Magic staves can only be used by the person who prepared them that day. Can someone use a friend's staff if they succeed with Trick Magic Item?
Our group is looking at backup options should our party cleric go down and were wondering if the party's divine ki monk could make use of the staff.
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Magic staves can only be used by the person who prepared them that day. Can someone use a friend's staff if they succeed with Trick Magic Item?
Our group is looking at backup options should our party cleric go down and were wondering if the party's divine ki monk could make use of the staff.
Found this while looking for the answer to a different question. I'm sure that whatever decision has long since been made but, for what it's worth, the only stipulation under Trick Magic Item is that you can't otherwise use the item in question. Whatever general rule brings that about, the specific rules of the feat allow you to make a skill check to contradict it.
The Monk couldn't otherwise use the staff for a number of reasons, and the fact that a staff can only be used by the caster who prepared it is but one of those reasons, no different to any other. Therefore, that reason can be overcome with Trick Magic Item. Unless, I suppose, you consider that restriction a more specific rule, but specific v specific is weird and I'm inclined to say that a character-chosen Feat is more specific than the general rules of how an Equipment category works.
Plus, I love the idea of some Eldritch Trickster stealing a wizard's staff and Tricking it at 'em. If I'm wrong and that's not how the rules work, they totally should because if that ain't the fiction I don't know what is. :P
I would allow this, so long as the Stave has charges and the tricking character knows what spells are held in the Stave.
You examine a magic item you normally couldn’t use in an effort
to fool it and activate it temporarily. For example, this might allow
a fighter to cast a spell from a wand or allow a wizard to cast a
spell that’s not on the arcane list using a scroll. You must know
what activating the item does, or you can’t attempt to trick it.
I would say that Trick Magic Item would definitely be the "Specific rule" compared to activating a Stave's general rule.
Nothing in the Stave rules preclude a character from tricking a staff specifically either. You just have to be able to cast the appropriate level of spell, and be the one that prepared the staff. I would say that Trick Magic Item sufficiently covers both of those issues with it's "...you normally couldn't use..." wording.
So in the case of the Monk with their friends staff, so long as the Monk knows what spells are held in the Stave, it's all good imo.
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The staff would have to be already charged at the very least.
Assuming it is charged, I'm not sure: Tricking the 'only the person who invested it can use it' rule seems like it might be a bit more involved than the 'I just might know enough about religion to use a divine wand or scroll' normal usage.
Also, note that Trick Magic Item is an action to use and only lasts to the end of your turn, so it only leaves you with 2 actions (at best) to actually activate the magic item: Spells with a 3 action or 1 minute+ cast time can never be activated through this feat.
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Given the GM determines the DC for the check to trick it, it hearkens back to the days of 3.5e/PF1, where there was a set table for tricking magical items, depending on whether the trickster shared various traits (race, class, casting tradition, traits, appropriate level, identity, command word known, etc)
I remember that the hardest of all these DC modifiers was imprersonating a specific person to activate an item, so the balance here might be the GM setting a stupid hard DC to activate a staff by someone who can't cast the spells tradition, can't cast the specific spells enabled by the staff, and not being the specific individual who can activate the staff
Also you'd have to fake being Invested in the Staff (if that has any meaning re: Trick Magic Item!).
Also you'd have to fake being Invested in the Staff (if that has any meaning re: Trick Magic Item!).
Doesn't feel like that much of a stretch when you have to trick it into believing that you can cast in the first place.
Also you'd have to fake being Invested in the Staff (if that has any meaning re: Trick Magic Item!).Doesn't feel like that much of a stretch when you have to trick it into believing that you can cast in the first place.
So is Trick Magic Item a way around the Investment cap?