The Ubiquitous Wizard’s Staff: New Ideas

The magical staff – strange gnarled wood, unusual cynosure, filled with arcane powers – is a classic accoutrement of legendary wizards since at least the time of Merlin. But in D&D, staves that are unique to the individual wizard are the exception rather than the norm. I think we can and should change that, and below I’ll outline the details of what I’m thinking.

1. Every wizard leaves wizard school as a level 1 spellcaster with their own personal wizard’s staff

    In this, all wizards will get a staff at start to use as a focus object as per Arcane Bond. This does NOT preclude wizards from also having a familiar. This is sort of a freebee, but can be integrated into a character’s backstory:

    He’d done all he needed to academically – he had only a very few small matters upon which to put finishing touches – but one task yet waited: each student, whether scholar or rube, had to create their magi’s staff. It was the mark of the Kerse collegium that each young mage they sent out into the world bore a staff of their own making. Inkakahd had thought long on the matter of his own, and he’d formulated what he thought was a worthy plan: several leagues to the south of Kerse, in the fields and dales of rural Druma, stood a patch of thick wood called the Silent Forest…

    …Inkakahd had got it into his head to investigate the Silent Forest and obtain one of these crystals, if possible, to use as the cynosure of his staff. At the very least, he would find a length of echowood (which was known to grow in the Silent Forest) from which to craft his staff. Echowood has strange acoustical properties and Inkakahd knew it would make him a good focus…

    … He would enter the forest a few hours after dark, the better to see the glow of the crystals (as well as understanding well that that the raw wood of a wizard’s staff ought to by rights be harvested at night, preferably at midnight, by the light of a torch made from the wood of an oppositional tree, which in the case of echowood was either yellow yew or cedar, and a half-dozen fragrant torches made from the latter were even now lodged in Inkakahd’s backpack) and examine them in their naturally occurring state…

    … Inkakahd made his way deeper into the Silent Forest, marveling at the sounds of the crystals, his ears straining to capture each note, when something caught his eye. A particularly low hanging crystal, dangling comparatively far from its fellows, making no sound of its own and, truth be told, glowing less brightly than the others. This forlorn crystal seemed to call to Inkakahd, and he found himself standing in front of it, his hand almost unconsciously plucking it from the twine that held it aloft. It nestled snuggly in his hand, and in his reverie Inkakahd almost did not hear the voice…

    So what does this staff do? By the arcane bond, “A bonded object can be used once per day to cast any one spell that the wizard has in his spellbook and is capable of casting, even if the spell is not prepared.” Which means that a 1st level wizard’s staff essentially provides the wizard with a free spell of the maximum level they are capable of. That’s an important distinction

    2. As a wizard progresses in level an grows more powerful, a wizard’s staff can do as well.

    First things first: any spells or powers beyond those defined by the Arcane Bond (i.e one free spell) must be recharged after use.

    In PF1: Staves hold a maximum of 10 charges. Each spell cast from a staff consumes one or more charges. When a staff runs out of charges, it cannot be used until it is recharged. Each morning, when a spellcaster prepares spells or regains spell slots, he can also imbue one staff with a portion of his power so long as one or more of the spells cast by the staff is on his spell list and he is capable of casting at least one of the spells. Imbuing a staff with this power restores one charge to the staff, but the caster must forgo one prepared spell or spell slot of a level equal to the highest-level spell cast by the staff. For example, a 9th-level wizard with a staff of fire could imbue the staff with one charge per day by using up one of his 4th-level spells. A staff cannot gain more than one charge per day and a caster cannot imbue more than one staff per day.

    In PF2: Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2E) rules for recharging magical staves differ significantly from Pathfinder 1st Edition.

    • During your daily preparations, you can prepare a staff to add charges to it for free.
    • When you do so, the staff gains a number of charges equal to the rank of your highest spell slot.
    • You do not need to expend spell slots, cast spells into the staff, or provide any special spell knowledge. The process happens automatically as part of your daily magical preparations if you choose to prepare the staff.

    For example, if a wizard’s highest prepared spell slot is 5th-level, the staff gets 5 charges for the day during that wizard’s preparations.

    All of which is great BUT how does a wizard get new spells and powers into their staff? Magic item creation rules.

    3. Wizards can invest their staves with new powers using magic item creation rules

    Under normal circumstances, acquiring the appropriate feats to craft a staff wouldn’t be available to the wizard until 11th level in PF1, at which point the wizard can can create any staff whose prerequisites they meet. Crafting a staff takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its base price. To craft a staff, you must use up raw materials costing half of its base price. A newly created staff has 10 charges.

    In PF2, the process for ensorcelling a person staff is outlined here: A custom staff must always be created around a single trait. For example, an elemental trait (air, earth, fire, or water), energy trait (acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic, positive, negative, or force), alignment trait, the detection trait, the light trait, and so on. The staff and its spells must have the trait. A few traits are too broad to use, including incapacitation and the traits for spell schools and traditions.

    The wizard’s level sets a personal staff’s maximum item level, which determines the price and the number and level of spells the staff can have, as shown on the table below.

    Staff LevelMaximum Spells PriceCantrip1st2nd3rd4th5th6th7th8th
    5160 gp12
    7250 gp122
    9700 gp1222
    111,400 gp12222
    133,000 gp122222
    156,500 gp1222222
    1715,000 gp12222222
    1940,000 gp122222222

    You can inscribe a number of common spells on the staff depending on its level, as shown on the table below. You can place the same spell into the staff at multiple levels to provide heightened versions, though doing so uses up one of your picks for that spell level.

    Once you’ve themed and designed your staff, you can craft it with the following the guidelines, along with previously established rules for crafting magical items. As with normal staves, one casting of all listed levels of all spells in the staff must be provided during Crafting. Choose a magical school for your staff from among the schools the spells on it have. Pick the one that best reflects the spells, usually the one most shared among them.

    You still need to Craft the staff. If you’re not good at Crafting, you can have somebody use the Craft activity for you, but you must be present the whole time. Since the creation of a custom staff is rare, you and the GM might decide to have a special quest for esoteric ingredients and methods as part of the story.

    As you level up, your staff will get less useful unless you upgrade it. You might also want to make revisions as you play if you come to dislike the spells you chose.

    To change spells already in the staff, use the Craft activity with a Price equal to 1/10th the staff’s Price. You can swap out any of the spells in the staff when you finish. The new spells have to have the staff’s chosen trait and be an appropriate level, just as though you were choosing them when initially making the staff, and you must provide castings of them.

    Upgrading the staff is similar to upgrading an item to a higher-level version (see Craft Requirements). Decide the staff’s new level. Pay the difference in Price, pick the new spells, and use Craft for the upgrade. You must supply castings of the new spells. Upgrading doesn’t let you switch any of the spells you’d previously chosen.

    4. Acquired magical staves can be liquidated for both raw materials and arcane power.

    We’ve played before that wizards can deconstruct acquired magic items in order to effectively render them into raw materials for crafting. Used to offset the materials costs, the deconstructed magic items provide raw materials worth 50% of the deconstructed magic item’s value.

    In the case of a wizard using this deconstruction method to generate raw materials to increase the power of the wizard’s own staff, the same processes apply EXCEPT if the object being deconstructed is a different staff. In that case, the wizard can select one of two options:

    • Deconstruct per usual and acquire half the cost in raw materials
    • Deconstruct but instead of raw materials, instead extract the powers from staff and build them into the wizard’s own staff as spell and power options.
      • this does not increase the staff’s spell level limitations, but insisted provides additional choices for spell selection to be availalbe for use
      • Non-spell powers from the source staff ARE transferred to the wizard’s staff, and do not count against the available spell level.

    Example: Ink is a 11th level Wizard, and his staff (echowood with blue crystal cynosure) can contain up to 8 spell levels, plus one cantrip, plus one additional spell of up to 4th level. Ink’s magic specialty is sonic (including sonic versions of other types of spells, to give them the sonic descriptor), so his standard loadout is:

    • Cantrip: Haunting Hymn
    • Thunderstrike x2 (2)
    • Sound burst x2 (4)
    • Shatter (2)
    • Painful Vibrations (3)
      • then one level in reserve for heightening for a total of 12 total spell levels (eight for staff, one cantrip, and one 4th level spell from Arcane Bond)

    Ink explores a dungeon with his friends and they acquire a Staff of Protection, which serves as a +1 weapon and contains the following spells:

    • Cantrip: Shield
    • 1st level: Alarm, Mystic Armor
    • 2nd level: Dispel Magic, Environmental Endurance, Resist Energy

    Ink decides to deconstruct the Staff of Protection rather than sell it, so Ink’s staff becomes a +1 weapon and he can now include any of the spells the Staff of Protection contains amongst the the spells within Ink’s staff.

    • this does NOT put these spells into Ink’s spellbook. For the purposes of this deconstruction, these spells may only be included in Ink’s staff’s loadout

    Essentially, Ink is creating a separate group of spells, made from the contents of looted staves, that are available only via his own staff.

    Comments are open, lend your thoughts!