magic staff help

[uahitei]

so i am building a half-elf bonded herb witch, worshiper of Immonheil, and i wanted their bonded item to be a staff, now i am bringing this character in at level 14. i like the idea of staves and they are very very cool, but i am unsure which staff to pick for them. is there any kind of guides that anyone knows of? or rather what should i be looking for in a staff?

the patron i will be going with is the healing patron, they are going to be chaotic good. the party doesn't need a dedicated healer, and i think that the healing patron provides enough to cover that. and anything that the healing patron doesn't provide can almost be covered with the Herb witch archetype.

so yeah any suggestions or tips on staves would be great.

[Lelomenia]

Staves arent really very good in pathfinder to start with (for casting purposes; there is some support for them as weapons). That becomes a bigger issue for witches, because on top of the short list of not very good options, you can’t use most of what’s left because so many of the common spells arent on your list.

Couple things tho:
(1) bonded staff effectively gives you craft staves feat, at least for your bonded staff, which opens the door to custom staff builds. Staff creation rules allow for some reasonably useful options. If your GM allows you to do that, we could come up with something useful
(2) Oaken Staff seems to have some thematic fit, and it’s basically the only way in the game you can get value out of shillelagh as a bonded item spell
(3) staff of travel at least has useful spells that are on your list

[MrCharisma]

I'm not super familiar with the Witch spell list, but the general rule would be to get a staff that:

- has one spell on your list and then a bunch that aren't (so you can recharge it, but it's giving you more options. This gives you options not usually allowed to your class.

OR

- has a bunch of spells on your spell list that you know you'll likely need anyway. This simply increases your staying power throughout the day. If going this route I'd probably try for spells you'll need when fighting higher level enemies, so you can recharge on easier days and then use the staff on the harder days.

[Lelomenia]

MrCharisma wrote:

I'm not super familiar with the Witch spell list, but the general rule would be to get a staff that:

- has one spell on your list and then a bunch that aren't (so you can recharge it, but it's giving you more options. This gives you options not usually allowed to your class.

OR

- has a bunch of spells on your spell list that you know you'll likely need anyway. This simply increases your staying power throughout the day. If going this route I'd probably try for spells you'll need when fighting higher level enemies, so you can recharge on easier days and then use the staff on the harder days.

i dont believe you can cast spells on a staff without having them on your list or using UMD.

[MrCharisma]

Yeah you'd be using UMD (sorry if that wasn't clear)