Why bother with powerstones?
 

Any wizard ready to create a ST 5 powerstone will most likely already have a staff with 40 mana that can be directly used to cast spells (instead of merely recovering fatigue after the fact) and has no daily recharge limit.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

I haven't read any rules on creating powerstones yet but I am familiar with what they do and how they work. One thing I'm thinking of...

You could give powerstones to non-wizard spellcasters. You might even have them embedded in their weapons like a jewel in the hilt of a sword.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

Only wizards can speed up powerstone ST recovery. Non-wizard spellcasters won't get much out of them.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

Henry,
I'm not sure what you mean...

ITL p.163
That last part makes them sound better than a staff to me. (But I will have to re-read the rules for recharging a staff to be sure)

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

A powerstone can potentially hold hundreds of ST to draw from, though it would take a long time to build one up that high.

On a related topic, does anyone have rules for requiring specific gems or quality in order to support higher ST capacity? The rules say the stone must be worth at least $1000 which seems to imply there might be some correlation between the stone's value and it's capacity.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

I think people may be jumping to conclusions about high amounts of ST being stored in every wizard's staff. It costs 200 XP per point, so 40 points is an 8000 XP investment. At a normal sort of rate of XP awards, that's ~50-100 sessions of play. If you have a normal kind of group, thats 1-2 (or more) years of play. After you've set the preconditions for all this by getting the stat points and spells lined up. So, for the next couple of years the only people we'll be hearing from about what its like to play with a 40 point staff will be those who just wrote up a maxed out wizard to see what it would be like.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

So true. And another reason why the Powerstones look more appealing to me. Powerstones don't "quit working" after their maker dies. You can throw them in as found magic items all you want. Please note I am not encouraging "powerstones galore".

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

They do similar things but both are useful. They take different resources to acquire, and powerstones may be obtainable by loot, trade, theft, purchase, or commissioning someone else to enchant them, not only by enchanting them oneself.

Staff mana can't be acquired in any of those ways - it's always by your own XP.

And, all of those resources for each, can be applied to other things you might want.

I think unless you set up a game to be about high-powered wizards spending a lot of time doing things other than adventuring, there won't generally tend to be much if any enchanting by PCs themselves going on. But all the wizard PCs will love/lust/etc to get their hands on any powerstones that happen to be around.

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

GM: "The multi-thousand dollar stone is revealed to be a 20 point powerstone. Do you pick up the cheap wooden staff that it is embedded in?"

Re: Why bother with powerstones?
 

@Skarg
Well said. That's what I was getting at.

@Hcobb
That's a very nice way to toy with your players! Is it a Wizard Staff that also has a powerstone embedded in it? Or is it just a normal staff with a powerstone embedded in it? One is safer to touch than the other if found as loot.

As a Wizard, I think I would prefer the normal staff with a powerstone embedded in it but those will be much more expensive than making my own staff.