Staves and Exchanging Charges

[Tectorman]

Did anyone else find the description of how investing staves works to be unintuitive?

For example, what is the line "If the two staves don't have that many charges between them, you fail to invest the new staff" supposed to accomplish? The previous line tells us we can divvy up the charges however we want. Presumably, that would include "take all of one staff's charges and put them in another". Or "only move one charge". Or any gradation between the two. Is the line just a convoluted way of saying "you don't get to manufacture charges out of thin air", that if you start with five charges you should end with five charges? It seems like this is trying to proof against some potential misinterpretation, but for me, it only seems to be adding its own.

Actually, I'm not even sure the bolded is how it's supposed to work. The language for expending charges to transfer spell energy almost seems like you're supposed to lose charges (due to the taxing nature of the process, which sounds like it's supposed to be inefficient) just to gain the ability to transfer your remaining other charges between the staves.

I.e., if my highest spell slot is 5th level, and I spent several individual days investing three staves one per day (so that they have charges even after I'm no longer invested in them, since they stay in the staff indefinitely until used), then I have a total of fifteen charges floating around. Let's say I use all five charges from one staff but I anticipate I still need that staff rather than the others. Am I losing another five charges just to gain the ability to put my last five charges in the first staff?

It doesn't seem like that's supposed to be the way it works, but I only suspect that. I don't feel I can really point to anything in the rules for staves to say "No, that's definitely not how staves work". I think this section could stand an example the same way using Lore, Crafting, or Performance to earn a living got examples to illustrate how they worked in practice.

Another example: "the first staff you invest in a day neither gains nor loses charges". So if I only have one staff, that staff will only ever be the first staff I invest in on any given day (until such time as I buy or loot another one). How, then, do I ever gain any use out of the thing beyond the minor benefit (like a Staff of Fire setting things aflame)? My staves can't gain charges until after I've invested one already.

[Ediwir]

Hey, don't look at me, I have been a proponent of "Invest the staff. You cast staff spells by either spending one resonance point or a corresponding spell slot" since they showed up on the blog.

Honestly in regards to a lot of items I am waiting to see how Resonance gets altered.

[Snickersnax]

Hmmm.... Resonance was supposed to eliminate item slots, but for some reason now we have the Staff slot and the Trinket slot.

[Balacertar]

I also ended up very confused after reading that long paragraph. Honestly I made no extra effort after the first read, I just wrote a mental note "You are supposed to carry along and use a single staff during the day" and a reminder to go check back if I ever have two staves around.

I am a bit expectant to see in play how well this works when you find a new more powerful staff and want to use it during the adventure. It feels like it might cause some resting discussions but I do understand the idea to limit carrying an arsenal of different staves with you (resonance and bulk should already account for that in my opinion).

[Lady Melo]

you have misread staves, investing in a new one requires you to EXPEND as in lose a number of charges equal to your highest level. If your highest spell slot is 5, and you have a staff attuned at 3 charges and a new staff with 5 charges, you can pay the cost to transfer your attunement 3 form the old one and 2 from the new one.

If the new staff only had 1 charge in it, you can not drain 5 charges from either to pay the re-attunement cost and therefor simply cannot attune to a new staff this day.

This is an exact counter weight to the 5 charges you gained by attuning to the first one, as a reduction in capability. It's a tax for swapping a powerful item to a new one. Staves are very powerful and basically balanced around only having 1 at a time.

[Lady Melo]

Tectorman wrote:

Another example: "the first staff you invest in a day neither gains nor loses charges". So if I only have one staff, that staff will only ever be the first staff I invest in on any given day (until such time as I buy or loot another one). How, then, do I ever gain any use out of the thing beyond the minor benefit (like a Staff of Fire setting things aflame)? My staves can't gain charges until after I've invested one already.

You also missed a part here, literally the sentence right before you started quoting, "If you didn't invest in a staff during daily preparations, you can still invest in one later"

staves only recharge when invested in during daily prep as to prevent prepared casters from owning multiple staves and charging up which one they need when they need it (making them more spontaneous).

[Tectorman]

Lady Melo wrote:

Tectorman wrote:

Another example: "the first staff you invest in a day neither gains nor loses charges". So if I only have one staff, that staff will only ever be the first staff I invest in on any given day (until such time as I buy or loot another one). How, then, do I ever gain any use out of the thing beyond the minor benefit (like a Staff of Fire setting things aflame)? My staves can't gain charges until after I've invested one already.

You also missed a part here, literally the sentence right before you started quoting, "If you didn't invest in a staff during daily preparations, you can still invest in one later"

staves only recharge when invested in during daily prep as to prevent prepared casters from owning multiple staves and charging up which one they need when they need it (making them more spontaneous).

So "investing in a staff during daily prep" is exempt from the "the first staff neither gains nor loses charges". The implication then, if I understand correctly, is that a Wizard who doesn't yet have a staff (and therefore couldn't have invested in one during daily prep) and who finds a staff later in the day, can't actually do anything with that staff for the rest of the day? He can invest during daily prep tomorrow, but it's just a fancy stick today?

[Tectorman]

Lady Melo wrote:

you have misread staves, investing in a new one requires you to EXPEND as in lose a number of charges equal to your highest level. If your highest spell slot is 5, and you have a staff attuned at 3 charges and a new staff with 5 charges, you can pay the cost to transfer your attunement 3 form the old one and 2 from the new one.

If the new staff only had 1 charge in it, you can not drain 5 charges from either to pay the re-attunement cost and therefor simply cannot attune to a new staff this day.

This is an exact counter weight to the 5 charges you gained by attuning to the first one, as a reduction in capability. It's a tax for swapping a powerful item to a new one. Staves are very powerful and basically balanced around only having 1 at a time.

I... think? ... I get what you mean by this, but it seems unnecessarily punitive. So is it actually the intention that a Wizard with multiple staves invest in them all one per day duribg downtime, just so that if he faces a scenario during the middle of an adventuring day where he needs to switch to a different staff, he can take the hit to his total charges distributed throughout his staves and still use the alternative staff?

[Lady Melo]

The wizard who finds a staff mid adventure would not gain the charges benefit till later, however staves can be used to A} use charges to cast spells listed on the staff and B use spell slots to spontaneously cast a spell on the staff. So if you had Dispel Magic, Stinking CLoud, and Haste prepared, and found a level 7 staff of fire, you could use it to cast everyone of those spells as a Fireball instead if you needed to.

The design of Staves as mentioned by others is that you own basically 1 staff, seeing as they give you a list of spells you can spontaneously cast, as well as Extra casters per day in the form of charges. The switching Staff attunement option is mostly ment as a "what if scenario" so that they didn't simply say it's impossible.

However the advantage to being able to switch a staff is still there. If you were walking around with a Staff of Fire attuned, and a bunch of battle spells in your slots and come across a situation that demanded stealth or investigation. You could (at a loss of charges) change to a staff of Divination or Illusion and make use of your spell slots through the listed spells on those staves.