{"id":4204,"date":"2025-04-24T14:16:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T21:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/?p=4204"},"modified":"2025-04-27T16:48:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T23:48:59","slug":"dd-5e-5-5e-rules-wands-and-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2025\/04\/dd-5e-5-5e-rules-wands-and-attacks.html","title":{"rendered":"D&D 5e\/5.5e Rules – Wands and Attacks!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KnowPart of an ongoing series of 5e (2014)<\/strong> Rules notes.<\/a>\u00a0 See the end of the post for notes on 5.5e (2024)<\/strong> rules.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Use of a wand in combat is not an Attack, or a Weapon Attack, or anything you could put into the chain of attack actions that a higher level martial character (like a Fighter) can use.<\/p>\n

The Magic Missile wand, for example (and other wands use similar language), says:<\/p>\n

While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the magic missile spell from it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Using a wand is an Action (more specifically, a Use an Item<\/em> Action).\u00a0 You get one Action per turn (and one Bonus Action and one Reaction), with very few exceptions.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t come into play with the Fighter’s\u00a0Extra Attack\u00a0<\/em>feature at higher levels. While the nomenclature is confusing, that lets a fighter do multiple attacks within a single Attack<\/em> Action (it isn’t adding to the number of Actions, it’s adding to the, if I can coin the phrase, sub-<\/em>actions under the Attack<\/em> sort of Action).<\/p>\n

I.e., a higher level Fighter may be able to swing a sword at an opponent three times in a round, but they can still only fire off a wand a single time.<\/p>\n

Using a wand also not casting a spell. That is a particular type of action (quite literally, the Casting a Spell<\/i> Action). If it were, then it would affect the limitations of only one leveled spell cast per turn<\/a>. If a magic user uses a wand, they can still cast any level spell is cast as a Bonus Action.<\/p>\n

The edge case exception here is that Action Surge<\/i> gives a Fighter an extra\u00a0Action<\/u> — which Action could, in fact, be used for Using a [Magic] Item<\/i>. I.e., getting two<\/em> shots off the Magic Missile wand.<\/p>\n

Wands and 5.5e<\/span><\/h1>\n

\"dnd<\/a>Things are mostly the same under the 5.5e (2024)<\/strong> rules, though with slightly different nomenclature.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Using a wand (or any magic item) is done as the newly named Magic<\/em> Action, as is spellcasting and the like. Unfortunately, the new rules also are quite clear that you cannot use Action Surge<\/em> to take an extra Magic<\/em> Action, so we’re back down to a single use of the wand per turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, allowing use of a wand as a Magic<\/em> Action still doesn’t forestall using a leveled spell via a Bonus Action or Reaction (5.5e calls them “slotted spells”).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is attacking someone with a wand the same as casting a spell? Is it an attack? Or is it something else?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,44,78],"tags":[67,47],"class_list":["post-4204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-onedd","category-dd","category-dd-5e-rules","tag-dnd24","tag-dnd5e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4223,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions\/4223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}