Cubes
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Now lets throw a curve ball…and talk Staffs.
Creating Staffs
To create a magic staff, a character needs a supply of materials, the most obvious being a staff or the pieces of the staff to be assembled.The cost for the materials is subsumed in the cost for creating the staff—
375 gp × the level of the highest-level spell × the level of the caster, plus 75% of the value of the next most costly ability (281.25 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster), plus one-half of the value of any other abilities (187.5 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster).
Staffs are always fully charged (50 charges) when created.
If desired, a spell can be placed into the staff at only half the normal cost, but then activating that particular spell costs 2 charges from the staff. The caster level of all spells in a staff must be the same, and no staff can have a caster level of less than 8th, even if all the spells in the staff are low-level spells.
The creator must have prepared the spells to be stored (or must know the spell, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) and must provide any focus the spells require as well as material and XP component costs sufficient to activate the spell a maximum number of times (50 divided by the number of charges one use of the spell expends). This is in addition to the XP cost for making the staff itself. Material components are consumed when he begins working, but focuses are not. (A focus used in creating a staff can be reused.) The act of working on the staff triggers the prepared spells, making them unavailable for casting during each day of the staff’s creation. (That is, those spell slots are expended from his currently prepared spells, just as if they had been cast.)
Crafting a staff requires one day for each 1,000 gp of the base price.
What cubes do we use for that? I assume the color of the highest level spell against the caster level which i assume would be uniform across all the spells in the staff? Not sure i can make that assumption, need to do a bit of research.
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@halfgiant said in Cubes:
What cubes do we use for that? I assume the color of the highest level spell against the caster level which i assume would be uniform across all the spells in the staff? Not sure i can make that assumption, need to do a bit of research.
This is where the variable cubes come in. Let me pull out an old 2e character sheet
Spell Level Color Low (1-3) Black & White Medium (4-6) Red & White High (7-9) Black & Red Good (10-12) Black & Gold Excellent (13-15) Red & Gold Exceptional (16-18) Gold & White Planar (19-20) Gold & Platinum Variable - Low (1-9) Chromatic Variable - High (10-18) Iridescent Chromatic -
@dwarf’s original plan had the following cubes. I Cannot find examples where
-are. but noted the spots existed.Class Lesser Medium Greater Mage Dark Grey Glowing Purple - Cleric - - - The Staff of Power used a
LesserandMediumMage cube.
The Staff of Curing used anAmberCleric cube, but I don’t know if that wasLesserorMedium. -
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Looking at those old sheets, even some wands used the lesser/medium cubes it seems based on their multiple effects…
Wand of Frost used Glowing Purple, I assume because of the multiple effects from different levels.
- Ice Storm - 4th level - 1 charge
- Wall of Ice - 4th level - 1 charge
- Cone of Cold - 5th level - 2 charges
Wand of Fire uses a Dark Grey cube. I assume some fudge factor here to let this wand use a 4th level spell with a lesser cube because wand s only use one type of cube.
- Burning Hands - 1st level - 1 charge
- Pyrotechnics - 2nd level - 1 charge
- Fireball - 3rd level - 2 charges
- Wall of Fire - 4th level - 2 charges
So a Staff that only has effects from a specific spell level would use a leveled cube. Potentially, if it only has two effects, it would only use leveled cubes because they would be in different slots…
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@halfgiant said in Cubes:
Yeah its confusing, and I might add created a new term Retail! It use to be Market or Base Price.
Well part of that was my unclear understanding that Base was the Market price.
I prefer the word retail simply because fuck that entire idea that magic is rare and not something that is retail in a shop…
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apparently we need a color for lvl 0 cubes too
i mean what kind o’ dipshit makes a cantrip wand anyway ? almost embarassed to even type that… -
s’been 3 months… no response - calling it Indigo !!!
(( twas the only ROYGBIV color cloud hadn’t assigned yet )) -
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I realize for completeness there needs to be a cube for cantrips, but for some reason the very notion of that just feels ridiculous.
Indigo is fine.
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yeah - i think in NWN they built 'em into neverending charged rods… so my caster wound up blasting EVERYTHING with his ray of frost
took farking FOREVER to crack open a chest or kill any monster over level 2… but giving our Wand of Arcane Mark with unlimited charges to someone like Dregs would wind up with him autographing every block, building and paving stone in Vral with sigils - just to annoy Sorvani…one of these days V really needs to get the city a 2nd powerviner for dregs to play with…
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Ok we started off with Cubes for Wands, Rods, and Staffs now we are expanding out to Cubes for wondrous items, gem-based magic (i.e. big ohm), magic rings, powered affects built into weapons (i.e. 2d-blade).
Items with charges per day, command words, and use-activated can all be converted or powered by cubes so this posting is to serve as a reminder about how magic items that work with cubes outside of Rods, Wands, and Staffs.
Cube Chamber
A cube chamber is a cube-shaped physical slot or a small extra-dimensional space on a magic item such as the handle of a weapon, edge of a shield, or the back of a breastplate that can hold one or more cubes. When a magic item with a cube chamber is loaded with cubes in the chamber, it is considered ready (or armed) and the magic item can be activated.Loading the cube chamber is a free action to dump used cubes, but requires a move or swift action to update the chamber with fresh cubes.
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@halfgiant said in Cubes:
Cube Chamber
A cube chamber is a cube-shaped physical slot or a small extra-dimensional space on a magic item such as the handle of a weapon, edge of a shield, or the back of a breastplate that can hold one or more cubes. When a magic item with a cube chamber is loaded with cubes in the chamber, it is considered ready (or armed) and the magic item can be activated.Where the fuck did cube chamber come from? Are you making up a new thing to go along with Kargin’s chain gun of wands?
Cubes are simply small slots on the magic item that they can be inserted into, historically, they were generally not interchanged during combat.
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Where the fuck did cube chamber come from? Are you making up a new thing to go along with Kargin’s chain gun of wands?
Cubes are simply small slots on the magic item that they can be inserted into, historically, they were generally not interchanged during combat.hmm no and yes, its loosely based off of wand chambers, and adapted by Kargin to create physical and/or extradimensional chambers (depends on the circumstance) to hold cubes that power magic items outside of the rod, wand, staff space; like rings, amulets, etc…
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H halfgiant referenced this topic on
