Any way to activate a spell-trigger item in a rage?

Question

While raging, a barbarian cannot use any Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except for Balance, Escape Artist, Intimidate, and Ride), the Concentration skill, or any abilities that require patience or concentration, nor can he cast spells or activate magic items that require a command word, a spell trigger (such as a wand), or spell completion (such as a scroll) to function.

I would really like to activate a wand while raging, but as far as I can tell, there is no feature out there that lets you.

Rage mage doesn’t; spell rage allows spellcasting, but not magic item use. Righteous Wrath also fails to do it, at least explicitly; Righteous Wrath actually kind of fails to do anything at all despite the description, since the only things it explicitly allows are things raging never caused a problem with in the first place.

So, without making assumptions about Righteous Wrath being interpreted generously, does anyone know of a way to activate a spell-trigger item while raging? Tricks to exit the rage and re-enter it are not answers; I want to cast the item’s spell while raging.

E6 is preferred; Epic is not allowed at all. Otherwise, any Wizards-of-the-Coast-published 3.5e materials, as well as 3.5e issues of Dragon and Dungeon, are acceptable. Third-party material, regardless of its licensing status, and homebrew material, regardless of its quality, are not acceptable (I am already aware of options that fit the bill from those categories; the point of this question is to avoid that). The form of the option doesn’t matter: feat, class feature, magic item, spell, whatever. I’d prefer not to have to multiclass for it but if that’s a way to do it, I want to know.

I’m not really looking for shenanigans; I’m hoping to find something that just says “you can use spell-trigger items in a rage.” I may accept RAW shenanigans, but only if they’re particularly air-tight and require neither DM assistance out-of-character, nor NPC assistance in-character. In short, please avoid anything that starts going “ask your DM to accept this dubious interpretation that might be there, if you squint.” Greater uses of wish and stuff like that are right out.

Answer 1

The feat Rage Casting (Dragon #310 30) has stiff prerequisites: It requires 5 ranks in the skill Concentration; both the feats Combat Casting and Quicken Spell (Player's Handbook 92 and 98, respectively); the ability frenzy or rage; and the ability to cast 1st-level spells. The feat has the following benefit:

When raging, you can cast spells that you can cast as a free action. This includes spells that have been quickened with the Quicken Spell feat. You can also activate magic items by spell trigger, spell completion, or command word.

The reader is urged to ask the DM what's to be done about this feat's benefit's first two sentences, but the meaning of the feat's third sentence—and our real interest in the feat so far as this question is concerned—is clarified by the feat's Normal entry that, in part, says, "When raging, a barbarian cannot cast spells or use a magic item activated by a spell trigger, spell completion, or command word."

Answer 2

The Torque of Lucid Raging (Dungeon 126, p. 95)

Well, this is probably coming many years too late, but I've recently found this magic item while researching something else.

It costs 9000 gp, occupies the throat slot and allows a character with a rage extraordinary ability to ignore all limitations imposed by rage, including the use of any feats, skills, abilities or magic items. Honestly, I think it's extremely cheap for the effect it bestows, compared to other options, but it's probably not going to be viable in E6.

Answer 3

Rage Casting is still the best, “correct” answer to this question. But I did find a couple of other oddball options.

Wandstrike, quite possibly

Wandstrike is a notoriously awful feat from Complete Arcane wherein you consume a charge of a wand as a standard action to make a melee touch attack with it and deal 1d6 damage (and is absolutely forbidden from receiving any kind of bonus damage), and then get to activate the wand (probably consuming another charge), but have to target the struck creature (or their space, for an area spell).

However, it says

you can activate the wand as part of the attack.

There are no caveats or limitations on this. Rage says you cannot activate items, this says you can. Which wins? No one knows! But there’s a decent argument to be made in favor of allowing it, since a similar (vastly superior, in most circumstances) feat, Eilservs School from Drow of the Underdark, explicitly states

[If you perform the necessary action,] you can immediately activate one of the spells from the staff […] This feat doesn’t let you activate a magic staff that you wouldn't otherwise be able to activate.

The fact that this was considered necessary information in Drow of the Underdark might suggest that a feat saying “you can activate” is more specific, and needs to be covered—so when Complete Arcane doesn’t, it means the feat can.

(Of course, Drow of the Underdark could have just been talking about needing the appropriate spell on your spell list or appropriate Use Magic Device check, not an explicit prohibition as with rage.)

The horselord barbarian’s battle ecstasy, kinda, maybe

The horselord variant barbarian from Dragon vol. 338 gets battle ecstasy instead of rage. Battle ecstasy is very similar to rage, but explicitly lets you do the kinds of things rage doesn’t let you do.

The problem, though, is that it’s not entirely clear that battle ecstasy “is” rage, that is, whether it counts as rage for the sake of feats and the like that activate when you’re raging. It doesn’t say so explicitly, so RAW, no matter how rage-like it is, it probably isn’t. And I wasn’t really looking for an alternate form of rage so much as a separate feature that would modify rage.

Answer 4

No, not even Pun Pun possesses the other-worldly might to do what you ask.

The closest you could get would be to have a familiar activate items at your behest. While a familiar is technically an NPC, it must obey every command you issue. Thus, if the familiar is capable of using the spell triggered item, then you could activate it by proxy by telling the familiar to activate it.