Unusually-Shaped Staves?

[Yorae]

Is it possible to craft staves that are a shape other than a big long stick?

Or is it possible to craft a wondrous item that has the "assumes the CL and DC of the wielder" properties of a stave?

[QuidEst]

Well, short staves are effectively wands, so one might suppose that you can't make it smaller without some compromise on power. That's the DM's call, naturally. If I were in that position, I'd say that other shapes were allowed, but staves are shaped the way they are because that's the easiest way to make them, and significant changes could raise the craft DC. Letting the players get away with easily concealed stave-shoes would probably not fly. If you're a sufficiently powerful wizard, you could use a coffee table as the basis for your "stave".

One rather clever take I saw was in Sci-Fi's version of the Dresden Files. His staff was a hockey stick, and his blasting rod was a drum stick.

As to crafting a wondrous item that uses a caster's CL and DC, that's a fairly major change, and I wouldn't make it cheap if I were running the campaign.

[JoshuaZ]

As to crafting a wondrous item that uses a caster's CL and DC, that's a fairly major change, and I wouldn't make it cheap if I were running the campaign.

A staff has three major differences- the CL/DC matter, the fact that they have multiple spells, and their larger size. Only the last is a negative and only in some circumstances. Eyeballing the SRD charts for wands and staves, the lowest price staff has a cost about midrange in the wand set, and the highest price staff is about 6 times the cost of the most expensive wands. Given that, I'd say ability to use the caster's caster level and DC would seem to be reasonably about a factor of 3 or 4 to total cost. Does that seem reasonable?