Craft Staff to a non-staff


Homebrew and House Rules


I have a wizard with a longsword arcane bond ~ the visual/theme is Morrolan e'Drien (Brust novels) or Elric of Melnibone (Moorcock) ~ and in a few months or so when he hits level 11 instead of Crafting a Staff, I'd really like to have the sword be like a staff.

Any reasons a longsword couldn't be used like a staff? Has anyone done anything like this? I don't need the sword to be a magical weapon really, it'd be nicer to have it be a versatile staff with stored spells.

Thanks!

Grand Lodge

I've argued elsewhere that the rules define the form of a staff:

p.491 wrote:

A staff is a long shaft that stores several spells..

Physical Description: A typical staff .. Most staves are wood, but an exotic few are bone, metal, or even glass.

Emphasis mine. I'd argue that you must meet the specifications for "a staff", but "a typical staff" only describes examples, as the individual staves themselves demonstrate. A sword isn't a "long shaft", so it doesn't qualify. Some other weapons might, especially as a staff may be made of metal.

Liberty's Edge

However, as a counter-argument, you might say that the longsword is merely an atypical "staff".

I'd allow it.


I see no reason that a longsword can't be a staff. Why does a magical staff have to deal 1d6 damage and only crit on a natural 20? Why not 1d8/19-20x2? Magic can do anything you can imagine. Putting rules on what it can't do is counterintuitive.

Grand Lodge

Ironicdisaster wrote:
Why does a magical staff have to deal 1d6 damage and only crit on a natural 20?

No reason at all. Pathfinder is silent on how much damage a magical staff does in melee.


Starglim wrote:
Ironicdisaster wrote:
Why does a magical staff have to deal 1d6 damage and only crit on a natural 20?
No reason at all. Pathfinder is silent on how much damage a magical staff does in melee.

Well yeah, but a magical staff shaped like a quarterstaff deals 1d6. I think a magic staff shaped like a longsword would deal 1d8.

Contributor

There's nothing wrong with this at all. You can make a flying carpet shaped like a cloak if you feel like it--it doesn't work when you wear it around your neck and attempt to use it for the cloak slot, but if you throw it on the floor and stand on it, it works great, and you can even get a cool visual of how this looks if you watch the old silent movie version of Faust.

In other words, if a player wanted a Faust-themed character who has a cloak that you stand on to fly it around, it would only be sensible to use the Carpet of Flying rules rather than the Wings of Flying because the game effect is the same effect as the carpet, even if the form appears to be the cloak.

Also, to quote 1st ed and the old text of Enlarge, "a staff-size wand is still a wand." Similarly, you could make a staff that was the size of a rod or of a wand if you felt like it, or you could make it look like something else. It's atypical, but then there's a lot of this going around. You find a three-foot stick topped with some sort of jewel. Is this a staff made by a halfling, a rod made by a human, or a wand made by a giant?

There's nothing wrong with having a staff in the shape of a sword. It's basically a ceremonial sword that has staff functions.

Grand Lodge

Because Form is very much part of magical Function. There's a reason that multi-spell charged items come in the form of staves, it's the most reliable way to form a stable matrix for such a device.

If a DM allows it it has to be researched and both doing that and the crafting is going to be much more expensive and require the craft magic arms and armor plus the craft staff feats.


LazarX wrote:

Because Form is very much part of magical Function. There's a reason that multi-spell charged items come in the form of staves, it's the most reliable way to form a stable matrix for such a device.

If a DM allows it it has to be researched and both doing that and the crafting is going to be much more expensive and require the craft magic arms and armor plus the craft staff feats.

Why? A magical sword enchanted with staff-like properties would not be a magical sword on its' own. IE, it doesn't bypass damage reduction, doesn't have any +X to hit or damage, and lacks any other property other than "it casts spells stored in it at the time it was enchanted." For that matter, neither does a magical staff enchanted in such a fashion. It probably gets +1 to hit on account of needing to be Masterwork, but that's already incorporated into the costs.

If you want it to be both a staff and a magical weapon, that starts getting expensive really fast, but as near as I can tell that doesn't apply here.

Scarab Sages

LazarX wrote:

Because Form is very much part of magical Function. There's a reason that multi-spell charged items come in the form of staves, it's the most reliable way to form a stable matrix for such a device.

If a DM allows it it has to be researched and both doing that and the crafting is going to be much more expensive and require the craft magic arms and armor plus the craft staff feats.

That argument is based entirely on made up physics.

You mean you can't make it up because the made up rules say you can't?
I am a DM and in my game I would allow it. The rules are not meant to stifle creativity, just give it some general guidance.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again untill they take my dice away. Once you buy the books and take them home you can change anything you want. If your DM is cool with it, run with it.

Peace.


Thanks, everyone! I'll talk to my GM about it and hope he sees it as a "ceremonial sword with staff functions" (exactly what I was trying to say!).

Grand Lodge

Boerngrim wrote:
LazarX wrote:

Because Form is very much part of magical Function. There's a reason that multi-spell charged items come in the form of staves, it's the most reliable way to form a stable matrix for such a device.

If a DM allows it it has to be researched and both doing that and the crafting is going to be much more expensive and require the craft magic arms and armor plus the craft staff feats.

That argument is based entirely on made up physics.

You mean you can't make it up because the made up rules say you can't?
I am a DM and in my game I would allow it. The rules are not meant to stifle creativity, just give it some general guidance.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again untill they take my dice away. Once you buy the books and take them home you can change anything you want. If your DM is cool with it, run with it.

Peace.

I also see a bit of munchkinism here. The player wants both a magic staff and a magic sword in one piece without having to spend feats. It's going beyond what I see as RAI.

I'll freely admit that after playing spellcasters for so long, I've become very strict on what I allow spellcasters to do.

My argument has nothing to do with physics. It's about story prescedent and what I consider keeping with versimilitude.


Well, as the player in question asking about it... I did say:

Quote:
I don't need the sword to be a magical weapon really, it'd be nicer to have it be a versatile staff with stored spells.

:-)


You can't be seriously discussing wether a Staff is actually a Staff or could also be a Sword, because a Sword might be an oddly formed Staff?!

If you want a Sword instead of a Staff and your DM is cool with it, fine, it doesn't seem to be overpowered to have 1d8 instead of 1d6 for a class that basically never finds itself meleeing, but if a player came to me and tried to convince me that a Sword is basically just a type of Staff I would just laugh him away.


As long as it was functionally identicle rules wise I'd allow it. (ie 50 charges max, same price as a staff, follows all the other rules for enchanting a staff)

I that in 3.5 (haven't double checked for PF) they include some staffs that were enchants as magical weapons in addition to their magical charges.

The Exchange

If it is mechanically the same, as in you are crafting it via the Craft Staff feat, and you pay all of the appropriate costs, by all means go ahead and do it. Now since it is a bonded object, I would make you choose which one, is it a staff or a weapon and then only that appropriate feat applies to the weapon. If you want to make both a staff and a weapon, I'd make you take the other feat to be able to enchant it. And if you do end up enchanting as both sword and staff (which I think is a really cool visual and idea for a character if they were going for an Eldritch Knight/Magus sort of character), I would argue it is actually a bit of a liability, because if it gets sundered you are out two magic items, not just one like you would normally be.

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