Always thought they were exactly like wands except for the number of charges.
Thanks for the answer. ;)
Wow. Sorry about that mistake.
No trouble. You'll also see it in the Ninth Wands of Aundair (City of Stormreach, page 76); the average member of the Wands is a warrior 3/magewright 1 equipped with an eternal wand carrying an offensive spell.
Beyond this, I personally allow magewrights to use the Extra Spell feat (from Complete Arcane) to learn sorcerer/wizard spells that aren't on the Magewright spell list, subject to the usual limitations of the feat. So you can have an offensive magewright, if he's high enough level - or one using an interesting spell from an expansion book.
No trouble. You'll also see it in the Ninth Wands of Aundair (City of Stormreach, page 76); the average member of the Wands is a warrior 3/magewright 1 equipped with an eternal wand carrying an offensive spell.
Beyond this, I personally allow magewrights to use the Extra Spell feat (from Complete Arcane) to learn sorcerer/wizard spells that aren't on the Magewright spell list, subject to the usual limitations of the feat. So you can have an offensive magewright, if he's high enough level - or one using an interesting spell from an expansion book.
As the topic goes, there's this issue that I'm worried about for a while. I'm recently going to do some mass fighting to simulate the battlefield, and I allow each PC to lead a hundred Aundairian soldiers (say about the size of a regiment). Among these soldiers, they can choose from infantry, cavalry, archer regiment or arcane regiment, as specified in the Forge of War.
Here's how my trouble comes. The eternal wand was invented during the last years of the war, but my campaign was set up at the beginning of it. Thus, in this period of time, the only offensive spell for those third level magewrights is Grease, which is only 25 ft in range, while a regiment of troops is like 50ft by 50ft. Then a magewright unit can only grease its adjacent enemy unit, which is quite a little useless. I considered the Extra Spell feat as well, but since magewright gains access to 2nd level spells at level four, what they can get from Extra Spell is only 0-level spells.
I also can't simply replace magewrights with wizards or make them higher level because of balance and the world's background itself. Could you suggest a solution for this situation? I'll be very thankful.
Could you suggest a solution for this situation?
The tools of warfare in Eberron are something I feel are very undeveloped, and I would have liked to have seen a little more about this in Forge of War. The Eternal Wand was a late development, but you could certainly posit other forms of more limited-resource magic weaponry that could be used by magewrights. Something that appears in The Dreaming Dark novels is the siege staff - essentially, a staff made out of the trunk of the tree, not especially more powerful than a normal staff, but capable of being operated by a magewright; essentially, a weaker, cheaper, less portable staff with the advantage of longer range and the ability to be used by a magewright, which serves as magical artillery. I see these as being rechargable by a magewright using a ritual - so you fire it, and then you need to take a chunk of time (and dragonshard components) to ready it for another shot.
Essentially, this is the sort of path I'd take - make up additional weapons that can be used by any arcane spellcaster. The magewright isn't supposed to defeat enemies with his spells, but he's supposed to be able to use a wider range of magical tools.
Keith, it feels like you freed me from il-Lashtavar!:D
Also, you could say that your group has more people with Wizard levels using normal wands.
He could, but...
I also can't simply replace magewrights with wizards or make them higher level because of balance and the world's background itself.
He's trying to hold on to the established flavor of the world, in which even a low-level wizard is a remarkable character. Per Forge of War, even the EL 8 Aundairian artilery squad is comprised of warriors and magewrights, with a single PC-classed character in command. The Ninth Wands are described as a mix of warrior/magewrights and wizards, but they are supposed to be an elite unit, not an example of a typical force that would be fielded in the hundreds on the battlefield.
Beyond that, I think the basic question is along the lines of "According to Forge of War, Aundairian troops include significant numbers of magewrights with eternal wands. If the eternal wand is a relatively recent development, what form did artillery take before then? Were there still magewrights on the field in the past?" What I'm saying is that yes, magewrights have always been a significant part of Aundair's army - simply using different tools than we see today, just as the technological tools of warfare have changed over time. The idea of the siege staff - a heavy weapon requiring a ritual to recharge and too bulky for one person to transport - is an example of this. In terms of pure firepower, it's far weaker than what a 10th-level wizard could produce; but even a 5d6 fireball will devastate a group of first level warriors, especially if it has extended range and effect (and one thing I do give the siege staff is exceptional range).
It's a topic I've wanted to address for some time - both the tools of war and the evolution of combat magic - and sometime I suppose I will. The main thing is that the tools we have today do represent recent innovation. At the turn of the century, it's possible that what we consider to be "normal" wands could only hold a dozen charges - and that even as they adapted the eternal wand to recharge itself and be more user-friendly, they also found ways to back more power into the "classic" wand.
In any case, magewrights and combat magic have always been important for Aundair... but the tools they use have certainly evolved.