You'd also have to delete the line for 2nd and 3rd spells, as every staff is supposed to have at a minimum 2, and usually 3, spells. I think every official staff has at least 3 spells.
If it's just one spell, what you have is an oversized wand.
If the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours' worth of work.
This is the text that affects adventuring, end stop. It doesn't matter how many hours you have free. You only get 4, and end up with 2. A ring of sustenance, sleep times, and lesser Restoration are not mentioned as exceptions to this rule.
"Can devote" does not mean the same thing as "is limited to."
You are conflating the "only" in the second clause to the first clause in that sentence. Nowhere does it say that an adventuring crafter cannot dedicate additional time. In fact the two sentences immediately following the sentence you're hanging your entire argument on, in isolation from the rest of the section, state additional conditions: "This time is not spent in one continuous period, but rather during lunch, morning preparation, and during watches at night. If time is dedicated to creation, it must be spent in uninterrupted 4-hour blocks."
So, if an adventuring crafter can dedicate an uninterrupted 4-hour block to crafting, in addition to the 4 hours of piecemeal crafting in between other activity during the day, there is absolutely nothing in RAW that prevents them from doing so.
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I am not arguing just stating time facts.
8-10 Hour adventuring day.
4 hours of craft
8 hours sleep (to get spells back)
your looking at 20-22hours of your day tied up, this does include washroom breaks (they go despite not role playing it, although I did in a modern game once). Eating.
Lets not forget that casters need 8 hours of sleep PLUS an hour or slightly less to regain spells.
Or with a ring of sustenance only 2 hours, or desna's star which makes it only 6.
So
10 hours adventuring ( which includes meals and bathroom breaks, this also is possibly force marching for 2 hours if this is travel)
8 hours crafting
2 hours sleep
1 hour spell prep
Total 21 hours granting 8 hours of crafting progress.
Or
10 hours adventuring ( including crafting while adventuring at 4 to 2)
4 hours crafting
6 hours sleep
1 hour spell prep
Total 21 hours granting 6 hours crafting progress.
Or, 15 minute adventuring day, lesser restoration for no sleep at all, 1 hour spell prep. Gee, enough time to craft?
Guess what? Still 4 hours of crafting while adventuring. The rules don't CARE if you are on the road traveling, dungeon delving, mapping, scouting, whatever. They don't care if you scare up 'extra time' somewhere. You get what the rules give you.
You are adventuring. You have 4/2 hours. They don't give you extra hours because your day suddenly has more free time. While adventuring, you are limited in what you can do. The rules do NOT give you extra hours just because you have magic, while you are adventuring.
If you want to devote extra time, being in a non-adventuring environment allows you to allocate 4 hour time slots, and secure/not secure locations determines how effective they are. But they clearly draw a line between adventuring and not adventuring, and you don't get extra hours while adventuring.
That's the difference between being in dangerous places and not.
You're attempting to read into the rules something that is not there. The rules give you exactly what they do, and that line between adventuring and not is clearly there.
So, no extra crafting while adventuring. Teleport back to town if you need to...that'll get around the problem.
I disagree with your interpretation and have never met any other person with it even on the boards.
The crafting while adventuring is an option not a requirement.
Remember any place suitable for spell prep is suitable for crafting.
However I doubt we will convince each other.
If you care I would recommend stating your case clearly in a new thread and hitting the FAQ button while asking others to do the same, if not happy gaming.
Did I miss something guys, why do we care so much about crafting staves? It's seems a totally unworkable solution to wait till level 11 and burn a feat on trying to craft hugely expensive items at only half the price. And I'd be hesitant to even let this power be in the hands of Players, it can too often end up with something really crazy such as a hodge podge of spells they are interested in but don't have any utilitarian combination. Like for example mixing general-damaging spells with powerful-debuff spells, they end up using up the charges they should have been saving for the debuff.
By level 11 you're getting about 26'000gp as they work their way through to level 12. Double it for higher point-buy. This is the point where time becomes way more valuable than money and the focus has changed so much away from trying to get lower level spells into staves. We're now into the 6th Level Spells. Money supply has increased such an order of magnitude that scrolls of haste are more economical
This is the point where the game ramps up into overdrive, imo, setting in crafting requirements is too much. No matter how little time you may be able to spend crafting the problem is that while your wealth has scaled up the amount you can craft per day has not, you're stuck far behind. You're trying to iceskate uphill. Crafting makes a lot of sense at medium-low levels where you get a lot of straightforward choices and can craft little bits of the items you want. But for the higher levels the GM should be generous and drop the magic items.
And the inherent nature of magic item pricing makes it more important to have MORE magic items than higher level magic items. Because magic items scale at a rate greater than exponential. When you go to replicating a level 2 spell the cost goes up by more than a factor of 2 but also a factor of the caster level which is higher than the spell level by a further factor. This means a Staff of Black Tentacles (just Black Tentacles, no secondary ability) costs half the wealth you'd gain...
Crafting is a way to get what you want/need without praying to the 2d4 items off the random item charts. And a way to modify and improve your items, it also takes away the trade-in tax on magic items.
The cost of magic items does not scale at a rate "greater than exponential" - it's quadratic (sometimes linear), significantly lower than exponential.
For many spells that don't rely too much on caster level, a staff is not the way to go, the same goes for spells you want to use every single day or encounter. The price of staves is such that having a staff with just one spell is slightly more expensive than a wand. The advantage of a staff is multiple spells at lower cost per spell, spell level x caster level x 300 for second most powerful, SLxCLx200 for the rest, and here crafting can be quite good for adding utility to your staff.
Yes, a couple scroll are cheaper if you end up not using them, but I want to make a wizard that exists and does stuff in between fighting dragons and watching rogues search for traps. And staves can have unique abilities that help identify a crafter as something other than "generic elf conjurer - variant #2".
If anybody forced characters to use staves, I would agree they are terribly designed, but as it stands - staves are an option, and not a bad one certain campaign styles such as sandbox and kingdom building. They are higher level items and they shine at higher levels - and at the same time gives power beyond level for low level characters.
Staves are great resources for a caster that uses spells in her downtime, even more so for expensive spells. But I would prefer (and do houserule) staves, rings, and rods as one item creation feat - allowing crafting at the current levels.
That was more ranty than expected, but staves are awesome.
@Alex Trebek's Stunt Double - I think folks are arguing about crafting here since crafting was brought up as something else besides recharging staffs which is easier to handle if the PCs have some downtime between adventures.
@GM Rednal - I can agree that different stories might involve different timelines, but just because you had a baseline wouldn't mean that you couldn't deviate from it. In fact, it might let you know that you should account for that deviation in other ways.
On the other hand, maybe it would be easier to just provide more ways for PCs to get the magic items they want or recharge staffs and such. Maybe there's something in Unchained for this. I haven't really checked it out. If not it could be a nice variant to add to some future book. I'd expect that supercharging crafting and recharging with gold or gems might help maintain balance while adding some flexibility.
I disagree with your interpretation and have never met any other person with it even on the boards.
The crafting while adventuring is an option not a requirement.
Remember any place suitable for spell prep is suitable for crafting.
However I doubt we will convince each other.
If you care I would recommend stating your case clearly in a new thread and hitting the FAQ button while asking others to do the same, if not happy gaming.
Then you haven't read enough posts for a long enough period of time.
Prior to the ruling that you could craft while adventuring at 4/2, the raging discussion was that you could NOT craft while adventuring at all vs "I can because I can make time for it." and throwing out portable hole labs, Rope tricks, and similar things, in addition to Sustenance/L Restoration time manufacturing, to justify it all.
Then Paizo came out with the official rules: YOu CAN craft while adventuring, and this is exactly how much you can do...not a lot, but better then nothing.
And now you're trying to tack extra hours on again, in a case of 'give me an inch, I want the mile.'
at the very least, the prior argument was, and still works, that you can just teleport home to a safe location and craft for the rest of the day without voiding any rules. There's no issue with that rule...if you are at home in your tower and laboratory, craft away! The DM might not like you doing this, but it IS the rules.
Saying you can craft more then the rules say you can while adventuring is reading your desires into the rules. There's no exceptions made during the crafting while adventuring rules. "The Rules don't say I can't do this" is not how the rules are meant to be interpreted...that is a GM's job, 'adding' to the rules set. They DO say explicitly how much crafting you can do while adventuring, and they say how you can allocate time while NOT adventuring.
And I'll stop here, because any further arguments are going to be redundant.
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I disagree with your interpretation and have never met any other person with it even on the boards.
The crafting while adventuring is an option not a requirement.
Remember any place suitable for spell prep is suitable for crafting.
However I doubt we will convince each other.
If you care I would recommend stating your case clearly in a new thread and hitting the FAQ button while asking others to do the same, if not happy gaming.
Then you haven't read enough posts for a long enough period of time.
Prior to the ruling that you could craft while adventuring at 4/2, the raging discussion was that you could NOT craft while adventuring at all vs "I can because I can make time for it." and throwing out portable hole labs, Rope tricks, and similar things, in addition to Sustenance/L Restoration time manufacturing, to justify it all.
Then Paizo came out with the official rules: YOu CAN craft while adventuring, and this is exactly how much you can do...not a lot, but better then nothing.
And now you're trying to tack extra hours on again, in a case of 'give me an inch, I want the mile.'
at the very least, the prior argument was, and still works, that you can just teleport home to a safe location and craft for the rest of the day without voiding any rules. There's no issue with that rule...if you are at home in your tower and laboratory, craft away! The DM might not like you doing this, but it IS the rules.
Saying you can craft more then the rules say you can while adventuring is reading your desires into the rules. There's no exceptions made during the crafting while adventuring rules. "The Rules don't say I can't do this" is not how the rules are meant to be interpreted...that is a GM's job, 'adding' to the rules set. They DO say explicitly how much crafting you can do while adventuring, and they say how you can allocate time while NOT adventuring.
And I'll stop here, because any further arguments are going to be redundant.
Except if you are in a location safe enough to prepare spells, and are crafting, then you clearly are not adventuring; so why should the adventuring rules apply during that time period?
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Maybe Stave's could drain magic items to re power their own limited power supplies.
Seems like a simple solution. Magic can cannibalize its own to power other things.
People are confusing the intent of staves with wands. This isn't helped by the fact that many staves are dispensing spells that are not level or DC dependent, so making them as staves is just dumb.
Likewise, the lack of an arsenal of charges for the staff is underwhelming, basically ignoring the fact that the staff can be recharged for free, and is essentially useful at every level of play because it scales and never runs out of charges.
You'll never find a wand at CL 8 by default. Thus, you almost never see a wand as pricey as a staff (Level 4 spells default at 21,000, but who buys level 4 spells in a wand?). So, arguing that a wand is cheaper for spell X is a misnomer, too, because nobody buys spells at that caster level to compare.
The measure becomes "Well, with a wand I could get 50 spells at one time out of this cheap stick, vs 10 spells out of a very expensive stick" which is a real bad comparison metric. DO you really want to buy a 50 charge level 4 wand of Wall of Fire? 21k down the drain when you use it up. Ugh. You're never going to need 50 charges at one time. You MIGHT need 5...but, you know, the staff is actually cheaper by the spell, and you get other spells then Wall of Fire to use, AND you get to recharge it for nothing, capping your outlay, AND the spell scales in damage...
And yes, the crappy spell choices involved make it harder to see. Remove every spell that isn't an attack spell where save DC, SR penetration, and/or damage is not important, and staves look MUCH better.
The comparison between Haste wands and scrolls is particularly apt. Scrolls are TWICE the cost of wands. But laying out nearly 6.8k gold for 50 haste spells is, like, ouch. Easier to eat the cost one at a time, despite the fact that the wand is half the price of a scroll per spell. Well, staves are even cheaper then wands, per spell. But you don't see it because of the higher CL and most of the game being played at low levels where the cost numbers are smaller. You also argue against needing staves of higher level spells vs scrolls, because you don't cast them at much...until you are at higher levels, where they are the first spells you cast, all the time!
The reason staves have only ten charges is balance issues, pure and simple. Nobody wants to have a caster running around with +25-50 of his most powerful spells on tap. You could do it in 3e, because staves couldn't be recharged, and initially, had fixed caster levels. When those spells scale, AND can be recharged? You simply can't do it.
The original staff creation rules was simply making wands with multiple spells more cheaply, and they still weren't gold efficient because you still only had 50 charges. By makign them rechargeable, Paizo had to limit the capacity so as not to overpower the game.
They should have made better spell combo staves, however. :/
I think what people want out of staves is cheaper Pages of Spell Knowledge, because that is basically what they are.
However, Pages are 'free to recharge', and staves are not, and 'per spell' are cheaper in price, ignoring the +1/day uses accumulating to +10 if not used.
:P
"Staves are great resources for a caster that uses spells in her downtime, even more so for expensive spells."
How do staves help with that?
From the PRD (emphasis mine):
Staves hold a maximum of 10 charges. Each spell cast from a staff consumes one or more charges. When a staff runs out of charges, it cannot be used until it is recharged. Each morning, when a spellcaster prepares spells or regains spell slots, he can also imbue one staff with a portion of his power so long as one or more of the spells cast by the staff is on his spell list and he is capable of casting at least one of the spells. 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. For example, a 9th-level wizard with a staff of fire could imbue the staff with one charge per day by using up one of his 4th-level spells. A staff cannot gain more than one charge per day and a caster cannot imbue more than one staff per day.Furthermore, a staff can hold a spell of any level, unlike a wand, which is limited to spells of 4th level or lower. The minimum caster level of a staff is 8th.
Two points here - one answers your question - the other corrects some odd info earlier in this thread.
First: Each morning, when a spellcaster prepares spells or regains spell slots, he can also imbue one staff with a portion of his power so long as one or more of the spells cast by the staff is on his spell list and he is capable of casting at least one of the spells. 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.
Note that this doesn't say 'and must supply material component' - so if you create a staff of stoneskin and true seeing you can recharge it without using more money. Same thing with raise dead or resurrection, or restoration, or any other spell that has a high cost. Including limited wish if you wanted.
Second: The minimum caster level of a staff is 8th.
You can't use 1st level CL for cheapo staves of first level spells - at least not if you are going by the rules. If you are ditching the rules - and by all means do so - I suggest looking at the 1st and 2nd edition DMG for staves that are interesting and appropriate - and having more 'at will' powers that don't use a charge (thus making the staff a utility item for a wizard - there was a reason for a staff in those days just for light and detect magic at will!).
Each morning, when a spellcaster prepares spells or regains spell slots, he can also imbue one staff with a portion of his power so long as one or more of the spells cast by the staff is on his spell list and he is capable of casting at least one of the spells.
Wait, you have to do that at the start of the day rather than the end of the day? I was thinking I could just cast a prepared spell into it that I hadn't used that day. This makes staves a bit more limited than I had in mind.
There are 2 problems with Staves:
Customs Staves, which are the only one that works aren't available to everyone. Some DM might don't allow them, and that's it.
Considering that putting another spell on the Staff increases its price to stupid prices, you end up having to craft 1 Staff for each Spell, which can create problems on your action economy during combat.
If you Craft the Staff yourself, as a Wizard, honestly, you're just better of getting Staff Like Wand, Craft Wands and be happy.
And, of course, the recharge thing. If you're wasting 20k for something that you MIGHT use... well, I'd rather spend it on something that I will use.
Yes, you can have 10 Extra Spells in 1 adventure, but recharging staves during adventuring kinda sucks.
If I can make my own Staves, maybe getting something like Communal Stoneskin might be worth it.
Yeah, the fact that you're giving up a spell per day to recharge the staff is another reason why it might be nice to have some days off, especially if the function of the staff you want to use burns more than one charge.
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Wave shield and windy escape are both personal spells, and stone skin is a creature touched spell. So a wizard could easily use wave shield or windy escape for themselves and still want stone skin for their allies. DR 10/adamantine is pretty good, even in high levels. And at 10 min/level, it can last through several encounters.
Considering that putting another spell on the Staff increases its price to stupid prices, you end up having to craft 1 Staff for each Spell, which can create problems on your action economy during combat.
If you Craft the Staff yourself, as a Wizard, honestly, you're just better of getting Staff Like Wand, Craft Wands and be happy.
1) Not so, only the most powerful spell is cost x400
second most powerful is x300 (25% discount)beyond that spells are x200 to craft (50% discount)
- so to optimize you would have a staff of 5th level spells, another for 6th level spells, 4th and below can all go in one because of the minimum caster level.
2) I love staff like wand from an economical viewpoint, but if I have to get craft staff for it, I want to craft a staff - and it will have spells with costly components or troublesome foci.
If a GM doesn't allow crafting or custom crafting or any other potential aspect of a pathfinder game, then that's not where you go for that aspect; that cannot be a problem tied to Staves as an item concept, it's a GM problem/choice.
The cost of magic items does not scale at a rate "greater than exponential" - it's quadratic (sometimes linear), significantly lower than exponential.I mean greater than cubic growth, informal use of "exponential" it's not going up by literally F(x) = 2 ^x
I mean something replicating a level 2 spell costs much more than simply double the cost of something replicating a level 1 spell.
Not much better, it's also less than cubic, because it's quadratic (mostly). Usually a la:
Cost = Spell Level x Caster Level x BASECOST ~= ½CL x CL x BASECOST = ½(CL^2) x BASECOST = quadratic cost
Actually, to make them viable, restrict them to level 4+ spells. That way, there's no competition with wands to speak of. Anything below 4th, just consider it a wand.
I disagree with you. The Paizo staff are pretty good at their jobs.
Well, the Postmonster does suck. Or eat. Or something. To be honest, I'm not sure what it does
Considering that putting another spell on the Staff increases its price to stupid prices, you end up having to craft 1 Staff for each Spell, which can create problems on your action economy during combat.
If you Craft the Staff yourself, as a Wizard, honestly, you're just better of getting Staff Like Wand, Craft Wands and be happy.
1) Not so, only the most powerful spell is cost x400
second most powerful is x300 (25% discount)
beyond that spells are x200 to craft (50% discount)
- so to optimize you would have a staff of 5th level spells, another for 6th level spells, 4th and below can all go in one because of the minimum caster level.
But here you come across the biggest problem with Staves. That "discounted" spell now it's eating the charges for your highest level spell. Also recharging costs a higher level spell slot.
So the more spells you have on the staff, the easiest it's going to be drained of charges, and the hardest it will be to recharge it.
2) I love staff like wand from an economical viewpoint, but if I have to get craft staff for it, I want to craft a staff - and it will have spells with costly components or troublesome foci.
I'm gonna get it on my wizard, becase I can make cheap wands and work as staves.
Craft staff? I might have to craft one for my Oracle, because he's a only healing oracle.
Actually, to make them viable, restrict them to level 4+ spells. That way, there's no competition with wands to speak of. Anything below 4th, just consider it a wand.Lets stay on topic. This is about stopping staves from sucking, not making them suck even harder.
And no, a CL1 Staff of Burning hands is very different from a CL1 Wand of Burning Hands as the former in the literal hands of someone who has caster level 5 will deal 5d4 damage while the CL1 Wand will always deal 1d4 damage. This is the whole point of staves, they go up in power with the wielder. Levelling up matters.
Wands will still have it for things where caster level is quite irrelevant, like a Wand of Color Spray.
But that takes a double home rule...single spell staves, to get wand costs per spell, and lowering minimum caster level to 1, to also minimize costs. This effectively makes wands worthless...have all your cheap wand goodness, and high caster level, too.
If you just relegate level 1-3 spells to wands only, wands don't compete to the cost of a staff, especially multiple spells, because level 4+ wands already have the same caster level.
It's far more balanced, and doesn't get into the low level fixed spell nonsense competition.
If we're talking scaling spells, Staves are already cheaper then wands. It's just nobody wants to spend the money on high CL wands to compare to staves.
Got to admit, I was glad I kept the one staff of storms or whatever when we found it. Almost the next fight later we needed gust of wind, which my oracle wouldn't have had otherwise.
Would you keep it over a Page of Spell Knowledge with the same spells?
Got to admit, I was glad I kept the one staff of storms or whatever when we found it. Almost the next fight later we needed gust of wind, which my oracle wouldn't have had otherwise.Would you keep it over a Page of Spell Knowledge with the same spells?
A Page can only hold one spell. It also means using the oracle's spell slots instead of stored energy within.
Lots of interesting ideas for staves. Here's one of mine.
2: Staff of Life and Death
This Staff can cast Resurrection and Restoration. Restoration costs 4 charges while Resurrection costs 7. The drawback is that it must vaporize 200 lbs of sentient creature remains to recharge 1 charge. When the third command word is spoken and the onyx head of the staff is touched to the remains, an undead monster or animated remains must make a 20 will or fort save or be vaporized. If the remains are not immobilized, it requires a crit. to vaporize. Only continuous remains are effected, and only enough to fill the staff, so a big pile of bones might not be totally destroyed. A hand severed from a corpse can be ironically resurrected with the same staff that destroyed the corpse. These are made by sects of churches that find trophy hunting repulsive.
(400X7X13)+(300X4X13)+100,000+8,000
36400(resurrection)+15600(restoration)+100,000(Diamond Dust)+8,000(+2 disruption weapon)
Price 160000 Cost to make 130,000(Diamond dust value cannot be reduced)
If I've messed up the math somewhat, let me know.
I started this design in another topic where a player was sick of another player's grisly trophies.
Yes, Moonsinger...all of which is why I was asking. Using your own spell slots is considered a feature, not a bug...no gp expenditure for charges, and you get them all back every day.
And Spon casters have always benefited more from staves then Prepared Casters. Less Spells Known versatility, on average.
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Staff of Weather (I assume this is what Toz meant).
Aura strong varies; CL 13th
Slot none; Price 84,066 gp; Weight 5 lbs.
Description
The carved surface of this solid oaken beam always depicts a scene with the opposite qualities of the current weather (rainy on dry days, dry on rainy days, and so on). It allows use of the following spells:
Fog cloud (1 charge)
Gust of wind (1 charge)
Wind wall (1 charge)
Ice storm (2 charges)
Sleet storm (2 charges)
Control weather (3 charges)
Construction Requirements
Craft Staff, control weather, fog cloud, gust of wind, ice storm, sleet storm, wind wall; Cost 42,033 gp.
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84k for basically 6 level dependent spells that you are HIGHLY unlikely to have memorized, but which can each be useful in specific circumstances.
Huh. Probably one of the better staves, really. Spells level 2, 3, 3, 4,4 and 7. 4, 9,9,16,16, and 49 k for Pages. It would be 54k for Pages for the first 5 spells, and 49k for the Control Weather ...which you need so rarely you could just buy a scroll or prep it.
Lots of interesting ideas for staves. Here's one of mine.
2: Staff of Life and Death
This Staff can cast Resurrection and Restoration. Restoration costs 4 charges while Resurrection costs 7. The drawback is that it must vaporize 200 lbs of sentient creature remains to recharge 1 charge. When the third command word is spoken and the onyx head of the staff is touched to the remains, an undead monster or animated remains must make a 20 will or fort save or be vaporized. If the remains are not immobilized, it requires a crit. to vaporize. Only continuous remains are effected, and only enough to fill the staff, so a big pile of bones might not be totally destroyed. A hand severed from a corpse can be ironically resurrected with the same staff that destroyed the corpse. These are made by sects of churches that find trophy hunting repulsive.
(400X7X13)+(300X4X13)+100,000+8,000
36400(resurrection)+15600(restoration)+100,000(Diamond Dust)+8,000(+2 disruption weapon)
Price 160000 Cost to make 130,000(Diamond dust value cannot be reduced)If I've messed up the math somewhat, let me know.
I started this design in another topic where a player was sick of another player's grisly trophies.
This would never make it in an official game because you turned the recharging into a benefit, not a cost. You effectively have unlimited charges if you have enough bodies around...and free corpse disposal akin to disintegration.
It's a neat idea, just not workable.
I just use a +1 enhancement that is VERY common, called Final Rest, that slowly burns bodies to white dust, and so makes animating the dead difficult. The dagger that destroyed the body can be used with a Raise Dead or Resurrection to bring the person back, but necromancy fails entirely, below the Wish level.
It can also be placed on a Masterwork dagger without the need to make it +1 first, so that it can be used in poorer locations most vulnerable to corpse stealing and animation.
Why would you keep it over the same Pages, with Control Weather as an outlier? Inquiring minds and all. It would cost about 19k more to just have Pages instead of the staff.
If your staff doesn't live up to your expectations, maybe you need to rehire.
Okay, that's going to confuse costs even more if the big plan with this is as a party buff. At level 7, just eat the diamond dust costs. 250gp is going to be your hovering wealth level anyway that can be eaten. AS GM, I'd want Wizard's spell slots to be used up on things like Stoneskin, especially as high level spells get both really expensive yet some can really break the game. DR10 to key party members can be great, that can lead to a fun engagement with a major boss type, rather than just Black Tentacles or Phantasmal Killer which are kind of all-or-nothing spells.
They have uses - I still think having a selection of useful at will spells (level 1 or 2 even) is what elevates a staff from 'meh' to 'omg must have'. Another consideration - perhaps you are going on the type of adventure where you won't be anywhere near civilization for months... or longer - you are going to another dimension that you know disallows travel back without a key you don't yet own - or something similar. The ability to use stoneskin without that 250gp bag of dust suddenly is much more beneficial.
I realize that the usefulness of staves is situational - however that could be said for a vast number of non 'big-six' magic items - that's why the 'big-six' are considered ubiquitous - because they are useful in almost all situations and conditions making the value per gold piece spent more worthwhile.
A staff of mage armor can be recharged for nothing.
It elevates by caster level.
So as soon as you have a higher caster level, the staff gets more and more valauble, and the wand conversely gets less and less valuable.
The staff never runs out. You can recharge it for nothing in down time, or for the price of a 1st level spell.
The idea that you will need 50 mage armors before you can recharge the stave is a very poor argument, and will basically never happen, especially as caster levels rise. You'll want the longer duration of the staff/cast spell, and the higher caster level to resist a possible dispel.
The wand effectively becomes useless. Needing to spam 10 spells in a row is extremely rare, except for CLW wands. However, the fact is I'd spam 10 magic missiles from a staff at my caster level before I'd spam ten magic missiles from a CL1 wand. Making the staff cost the same as the wand? Hah, that's not even a contest. Staves all the way.
Your scrolls example is poor, too. You have to keep drawing each scroll out, which is also an action waster. The staff is already in hand. The wand you can just transfer to your other hand if you need to...or drop it and pick it up later, if you don't think you'll need it again this combat. If you do need it again, it's already drawn.
Also, using a scroll provokes an AoO. Wands don't.
I see nowhere in the rules that you can use Alchemical Power Components for scrolls. Can you point me to that? If you can do it for scrolls, then you generally could do it for wands and staves...or other magic items, to be honest.
I think you're ignoring the value of a Staff boosting the caster level, and how important and powerful that is. The reason Staves have CL 8 default is BECAUSE of how powerful the ability is. IF staves barely cost more then wands, and scale freely...nope, huge balance issue.
The only argument you can really make is the wands are better at spamming lots and lots of low level spells. If you don't need the spell repeatedly, the staff will always be the way to go...available in an emergency, can be recast as necessary, and scales, and can be recharged for nothing every day, slowly, especially in down time.
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Not sure that's a great example either, Das Bier. Why on earth would you spend a bunch of money on a staff that lets you have mage armor at your caster level each day, when you could pocket the money and just cast mage armor each day? (Whether you use the staff or not, you're still end up spending the spell slot each day.)
Better for spells that you might need multiple times in a day, or just don't want to prepare, rather than a spell that is going to last all day anyways.