Nearly all wands have a command word to activate. I recommend that while invisible, if someone is buffing with a wand, then a message appears, much like the chanting from a spell.

'You hear an Arcane/Divine Command Word being spoken aloud.'

An exception might be, in fact, wands of invisibility themselves, for the reapplication of invisibility, but even that might just unnecessarily complicate the script. So in general I would say it should apply to all wands.

I would want this to apply to potions too, but for the sake of realism, I don't think you would hear someone drinking a potion unless they were being a sloppy mess about it, so I don't think that could be justified!

Very good suggestion I say, I think every wand should have it, but not potions.

Another possible suggestion is that most wands actually have to be equipped, in order to make use of them.

You can't equip wands.

But hearing the usage makes sense.

I've seen many servers where wands are equippable. I'm not sure if its an actual .hak required or not.

That could get complicated, possibly. You'd have to make Silence block wanding too. And then would that mean you should be able to use Still Spell when creating a wand to make one triggered by gestures alone? What about UMD? Could you use that to figure a way to activate a wand silently?

I'm not sure how easy to script this is, but the suggestion does have merit. Maybe one of our script masters will chime in.

Doesn't this also mean that wands should be unusable while under the "Silence" spell?

The assumption is being made that you're actually able to hear them to start with. Just because a spell (or wand or what-have-you) has a verbal component, it doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be spoken loudly enough for others around to hear. It could be mumbled, whispered, spoken under their breath, etc. There could be many reasons why you wouldn't be able to hear them.

It's my understanding that unless the person is under an impr invis, the minute they take action they'll be visible anyway. Isn't this kind of like asking for a hint someone's there?

Only aggressive actions will remove invisibility. Buffing and summoning monsters don't count!

I dislike this. You can already hear the spell effects. There has never been any mention that 'wands need a verbal component', and should not be changed. Even if they do need a verbal component, it should not always need to be as strongly said as a spell which requires manipulation of the arcane, rather just activating a wand. Having silence block all wand use is also ridiculous, because it's never been put in in the past. While this suggestion might have merit if it had been a rule that wands require an 'activation word', this is the first time I've ever heard of this.

From the 3.5 SRD Hypertext Web-Book.

Activation

Wands use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a wand is usually a standard action that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. (If the spell being cast, however, has a longer casting time than 1 standard action, it takes that long to cast the spell from a wand.) To activate a wand, a character must hold it in hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures) and point it in the general direction of the target or area. A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole.

Spell Trigger

Spell trigger activation is similar to spell completion, but it’s even simpler. No gestures or spell finishing is needed, just a special knowledge of spellcasting that an appropriate character would know, and a single word that must be spoken. Anyone with a spell on his or her spell list knows how to use a spell trigger item that stores that spell. (This is the case even for a character who can’t actually cast spells, such as a 3rd-level paladin.) The user must still determine what spell is stored in the item before she can activate it. Activating a spell trigger item is a standard action and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

NwN uses 3, not 3.5, AFAIK, and unless you are also proposing to impliment 4 to 'keep current', it doesn't seem viable!

Its the same in 3.0.

How would this work if you used UMD to activate a wand? I always just assumed you waved it around and didn't say anything.

In UMD you're basically saying nonsensical words that sound Arcane, and waving it around, and by force of presence and will power the wand works because it is 'fooled'.

How do you 'fool' an enchanted stick? :P

On every PC that I've played that could use wands, I've always RPed it was them lightly tapping someone or something with the wand.

Anyway, I don't think this suggestion really adds all that much. I mean, if you're invisible and using a wand you're obviously trying to hide. If you can 'fool' a magic stick I doubt it'll care much that you whisper the word. So all you have to do is stand outside of whisper range (very easy) and use the wand.

Thus, I don't think this would be very useful.

You could just whisper the activation word to yourself so others can't hear it, so this suggestion isn't really viable.

I do like the notion of equipping wands, though. Not sure if its possible however.

You could try whispering the words of a spell as well, but usually Arcane Command words and spells require them to be pronounced prominently, else they don't function as well.

I would disagree. Speaking an entire arcane phrase forcefully in order to manipulate the Weave (casting a spell) is alot different than just sliding out a wand and speaking a singular word to activate it. Anyways, I do not think this suggestion is desired- you can already hear the spell effects anyway, so putting in a scripted solution is fairly redundant.

We're not playing PnP DnD, we're playing EfU. There aren't any command words.