Can a staff with the morphing trait cast spells when it's morphed as another weapon?

[WWHsmackdown]

Header says it all. I just wanna know if my more gishy wizards and sorcerers can cast from their weapons if they're morphed staves

[Gizmo the Enemy of Mankind]

WWHsmackdown wrote:

Header says it all. I just wanna know if my more gishy wizards and sorcerers can cast from their weapons if they're morphed staves

Well, it says in the staves section:

CR-p592 wrote:

Attacking with a staff: Staves are also staff weapons, included in their Price. They can be etched with runes as normal for a staff. This doesn’t alter any of their spellcasting abilities.

Says right there that runes don't alter the staff's spellcasting abilities.

The Shifting rune states:

CR-p585 wrote:

The weapon takes the shape of another melee weapon that requires the same number of hands to wield. The weapon’s runes and any precious material it’s made of apply to the weapon’s new shape. Any property runes that can’t apply to the new form are suppressed until the item takes a shape to which they can apply.

Even though staves don't get their magic from runes, this would suggest to me to be consistent with the magic in the object carrying over in it's new form since there is nothing inherent to the staff's shape in determining it's magic, at least not from what I can find.

Pretty cool!

[Castilliano]

To be determined.

The question to which we have not answer boils down to:
Is it necessary for spells staves to be in staff form in order to function like staves? Both answers are straightforward depending on which direction you approach the question from.

Looking at how magic weapons keep their magic when shifted by a Shifting Rune (except inappropriate Property Runes), then it seems okay for the weapon to retain those spells. It's costing a rune slot after all.

Yet doesn't the staff have to be a staff to do staff things? It's not explicitly said, but if staves didn't have to be staves, wouldn't there be a whole market of spell-casting weaponry? Why would one even need to use a Shifting Rune? Plus does it really cost a rune slot (or even a hand in PF2 where hand usage matters a lot) if one transforms the staff into a shield spike and attacked with a different weapon?

To further complicate matters, the effects of Shifting Runes do not expire. As written, the transformation has zero triggers which end it, not even removing the Shifting Rune. That would only prevent future transformations. So a party could pass around the Rune turning their favorite magic staves to more portable forms like perhaps a Clan Dagger because who'd deprive a Dwarf of their clan dagger at a social affair?

That tactic too would have a cost, though kinda minor. And if we throw a Champion into the mix, it'd be zero. We could get a Shifting Rune put on a new weapon every day. There'd be a lucrative business for them, or Champions might even do it for charity for like-minded folk. The marketplace would be wholly different were this possible. Abadar would've made this so.

So we have a tension, part of which includes the "too good to be true" rule in the CRB. A strict PFS reading would default to yes, you can AND you can do shenanigans for all your caster party mates too. "I'm going to adventure with Chuck's Champion so I can get my staff altered." (I'm unsure if that would carry over, perhaps with a GM's signature?) And I wouldn't be surprised at a Venture person stepping in to prevent it.

On other threads, many have suggested houserules at various stages to get to their preferred answer, but there's no official ruling yet.

Myself, I'd say nay, partly because I know how badly I could abuse this.

[Timeshadow]

I 100% would have the weapon morph back to normal if the shifting rune was removed. This pritty much solves the majority of the "resale" issues.

[Kennethray]

In pfs you can not have your character take anything from another character past the current scenario so I would doubt that would work.

[Old_Man_Robot]

Castilliano wrote:

So we have a tension, part of which includes the "too good to be true" rule in the CRB. A strict PFS reading would default to yes, you can AND you can do shenanigans for all your caster party mates too. "I'm going to adventure with Chuck's Champion so I can get my staff altered." (I'm unsure if that would carry over, perhaps with a GM's...

There really is no such thing as the "too good to be true" rule, and I hate that it keeps popping up as if it was.

What exists, on page 443 of the CRB, is a general convention that says if a rule seems ambiguous that you should work it out with your group

Ambiguous Rules wrote:

Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.

That's it! Work it out with the people you are playing with, it's not an auto-no nor auto-yes. Just come to an equitable solution for your group. The type of language used in pathfinder is not nearly tight or uniform enough for "ambiguity" to be the decider.

I know you weren't doing anything negative in this regard Castilliano, but I've seen far too many illegitimate uses of this "rule" for me not to call it out when it crops up.

[MaxAstro]

"If one version is too good to be true, it probably is" seems pretty straightforward to me...

Also, I need to dig it up, but just a few days ago there was a post by Mark Seifter where he specifically referenced that line, I believe even referring to it as the "too good to be true" rule.

EDIT: Perhaps I am mistaken; I was almost certain he said something about it, but I can't now find it.

[Old_Man_Robot]

MaxAstro wrote:

"If one version is too good to be true, it probably is" seems pretty straightforward to me...

Also, I need to dig it up, but just a few days ago there was a post by Mark Seifter where he specifically referenced that line, I believe even referring to it as the "too good to be true" rule.

Can you try to find it for me, as a quick keyword search of Marks posts turns up nothing of relevance for the word "Good", "True" or "Ambiguous" from November 2019 onwards.

If you are referring to this post

Mark Seifter wrote:

Eric Nielsen wrote:

Yes, dev's speaking in their unofficial capacity outside of official errata/statements are not official ruling, and I shouldn't have called it a ruling. However it felt like the consensus that had emerged, w/o dev statement was that hero points were NOT 'use before knowing result'.

However...
Dev's will typically answer if the questions is not a 'ruling' (which implies the original rules left multiple interpretations), but instead can be answered by quoting the rules. In this case I take Mark as doing the latter, calling out the that the absence of the text was intentional, and the rule is as written, without the implied 1e spin people had been reading into it.

Yes, nothing I say should be construed as an official ruling on an ambiguous piece of text, but I'm happy to point out when a certain rule that we all remember from PF1 just isn't in the game any more. I always check first because I can easily be wrong. Just today I thought we still had the extraplanar trait but didn't print it on monsters because you never know if they're encountered on their home plane, but I was happy to discover we got rid of it completely and just say, for instance, you can banish something "that isn't on its home plane" like I had wanted. I just totally spaced that we had executed on that change.

It doesn't actually make any reference to what we are talking about really.

Further

MaxAstro wrote:

"If one version is too good to be true, it probably is" seems pretty straightforward to me...

This is not the part I had a problem with, but if you found my statement too ambiguous... well.

[Gizmo the Enemy of Mankind]

Castilliano wrote:

To be determined.

The question to which we have not answer boils down to:
Is it necessary for spells staves to be in staff form in order to function like staves? Both answers are straightforward depending on which direction you approach the question from.

Looking at how magic weapons keep their magic when shifted by a Shifting Rune (except inappropriate Property Runes), then it seems okay for the weapon to retain those spells. It's costing a rune slot after all.

Yet doesn't the staff have to be a staff to do staff things? It's not explicitly said, but if staves didn't have to be staves, wouldn't there be a whole market of spell-casting weaponry? Why would one even need to use a Shifting Rune? Plus does it really cost a rune slot (or even a hand in PF2 where hand usage matters a lot) if one transforms the staff into a shield spike and attacked with a different weapon?

To further complicate matters, the effects of Shifting Runes do not expire. As written, the transformation has zero triggers which end it, not even removing the Shifting Rune. That would only prevent future transformations. So a party could pass around the Rune turning their favorite magic staves to more portable forms like perhaps a Clan Dagger because who'd deprive a Dwarf of their clan dagger at a social affair?

That tactic too would have a cost, though kinda minor. And if we throw a Champion into the mix, it'd be zero. We could get a Shifting Rune put on a new weapon every day. There'd be a lucrative business for them, or Champions might even do it for charity for like-minded folk. The marketplace would be wholly different were this possible. Abadar would've made this so.

So we have a tension, part of which includes the "too good to be true" rule in the CRB. A strict PFS reading would default to yes, you can AND you can do shenanigans for all your caster party mates too. "I'm going to adventure with Chuck's Champion so I can get my staff altered." (I'm unsure if that would carry over, perhaps with a GM's...

There's some really interesting ideas here and, as you say, whether or not the nature of a staff being a staff is central to its magic is the key to the answer (and the answer is not 100% clear). It may come down to the lore of this world and how staff magic works; will changing its shape inhibit the source of its power?

As for the shifting rune, it says "The weapon takes the shape of another melee weapon that requires the same number of hands to wield." It does not state that the weapon permanently transforms into a different weapon. In effect, a sword shifting to an axe becomes an axe-shaped sword that functions as an axe in every way. This seems like semantics, but I would contend that the source of the transmutation magic that changes the weapon's shape originates from the shifting rune (the rune is the thing with the Magical and Transmutation traits), meaning that the weapon will return to its true form when the shifting rune is removed or the magic of the rune is suppressed. It would be the same for a weapon with the light spell cast on it: once the weapon enters an anti-magic field, the magic is suppressed and the light goes out.

A Champion selecting the shifting Blade Ally is a similar situation: the Champion selects a new weapon each day during their daily preparations to benefit from a rune's magical property and the weapon from the previous day loses the Blade Ally's benefits (thus a shifting weapon loses it's magical shifting property and returns to normal).

[Mad Beetle]

I have always seen it possible with RAW, that you can turn your magical staff into a gauntlet with the shifting rune and keep it functional.

I kinda like the imagery of that.

And really, it´s not like it breaks the game or anything.