Wand of Wonder

[CamDawg]

I think this bug is being lost in my playthrough thread, so I wanted to bring it up here for discussion.

 

The Wand of Wonder, found in the Athkatla illithid lair, is seriously overcharged. It comes with 50 charges, even though the item lists the max charges as 10. This quintuples its sell price to a (typical) value of 15k gp. By comparison, only one item in the entire game (upgraded Short Sword of Mask) can be sold for more, and only two other items in SoA are worth more than 10k when sold (Balduran's Plate and Staff of the Magi).

 

I think the overcharging is a pretty clear-cut bug, but there are two ways to fix it: reduce the number of charges on the item when found to 10, or upping the maximum number of charges listed in the item file to 50. Either course would have the desired effect of removing the price inflation and reducing the sell cost to 3k gold.

[Gorilym]

I'm not 100% convinced that the "overcharge" isn't intentional, but if it's going to be changed I vote to raise the max charges to 50. Reducing the set charges to 10 will nerf its usefulness as well as its value, which I think is unnecessary and excessive.

[Salk]

Personally I have always valued conditions in which a party should think twice before using charges in a wand because they should really be limited. 50 charges is in my opinion too much. No matter what wand contains it.

[CamDawg]

I'm not 100% convinced that the "overcharge" isn't intentional,

Nothing even comes close to it. The only other overcharged wands are a handful of spell striking wands, which have one over their max. 6/5 is a lot different than 50/10.

[Gorilym]

Yeah, but the spellstriking wands aren't unique, nor are they one of the two main treasures of an illithid lair (or is it alhoon's lair?). Also, I'm having trouble imagining how a value of 50 could have sneaked its way into the .itm accidentally.

 

Anyway, there are quite a few wands with 50 as max charges, so changing the WoW to fit that schema seems reasonable.

[CamDawg]

50 isn't in the item at all. The container that holds items (in the area file itself) has set the charges to 50; the item file indicates the max is 10. This is why you get the quintuple price markup--it has quintuple the max charges indicated by its item file.

[Nythrun]

I'm in favor of upping the wand's charges to fifty in the item file

 

Thinking about increasing the stackability of Throwing Daggers/Poisoned Throwing Daggers to twenty also, to eliminate the Secret Knife Piling Techniques of the Shadow Thieves which are not taught to outsiders.

[BigRob]

In PnP, most wands can have up to 100 charges, and a Wand of Wonder isn't an exception. Since the thing has very limited utility, (I tend to use it for kicks when I've got nothing else for a mage to do) I wouldn't think increasnig its max charges to 50 would be unbalancing. I doubt if I've ever used more than a few charges on the thing though, except when I'm desperate or being silly.

[igi]

I'd be in favour of setting the max charges to 10, to match the ITM file.

[Guest kimmel]

I'd be in favour of setting the max charges to 10, to match the ITM file.

 

Just a belated comment on the usefulness of the wand of wonders: it's actually very powerful, if you use it the right way. When you target the wand on some item on the ground, instead of a random effect you get, every time, a casting of web, followed by fireball, followed by lightning bolt (in that order, I think).

[Salk]

I agree with Nythrun about stackable throwing daggers (as it seems sensible, since you can stack 20 arrows which are not certainly less cumbersome) but I would limit the Wand of Wonders charge to 10...

[Kulyok]

I'd like to have 50 charges, so it'll be consistent with other wands, such as the Wand of the Apprenti. As it is, I have to either recharge it several times through the game, or use it via Project Image, which is kinda annoying.

 

By the way, Wands of Spell Striking are buggy, too: they have 6/5 charges, but when recharged, they have 5/5. I suggest limiting it to 5/5 from the start.

[CamDawg]

Yeah, Nythrun caught the Spell Striking wands when she did a charge review.

 

As for the poisoned throwing daggers, I say no. Nythrun's referring specifically to a number of shadow thieves that are carrying stacks of 20 poisoned throwing daggers (some do have the actual stack max of 10). My main objetion here is that we either end up with poisoned daggers having a larger max stack than normal throwing daggers (20 v 10), or we up normal throwing daggers as well--neither of these options are good to me.The former because it makes no sense and the latter as we have zero evidence of intent for it.

[Nythrun]

There's a few examples of vigintubly stacked dagg05 floating around too - but these are both of those things that I have to change locally, or it'll take me out of the moment when I see them in game

 

There's little evidence either way (I justify it to myself based on Bioware's penchant for handing out stackables as either max stack or half max stack - almost all ammo is like this) so it's probably too marginal to be a fix.

 

There's at least some evidence that stakes were meant to be stackable also, though I keep forgetting to check if this will interact badly with the coffin scripts in Ms Bohdi's Neighborhood, and haven't implemented it yet.

 

/edit

 

Coffin scripts are okay.

 

c6elhan2.dlg would need action 14,15,16,17 updated to replace

GiveItemCreate("misc6W",LastTalkedToBy,0,0,0)
GiveItemCreate("misc6W",LastTalkedToBy,0,0,0)
GiveItemCreate("misc6W",LastTalkedToBy,0,0,0)
GiveItemCreate("misc6W",LastTalkedToBy,0,0,0)

with

GiveItemCreate("misc6W",LastTalkedToBy,4,0,0)

and similarly for aran.bcs action 19 to replace the four GiveItem("misc6w",LastTalkedToBy).

[CamDawg]

Personally, if the stakes aren't broken I'm not going to mess with them--though I might include them in the stacking components in Tweaks.

 

Seems like we have a slight preference for upping charges to 50, so: done.