Cutting Core Staff Prices In Half


Homebrew and House Rules


...so we heard this essentially from on high:

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

The APG staves are priced incorrectly (half of what they should be according to the staff pricing rules in the Core Rulebook).

I believe in UE we fixed the prices of the APG staves to what they should be.

This news was very disheartening since staves in the core rulebook have never been worth the price. To the extent that players and GMs in our group have been completely uninterested in them.

So... As a house rule, we were thinking of ruling the other way; that the APG and other sources got it right, and that the core rulebook got it wrong; so cut the market price and craft price of all staves in the core rulebook in half.

We like the idea of staves and want to promote their use, so we want to try this out. Can someone see how this rule could be unbalanced?

One way we measured its balance was by imagining a staff of magic missile. Instead of a market price of 6400 and a craft price of 3200, we have a market price of 3200 and a craft price of 1600. This seemed fine to us.


Anyone else tried a homebrew solution to the expensiveness of staves? >.>


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The Chort wrote:
One way we measured its balance was by imagining a staff of magic missile. Instead of a market price of 6400 and a craft price of 3200, we have a market price of 3200 and a craft price of 1600. This seemed fine to us.

Obviously you may disagree, but to me it makes no sense to have a staff of magic missile cost half as much as a wand of magic missile.

The reason the staves in the core rulebook are so expensive is that most of them have high level spells in them (and/or a whole laundry list of fairly crappy spells in them). It's just not practical to have a magic item that allows you to cast Astral Projection 5 times a day, for instance.

The less ambitious staves, like the Staff of Charming or the Staff of Fire are reasonably priced, IMO.


hogarth wrote:
The Chort wrote:
One way we measured its balance was by imagining a staff of magic missile. Instead of a market price of 6400 and a craft price of 3200, we have a market price of 3200 and a craft price of 1600. This seemed fine to us.

Obviously you may disagree, but to me it makes no sense to have a staff of magic missile cost half as much as a wand of magic missile.

The reason the staves in the core rulebook are so expensive is that most of them have high level spells in them. It's just not practical to have a magic item that allows you to cast Astral Projection 5 times a day, for instance.

The less ambitious staves, like the Staff of Charming or the Staff of Fire are reasonably priced, IMO.

A wand of magic missile costs 750 or 375 gp to craft. A wand of magic missile isn't so great since it scales considerably with caster level. A wand of silent image is much, much better than a staff of silent image. So if you want to cast more static spells, use a wand, if you want scaling or high level spells, go with a staff. Doesn't seem like too much of a problem.

Again, wand if 50 charges, staves are 10 charges.

They can be recharged, but you can only do one recharge per day, even if you have multiple staves. For that reason alone, wands are nice. (Especially spells like silent image)

...so I don't think half price staves edge out the usefulness of wands.


The thing is at lvl 9 the staff is pumping out cl 9 magic missiles. They can also either let you nova at the beginning (with the staff) with plans to recharge after the adventure. Or let you sit on support spells without devoting slots to them. They are far better than wands.

I love them as treasure, though I don't know that I'd ever make one unless it was a bonded object.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think the reason they cost so much is their recharge ability. They are, given enough recharge time, a powerful never-ending resource used in higher level play where cost would not be an issue. If it works for you I say go for it! Myself I tend to play casters that take craft staff so I won't have to pay full price, so take that in consideration as well since these will be 1/4 price when crafted under this house rule.

Wizard + Craft Staff + Efficient Quiver = Win! :P


For Staffs we never buy them but players makes them. You can make a very decent staff


The Chort wrote:
A wand of magic missile costs 750 or 375 gp to craft.

A CL 9 wand of magic missiles costs 3375 gp to craft, and under your rules a CL 9 staff of magic missiles would cost 1800 gp to craft.

The Chort wrote:

Again, wand if 50 charges, staves are 10 charges.

They can be recharged, but you can only do one recharge per day, even if you have multiple staves. For that reason alone, wands are nice. (Especially spells like silent image)

I guess it varies from campaign to campaign. In my experience, it's fairly rare to use more than 10 charges from a wand per adventure (well, except for CLW).

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