3.5E - Can Trigger items be used more than once in a round?

[Harold Groot]

Most of the time this doesn't come up, since it's almost always a
standard action to use such a device and the game rarely allows
multiple standard actions in a round. Ah, but "rarely" is not the
same as "never".

The Belt Of Battle, for example, can give the wearer a second standard
action in a single round. Can a sorcerer wearing the BoB cast two
spells off a single wand in a single round?

Or suppose you have a team for 4 sorcerers standing all in reach of
each other. In a single round, could the wand be fired off 4 times,
i.e. the first sorcerer draws the wand and fires it, the next uses a
move action to take the wand (the first sorcerer doesn't resist) and a
standard action to fire it, then the third sorcerer takes it and fires
it, and finally the fourth takes it and fires it?

I haven't been able to find anything in the rules or FAQ to cover
this. Among the players around the table last night, opinion was
divided. Some thought that such magic items could only be used once
per round, others didn't think there was a restriction. The DM issued
a temporary ruling for that session and asked that we look for
something more definite by next week.

So - is this officially covered somewhere? If not, what do you people
think?

[Justisaur]

I think it was covered in one of the far later books, perhaps the
magic item compendium, and the answer was no. As I've divested myself
of the 3e books I can't check though.

- Justisaur

[El Rico D]

I checked Spell Compendium and Complete Mage, but neither reference
this.

I would allow items to be used multiple times per round, even the
rather humorous line-of-sorcerers. Since picking up an item is a move
action, you could pass the wand down the row.

If you lined up 1,352 such sorcerers in a row, and had them all act
sequentially, you could even get the wand to break the sound barrier
by the end of the round.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 09:17:42 -0700 (PDT), El Rico D
<elr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>If you lined up 1,352 such sorcerers in a row, and had them all act
>sequentially, you could even get the wand to break the sound barrier
>by the end of the round.

Lets do better than that.

Lets gather everyone in a medium sized country (you need 33 million)
and line them up. Each takes an action of taking the item from the
guy in front of them.

Said item goes FTL.

[Loren Pechtel]

I just had another thought here. Lets be more practical:

Line up 32,000 people to pass the item and it goes into orbit. Small
packages to orbit on the cheap!

[Jim Davies]

On the grave of El Rico D <elr...@gmail.com> is inscribed:

>On Sep 26, 8:14�am, Justisaur <justis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 25, 5:09�pm, ques...@infionline.net (Harold Groot) wrote:
>> > Or suppose you have a team for 4 sorcerers standing all in reach of
>> > each other. �In a single round, could the wand be fired off 4 times,
>> > i.e. the first sorcerer draws the wand and fires it, the next uses a
>> > move action to take the wand (the first sorcerer doesn't resist) and a
>> > standard action to fire it, then the third sorcerer takes it and fires
>> > it, and finally the fourth takes it and fires it?

>I would allow items to be used multiple times per round, even the
>rather humorous line-of-sorcerers. Since picking up an item is a move
>action, you could pass the wand down the row.
>
>If you lined up 1,352 such sorcerers in a row, and had them all act
>sequentially, you could even get the wand to break the sound barrier
>by the end of the round.

It would run out of charges after the 50th sorcerer, so the 51st would
probably refuse to cooperate.

In any case, I'd say no. It takes a standard action for the wielder,
but arguably it takes a standard action for the wand as well. And the
wand wouldn't get more than one.

Conversely, if it were a free or swift action, it might get 2 or more.

--
Jim

http://www.aaargh.org