Druid crafting a custom staff?

[Nik Gervae]

I am a day away from my first Pathfinder 2 session! I had created a Storm Druid with a whole Concept about being initiated when a nearby tree got struck by lightning and now he carries a staff made from that tree. But then my group said well we are all level 7 so you have to skip up to that and buy gear. Oh and you should get a magic staff.

There are so many staves, for fire, illusions, summoning animals, doing plant things. But there's nothing for storms.

So I looked up item creation. Hm, INT based. Needs a skill and a feat. Oh and formulas, which apparently are only for items...already in the catalog.

Well that rained on my parade a little. Unless I'm wrong and you can craft a staff with custom spells. The skill & feat investments are way hefty just for a single item anyhow.

For the heck of it, here are all the low-level spells I found that would be in theme:

Cantrip: Electric Arc, Ray of Frost
1st Level: Chilling Spray, Gust of Wind, Personal Rain Cloud, Shocking Grasp
2nd Level: Obscuring Mist, Rime Slick, Sudden Bolt

That's way more spells than a 6th level staff normally gets, so further tightening the theme would probably focus on either cold or electricity.

I can't think of a suitable item bonus, those are usually quite modest or involve identifying things.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Yeah, the rules only allow for new staves to be invented by/with the GM. FWIW, here's the guidelines on that.

Gamemastery Guide p84 wrote:

STAVES

You’ll need to come up with a theme and curate a list of spells that stay close to that theme, typically one to three per spell level, all on one spell list. A staff is always at least 3 levels higher than the minimum level for a spellcaster to cast the highest-level spell it contains, so a staff with up to 4th-level spells would be at least a 10th-level item.

I would try (GM permitting) to skip the feats and skills, since this is apparently the one thing you want to introduce, and declare that the lightning strike created the magic staff as described. It doesn't matter if they've been carrying it from 1st level and the staff is 5th-7th level, the normal constraints don't have to be followed pregame.

[Nik Gervae]

Ah, I don't have that book. Thanks for the tips!

[jdripley]

A 6th level staff gives you one nifty but typically not powerful ability, 1 cantrip, 2 1st level spells and 2 2nd level spells.

For a nifty ability, how about the ability to douse flames with a little jet of water? That is essentially opposite the Staff of Fire's nifty ability, and I could see it being useful if you need to quickly put out a campfire because you're on watch and perceive an enemy approaching your camp...

Cantrip, Electric Arc seems the clear winner

1st level: I'd go Gust of Wind and Shocking Grasp. Gust of wind stays good, Shocking Grasp is pretty near the end of its usefulness as a 1st level spell if you are 7th level, but... 2d12 is still marginally OK, you may get lucky and get nearly 20 damage out of it, and if you get lucky and crit it could land for big damage...

2nd level, I'd go for Obscuring Mist and Sudden Bolt. Obscuring Mist stays good forever and Sudden Bolt is still quite good even at 7th level.

Sudden Bolt is an Uncommon spell, so I could see a GM balking at that, but maybe they will have mercy on you because they're asking somebody who has never played PF2 before to dive right in at 7th level...