Not sure that's a great example either, Das Bier. Why on earth would you spend a bunch of money on a staff that lets you have mage armor at your caster level each day, when you could pocket the money and just cast mage armor each day? (Whether you use the staff or not, you're still end up spending the spell slot each day.)
Better for spells that you might need multiple times in a day, or just don't want to prepare, rather than a spell that is going to last all day anyways.
Heh, that's a completely seperate argument, Rav, especially since Mage Armor goes away in usefulness around level 13-14 when it is finally worth it to get Bracers +5. But I didn't choose the spell, I was just going with the prior example.
Which is naturally even worse when you consider CL 1 Mage armors against those at your own CL.
The only answer would be if you need to recast it and you don't have it memorized twice, and no free spell slots. It's really a bad example spell for frequent use, as you WILL memorize it every day...which is basically the same as giving a charge to the staff. As a reserve spell 'just in case', or giving the spell out in an emergency to someone else, it's not a bad choice.
Lots of interesting ideas for staves. Here's one of mine.
2: Staff of Life and Death
This Staff can cast Resurrection and Restoration. Restoration costs 4 charges while Resurrection costs 7. The drawback is that it must vaporize 200 lbs of sentient creature remains to recharge 1 charge. When the third command word is spoken and the onyx head of the staff is touched to the remains, an undead monster or animated remains must make a 20 will or fort save or be vaporized. If the remains are not immobilized, it requires a crit. to vaporize. Only continuous remains are effected, and only enough to fill the staff, so a big pile of bones might not be totally destroyed. A hand severed from a corpse can be ironically resurrected with the same staff that destroyed the corpse. These are made by sects of churches that find trophy hunting repulsive.
(400X7X13)+(300X4X13)+100,000+8,000
36400(resurrection)+15600(restoration)+100,000(Diamond Dust)+8,000(+2 disruption weapon)
Price 160000 Cost to make 130,000(Diamond dust value cannot be reduced)If I've messed up the math somewhat, let me know.
I started this design in another topic where a player was sick of another player's grisly trophies.This would never make it in an official game because you turned the recharging into a benefit, not a cost. You effectively have unlimited charges if you have enough bodies around...and free corpse disposal akin to disintegration.
It's a neat idea, just not workable.
I just use a +1 enhancement that is VERY common, called Final Rest, that slowly burns bodies to white dust, and so makes animating the dead difficult. The dagger that destroyed the body can be used with a Raise Dead or Resurrection to bring the person back, but necromancy fails entirely, below the Wish level.
It can also be placed on a Masterwork dagger without the need to make it +1 first, so that it can be used in poorer locations most vulnerable to corpse stealing and animation.
Final rest does not seem to be in the core rulebook. Disruption is.
Perhaps the PFS version should just be final rest, that reduces remains to dust(which resurrection can be used on), cannot be used on active undead, and is just a masterwork staff in combat.Thew worst part of this is I gotta recalculate the cost. I'll need to see this Final Rest power or spell to do that. All I'm finding with Google is an Inquisitor thing that includes Disruption.
Note that spell recharging is impossible, it was replaced with the destruction of remains. That's known as a trade off.
Apologies, you were talking about custom staves and powers for your Home campaign, so I threw in one of mine.
It works out to this:
Final Rest, +1 Enhancement
Typically found on daggers, Final Rest is so named for its referral to an ancient, common ritual cast over the deceased to prevent them from rising from the dead. It is typically used to destroy corpses to prevent necromancy and for reasons of health and space.
A Final Rest weapon slowly destroys any normal deceased flesh it damages with a heavy, ghostly white flame, reducing it to inert cool white ash over a period of an hour or so for a human-sized body. If the body was undead, this becomes almost a bonfire, completely destroying the remains within minutes.
A Final Rest enhancement can be placed on a masterwork weapon, without requiring the normal +1 bonus. However, such a weapon cannot be further enhanced.
A Final Rest weapon ignores the DR of undead foes, including DR/Slash or Blud. It can strike incorporeal undead normally. An undead creature laying hold of a Final Rest weapon takes standard weapon damage every round it holds the weapon as the pale fires burn it.
A body fully destroyed by Final Rest is reduced to dust and generally unrevivable save with a Wish. However, if the caster holds the weapon used to administer Final Rest in hand, and the spirit is willing, Raise Dead and Resurrection spells can be used normally, with the burning of the body reversing and rebuilding the corpse into an intact state.
Requirements: Masterwork or +1 Weapon, Gentle Repose (reversed). Price: +1 Enhancement
That ritual can be added here.
Go to Rituals.
It is an interesting variant of the funeral that allows use of the corpse only if reversed. Nice touch that rituals can only be imbued into masterwork items that cannot be further enchanted. I'm going to add that to the ritual dagger.
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The only house rule I think staves needs is remove the restriction that you can only recharge them once per day. Just with that, you can have your staff from empty to fully charged in two days of downtime.
The house rule from Alex to remove the minimum of caster level 8 to craft them is also very nice.
It takes a lot of wood and time to burn a body, as opposed to just throwing it in the ground. Cremating a body actually costs about the same amount as a funeral. Bones do NOT burn easily, and disposing of a couple hundred pounds of meat isn't done instantly and automatically easy.
Plus, messy.
Generally, putting someone on a pyre is going to at least leave the bones behind unless it is VERY hot. Bones can be animated.
The Ritual or a Final Rest knife makes disposal of the body clean and easy, leaving nothing behind to be desecrated, without use of foul necromancy. The knife can even be used in mass body disposal...cut each corpse, and in a day even a thousand dead are just dust. Good for getting rid of plague victims and clearing battlefields.
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The easiest way to fix the staff is to change the charging rules.
Simple if you want to place one 5th level spell in your staff you expend 3 5th level spell slots and if you want to place a meta magiced spell in the staff you simply add the number of spell slots that the metamagic effect costs. example a empowered flame strike spell would cost 7 5th level spell slots to recharge. You can take as many days as needed to recharge your staff.
I would even add a feat, Fast charge: for each 3 caster levels that you have you can reduce the number of spell slots need to charge a staff by one, you cannot reduce the cost below one spell slot per charge.
This feat also works on rods.
One problem I see with certain Pazio rules is that they ae overly complex staff charging and item creation as a whole is an example of this.
The easiest way to fix the staff is to change the charging rules.
Simple if you want to place one 5th level spell in your staff you expend 3 5th level spell slots and if you want to place a meta magiced spell in the staff you simply add the number of spell slots that the metamagic effect costs. example a empowered flame strike spell would cost 7 5th level spell slots to recharge. You can take as many days as needed to recharge your staff.I would even add a feat, Fast charge: for each 3 caster levels that you have you can reduce the number of spell slots need to charge a staff by one, you cannot reduce the cost below one spell slot per charge.
This feat also works on rods.One problem I see with certain Pazio rules is that they ae overly complex staff charging and item creation as a whole is an example of this.
That's - actually more complicated and difficult than the current rules -
COmplex, but you could spend multiple spells to recharge quickly, which is what people want, instead of one slot to recharge slowly 1/day. ANd you could spend the slots at anytime, instead of having to prepay in the morning.
Staffs arent that bad surely?
Staffs arent that bad surely?
They're not "bad" as much as "highly dependent on the amount of downtime in the campaign." Also, as mentioned in my first post in this thread, they are very expensive RAW compared to their benefit.
Because of how recharging a staff works RAW in Pathfinder, they range from "I might as well just prepare/cast the spell myself" to "a way to get a few extra spell effects off now that I can replenish later." Even in campaigns with sufficient downtime, a staff is generally in the "good, but not great" category of magic items (unlike the "big six").
This is a huge change from the way 3.x handled it: In 3.x, a staff was effectively a "super wand" with the same number of charges, no 4th-level spell limit, and the ability to hold more than one spell (improving the action economy from switching between multiple wands). A 3.x staff still had fixed CL and DC, but (because of the generally higher-level spells/spell slots used) were still often more useful than a wand at higher level play. Also, they were prized for the ability to "nova" several times per day without using native spell slots (up to 50 charges available); even the restriction on recharging for most staves had some work-arounds (allowing them to be used even more often).
Compared to that, the biggest advantages of Pathfinder staves (using the CL and casting ability modifier of the wielder if higher than the minimums; the ability of all staves to be recharged without needing non-Core methods) are viewed as a "weak" to many that were used to the 3.x staves and/or are mainly involved in campaigns with non-existent or extremely limited downtime.
You will note that casting a spell from the Staff of Life and Death uses one charge per level. Variant methods of charging such as destroying remains throws out the "one charge per day" rule. PFS version will probably only allow one charging per day so make a big pile of remains before charging. That way you can resurrect someone, recharge, then restoration them.
You could just invite the whole gaming group outside, write the offending parts of the rules on slips of paper, burn them in the barbecue, then cook burgers(traditional or soy). Restrictions burned are considered dead and cremated. :)
Staffs arent that bad surely?
Think that the fact that low level spell still cost a lot to craft is a downside.
Up to level 4 there are a lot of spells you'd like to have on a Staff to use your CL, but prices go up fast and being low level spells most of the time it's not worth their price.In the case of higher level spells, for example Communal Stoneskin, you still have to pay the price for 50 charges.
Now, if this is a party buff, we could argue that the cost should be divided among the party, which will lower prices, but still.
Combining spells get expensive fast. If I use a scroll, puf, it's gone, but I invested gold/time making it.
If I use a wand, its charge gone, but it did its work.
If I use a staff, I can keep using it, but suddenly to re-use that staff again I have to pay again to use it.
I pay to buy/craft, then I pay to re use. It's a one time price to get, every time price to use.
That means that with no downtime a staff is only worth 10 spells until you get 10 days of downtime.
Someone should run the math, but I think it's still cheaper to get scrolls.
Yes, CL is important, but if you're investing big gold into the Staff, it HAS to be something you have to use frequently to justify its price.
Alternative charging helps - there is now an item you can buy to charge any staff at 2x the speed - but that's another item you have to buy. I followed the links previously and picked up the 3pp staff books and they are great. I recommend them to anyone that wants to use a staff in their game.
Krazy Kragnar's mystical staff emporium - the feat for craft lesser staff (allowing a wizard to create a personal staff at level 8 - with rules for upgrading said staves and ideas on allowing the feat to upgrade as well - awesome).
Also I may have missed it but every staff has a thematic way to double charge the staff which fits the idea that magic is cool and requires more than wiggling fingers.
Rite publishing #30 staves - also great and gets into the idea that I like about staves - wonderous staves where each one gets an ability if the staff is broken and the wizard gets a spell or two that costs no charges to use - this part is what I think makes a staff go from 'meh' to 'awesome'.
Staffs arent that bad surely?They're not "bad" as much as "highly dependent on the amount of downtime in the campaign." Also, as mentioned in my first post in this thread, they are very expensive RAW compared to their benefit.
Because of how recharging a staff works RAW in Pathfinder, they range from "I might as well just prepare/cast the spell myself" to "a way to get a few extra spell effects off now that I can replenish later." Even in campaigns with sufficient downtime, a staff is generally in the "good, but not great" category of magic items (unlike the "big six").
This is a huge change from the way 3.x handled it: In 3.x, a staff was effectively a "super wand" with the same number of charges, no 4th-level spell limit, and the ability to hold more than one spell (improving the action economy from switching between multiple wands). A 3.x staff still had fixed CL and DC, but (because of the generally higher-level spells/spell slots used) were still often more useful than a wand at higher level play. Also, they were prized for the ability to "nova" several times per day without using native spell slots (up to 50 charges available); even the restriction on recharging for most staves had some work-arounds (allowing them to be used even more often).
Compared to that, the biggest advantages of Pathfinder staves (using the CL and casting ability modifier of the wielder if higher than the minimums; the ability of all staves to be recharged without needing non-Core methods) are viewed as a "weak" to many that were used to the 3.x staves and/or are mainly involved in campaigns with non-existent or extremely limited downtime.
Staves in 3.5 sucked as bad as they do in PF, if not more.
1) Still pricey
2) No recharging. You had to literally make the staff again to recharge it. i.e. be 11th/12th level.
3) It cost as much as multiple wands, but had a fraction of the charges. You'd be better off with multiple wands of the same spells, at least you got tons of charges out of them.
I pointed this out to SKR in a debate thread about 3e staves, and there was a resulting change was the 3.5 reduction in cost for spells past the first and most expensive staff. It made them better, but it didn't make them popular. That reduction is still there today.
The only staves that were truly awesome were the ones that could be recharged easily...i.e. the Staff of the Magi. The runner-up staff of Power was more like a big can of emergency spells you didn't ever have to want to use.
Now, Runestaves, from the compendium, started to get some traction. They were staves that used your spell slots or memorized spells to cast a fixed array of spells. In short, multiple Pages of Spell Knowledge for both classes. Very few downsides and no reason to worry about charges.
But I've never heard of 'popular staves' in 3e, either. The high cost was always a problem. And the WoTC line was that a staff HAD to have multiple spells, or you used the wand rules, and these spells had to be thematic. People just wanted to abuse the staff rules to save money by loading them up with low level spells that had nothing to do with one another...because the designed staves were naturally VERY expensive, always with multiple spells, some of which you didn't want, and always on theme, instead of what you wanted.
Staves have always been VERY low on the totem pole of desired items.
HOWEVER...I had a f/mu dual class FR character back in the day, who double specced staff and had a staff of striking. He tumbled onto the fallen mythal that could focus its power to recharge items. WHen he started spending charges from his staff to beat stuff up, he could do a lot of damage REALLY fast...
Vlod Fidemfer, former shepherd captured by drow slavers and freed by us. :) Ended up at f/7, MU/12 before all was said and done.