Pseudo-wands

Unlike traditional charged wands (a.k.a. “true wands”), pseudo-wands do not have a definite number of charges. Instead, a pseudo-wand has a charge die.

Initially, when such a wand is created, the charge die is a d20. After each time that a power of the wand is used which uses one or more “charges” (a.k.a. pseudo-charges), the wand’s wielder must immediately roll the charge die one or more times, with the number of rolls being equal to the number of “charges” just used. (For example, if 1 “charge” is “spent”, the charge die is rolled once; if 2 “charges” are “spent”, the die is rolled twice; etc.)

If none of the rolls of the charge die come up “1”, nothing happens. If, however, at least one of the rolls comes up “1”, the wand’s charge die is immediately reduced in size, by one step (d20 → d12 → d8 → d6 → d4). If a “1” is rolled on a d4 charge die roll (i.e., when the charge die is as small as it can be), this means that the wand’s magic is finally expended; the wand is now nothing more than a non-magical stick.

Unlike a traditional (spell trigger) wand, a pseudo-wand is a command word item. (If the wand has multiple different powers, a separate command word is used to activate each power.)