why anyone thinks that is funny.

Also... no. he's not right by every means of computing average. Even if he were right by that one method, he would still be wrong by mode and median.

[PoliteNewb]

Doom, on the first page: (emphasis added)

Anyway, I think a proof for expected number of uses for general probability of failure after use is a bit much for here, but let's go with proving it for failure probability 1/2, since it's particularly easy, just for the simple pleasure of making Kaelik look like an ignorant loudmouth idiot in complete detail.

Is that clear enough for you? That you roll after, not before? So your crap about it blowing up before you use it is completely nonsensical, and has been from the beginning of this discussion?

And here is Doom on the first fucking post:

Instead, I just give the item a % chance of disintegrating with each use. So, the wand of fireballs with 10 charges before, now has a 10% chance of being done every time it's used.

Not every time but the first time. Every time.

I'm sorry for reading the first post. In the future, I'll just assume that when Doom contradicts himself after I point out he's wrong, he's actually using time travel to change the past except only I can see the original time line.

Okay. I thought I rubbed hard enough, but apparently I was wrong. You're still fucking obtuse.

Who the fuck said not to do it the first time? YES, you do it even the first time. AFTER YOU USE THE FUCKING WAND. So there is ZERO chance that it stops working until it has worked at least once.

Everyone in this thread with a brain has understood "X chance of disintegrating with each use" to mean "X chance of disintegrating each time it is used, after completing the use". So every time it's used--yes, including the first time, you didn't need to point that out--it has a 10% chance of disintegrating AFTER it does what you wanted it to do.

Everyone else understood this without needing it explained. And then Doom fucking explained it to you, because you apparently have the mind of a two-year old. Which is probably why you're still shaking your head and going "nuh uh!" even after I explained it in excruciating detail.

[Starmaker]

Also... no. he's not right by every means of computing average. Even if he were right by that one method, he would still be wrong by mode and median.

WAT.

There's only one way of computing average, and that's multiplying each result by its probability and adding it all together. This is what "average" is: if you take a fuckload of Doom-style 10% wands and use each of them until it disintegrates, you'll get, on average, ten uses per wand.

There are other ways to calculate the sum (AnBn - the final destination way, derivatives - the clever way, infinite rows - the "I hope it conforms to this one criterium* I'm too lazy to check for" way which Doom used) but it's still TEN. Not seven.

*of course Doom, being a math teacher if I'm not mistaken, probably knows the criterium in question and that a geometric progression conforms to it, no checking needed

[Roy]

Yes, it's not a huge difference. It's just funny that you are wrong right by every single method of calculating averages, all of which must, of course, give the same answer. I mean, yes, if you had a system that actually did have a mean of 2, I would still tell you to make a less sucky system, and stop being Elennsar, and thinking that one person out of every billion getting to use a two charge wand for their entire career makes up for half of all people having spent X gp for an item that doesn't actually do anything works only once. But that's besides the point. The point is that I have a small penis and compensate for it by being a dickhead myself. Fortunately, I mean this quite literally; my many years of being a figurative dickhead payed off when the god of dickheads saw fit to let me ascend to true dickheadedness, and it's why all the ladies say "Caelic doubles the stimulation of erogenous zones."

Fix'd that for you.

You do not change things in any meaningful way at all, you just introduce more bookkeeping and herp derp randomness.

Nah, he doesn't introduce more bookkeeping with a memoryless distribution, he just adds more rolling dice. Which is arguably worse, since it can take more time to roll some dice and check the result than to mark one usage off.

No, that is more bookkeeping. With the charge method, if you have a wand, and use 5 charges then you can forget to make it off until later, and then mark off 5 charges and you're fine.

With the x% fail, you end up with oh shit, I forgot moments. And then if it turns out your wand broke on the first, or second, or third, or fourth cast LOL RETCON.

[quanta]

I am so confused. On the one hand, you say I am overcompensating for a small dick. On the other, you say I am have the best dick in the world. While generally speaking, these two things are considered opposites, I could perhaps see that you find small dicks to be more sexually stimulating, but then why would I be compensating for it?

Long version or short version of the story? It involves you discovering you don't need a large penis only after you ascend to true dickheadedness. You then make the best of things blah blah blah. It's a very heartwarming Christmas tale and all that.

Also... no. he's not right by every means of computing average. Even if he were right by that one method, he would still be wrong by mode and median.

The average is probably the mean unless specified otherwise. Although, yes you are right that it's acceptable usage to call the median or mode the average. Weird, but acceptable.

[Orca]

No, that is more bookkeeping. With the charge method, if you have a wand, and use 5 charges then you can forget to make it off until later, and then mark off 5 charges and you're fine.

With the x% fail, you end up with oh shit, I forgot moments. And then if it turns out your wand broke on the first, or second, or third, or fourth cast LOL RETCON.

The direct equivalent to your statement Roy is that if you mark off 5 charges later and it only had 4 or less charges, LOL RETCON.

Which doesn't make this charge/%fail a great idea. But I think your argument has a hole in it.

[Doom]

Nah, he doesn't introduce more bookkeeping with a memoryless distribution, he just adds more rolling dice. Which is arguably worse, since it can take more time to roll some dice and check the result than to mark one usage off.

Oh come on. (clatter) "Is it a 01?" Yes/no...done, and you can do it the same to you roll the dice for any other wand effects, effectively resolving both at same time.

As opposed to (scratch old number, reduce old number by 1, write down new number). Am I really the only one here to have ever seen a player forget to mark off a charge, or to forget on my own wand? Particulary with healing wands, since the player is more concerned with restoring the hit points right away than reducing the charges.

Additionally, the DM can make that die roll, as opposed to walking over to the PC's sheet and erasing/scratching out or whatever, or hoping the player remembers to do so after rolling for healing and erasing/changing his current hit points.

Ultimately, a big difference? Not at all, but neither is THACO as opposed to BAB, and the latter is clearly superior (at least in cultures that favor adding over subtracting) no matter how minimally incremental one argues.

No, that is more bookkeeping. With the charge method, if you have a wand, and use 5 charges then you can forget to make it off until later, and then mark off 5 charges and you're fine.

With the x% fail, you end up with oh shit, I forgot moments. And then if it turns out your wand broke on the first, or second, or third, or fourth cast LOL RETCON.

So, you forget to mark off the first 4 charges, and hope to remember on the fifth, hope to remember how many charges happened before, assume there's no RETCON and that's abolutely better than just rolling dice at the same you're rolling other dice, and assuming a RETCON?

Not exactly a fair standard of measurement you're using, there.

When you run out of charges, and forget, you HAVE to RETCON. The other way, forget to roll, and the DM can decide if it's worthwhile to bother with the some-how missed die roll, making the RETCON legitimately optional (the rolls would probably have been made, and were the DM's responsibility anyway, making him hard pressed to screw the players for his own error).

I rather thought % rolling would make the players husband the items, too, but the reverse happens--they figured to might as well burn through them, because you have no idea how much you're going to get.

Eh, might just be the current group.

[Parthenon]

Personally I think all the wanking over the average is pretty useless. What I am a player am concerned with is this: "If I buy a 10 charge wand, am I likely to actually have 10 uses with it?".

In this case, the answer is no- the probability is that over half the time I'm going to have 7 or less. In which case I would be asking: why would I spend 10 charges worth of money on 7 charges?

And the basic answer is that I won't. I won't buy one because its not worth the money. I won't base tactics on having one found as loot because I can't rely on it working more than once. All I'll view it as is a one use item that you have a 90% of getting another use out of it.

[Doom]

Well, again, that goes to the 'too easily purchased' issue. As someone else pointed out, the minor discrepancy between median and mode here is trivially offset by how cheap items are in the first place.

To be fair, though, you do have an over 20% chance of getting 15 or more uses out of a '10% failure' item...it's weird to have such strong emotions over this.

[Zinegata]

A note on Kaelik:

He has been reported. Everyone please stop replying to his useless and intentional trolling.

This idea is one of the most stupid ideas I have ever seen, and that includes ones presented by the mouth breathing fuckwits over on Paizo. Doom, you should be ashamed you ever wrote that and should apologize to the Den as a whole immediately.

You do not change things in any meaningful way at all, you just introduce more bookkeeping and herp derp randomness.

This is a completely meaningless post that boils down to herp derp. It contains no actual applicable criticism.

Saying a constant X% chance of the wand blowing up is more bookkeeping compared to counting the number of charges that changes from encounter to encounter is frankly the words of someone who didn't actually read what Doom actually proposed.

(Editted: Doom didn't actually specify the exact %. The 50% chance was just the main example in the whole thread)