[3.P] Optimizing Staves

[Andreaz]

Hello there!

My group has recently acquired a Staff of Fire, and our wizard has tons of motivation to use it, but...

It's just so expensive! One needs 10 4th-level spells to recharge it completely, and a wall of fire takes 3 charges. It's also necessary to recharge at the beginning of the day, rather than at the end. And only 1 charge/day can be used. Might as well just cast the blasted spells without one :\

Is there any way to improve the recharge method? Both 3.5 and PF is being used.

[Hrugner]

Giving up one spell a day to have five extra fireballs if things go crazy seems like a good trade. It gives the wizard some flexibility in what he memorizes as he never really needs to memorize the spells in the staff anymore. That's not what you asked though...

The only thing I can think of is "Staff Magus" who can expend arcane pool to refill the staff, and while he can only fill up one staff there doesn't appear to be a written limit on how much he can fill one staff. Good luck finding a staff magus though.

[The Random NPC]

Giving up one spell a day to have five extra fireballs if things go crazy seems like a good trade. It gives the wizard some flexibility in what he memorizes as he never really needs to memorize the spells in the staff anymore. That's not what you asked though...

The only thing I can think of is "Staff Magus" who can expend arcane pool to refill the staff, and while he can only fill up one staff there doesn't appear to be a written limit on how much he can fill one staff. Good luck finding a staff magus though.

You give up one 4th level spell per day to be able to cast an extra fireball every other day. Or a 4th level spell for an extra Wall of Fire every 3 days. Or an extra Burning Hands, but for that you should just prepare Burning Hands in your 4th level slot.

Personally, I find the only benefit to staves are being able to cast spells that aren't on your list, if they are, you should probably just prepare them.

[MukkTB]

I'm not a major fan of staves due to their cost. However, the position that they are an inefficient use of spellcasting resources is wrong. A staff can be charged up during downtime. This gives the caster a reserve of spells that they can dip into to extend their resources for a long adventuring day, or go nova in a particularly hard fight. Used this way a staff is like a wand that can be recharged between adventures and uses the wielder's casting stats. Of course it has fewer charges.

The most efficient way to channel charges through a staff I have found is a bit cheesy but within RAW. Build your own staff or visit a powerful crafter while carrying a bag of gold and a list of specifications. Lets say you want access to a lot of fireballs, a 3rd level spell. You pick 2 4th level spells and you put them in the staff using 5 charges a pop. This is relatively cheap because the cost of a spell is divided by the number of charges used to activate it. There are no RAW limits to how many charges a staff could use for a single spell, but I haven't seen one that uses more than 5 so I will assume 5 is a hard limit. Next put in fireball as 1 charge per use. This is expensive, however adding fireball will have a considerable discount because it is the 3rd most powerful spell in the staff by spell level. It gets a 50% discount on price.

This staff would cost 16,240 gp on the open market (assuming a caster level of 7). This compares favorably to a Staff of Fire which costs 18,950. You get 10 fireballs before you have to recharge, compared to 5. If you decide to recharge the staff during an adventuring day you trade a 4th level spell slot for a 3rd level spell. That's not terribly inefficient, especially if it is the end of the day and you have a spare 4th level spell you haven't used. The 4th level spells in the staff can be accessed in an emergency. If you want you can add new spells to the staff of 3rd level or lower at the cost of (7*(spell level)*200/(charges per use)) for additional utility.


You only need 1 spell that is on your list to be able to use a staff. I am not sure, but I believe that when making staves you can take advantage of spellcasting list overlaps to gain access to the other list. For example both cleric and wizard spell lists include Summon Monster I. You could have a cleric make a staff of Summon Monster I and Heal and hand it over to a wizard.

[Chronikoce]

Well one alternative is to use 3.5 staves. They have 50 charges rather than 10. Sure they can't be recharged but given the rules in pathfinder for recharging I think you would have to use your staff a massive amount before recharging rules made up the difference in power.

3.5 staff with 50 charges gives the same uses as PF staff that has been recharged 40 times (I. E. 40 days of using a spell slot equal to the highest spell in the staff).

So after 40 days of that the pf staff wins out since it's still useful while the 3.5 one is dead. I'd rather have the 3.5 staff though because I've never seen a party blow through that many charges before.

[The Random NPC]

I'm not a major fan of staves due to their cost. However, the position that they are an inefficient use of spellcasting resources is wrong. A staff can be charged up during downtime. This gives the caster a reserve of spells that they can dip into to extend their resources for a long adventuring day, or go nova in a particularly hard fight. Used this way a staff is like a wand that can be recharged between adventures and uses the wielder's casting stats. Of course it has fewer charges.
...

I'll admit I failed yo consider downtime, mostly because my group never gives us more than 2 days.

You only need 1 spell that is on your list to be able to use a staff. I am not sure, but I believe that when making staves you can take advantage of spellcasting list overlaps to gain access to the other list. For example both cleric and wizard spell lists include Summon Monster I. You could have a cleric make a staff of Summon Monster I and Heal and hand it over to a wizard.

I referenced this in my earlier post, you don't even need overlapping spells, you can collaborate to while crafting it.