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Please help me clarify this. I suspect I must miss some information somewhere.
1. Staves use the spell trigger activation method. (p. 491)
2. Spell trigger items can be used by anyone whose class can cast the corresponding spell. (p. 458)
3. Staff of Defence (p. 492), as well as several other staves, has mixed arcane and divine powers:
Shield: Sor/Wiz 1
Shield of faith: Clr 1
Shield other: Clr 2, Pal 2
Shield of law: Clr 8
So now, if I am a wizard or sorcerer, is Shield the only power that I can use out of this staff?
This would mean that I'll need to share the item with the group's cleric if I am to make full use of its powers. Is this working as intended? Or can the wizard - and therefore also cleric and paladin - use all powers (having just one on his spell list being enough to use them all)?
And here's one more question for the rule pundits among you:
Recharging Staves: Imbuing a staff with this power restores one charge to the staff, but the caster must forgo one prepared spell or spell slot of a level equal to the highest-level spell cast by the staff. (p. 491)
Suppose I am recharging a Staff of Divination, whose highest-level spell are Prying Eyes (Wiz 5) and True Seeing (Clr 5, Wiz 6, Drd 7): does the "cost" of recharging the staff depend on who is recharging it? (Alas, the poor druid must spend a 7th-level spell slot!)
PS: when I was checking the above, it took me a while to find Prying Eyes in the rulebook... turns out it is on page 326, just before Produce Flame. Maybe somebody at Paizo was trying to reform the alphabetical order? :)
You can't cast spells not on your spell list (unless you use UMD checks). So yes, this item is meant to be shared.
As for recharging, again, yes. A wizard would be able to sacrifice a 6th-level spell to satisfy the requirement. A cleric would only need a 5th-level spell to do so. A druid casts true seeing as a 7th-level spell, so that's the spell slot he has to sacrifice to recharge the item.
Yeah, both ruling kind of suck, but not so much in a typical party. A normal party works with teamwork. So when you've got a few days of down-time in town, the wizard hands the staff to the cleric and says "um, could you fill this up over the next few days for me?"
Yes, Shield is the only power a wizard could activate from the staff. Unless he used the Use Magic Device skill. A cleric could use all powers except for Shield (unless he has it as a domain spell, although I don't think any of the listed domains in the CRB have it. An Oracle with the wind domain gets it and so could use all the spells in the staff).
Yes, per the rules, recharging a staff would require the use of a spell slot equal to the highest level spell in the staff. While not explicitly stated, it does appear that this would depend on whose doing the charging.
That does raise the question of what if the highest level spell isn't even on the charger's spell list--such as with a wizard recharging a Staff of Defense. Common Sense tells me he'd have to use an 8th level spell slot, since Shield of Law is an 8th level cleric spell. This gets trickier with your Staff of Divination. Say a bard without UMD uses it to cast tongues. What level slot would he have to use to recharge the staff? True Seeing is a 5th lvl cleric, 6th lvl wizard, 7th lvl druid spell. Does he go with the highest, in which case he'd be unable to even recharge it as he gets no 7th level spells. Does he go with the arcane version? Does he go with the lowest? Does he use the rules for assuming what lvl spell would be on a randomly generated scroll, thus assuming that it would be the sorc/wizard version first, cleric second, druid third? There no clear answer at all to this.
The way it works out makes some staves incredibly lame, including the Staff of Defense. A wizard could use the staff to do nothing but cast Shield, but then he has to drop an 8th? level slot to recharge it. Yeah I guess he could wait to recharge it if he gets some down time. But it makes the staff a 10-use item, at best, for low to mid range characters...anyone lower than 15th lvl. Even the cleric if he used it to cast Shield of Law would then have to use 3 eighth lvl slots to recharge it the one spell use. Again, hardly seems worth it. The worst offender seems to be the Staff of Illumination. Drop an 8th lvl slot to do a cantrip! or two 8th lvl slots to do a 3rd lvl spell. Ouch.
You cannot use the spells unless they are on your spell list, so with a staff of defense, a wizard can only use shield.
As for the staff of divination, you would have to expend a 7th-level spell to recharge it regardless of what class you possess.
EDIT: Nevermind. A 5th-level spell slot for a cleric or a 6th-level spell slot for a wizard should suffice.
If the highest level spell was one that wasn't on your spell list, you would still have to expend a spell slot equal to that spell's spell level to get a new charge (you can't use a slot equal to a lower level spell that IS on your spell list.
What I want to know is can you pass the staff among a party of spellcasters and have each one expend a spell slot into the staff in order to recharge multiple charges each day?
EDIT: Nevermind. A staff cannot gain more than one charge per day. Period. Such stiff limitations!
It's been like this since 3.5.
But mind! I didn't quite realize that either. Gee, no wonder my party didn't like those staffs I put in their treasure piles and just sold them off. Duh.
Pathfinder staffs are still more usable than in 3.5, since they can be recharged at all, and they are now ideal for sorcerers, since sorcerers now have Use Magic Device as a class skill.
I almost always make and use homebrew staves with my own selection of spells. That way it is guaranteed to always be useful.
I just run with the "if you can charge a spell on the staff, you can cast all spells on this staff."
I've never seen anyone buy a staff on purpose and exploit this rule. Heck, I've never seen anyone buy a staff on purpose. Most of the time they're unused, so it's not a big problem. Before I decided to go with this, they were just sold.
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The Staff of Passage is mean to be a mage's tool, the Bard should be grateful that he can get as much use as he can.
Why should the bard be "grateful"? Should he also be grateful that he can use a rapier or cast mass suggestion? I mean, dimension door is in the bard class spell list and bard tend to be quite good at Using Magic Devices. I don't see why a bard should be "grateful" for what amounts to his/her class features.
BTW, you do realise that the Bard if he's at least semi-competent in his skills can unlock the other uses of the staff with a Use Magic Device roll?
Of course I realize that. But still he needs a 17+ level cleric or wizard, or 18+ level sorcerer to recharge the staff.
Say a Bard 20 is using a Staff of Passage, just casting dimension door which is on the bard's list... then he can't recharge the staff since astral projection is level 9?!
Yes. This is to prevent adding magic missile to the list of spells on a staff and then just handing it off to an apprentice every morning to recharge. You have to be able to contribute a spell of the highest level used by the staff in order to recharge it, because you're using the energy required to actually cast that spell when you use the staff.