Spellcasting archetypes on casters with staves, wands, and scrolls

[Drillboss D]

Hi folks,

Saw this discussed a while back on Reddit/stack exchange but the answers didn’t look conclusive.

We have a Cleric PC who has taken Wizard Dedication. Per the spellcasting archetype rules, he can now use staves, wands, and scrolls from the divine or arcane traditions.

Say he gets a Staff of Earth, which has spells that are primal or arcane, but not divine.

1. Which DC does he use for casting the spells? The entry on staves says

Use your spell attack roll and spell DC when Casting a Spell from a staff. The spell gains the appropriate trait for your magical tradition (arcane, divine, occult, or primal)

“Your” could be taken to mean either any of the ones the character has, or specifically the one that allows you to cast that spell. My inclination is that it’s the latter because the “your” from the second sentence seems to suggest he would be casting an arcane pummeling rubble as opposed to primal. But if it is meant to use his best DC, would it be divine pummeling rubble?

2. Can he use his cleric slots to prepare/add additional charges to the staff?

3. The staff entry says he must be “able to cast spells of the appropriate rank or higher”. Not an issue for this staff, but if gets the greater one early, say at level 7, he would have access to rank 4 divine spells but only rank 2 arcane spells (via basic spellcasting). Could he cast the rank 3 spells from the staff even though they are arcane/primal but not divine?

Many thanks!
Drillboss

[Errenor]

I think it would be better to use one specific spellcasting ability to prepare a staff and use it for everything there.
"You can Cast a Spell from a staff only if you have that spell on your spell list, are able to cast spells of the appropriate rank or higher, and expend a number of charges from the staff equal to the spell’s rank."
So, if at least one spell from the staff is on divine list, you can use divine slots, DC, trait and can cast only spells which could be divine.
If the staff doesn't have divine spells, you use wizard's everything, including highest spell rank, and can't cast spells that are only divine, occult or primal.
I don't think mixing spellcasting abilities for using staves would do any good. If one is prepared and another spontaneous it's even more obvious.

[Tridus]

Drillboss D wrote:

Hi folks,

Saw this discussed a while back on Reddit/stack exchange but the answers didn’t look conclusive.

We have a Cleric PC who has taken Wizard Dedication. Per the spellcasting archetype rules, he can now use staves, wands, and scrolls from the divine or arcane traditions.

Say he gets a Staff of Earth, which has spells that are primal or arcane, but not divine.

1. Which DC does he use for casting the spells? The entry on staves says

Use your spell attack roll and spell DC when Casting a Spell from a staff. The spell gains the appropriate trait for your magical tradition (arcane, divine, occult, or primal)

It's the same DC as whatever is giving the ability to cast the spell. Since there's no Divine spells in this staff, casting them has to be coming from Wizard and thus would use the Wizard DC.

Quote:

2. Can he use his cleric slots to prepare/add additional charges to the staff?

It's not explicitly stated, but I wouldn't allow it since a Cleric can't prepare or use this staff. If there was one Divine spell in it, then it'd be fine.

Quote:

3. The staff entry says he must be “able to cast spells of the appropriate rank or higher”. Not an issue for this staff, but if gets the greater one early, say at level 7, he would have access to rank 4 divine spells but only rank 2 arcane spells (via basic spellcasting). Could he cast the rank 3 spells from the staff even though they are arcane/primal but not divine?

In this case the caster can't cast the spells in the staff at the appropriate rank, so I wouldn't allow those to work either.

The rules don't cover some of these interactions specifically.

[Finoan]

Errenor wrote:

I don't think mixing spellcasting abilities for using staves would do any good.

Agreed. Pick what class or archetype you are using to prepare the staff when you prepare it. You can then use the staff as that class or archetype.

So a Cleric with Wizard archetype using a staff with only non-Divine spells would want to use their Wizard archetype for the preparations. Spend a Wizard archetype spell slot to add charges to the staff, only access the staff spells up to their Wizard maximum spell slot Rank, and use the characters spellcasting proficiency (I think they only have one of those now) with their Wizard spellcasting attribute modifier (always INT for Wizard) to get their spell attack bonus and spell DC for spells from the staff - which should be the same as for spells cast from their Wizard spell slots.