Activate

[Canning_s]

I am a lvl 8 sorceror and am looking at an item in the AH.
It is the Wand of Cure Critical Wounds... it says that it has a 0% chance to activate.... why is this?

thanks

[Victorhammer]

Your UMD skill is far too low to even give you a small chance to activate it.
Simply means you can not use it. It should have a red boarder around it also as a visual clue you can not use that item.

[wootvenu]

Cure wands come under divine category. You are an arcane, if you want to use Divine items you need UMD. UMD required will be in the description.

[Victorhammer]

As a level 8 sorceror your UMD skill should be 10+ already. If your UMD was that high you should be able to use that wand or close to it. Higher than zero anyway. Sorcerors need a high cha score. Which happens to boost your UMD score.

[FuzzyDuck81]

As an extra point, regardless of your charisma & the skill modifier that it grants, you still need to have invested skillpoints into UMD to be able to use it.

Since its a d20 system, every +1 to the skill you have is an extra 5% chance to activate it succesfully. This means an item with, say, a UMD DC of 38 (which would be 100% success chance), you'll need a minimum adjusted UMD score of of 19 to have a 5% chance of using it successfully.

For equipped items its just a straight "have this amount or u cant use it".

[learst]

Cure wands come under divine category. You are an arcane, if you want to use Divine items you need UMD. UMD required will be in the description.

Just to extend a little more on this.

There are limitations to what a class can/cannot do and use. For arcane casters like sorcerors, they cannot cast divine spells (spells cast by clerics/favoured souls). The only way to overcome this is by the Use Magic Device skill (UMD), which is based on Charisma. This skill attempts to "bluff" the item into thinking you fulfil the requirements to use it.

Since it's Charisma based, it should technically be easier for a sorceror to have a high UMD score since that is your primary casting attribute.

[Deanarth]

To further expand on this, you need to understand the Kurewando, Gawd of Cure Wands, whos Mythos is the domain of all wands that cure, hates you. Sorry, sucks to be you.

But yea everyone else already said it.