Staves and opposition schools

[reefwood]

As far as I can tell, an opposition school only means two things:

1) Preparing those spells requires two spell slots of the appropriate level instead of just one slot.

2) There is a -4 penalty to skill checks for crafting a magic item that has an opposition school spell as a prerequisite.

Therefore, it seems like there is no penalty or added difficulty for using magic items that cast spells from opposition schools. Correct? A scroll of opposition school spell or wand of opposition school spell can be used just like any other scroll or wand, right?

How about when recharging staves?

Lets say you have evocation as an opposition school and find a staff that holds magic missile (1st-level, evocation), scorching ray (2nd-level, evocation), and fireball (3rd-level, evocation). If you know magic missile, you can use a 3rd-level spell slot to restore 1 charge to the staff... but because it is an opposition school, do you need to use two 3rd-level spell slots to restore 1 charge?

[HaraldKlak]

reefwood wrote:

How about when recharging staves?

Lets say you have evocation as an opposition school and find a staff that holds magic missile (1st-level, evocation), scorching ray (2nd-level, evocation), and fireball (3rd-level, evocation). If you know magic missile, you can use a 3rd-level spell slot to restore 1 charge to the staff... but because it is an opposition school, do you need to use two 3rd-level spell slots to restore 1 charge?

Think not. You only expend a spell slot to recharge a staff, and does exactly cast a spell of the given school. Also there might be some difficult to judge cases, of staves with spells from different schools.

But I wouldn't mind ruling it otherwise. I am all for having opposition schools taking a more important part of the game.

[reefwood]

HaraldKlak wrote:

reefwood wrote:

How about when recharging staves?

Lets say you have evocation as an opposition school and find a staff that holds magic missile (1st-level, evocation), scorching ray (2nd-level, evocation), and fireball (3rd-level, evocation). If you know magic missile, you can use a 3rd-level spell slot to restore 1 charge to the staff... but because it is an opposition school, do you need to use two 3rd-level spell slots to restore 1 charge?

Think not. You only expend a spell slot to recharge a staff, and does exactly cast a spell of the given school. Also there might be some difficult to judge cases, of staves with spells from different schools.

But I wouldn't mind ruling it otherwise. I am all for having opposition schools taking a more important part of the game.

This is pretty much the same as my conclusion and thoughts on it.

The staff is question actually does have spells from two different schools of magic, but I wanted to start off with a simple version of my question.

I think in the Beta version of Pathfinder, using a wand from an opposition school required 2 charges per use. But on the flipside, I guess when it comes to magic items, someone else already did most of the work, and the user just needs to do the last little step, so I can see why there is no need for extra effort to use a scroll or wand or staff.

Anyway, thanks for the reply!

[Thazar]

Thinking of it another way. Spell trigger items only require you to have the spell on your list. So a bard or sorcerer that does not even KNOW the spell can still us a want or staff if that spell is on his/her list. So it is just straight up raw magical know how that allows the character to use (and with a staff - charge) items and opposition or lack of a spell is not really relevant IMHO.