Magic Item Creation


Rules Questions


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

I was noticing that the Craft Wand feat only allows you to craft wands of spell level 4th or lower. Are there any legal ways to craft a wand with a spell level higher than that? And could I conceivably craft a wand like a staff?

Thanks!


It's not a limit on Craft Wand, it's a limitation on wands in general---they only hold spells up to 4th level. No legal ways around it, it's in the definition of wand.

Nor can you legally craft a wand like a staff, their definitions are incompatible. (Metagame reason: that would make Craft Wand subsume Craft Staff, and they're supposed to be two different feats.)


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Yeah, I get that. I think the DM will let me craft a staff like a wand to get around this....I think it's kind of a lame limitation. That way I need both feats to create a kick ass staff-wand.

With that said, am I able to add a metamagic feat on the fly with a spell used by my wand? Example, Wand of Fireball, Rod of metamagic - could I use a charge from both and combine?


I'm afraid that's another No. Using an item is not actually casting a spell, just like using a spell-like ability wouldn't be, so you can't add metamagic to it on the fly. Basically because if you were using a feat instead of a rod there'd be no way to assess the metamagic level tax.

The good news is you can craft a wand of a metamagic'd spell, as long as the adjusted spell level doesn't exceed four. You can even use your rod in the crafting so you don't have to have the metamagic feat personally.


The spell level can not exceed 4th, but the caster level can be adjusted, such as a wand of fireballs(CL 10) that does 10d6 dmg per use, though I do not recall if there is a cap by spell lvl.

Scarab Sages

So potions can only go to spell level 3, and wands to 4. I suspect the reason for this is to prevent power discrepencies. You see, as spells go up in level, they become quadratically more powerful. That is to say, a second level spell is generally more powerful than 2 first level spells. By the time you get to fifth level, you are getting into some really nasty stuff, and letting someone have 50 shots of it that they can do every round would be bad.

Let's take, a fourth level spell like, say, enervation. To kill someone off with a wand of it requires a touch attack to hit, and a series of hits in d4 increments that equals their hit dice. Undead are immune to the spell, as is anything immune to energy drain(like constructs)

Compare that to the fifth level spell explode head. It doesn't require an attack roll, does level d6 damage (1/2 on a save), very few things are immune to hit (oozes, elementals), and instantly kills people, no save, if the damage brings them to 20 hp or less.

While sitting there and spamming enervation off a wand is nasty, how much nastier would explode head be? Gaurenteed damage, it effects stack with the hit point damage the party barbarian is doing, and no need to worry about firing into combat/rolling those nat 1s.

I think the reason items of higher level spells are restricted to scrolls are because scrolls are a lot more unweildy. They require light, (no casting in darkness), time to get out, and have some more restrictions on using them.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

I see your point, but I personally think it semantic. The reason being, you can build a staff with a rechargeable fireball/lightning bolt/cone of cold or whatever the heck you want really. So really, it just comes down to flavor: do you want a staff? Wand? Rod as your main spell casting magic item? Potions I get because they are pretty cheap, even at a really high level if you extended the cost per spell level all the way to 9th.

And if you are crafting an expendable 6th level spell wand - that is expensive. There is your limiting factor.

So if my DM is going to be a hardass about it, I'll just make a staff with all my cool stuff. :)


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

The limiting factors with staffs, compared to wands, are:

1) Because staffs can only hold up to 10 charges at a time, it's harder to spam spells from the staff every round in every fight.

2) Recharging staffs is slow, by RAW: The owner can only replenish one charge per day; and the choice must be made when preparing/regaining spells (meaning the spell slot used for recharging is unusable for the rest of the day), not at the end of the activity period (as a way to get a benefit out of unused spell slots).

3) Staffs are much more expensive than wands. Wands are the cheapest magic item (15 gp x spell level x caster level per charge).


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Staffs cost 400gp x CL (min 8) x SL vs. Wand at 750gp x CL x SL

So a wand of magic missiles costs 750gp has 50 charges that deal 1d4+1
A staff of Magic missiles (only mm in staff) costs 3200gp has 10 charges and can deal 4d4+4.

That's a difference of 15gp per shot vs 320gp per shot. Even a CL 8 wand would cost on 6000gp, barely twice the cost for 5 times the number of charges or still only 120gp per shot.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Interesting....I didn't know that staves only had 10 charges. I was used to old DnD where they had 50. So with that said, there are staves in Pathfinder that have 50 charges - how do I make one of those?

Do I just create one off of the created magic items page?


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

All good points by the way - I'm really learning a lot and getting back up to speed. We (the group I play with) just got back into DnD and since 4th and 5th addition are an abomination compared to 3.0 & 3.5....heck even 2.0 - trying to catch up on all of this is challenging!


Morbidwarrior wrote:

Interesting....I didn't know that staves only had 10 charges. I was used to old DnD where they had 50. So with that said, there are staves in Pathfinder that have 50 charges - how do I make one of those?

Do I just create one off of the created magic items page?

Remember that in old D+D staves had 50 charges because they could not save for some specific exceptions, be recharged.


Morbidwarrior wrote:
So with that said, there are staves in Pathfinder that have 50 charges - how do I make one of those?

There are? Where?


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Staff of Magi - 50 charges


Morbidwarrior wrote:
Staff of Magi - 50 charges

Dude, that's an artifact! How do you make one? First step: be godlike.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Fair enough - but there are rules to create an item with more charges.....just saying'. :)


No, there really aren't.

Artifacts wrote:
Minor artifacts are not necessarily unique items. Even so, they are magic items that no longer can be created, at least by common mortal means.


Staff of the Magi is an Artifact not a Staff and cannot be crafted. In Pathfinder all Staves are made with Craft Staff and have 10 charges.


Step 1:Buy Mythic Adventures.
Step 2:Take the Legendary item path ability, twice, and turn your staff into an artifact.


Goth Guru wrote:

Step 1:Buy Mythic Adventures.

Step 2:Take the Legendary item path ability, twice, and turn your staff into an artifact.

A Legendary Item Artifact is a different thing to an Artifact. There is nothing in the Legendary Item rules that would allow a staff to increase it's charges.


Scrapper wrote:
The spell level can not exceed 4th, but the caster level can be adjusted, such as a wand of fireballs(CL 10) that does 10d6 dmg per use, though I do not recall if there is a cap by spell lvl.

There's no hard cap, but two factors give a realistic cap.

First, CL is a factor in the cost, multiplied in. A wand of Magic Missile at caster level 9 is 9x the cost of a basic CL1 wand.

Second, the spell itself may have a hard limit. Magic Missile is an example here too (as was Fireball): no-one cares about CL15 for Magic Missile, as it peaks at CL9. (And while you could have it at CL 2, 4, 6, or 8, that would be wasted gold, since MM doesn't do its extra missile until odd levels.)


It might actually be easier to take a look at the necklace of fireballs instead and use that as your inspiration for your custom item.

As far as I can tell, the necklace of fireballs is actually priced slightly under the spell level * caster level * 50gp for single use item threshold (per use)

Unless there is something that I'm not aware of that would entirely prohibit this as an idea, I don't see why you couldn't put your spell charges on a various charms and rip bits of it off as needed.

(EDIT) Though, obviously, this takes us out of the "wand" category and into wondrous items.

Scarab Sages

Using staves with multiple charges per spell is the way to get the cost down. Typically at least 2 charges per spell. Though that means you cant use it everyday forever, it takes a very long period of consecutive days to deplete at one use a day.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Magic Item Creation All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.