Balance feedback wanted: Some changes to magic items.

[OmniMage]

I'm looking for some feedback on some house rules I'm considering.

Some of you might know that I use a house rule for magic item creation feats. To recap, I use just 2: Consumables (scrolls, potions, wands, staves) and Permanent (wondrous, rings, arms and armor, and rods). I don't think there is much benefit for anyone having more than a few magic item creation feats; all will consume money and downtime.

On to today's topic. I'm looking for some feedback as to what might happen if I make more changes to magic items. Mainly its to remove the level limits of different kinds of consumable magic items.

Scrolls will be unchanged.

Potions. Any spell level instead of being limited to spell level 3 or less. I don't think there would be much drawback to this one; aside from being expensive scrolls. Potions of cure critical wounds, restoration, heal, and even resurrection become possible.

Wands. Any spell that is level 4 or lower can be turned into a wand. I want to remove that limit so higher level spells can be made into wands. My justification for that is that back in DND 3.5, wands reached their limit right around the time staves would pick up the slack. However, back then staves were basically bigger wands with more spells. They had like 3 or more spells and 50 charges with no way to recharge them. Because staves are different in Pathfinder, I'm looking to expand wands to fill that empty space.

Staves. I want to remove the limit of them needing to have a minimum caster level of 8. Because staves are different in pathfinder, I think they should also cover the lower levels instead of being restricted to moderate level magic. Of course, players aren't going to be playing with staves at first level. Like with wands, they would be too expensive for the first few levels. It might be 4th level before players get their first staff.

I also want to make a misc category. I want to move a number of wondrous items with finite uses to the consumables category. They would be a catch all for a bunch of magic items that don't have a set of unifying rules.

[Lelomenia]

CL1 staves are overpowered for the price; basically cheaper wands that use the wielders CL and DC.

[avr]

Suppose you had a staff which had CL 1 and allowed you to cast 3 1st level spells. It'd cost 900 gp to make, base value 1800 gp - the same as 2.4 wands of the same spells and they'd scale a little better. You'd probably get one at 3rd level if you were allowed to, unless you were eagerly saving for something else. i.e. Lelomenia's right. If you want them to be available from 4th level then even a minimum CL of 2 or 3 would make the price right for that.

[OmniMage]

I missed that somehow. I figured that a level 1 spell wand would be 750 gp, and that a single spell level 1 spell staff would be 800 gp, so that they'd be kinda balanced. The difference would be that the wand would have more charges, but the staff could be recharged. I missed the part where the staff would be working as a 4th CL level at character level 4. A single level 1 spell staff with a caster level of 4 would be worth 3200 gp, which is clearly much more than the wand.

I suppose I could do a reset and return the minimum caster level for staves as 8, but then it would still out compete any wand that used spells higher than level 4. It seems that staves and wands at the same spell level don't mix well.

I figured that the price discount you get with having multiple spells on a staff would be of set by the fact all the spells draw from the same pool of charges. Maybe I underestimated the impact it would have. 10 charges might be more spell than what a 4th level spell caster would have per day, but once used up, you are recharging at a rate of 1 charge per day. Even if you had multiple staves.

[avr]

Actually using up all 10 charges and keeping them used up requires a very rapid pace game. I mean, characters generally manage without wands or staves at all aside from maybe a CLW wand. If you do though then staves are more equivalent to pages of spell knowledge.

Perhaps abandoning the existing staff model and switching to something like that - a staff containing knowledge of spells, and perhaps the odd trick with using them rather than serving as a 10 spell slot buffer - might serve your purposes, given that you have high level wands now?