Staff Preparation

[Garulo]

If I am an Occult caster and take the druid dedication (without taking basic spellcasting), can I prepare and charge a Staff of Healing?

Also, since the spells take on "my tradition," would that be Occult or Primal?

[tivadar27]

The requirements for charging are:
* Highest level spell you can cast for charges, I assume cantrips don't count, but that's open for debate as the rules don't seem to strictly prohibit it.
* At least one of the staff's spells on your list.

These appear to be independent, so you could use your Occult slots to determine charges given that heal appears on the druid list, which you also have.

After this, the requirements for casting a spell is:
* Able to cast of that level
* Have it on your list.

Similarly, these *appear* to be independent as written, so if that's true, yes, you could cast Heal from the staff.

This is my interpretation of these things, though as I said, I have no idea if this was the intention of the rules, but at least as written, it appears to work, and honestly, I don't see a huge problem with how it's written, minus the cantrip exception I listed :-P.

[Pumpkinhead11]

I think you choose which one you prepare in that situation; but i think they are tied together. With your example; I believe you would either prepare your staff as a Bard/Sorc or as a Druid. Otherwise there might be situations where a Wizard could prepare an Occult staff, as a prepared caster, with only the Dedication Feat.

Errata wrote:

Page 592: Under Preparing a Staff, in the second sentence change “highest level of spell you’re able to cast” with “highest-level spell slot you have.”

I believe it says somewhere in the CRB that Cantrips and Focus Spells don’t qualify for spell casting requirements. The Errata though clearly states you need Spell Slots in order to prepare a Staff.

[tivadar27]

Pumpkinhead11 wrote:

I think you choose which one you prepare in that situation; but i think they are tied together. With your example; I believe you would either prepare your staff as a Bard/Sorc or as a Druid. Otherwise there might be situations where a Wizard could prepare an Occult staff, as a prepared caster, with only the Dedication Feat.

Errata wrote:

Page 592: Under Preparing a Staff, in the second sentence change “highest level of spell you’re able to cast” with “highest-level spell slot you have.”

I believe it says somewhere in the CRB that Cantrips and Focus Spells don’t qualify for spell casting requirements. The Errata though clearly states you need Spell Slots in order to prepare a Staff.

Thanks for the errata text! Didn't realize they had fixed that bit up... Still, the question of whether or not you can work off of different lists is an open one. It's not specified you can't, but that could be RAI, I'll agree.

[Garulo]

So, I am an occult caster with spell slots and can thus prepare a staff. Also, I can cast the heal spell from the staff since it is on my dedication spell list

[Garulo]

Pumpkinhead11 wrote:

... Otherwise there might be situations where a Wizard could prepare an Occult staff, as a prepared caster, with only the Dedication Feat.

Actually, that is what the rules appear to say that you can do. There is no longer an "occult" or a "primal" staff. It is a staff with spells which can appear on multiple lists (Heal appears on both divine and primal). The only part I see in the rules about tradition is that the staff takes on your tradition when CASTING (which was my question as to which tradition I can choose). Nowhere in the rules does it say you have to prepare the staff as an Occult or a Primal staff. I think of it being charged in an agnostic fashion

"Use your spell attack roll and spell DC when Casting a
Spell from a staff. The spell gains the appropriate trait for
your magical tradition (arcane, divine, occult, or primal)
and can be affected by any modifications you can
normally make when casting spells, such as metamagic
feats"

[Goldryno]

I would agree with you Garulo. It is because you were already an Occult caster with spell slots you could prepare this with just the dedication and not the Basic Spellcasting feat. I would also rule that the tradition that you would use should be the same tradition as the spell slot your referencing to prepare the charges (if you had two that were equal I would suppose you would have a choice that you would want to declare).

If we were looking at this through that lens I would say though that if you were attempting to do this as a Martial class it would not work because you would not acquire any spellslots to prepare the staff with, and you would not already have any to use.