Prerequisite: You must be at least an 11th-level Wizard and must have the Craft Staff feat to select this discovery.
Benefit: Similar to using a magic staff, you use your own Intelligence score and relevant feats to set the DC for saves against spells you cast from a wand, and you can use your caster level when activating the power of a wand if it’s higher than the caster level of the wand.
You can get at level 10 Craft Staff with Ioun Stone that gives +1CL and at 11 you get the Discovery.
I'm trying to understand why is it a bad discovery. This will certainly touch the issue on how useful Wands are.
Most people advice to stay away from Craft Wands, either because it's too costly to make level 3-4 wands, or because you won't be using them THAT much due to the 50 charges.
So it all falls down on are Wands actually useful that warrant a Discovery (and a tax feat) to use them with full CL?
Craft Staff is completely a Tax Feat. You can rarely craft more than 2 on your career considering most APs end at level 17.
What do you guys think about this?
Yes, its good. A cl 1 wand not is now 11+. Mage armor, magic missile, scorching Ray...
No its not a feat tax. It's appropriate, thematic, and useful.
The feat is all about Wands, why do I need Craft Staff?
And if you take this Discovery it makes sense to have Craft Wands. You're now wasting 3 feats for 1 ability.
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I think it's useful. Wands are generally not good for attack spells for the reasons you mention: lack of scaling and low DCs. Staff-Like Wands fixes that problem. Wands are the most cost-efficient charged magic items, so unless your GM is into letting you make unlimited use command word SIAC wondrous items, wands are the most cost-efficient way to spam very common spells.
If there's a problem with Staff-Like Wand, it's in the prereqs. It should have been 13th level since the only way to get Craft Staff at 10th is the orange prism ioun stone. Or Staff-Like Wand should have been a 10th level discovery without Craft Staff as a prereq.
I think it's useful. Wands are generally not good for attack spells for the reasons you mention: lack of scaling and low DCs. Staff-Like Wands fixes that problem. Wands are the most cost-efficient charged magic items, so unless your GM is into letting you make unlimited use command word SIAC wondrous items, wands are the most cost-efficient way to spam very common spells.
If there's a problem with Staff-Like Wand, it's in the prereqs. It should have been 13th level since the only way to get Craft Staff at 10th is the orange prism ioun stone. Or Staff-Like Wand should have been a 10th level discovery without Craft Staff as a prereq.
My issue is that I see no reason to use wands when you are level 11. Why would you use wands when you have access to spells of higher level?
You could use some utility spells, yes, but they will only last 11 hours, not all day.
If you prepare the same spells, you can extend them for 3k with rod of extend and they now last all day.
I see maybe Darkvision could be turned into a Wand, but it costs 4500 to craft one, and permanency of darkvision is 5000.
I'm trying to find situations where I would use Wands in place of my spells and what advantage that would give me.
You would use wands for frequent use utility spells that you don't want to have to memorize or cast, but might have to use repeatedly.
resist Elements, possibly. Gifting out mage armors, possibly. What if you NEVER want to cast Dispel magic again? It tops out at +10, so why not just carry a CL5 wand of it around?
An Intensified Shocking Grasp wand dealing 10d8 dmg could be a big surprise to someone. An Intensified or even normal Magic Missile wand is essentially a 'Counterspell Wand'.
A fireball wand in the hands of a caster with this discovery can literally obliterate an army with that many fireballs.
Basically, it comes down to the fact that a wand is the absolute cheapest way to cast a spell, out of the 3 consumable methods, and by scaling it, you reduce the cost of it effectively in half or more. It's just a matter of what you want to spend your money on.
If your DM allows you to buy wands with partial charges, then Wands simply become half price scrolls with higher caster levels. What scrolls do you carry around, and what could you replace with a wand of 5-10 charges?
==Aelryinth
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Yes, its good. A cl 1 wand not is now 11+. Mage armor, magic missile, scorching Ray...
No its not a feat tax. It's appropriate, thematic, and useful.
The feat is all about Wands, why do I need Craft Staff?
And if you take this Discovery it makes sense to have Craft Wands. You're now wasting 3 feats for 1 ability.
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The feat is about your knowledge of staves and using it with wands. Craft feats are some of the most potent feats available. Requiring both craft wand and staff would not be a tax.
Permanent spells can be dispelled. That's a hefty investment that can be stripped away at a distance, even by disposable summons.
It's also not terrible if you have UMD for some divine buffs via wands since it doesn't mention anything about the spell being on your list.
Letric, are you really trying to figure out why it's a "bad discovery"? You seem already inclined to view it as not great whereas everyone else is saying it's worthwhile, even with the Craft Staff prereq.
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Yeah, if used properly this discovery is extremely powerful. There's a reason it's gated behind a level 11 feat.
Just the craziness of buying CL1 wands at 15 gp a charge and then getting CL13+ effects out of them is great. Think of all the low level utility spells that get better with CL, then think about buying wands of them at minimum CL yet getting the improved effects.
I love the idea, but hate the create staff feat tax. Staves in general suck. It's inky worth it to use if you find them as loot.
Staves are great. They have a lot of utility picks that automatically use caster level, and they can be freely recharged during downtime. Some of them have other effects like acting as a metamagic rod for any metamagic feat you have.
Let's consider the average AP like Rise of the Runelords.
Let's consider you're a crafting Wizard. You'll have CWI, CWands, Rods and Staves.First, crafting a level 4 Wand takes around 20 days, which is a LOT of time. After 20 days of waiting you get to use it at your full caster level.
Of course you've lost a lot of time you could've use to craft woundrous items, scrolls or rods.
Then, there's Staves. If you get to craft more than 1 during your adventuring days and actually use it, it's a miracle. Staff only work as a casual consumable, and you could get the same result using a scroll. If you need a Staff to deal damage (like fireball) you're better off just using your spells. You can only recharge 1 charge/day and gotta use spell slot equal to highest level spell. I can't honestly think how the staff is useful.
I'm not saying the Discovery per se is bad, but considering the role of a crafter wizard, if you end up have 4 crafting feats, I can't physically find the time to craft, unless you take 60 days every time you get gold to craft, which in same APs it's just impossible.
It kinda depends upon your group/GM.
I have had GM's that hand out lots of random wands as loot. Some groups allow all the crafting to happen offstage and don't really keep track of the time.
If the group has extremely long 'adventuring days' it becomes more common to run out of spells. Then effective wands can be very useful.
I always appreciate a Staff when I'm playing a Sorcerer, regardless of what kind it is. Uses my Caster Level? And my DCs? And the spells don't take up my Spells Known? Sounds great.
Staff-like Wand does make for some interesting corner cases however. Such as Dispel Magic mentioned above. Although, Dispel Magic no longer has the hard cap of +10 like it did in 3.5, so it is useful practically forever.
Some other good ones might be those long-duration buffs like Heroism, Communal Resist Energy, and the like.
Pregen staves are absolutely terrible, staff of the master aside.
custom staves can be pretty damn good due to the significant price drops you can get from gaming the charges system.
Unfortunately, the high level req makes them marginal. Few games even get past level 10.
My issue (staves aside) is having to craft Wands.
Staves I can craft them, but let be honest, it's gonna take so much time for such little advantage that I'm better off buying it myself.
If I need 25 days to craft a Staff, that's 25 days I'm not crafting for the party, not crafting scrolls or rods.
Wands are great if they're level 1, 2 even, but then 3-4 it's the same all over again. +10 days to craft one; unless you get downtime or you auto succeed every day at crafting it's gonna take a bit to get those wands.
Personally I think the discovery is great and really useful but dependent on your crafting time, how long adventures are and how much downtime you get
Wand of Dispel Magic > 12 days to craft, 12 days having to prepare Dispel Magic, waste it for crafting.
If you don't think 12 days is a LOT of time, then your campaign has a lot of downtime, which makes crafting 10 times easier.
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Eh, since you're talking a wizard and by necessity you have the correct spell, no wand is more than a DC 12 Spellcraft check to make. If you have staff-like wand there is nearly no reason to make wands above the minimum CL. So you can easily add 5 to the DC to make it in half the time. If you are a level 13 wizard generally making a DC 17 Spellcraft check by taking 10 is well within your reach - heck you could probably do it at level 1.
So the time for a wand:
1st level spell: 1 day (DC6 to make)
2nd level spell: 3 days (DC13)
3rd level spell: 6 days (DC15)
4th level spell: 11 days (DC17)
So yeah, the 3rd/4th level spells can cut into your downtime, but the true power of the discovery is for low level buffs. Look at this quick list of spells it's nice to craft at CL1 or 3 then cast at your full CL:
mage armor
magic missile
false life
knock
scorching ray
resist energy
That's just off the top of my head.
Eh, since you're talking a wizard and by necessity you have the correct spell, no wand is more than a DC 12 Spellcraft check to make. If you have staff-like wand there is nearly no reason to make wands above the minimum CL. So you can easily add 5 to the DC to make it in half the time. If you are a level 13 wizard generally making a DC 17 Spellcraft check by taking 10 is well within your reach - heck you could probably do it at level 1.
So the time for a wand:
1st level spell: 1 day (DC6 to make)
2nd level spell: 3 days (DC13)
3rd level spell: 6 days (DC15)
4th level spell: 11 days (DC17)So yeah, the 3rd/4th level spells can cut into your downtime, but the true power of the discovery is for low level buffs. Look at this quick list of spells it's nice to craft at CL1 or 3 then cast at your full CL:
mage armor
magic missile
false life
knock
scorching ray
resist energyThat's just off the top of my head.
I can see your point. In all honestly, I didn't want to take the feats because I'm afraid I won't have enough downtime.
But even with 4 Crafting Feat (WI, Wands, Rods, Staves) wizard is still a powerful class, and doesn't really need extra feats to become more powerful.I think I'll have to use Wands to circumvent opposition schools, that's another + the discovery gets.
I'm gonna re check potentially good spells, but I think feat's power is comparable to other feats you could get, and there aren't that many that will make your class super op.
I like the idea of staff-like wand, but absolutely hate having to take craft staff. I get why, but I just dislike staves in general.
Eh. Feat Taxes exist. If martials need Combat Expertise, I'm willing to take a limited use craft staff for an extremely useful Staff-Like Wand.
Well, I just wish I could take craft staff earlier. lol