D&D 5E Wand of Wonder?

[Mouseferatu]

I've been contemplating tossing a wand of wonder into my current campaign, something I haven't done since 2E (when my players and I were a lot younger). And in thinking about this, something's suddenly occurred to me.

I get why the WoW would appeal to a certain type of player, but... Assuming nobody's playing a CN-to-the-point-of-madness sort, what character in their right mind would ever use one of these things once they knew what it was? I honestly can't think of a good reason to ever activate the damn thing, unless you're literally out of all spells and every other options.

So, thoughts? Leaving aside any player preferences and assuming sanity, what in your opinion and/or experience would entice a rational PC to use a wand of wonder?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Personally? I hate them. But then again, I tend to be a planner who appreciates order. I guess you can say I'm LN

heck, I don't even like wild magic for the sorcerer.

*Edit* I guess to answer your question, I can see a player using one on a last ditch effort, when you have no choices left and are desperate.

 

[lkj]

. . . Leaving aside any player preferences and assuming sanity . . .[/I]?

With these sorts of absurd restrictions on the discussion, we aren't going to be able to help you at all.

AD

 

[lkj]

Joking aside, we loved the wand of wonder back in the day. But it was used entirely for player amusement and generally marked the character as insane. I could come up with in world reasons for using it, but they pretty much fall into the category of 'very dangerous hail mary pass in a TPK situation'. (Or character is a little insane, but that's outside the bounds)

AD

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[ccs]

So, thoughts? Leaving aside any player preferences and assuming sanity, what in your opinion and/or experience would entice a rational PC to use a wand of wonder?

Do you know of any other way to summon an elephant?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've been contemplating tossing a wand of wonder into my current campaign, something I haven't done since 2E (when my players and I were a lot younger). And in thinking about this, something's suddenly occurred to me.

I get why the WoW would appeal to a certain type of player, but... Assuming nobody's playing a CN-to-the-point-of-madness sort, what character in their right mind would ever use one of these things once they knew what it was? I honestly can't think of a good reason to ever activate the damn thing, unless you're literally out of all spells and every other options.

So, thoughts? Leaving aside any player preferences and assuming sanity, what in your opinion and/or experience would entice a rational PC to use a wand of wonder?

It's honestly a potentially powerful source of attack spells. Always target an enemy creature, and when you roll to see what happens, you either hit that creature with a powerful attack, do nothing to it (and do something weird), or do something that causes you a minor inconvenience. It includes fireball and lightning bolt (each of which are worth rare wands in and of themselves), as well as enlarge/reduce (reduce more often will be useful), faerie fire, gust of wind, stinking cloud, darkness....and even the self-invisibility or detect thoughts aren't very useless. The worst effect is probably that you blind your party, but since you also blind your enemies, even that one could be worse.

This means it's great for openers before the party gets mixed in the area, when you're not sure what you might want to do or what the capabilities of the enemies are, but you want to do something. There's a chance it'll backfire, or do nothing of note, but there's a better-than-solid chance that someone's day would be better if you didn't use it.

The way magic items in 5e work, they're always sauce on top of what you can do, so the wand is just some sauce with a kick - not something you'll want to break out when you need to make every step count, but a good way to say "hello!"

My experience with the wand is, though, as a gnome wild mage who is CN and who draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll, so....he probably gets more use out of it than most folks would. Still, though, the last time he used it it created a gust of wind that effectively blocked a doorway and made lines of sight pretty important.

More importantly, though, it was hilarious, and if a group of people laughing isn't a sign of a successful D&D session, I dunno WHAT is.

 

[Ath'kethin]

In 2e, a wild mage had a 50% chance of controlling a wand of wonder. I see no compelling reason not to carry this rule forward into the new edition.

So to answer your question, a wild mage would likely want one.

 

[jgsugden]

In a 5E setting where there are fewer items, you take what you get and use what you have. But, even if not, you can add legends to the game that indicate that there are some amazingly good things that can happen with the wand...

In 3E I redesigned the wand so that it had three tables. You used the first when you pointed it at an enemy. You used the second when you pointed it an ally (or yourself). You used the third when you pointed at anything else. Each table had things that varied from slightly negative (heal enemies, curse, allies, etc...) to very beneficial (fireball an enemy, teleport an ally anywhere in the world they wish to go, a rain of gold coins, etc... However, there was a lot of options that gave the PCs a slight benefit, but primarily just changed the combat environment in an unpredictable way (an enemy generates a repulsion field, an ally increases in size, an area is filled with green mist that dyes anything in it permamently, everything in a 100 foot radius gets snowed on heavily for 2d12 hours (6" snow per hour), etc.... I felt like that gave PCs more of an incentive to use it, but kept it from being too powerful. However, the darn PCs sold the dang thing without using it more than a few times.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

What character in their right mind would ever use one of these things once they knew what it was? I honestly can't think of a good reason to ever activate the damn thing, unless you're literally out of all spells and every other options.

So, thoughts? Leaving aside any player preferences and assuming sanity, what in your opinion and/or experience would entice a rational PC to use a wand of wonder?

Well, you can't count out natural curiosity. When you see that big red button what are you gonna do, not push it? Psh.