Use Magic Device Is A Great Skill, And Pathfinder Players Should Invest In It

There are some gaming strategies that are so universal in your experience that you occasionally forget they aren't truly universal. For me, this happened the other day when I was on a forum where a player was asking what the point of the Use Magic Device skill was in Pathfinder. The poster didn't see the point in spending points investing in this skill, and there were more than a few commenters who had never bothered with it either. At least a few folks said it should just be stripped out, since it was a vestigial part of the game with no real use.

Since I know there are at least some users out there who haven't heard the good word of U.M.D., I figured I'd spend this week making the case for why you should at least consider taking it for your characters.

The potential of wands alone should be enough to warrant a half dozen ranks.

How It Works, And Why You Should Have It

The name of the skill tells you pretty much everything you need to know; Use Magic Device lets you pick up a magic item, and use it. With a successful check you can fire a wand, even though that spell isn't on your spell list. You can mimic having a high Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma score in order to use an appropriate item. You can use a scroll, you can read a written spell, and you can even emulate a class feature, race, or alignment in order to make a magic item function for you even if it normally wouldn't.

Concrete examples are what really help to bring home how incredibly useful this skill can be, though. For instance, say the cleric has been knocked out, and you don't have any other healers. You've all downed your potions, so you can't just pour an ounce of pure medicine down the priest's throat. If the rogue has Use Magic Device ranks, he could snatch the cure moderate wounds wand off the cleric's belt, activate it, and make sure the holy man doesn't die. If you're playing a monk who wants to have the most ridiculous armor class possible, then using a wand of mage armor and a wand of shield can be just the ticket to being the next best thing to untouchable. If a bunch of shadows come lurking out of the walls, and it's early enough in the game that you aren't armed to the teeth with magic weapons, then the bard pulling out the scroll of scorching ray can be a literal life saver. If your human fighter found a bow that only unlocks its true potential for an elven wielder, he can trick the magic item into working for him, raining all kinds of damage onto the enemy. It's even possible for evil-aligned characters to wield holy weapons without penalty (or vice versa) by making regular Use Magic Device checks.

You can even cause purposeful malfunctions of a magic item in order to direct the item's 2d6 of feedback damage as a weapon against your enemies, rather than taking it all in the face. Which, considering that low-level magic items like a wand of magic missile only deal 1d4+1 damage anyway, is a risky kind of upgrade.

"Just read the scroll." But I'm not a necromancer! "The scroll doesn't know that!"

Pathfinder is a game with a lot of magic. You're practically tripping over it in the world setting, and it's everywhere when it comes to your loot. You can buy at least some magic items in most decently-sized towns and cities, and even if you find a spellbook no one in the party can use, every page in that spellbook acts like a scroll for the listed spells. Everything, from the ability to decipher written spells, to the ability to convince a magic item that you're totally lawful-aligned in order to get the full benefit of its wooge, can be done with a good Use Magic Device check.

There will never be a campaign where you can't make the most of Use Magic Device, if you invest in it, barring DMs who purposefully try to run a low-magic game.

Activating Consistently (Getting High Checks)

One thing that makes Use Magic Device stand out is that it has some pretty high DCs. Activating an item blindly is a DC 25 check. Emulating a race or a class feature is a DC 20. Purposefully causing a mishap is a DC 30, as is emulating an alignment. Those are some intimidating numbers, especially for players who want to make use of this ability at low or mid levels, instead of waiting till the campaign is nearly over to get consistent results.

Fortunately, Use Magic Device is a skill. And skills are fairly easy to crack in Pathfinder.

Let's crunch some numbers, shall we?

So, the first thing you want to do is have Use Magic Device as a class skill. If you don't have it as a class skill (not uncommon), then you can take the Dangerously Curious trait to make it a class skill, and to get a +1 trait bonus on your checks. So, ignoring your Charisma score for the moment, you've got a minimum of 4 (class skill bonus plus 1 rank) in the skill, and a 5 if you took Dangerously Curious. Not huge, but that's a 25% chance to activate a wand right out of the gate. Alternatively, if you're an Intelligence-based character, you might want to take Pragmatic Activator, which lets you swap Intelligence for Charisma on these checks. Choose your magic trait wisely.

Now, let's move on to feats. The feat Magical Aptitude gives you a +2 bonus on U.M.D. checks, and a +4 if you have 10 ranks or more. Skill Focus gives you a +3 bonus, and a +6 if you have 10 or more ranks (you also get Skill Focus for free if you're a half-elf). So, if you take the first option here, and combine it with the earlier layout, you've got a 7. If you take the latter option, you have an 8. If you take them both, you start off with a 10 overall, giving you a 55% chance of activating a wand (because you can roll a 10-20 and succeed, you don't need an 11).

There are other tricks to increasing your U.M.D. effectiveness, as well. The Pathfinder Savant prestige class, for example, allows you to add half your level as a bonus on Use Magic Device checks. If you boost your Charisma with quick infusions of things like a potion of eagle's splendor, or a stat-boosting headband, that will also eke out a few points for you. And if you have a friend (or a cohort) with the glory domain, they can touch you as a domain power to add their cleric level to any one Charisma-based skill check you make in the next hour. That can be a powerful bonus at later levels. And, of course, if you've activated the item successfully before then you get a +2 on future Use Magic Device checks with it.

Let's go back to our original math. Let's say you took all the early options for boosting, so you had a check of 10 at level one. Now let's add in your Charisma modifier. If you're a high-Charisma class like a sorcerer or a swashbuckler, you've probably got between a 13 and a 15 for your Use Magic Device checks. That's a 75% chance to activate a wand, and a roughly 55% chance to activate an item blindly if you're on the high end of the spectrum there. If Charisma was not a priority, though, you should still have an 11 or a 12. Which isn't bad. By level 5 or so, you should be able to consistently activate a wand, or emulate a race or class feature. And you've got a better than even chance of activating a magic item blindly. By level 10, assuming you took the two feats listed, you should have a minimum bonus of 23 to your Use Magic Device check (10 from ranks, 10 from the feat bonuses, and 3 from the class skill bonus). Adding in your Charisma score, trait bonuses, and miscellaneous bonuses from class features is just gravy, but it means that you should be able to run your fingers over most magic items, and get them to unlock with little difficulty. It also means you're quite unlikely to be the recipient of any backlash, since your skill is so high.

Just remember, that if you roll a natural 1 on a U.M.D. check, and that roll is a failure for that particular check, you cannot active that particular magic item for 24 hours. Which can be a bastard, if you depend on it.

It Never Hurts To Have A Little Magic On Your Side

The degree to which you invest in Use Magic Device will depend on what you want to do with it. Do you want to hoard scrolls, and constantly throw pre-prepared spells into the fray? Or do you just want the ability to use a few, low-level wands in order to buff yourself with self-targeted spells, and to free up the party casters for other duties? How much investment you make will depend entirely on your goals, but even if you're not a Charisma-based class, and you only have a few skill points per level, you can never go wrong with having Use Magic Device on your sheet. It's situational, but those situations are going to crop up pretty damn frequently.

That's all for this week's Crunch topic. Hopefully it got some folks' gears turning, and at least a few character concepts coming to mind. For more from me, check out my Vocal archive, or take a listen to the shows I help put together with fellow gamers over on the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. To keep up-to-date on my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support Improved Initiative, head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. All it takes is $1 a month to make a difference, and to get some sweet gaming swag as a thank you.

What Do Your Wands, Scrolls, and Potions Actually Look Like?

There are a lot of minutiae to keep track of when you're playing an RPG. How many weapons are you carrying, which are you swinging, what armor do you have equipped, what race is your character, how long does that spell you cast last, what bonuses do you have active... it's enough to make your head spin.

The unfortunate thing is that, as players, we can sort of miss the forest for the trees when it comes to our games. We might get so caught up in the mechanical function of something that we forget to take a step back, and to appreciate what its significance is in the world our characters inhabit, and in the story we're all collectively telling. Like how you might miss the complexities of morality happening with Albrecht Ironhand, who is trying to leave behind the brigand he once was while embracing a new life with his companions, if you just label him as "the barbarian" all the time. Or how you stop marveling at the roiling clouds contained in the black steel of the Stormspear, when you reduce it to nothing more than a +2 shocking burst lance.

I've talked about classes and magic items before, in posts like What's in a Name? How Your Character Class is Limiting Your Creativity and How To Keep Your Magic Items From Getting Mundane, but this week I wanted to talk about some items that get even less love, but which we use a lot more often; wands, scrolls, and potions.

No, the MINT one is the cure potion!

Single-Use Items in All Their Flavors

Take a moment to ask how many expendable magic items an average party goes through in the length of a campaign. How many healing potions do they drink? How many fireball wands do the use? How many restoration scrolls do they burn?

Now ask how you could make every one of those items a little more unique, and make it something players will remember, instead of just something they use.

So... how do I do that?

Well, the first thing you should do is ask what the item is made of. If it's a scroll, ask if it's written on regular parchment, ancient parchment, vellum, silk, animal hide, human skin, etc. If you're looking at a wand, is it made from wood? Bone? Crystal? Iron? In both of these instances, you should be asking what materials the particular crafter used to make the item, how old it is, and whether what it's made from has a bearing on the power of the magic inside of it. Because while it may be true that there is no mechanical bonus to necromancy spells inked onto the flesh of a virgin, or evocation spells kept in a wand tipped with volcanic stone, those are the details that will make these items stand out to the players using them.

What about potions, though? Well, what about them? As we all know it's possible to identify a potion by taste with a high enough Perception check (in Pathfinder, anyway), so ask yourself what different spells taste like. Are cure spells sweet, or do they taste like bitter medicine? Does the witch you bought the batch from infuse her expeditious retreat potions with coffee? Also, what do these potions look like? Are they thick and syrupy, or are they thin as water? Are they unusual colors, or filled with swirling patterns? Are they kept in glass bottles, or are they in ceramic jugs? What do they smell like?

By changing up these tiny details, even if you don't add mechanical backing to them, you make these basic magic items a lot more memorable. You can even add lore to them. If the party finds a scroll case in a troll's lair, and those scrolls are written in an older form of magic that the church no longer uses, then it may be possible to date when they were made. Different regions may have different potion blends, the same way coffee or tea will have a local flavor and style to it. And wands, just like swords, may bear maker's marks, or particular command words, making them unique pieces of craftsmanship that give insight to the person who made it in the first place.

It's the little things that often stick in players' memories, so make sure you sweat the small stuff.

That's all for this week's Fluff post. Hopefully it gives the DMs out there a few ideas, and gets you asking about the origins of these finite magical items. If you want to check out more gaming content from me, just head over to my archive on Gamers. If you want to keep up-to-date on all my latest releases, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support Improved Initiative, then head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. All it takes is $1 a month to make a big difference, and to get yourself some sweet swag as a thank you.