Spontaneous Staff Users


Rules Discussion

The Exchange

I've been mulling this over in my head but haven't really been able to come up with an answer. It seems between Prepared Casters and Spontaneous Casters, the prepared people have a bigger advantage when adding extra charges to a staff. They can expend a spell to add its level of charges to the staff whereas a Spontaneous caster can only expend a slot and a charge to cast from it. I just don't get how useful it is since they only get one more spell slot than a wizard.


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A wizard can invest their spell energy to cast the staff's spells in a different level division. E.g. invest a 6th level slot, get out a 3rd, a 2nd, and a 1st; or two 3rds, three 2nds, etc. At least theoretically, he could prepare all of those spells on his own (if he had them in his book), so he's not necessarily getting all that much flexibility.

A sorcerer, however, can pick up a staff filled with spells not in her repertoire and use the free charges to treat them as spells known until the charges run out. So if she invested it and got 6 free charges, that's up to six times she can use her slots on quite a few spells she doesn't ordinarily know. That's A LOT of flexibility, but at the cost of using those free charges on more limited use of the staff for free.

The Exchange

Ah thank you for that. I couldn't quite envision it reading the two of them side by side. I was thinking of the number of charges as the be all end all of it.


Unfortunately I still don't get it.

Say I am 4th level and get basic spellcasting as a Sorcerer. I now have 1st level spells for Sorcerer. I believe I only have one known spell.

So I charge my staff each day. I get 1 charge since my highest level spell is currently 1st level. This is done for free. I now have the ability to cast the spell slot in my head plus I have 1 charge on the staff.

Can I use any generic staff or must I use one of the magic staves listed in the book?


Kalderaan wrote:

Unfortunately I still don't get it.

Say I am 4th level and get basic spellcasting as a Sorcerer. I now have 1st level spells for Sorcerer. I believe I only have one known spell.

So I charge my staff each day. I get 1 charge since my highest level spell is currently 1st level. This is done for free. I now have the ability to cast the spell slot in my head plus I have 1 charge on the staff.

Can I use any generic staff or must I use one of the magic staves listed in the book?

There's no such thing as a generic staff. The ones in the book are all that there are unless you GM homebrews a new one.


Xenocrat wrote:
Kalderaan wrote:

Unfortunately I still don't get it.

Say I am 4th level and get basic spellcasting as a Sorcerer. I now have 1st level spells for Sorcerer. I believe I only have one known spell.

So I charge my staff each day. I get 1 charge since my highest level spell is currently 1st level. This is done for free. I now have the ability to cast the spell slot in my head plus I have 1 charge on the staff.

Can I use any generic staff or must I use one of the magic staves listed in the book?

There's no such thing as a generic staff. The ones in the book are all that there are unless you GM homebrews a new one.

Got it. What throws me is seeing Ezren (pre-gen 1st level wizard) with a staff in hand. Odds are you won't have enough gold to buy even the lowest cost one in the book @ 60 gold until at least 3rd to 5th level.

Could be his Arcane Bond item I guess.


Kalderaan wrote:
Xenocrat wrote:
Kalderaan wrote:

Unfortunately I still don't get it.

Say I am 4th level and get basic spellcasting as a Sorcerer. I now have 1st level spells for Sorcerer. I believe I only have one known spell.

So I charge my staff each day. I get 1 charge since my highest level spell is currently 1st level. This is done for free. I now have the ability to cast the spell slot in my head plus I have 1 charge on the staff.

Can I use any generic staff or must I use one of the magic staves listed in the book?

There's no such thing as a generic staff. The ones in the book are all that there are unless you GM homebrews a new one.

Got it. What throws me is seeing Ezren (pre-gen 1st level wizard) with a staff in hand. Odds are you won't have enough gold to buy even the lowest cost one in the book @ 60 gold until at least 3rd to 5th level.

Could be his Arcane Bond item I guess.

If by "generic staff" you mean mundane weapon staff, then yes, you can have one of those, but it's just a stick that you bash people with, no investing and no magic powers. That's what Ezren has at level 1.

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