Making a Magic Staff into a Scythe

[Yamatohekatsue]

I'm working on an Idea for a weapon wanting to use Rules as close to Raw as possible. The Character using the weapon is a Dread Necromancer. And the weapon is for him but our party Artificer is trying to build him a magic Staff that will hold some key spells for my DN. some of the questions I'm wondering is. using the rules from dragon #338 Recharge Staff you can recharge your imbued staff only but no other staff. is there any other way to add charges to a staff even if you have to meet certain conditions like kill target or possibly making checks to absorb a spell (I think I remember a staff that can do that?)

Spoiler

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Recharge Staff
Type: Item Creation
Source: Dragon #338

You have the ability to transfer your arcane power into your imbued staff, recharging it.
Prerequisite: Caster level 12th, Craft Staff, ability to imbue a staff
Benefit: You may, as a standard action, expend any of your prepared spells or unused spell slots to add charges to your imbued staff. For every five spell levels expended in this way, add one charge to your imbued staff. Cantrips cannot be expended in this way. Your imbued staff must be enchanted with spells that consume charges for this feat to have any effect. Your staff cannot exceed 50 charges through this ability.
Special: If the imbued staff is ever destroyed, the ability to use this feat is lost until a new staff is imbued.

Second question.
is there any rules on items being added to the ends of a staff or another polearm besides the quarter staff being used to make a magical staff? I'm basically looking for something similar to a Blade staff from Pathfinder in 3.5 D&D or a way to turn a Staff into a Scythe or enchant a Scythe so it can be used like a magical staff.
I know there is a Weapon Enchantment in Pathfinder that lets a weapon morph into another weapon but that's a +3 enchantment in Pathfinder and im trying to stick to 3.5e as much as I can.

[Saintheart]

I'm working on an Idea for a weapon wanting to use Rules as close to Raw as possible. The Character using the weapon is a Dread Necromancer. And the weapon is for him but our party Artificer is trying to build him a magic Staff that will hold some key spells for my DN. some of the questions I'm wondering is. using the rules from dragon #338 Recharge Staff you can recharge your imbued staff only but no other staff. is there any other way to add charges to a staff even if you have to meet certain conditions like kill target or possibly making checks to absorb a spell (I think I remember a staff that can do that?)

Spoiler

Show

Recharge Staff
Type: Item Creation
Source: Dragon #338

You have the ability to transfer your arcane power into your imbued staff, recharging it.
Prerequisite: Caster level 12th, Craft Staff, ability to imbue a staff
Benefit: You may, as a standard action, expend any of your prepared spells or unused spell slots to add charges to your imbued staff. For every five spell levels expended in this way, add one charge to your imbued staff. Cantrips cannot be expended in this way. Your imbued staff must be enchanted with spells that consume charges for this feat to have any effect. Your staff cannot exceed 50 charges through this ability.
Special: If the imbued staff is ever destroyed, the ability to use this feat is lost until a new staff is imbued.

There's only 2 methods I know that allow straightforward recharging of a staff:

- The Glowstone, which is an artifact out of Magic of Faerun: 1,000 charges, it's literally like a charging station for your stave.

- Soul Charge, a Web but therefore not third-party option that ShurikVch once dug up. Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 3: This is a touch spell that puts a negative level on whoever is touched and uses the energy from the negative level as a replacement for a charge from a spell trigger item (i.e. including a staff). However, it's limited to use on 3rd level spells - and the wand's spell has to be on the list for your class. And it takes 10 minutes to cast -- so it's tricky to get tactical use out of it without shenanigans (the simplest of which is Ocular Spell, another of which is the Arcane Archer's Imbue Arrow.)

A less direct method is to deem the staff an Ancestral Relic, and persuade your DM that committing gold pieces to the staff amounts to restoring charges to it as well. Works with Imbued Staff as far as I can see since it has to be a masterwork item at first.

There are methods that allow you to blow spell slots in place of a charge from the staff, and one fairly finicky option that allows you to take Con damage in place of charges (i.e. hello Wand of Lesser Restoration and/or binding Naberius) but I'm leaving those aside.

Second question.
is there any rules on items being added to the ends of a staff or another polearm besides the quarter staff being used to make a magical staff? I'm basically looking for something similar to a Blade staff from Pathfinder in 3.5 D&D or a way to turn a Staff into a Scythe or enchant a Scythe so it can be used like a magical staff.
I know there is a Weapon Enchantment in Pathfinder that lets a weapon morph into another weapon but that's a +3 enchantment in Pathfinder and im trying to stick to 3.5e as much as I can.

Wand Chambers (DScape) by RAW work just fine on quarterstaves, and you can get two of them on them.

In terms of weapon enchantments - the Morphing quality is a +1 in 3.5, it shows up in Underdark. Might be in the MIC too, I'm AFB right now.

In terms of gear, the Close-Fighting Blade (RoTW 166) applies to all weapons, and presumably would work here too.

[Prime32]

is there any rules on items being added to the ends of a staff or another polearm besides the quarter staff being used to make a magical staff? I'm basically looking for something similar to a Blade staff from Pathfinder in 3.5 D&D or a way to turn a Staff into a Scythe or enchant a Scythe so it can be used like a magical staff.

Which feats you'd need isn't defined, but the price should be the same.

You might want to consider runestaffs (Magic Item Compendium) instead - they're about half the cost of normal staffs, and rather than having their own charges they effectively add a spell to your spells known while held (you expend a spell slot, can use metamagic, etc.). Often but not always you're limited to using each spell 3/day. I think there's also precedent for items which function as runestaffs on top of their other properties. But you'd need to make a DC 20 Use Magic Device check to emulate having the spell on your class spell list.

Similar are the Knowstones (Dragon #333) which never have a daily use limit, but are more expensive.

And then there's the Drake-Helm (Explorer's Handbook p151-152), a cheap item for spontaneous spellcasters with 1-4 sockets, each of which can be fitted with a specially enchanted gem to add one spell to your spell list (no UMD check needed). A 1st level gem costs the same as a staff of a 1st level spell, while higher levels are a bit cheaper. Besides swapping out the gems, you can also change the spell stored in each gem 1/month by having an ally cast a spell into it.

[YellowJohn]

The easiest way to 'recharge' a staff is to let it run out and just enchant the piece of wood again. I can't think of a compelling rules argument against this; I thought there was a rule that an empty staff crumbles to ash but was unable to find it in the DMG. Further, staffs that have been enchanted as weapons explicitly continue to be weapons when emptied of charges (in core, the staffs of Power and Woodlands do this - and there are more outside core). This may create some hairy moments when the staff is nearly empty, but I can't think of a RAW reason this wouldn't work.

Getting a scythe blade onto a staff is likely trickier. The only thing I can think of is a Close Fighting Blade from Races of the Wild which... isn't quite what you want.
On the other hand, if we're going to go full RAWtard, a staff is 'a long shaft of wood that stores several spells'. And the handle of a scythe is... a long shaft of wood. The physical description of a staff in the DMG says that 'Staffs often have a gem or some device at their tip or are shod in metal at one or both ends'. Is a scythe blade a device? I think you could reasonably argue so, and there's nothing here that would preclude a scythe blade.

Honestly, as a DM, I think the idea is pretty cool - especially if the spells in the 'staff' have a Necromantic theme.

[ShurikVch]

Nerull is the Flan god of Death, Darkness, Murder, and the Underworld

Nerull is usually seen as a black-robed skeleton, with a rust-red body and green, ropy hair. He carries a staff called "Lifecutter" that at his command grows a scythe blade made of scarlet energy.

So, Dragon #342 has the Nerull's Scythe spell.
How about to pretend it would conjure the "SithSaber-style" energy scythe blade on your staff (rather than summon the whole scythe)?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm definitely going to try and talk my DM into this idea next time I have the option of getting a staff. It even sounds like a cool idea for part of a setting. Weapons with a metallic core can be enchanted to get magic weapon damage/some sort of magic effect, weapons with a wooden core can be made into staffs (staves?) that store spells instead.

I'm not sure where axes and maces go yet. They have a wooden handle, but often pretty short and with a big chunck of metal on top.