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Writing about the whole thing with the wands was challenging.
I didn't want to stray too far from the standard and age-old D&D tradition of a magician's wand or staff being a piece of junk that stores "charges" of spells for later use, but the 4th edition version... a permanent implement that is as much part of a wizard's character as the weapon a warrior chooses to wield... just appeals to me on such an arcane primal level as being right that I hated to ignore it.
But ignore it I did, because there would be problems with suddenly introducing this facet of magic at the start of the second year. The charge-wands are just one more thing you can do with magic; implement-wands would be an integral part of using magic, and would have needed to be there from the beginning.
Also, there is another writer out there who did the "school of wizardry" thing with wands being a permanent and personal part of a wizard's channeling of magical power and she made them such an iconic part of her universe that I'd hesitate to tread on her robes.
(Hmmmm, tangent: now I'm wondering if that widespread and popular depiction of wands as tools didn't influence the direction of "implements" in 4E... one of the problems D&D has had through the ages is that it's gotten worse at depicting fantasy in general as it became better and better at giving us a simulation of D&D. With so much other fantasy stuff taking its cues from D&D, it's hard to imagine where else the "Wizards carry wands and use them to cast all their spells" rather than "Wizards carry wands because they can use them to cast the spell the wand is charged with" came from.)
As Mackenzie's education advances I will be getting into more wizardly tools like the powerstones, which some readers will no doubt identify as being an obvious GURPS influence. All of this is part of why I was eager to get to the second year, of course.
I didn't want to stray too far from the standard and age-old D&D tradition of a magician's wand or staff being a piece of junk that stores "charges" of spells for later use, but the 4th edition version... a permanent implement that is as much part of a wizard's character as the weapon a warrior chooses to wield... just appeals to me on such a
But ignore it I did, because there would be problems with suddenly introducing this facet of magic at the start of the second year. The charge-wands are just one more thing you can do with magic; implement-wands would be an integral part of using magic, and would have needed to be there from the beginning.
Also, there is another writer out there who did the "school of wizardry" thing with wands being a permanent and personal part of a wizard's channeling of magical power and she made them such an iconic part of her universe that I'd hesitate to tread on her robes.
(Hmmmm, tangent: now I'm wondering if that widespread and popular depiction of wands as tools didn't influence the direction of "implements" in 4E... one of the problems D&D has had through the ages is that it's gotten worse at depicting fantasy in general as it became better and better at giving us a simulation of D&D. With so much other fantasy stuff taking its cues from D&D, it's hard to imagine where else the "Wizards carry wands and use them to cast all their spells" rather than "Wizards carry wands because they can use them to cast the spell the wand is charged with" came from.)
As Mackenzie's education advances I will be getting into more wizardly tools like the powerstones, which some readers will no doubt identify as being an obvious GURPS influence. All of this is part of why I was eager to get to the second year, of course.
