Troll Lord Games

In the past, I have been very critical of Vancian magic. I'm still not a fan, but in my attempt to be more RAW with the CnC rules, I have been considering the advice given the items portion of the manual. To my recollection, there is a sentence in their which states that magic user's spells per day should be augmented with magic items containing charges to give them a deeper spell list than their regular table. However, this seems to fly in the face of what is expected in distribution of magic items. That is to say, magic items should be rare. What do you do to balance this? I was thinking of keeping of simple, such as wizards begin with a staff of magic missile. It contains 20 charges which recharge each day. Something like that. The idea being it was given to them by their Order.

If you are going to allow it to recharge every day, I would limit it to 10.

Also, you could do like Treebore does, he gives spellcasters an arcane blast. Essentially a magic missile at 1d4 dmg with an attack roll. Or something like that.

R-

There is also the "Apprentice Bolt" in the CKG.

Though I like arcane/apprentice bolt, I'm trying to steer away from the unlimited mana pool approach. I've done that before and there is nothing wrong with it, I just think I'd like to try a different approach.

Then, like I said up thread, I'd limit the wand to 10 or so charges everyday.

R-

I give starting wizards a defective wand of magic missiles. It can only hold 3 charges. The PC can recharge it by casting magic missile into the wand (one cast spell puts one use back into the wand). This gives the wizard a little more to do without grossly exaggerating the wizard's power at 1st level. The wand stops working sometime before 3rd level.

Options are its not spells per day, but spells per rest. Meaning when the spell casters run dry they pray or read their books and in X minutes per spell level they have some or all their spells back. Adding the night's sleep then the active recovery is a rule that really is no fun. Fighters never get tired.. the thief can endlessly do his thing.... well, there are no rules.. but spell casters are weak batteries in need of constant recharging... I like giving them a burst of energy quicker.

The other option is to allow them simple magics always.. infinite zero level spells?

I have always ran my own dungeons and such so the distribution thing has always been in my control. One thing you can do about the treasure in modules is to tweak it a bit by adding a scroll here, a nearly depleted wand or ring there, etc. as needed to give the glass cannons a little more stamina, especially at lower levels. At higher levels this becomes increasingly unnecessary I have found.