Those paying attention to the changelogs may have seen that last week, we added support for Potions, Scrolls and Wands to the Pathfinder system. These items, unlike most magic items, are not specifically named but provide a means to access the effects of spells. As such, there is no clear list of scrolls, for example, but rather, any spell available to any class can be made into a scroll item. Similar, wands or potions can be made for lower level spells.
Fortunately, the game system configuration already has a complete list of available spells for each class — this is used to help autocomplete and check spell lists on sheets. Based on this list, we’ve made the sheet automatically recognize these spell completion items for you.
The whole endeavour was more complicated than simply pasting “Scroll of ” before every spell, however. First off, to determine the value of scrolls, potions or wands, you do not just need to know the level of the spell, but also the caster level of the item. This should be, at minimum, the caster level of the lowest level spellcaster capable of casting the spell. In most cases, this is 2 times the level of the spell minus 1, but not always, and it is possible to create higher level scrolls, for example to do more damage with a fireball.
To help players, the server now runs through the list of all spells and checks to which classes it is available and at what level, suggesting the item at the cheapest available cost, while still allowing players to raise or lower the caster level.
Beyond caster level, spells may also have expensive material components, such as silver dust or gemstones. To make sure a scroll of True Resurrection does not end up cheaper than casting the spell yourself by avoiding the material component cost, we’ve added those costs — times fifty in case of wands, which have that many ‘charges’.
Finally, we had to make some adjustments to the Ranger and Paladin, as they have lower caster levels, thus making scrolls of spells only available to those classes cheaper in most cases.
Did I say finally? Turns out, the rules for Psionics which are used in many of our Pathfinder campaigns, have their own set of items, such as Psionic Tattoo’s, Power Stones, and Dorjes — which function exactly the same as Potions, Scrolls and Wands, except for psionics. So we added support for those as well, and made sure that “Wand of Mi” can autocomplete to “Wand of Minor Image” but not to “Wand of Mindlink” while “Dorje of Mi” does the opposite.
We aren’t quite happy with some of the back-end handling of this change yet, so you might see more on this later, but for now we believe this should already be very helpful! What items would you like to see added next? We’d love to hear from you on the Community Forum. While there, be sure to check out this week’s changelog!