Further Thoughts on Recharging Magic Items

I've been doing some more research into magic item construction and recharging of charged items. It seems fairly obvious to me now that the spell enchant an item is essential to the process in AD&D. This spell (6th level magic-user spell, requiring the caster to be 12th level) enables an item to receive an enchantment - the spells to be used in the enchanting of the item. But this isn't as easy as it sounds...

Gygax never really wanted the Player Characters to make their own magic items. In fact, it's sort of the opposite of the game's premise. However, someone makes all those magic items, why not the PCs themselves? So the spell enchant an item was created and included in the rulebooks along with rules on the fabrication of magic items. The whole process is left rather nebulous -- probably intentionally. After all, if the process is known and established it becomes rather uninteresting. The downside to this is that the DM has to come up with something either on the fly during play or between sessions and this will differ from campaign to campaign. The costs are unknown, the time required is unknown, and the materials are unknown. All this is the purview of the DM.

Now, I think this is what makes being a wizard so fun and exciting! You get to learn esoteric things about the world you live in, how sympathetic magic works, what materials are gleaned from monsters to enchant different materials, etc. It also gives you something to look for in ancient tomes and lost libraries. However, the caveat is that you NEED a dedicated and invested DM to make this work. A casual campaign of occasional gaming is not the backdrop in which you should even try to make magic items. However, if you are a member of a long-standing, detailed campaign world, by all means, give this a try!

The majority of your investment will be time and money. You also need to be able to cast the spells to be placed into the magic item. Like begets like - the essence of sympathetic magic. However, I'm not sure you need to know all the magic spells when recharging an item. The only items with charges are wands, staves, rods and some rings or magic blades (usually those with wishes).

I'm more concerned with wands, however. I've rarely had a staff come into play (except a staff of curing and the Ruling Staff of Amun-Ra) and no one has ever found a rod. So, as far as I'm concerned, wands are the only charged magic items I deal with regularly. Heck, the wizard in the party has no less than 3 magic wands on her at all times (fire, frost, and conjuring), and the party thief has a wand of secret door and trap detection that sees regular usage. Even the druid has a wand of fear that sees infrequent use, and the ranger owns a wand of magic detection.

Now, interestingly, all wands in the DMG can be recharged, except a wand of negation or wand of wonder. Therefore, all their wands are potentially able to be recharged. The stickler is finding a magic-user (or cleric) with the means to do so. A magic-user would require enchant an item to perform this function; a cleric need only pray (but success is very slim). Obviously, neither would need to research the item in question assuming they already know all its properties. For example, the wizard in our group uses identify spells regularly to determine what her magic items are capable of. She knows all the functions for the wand of fire and the wand of frost, but still is missing 2 functions of the wand of conjuring. I would require her to do research only to get an idea of what is required for the wand of conjuring, should she have the opportunity and means to recharge it.

The wand of fire would require some or all of the following spells: burning hands, pyrotechnics, fireball, and/or wall of fire. Each spell cast into the wand during the enchant an item duration would restore a number of charges tied to the casting of that particular spell. Since she only knows burning hands and fireball personally, she can only restore charges of 1 or 2 per casting. Since she must be 12th level in order to cast enchant an item (and have that spell known), she will likely be able to memorize several of each spell. I would only require the one saving throw for the item to see if the enchant an item spell takes. Otherwise, the spell is wasted and the process must be started anew.

Looking at what is required for the wand of conjuring, however, it would be very difficult to replace the spells therein. The wand basically replicates the following abilities: read magic (conjuration/summoning), detect magic (conjuration/summoning), unseen servant, monster summoning I-VI, darkness 15' radius, prismatic sphere (or wall). Neither read magic nor detect magic cost charges to use, therefore they would be useless in recharging the wand (it's more a property of the wand bestowed to the wielder). She has no monster summoning spells, darkness spells, and is nowhere high enough in level for prismatic sphere. She might have unseen servant. So she could replace, at best, about 4 charges per casting of enchant an item (5 with her pearl of power).

The wand of frost would require some or all of the following spells: ice storm, wall of ice, cone of cold. These are all 4th or 5th level spells of great potency, although not as high as a wand of conjuring. Still they only cost 1 or 2 charges each as opposed to the number of charges needed by the wand of conjuring's abilities.

The cost of a wand of conjuring is grossly lower value than other potent wands, at only 35,000 g.p. for full charges. However, the experience point value is appropriately the highest on the list. The only wands more expensive are the wand of frost (50,000 g.p.) and the wand of secret door and trap detection (40,000 g.p.)! How these values are calculated is unknown, but there must be some mathematical relationship regarding spell levels, number of functions, etc.

Looking at the lesser wands, the fear wand would require only cause fear as a spell. Each spell cast into it would restore one charge. The wand of secret door and trap detection would require detect invisibility or true seeing and find traps. The wand of magic detection would obviously require detect magic as its only spell, and each casting would restore 1 charge.

Should there be a cost in the casting of the enchant an item spell? I think not for recharging, since the magic item is already created. However, this doesn't consider any possible research required to fully understand the magic item, nor would it cover any material component costs for the spells cast. Other than this, the only requirement is, therefore, time. Casting the enchant an item spell takes 2+1d8 days. Then the caster must insert as many spells as possible within 24 hours based on level of the spell used. The higher the spell, the longer it takes. If the spells cannot all be inserted within this time, the enchant an item spell must be cast again! It would probably take several castings to recharge a wand of conjuring or frost since those spells are so high in level. In any case, it would take months to recharge any wand to full charges, assuming that they were nearly depleted!

So, it seems that recharging wands is not as glamorous as it may seem. It would probably be less aggravating and time consuming to simply locate a new wand of the same type. However, some wands just don't come around too often and those that see frequent use might be worth the effort. However, if the magic-user is willing to give up their one and only 6th level spell at 12th level to become a magic battery charger, I say let them! You can always frazzle them later by making it known to others in the area that he or she can do so. NPCs would then search out the wizard looking to have THEIR wands recharged as well! This could be a lucrative business for the magic-user in question, so long as they have the required spells in their spellbooks.