Buff-Stick

[Karoht]

So rather than requiring the party to either have a caster, or drag along a Buff-Bot + Healer NPC (who might have other class features to worry about), I was thinking of making a magic item that essentially did the work for them.

My theory is that I can pack the staff with a bunch of buffs that will last them until it is reasonably expected that they can craft their own newer and better buff-stick. I can pack on higher level buffs (they will likely find the buff-stick shortly after reaching character level 2 or 3) and gate their access by the Use Magic Device skill DC's which are naturally associated with their respective spells. In other words, they can't *likely* cast spell X because their access to sufficient UMD makes it *unlikely*

So lets say we have a Staff. How many spells can we reasonably pack into it?
Which spells should we give them access to?

As for recharging the staff, I may or may not just allow it to refresh charges automatically. Not all charges at once, just a small amount, or even just 1 charge per day. Or I may allow any spell of the appropriate level to refresh a charge, but also with some kind of limit per day.

It is moderately home-brew, but I want to see how closely to legit I can make this without handing over something which would break wealth by level completely.
I am also looking for a means to prevent the party from selling it beyond DM fiat.

[herrhauptmann]

Don't require the party to have a caster/buffer.
If they want to play 6 warriors, so be it. After a little while, they can do every noncombat magic spell with UMD if they need to.

Could curse the magic stick so it can't be put down or given away. But now the holder is stuck using his actions to buff, rather than smash, or whatever he wants.
Perhaps have an out of character discussion with the party: "Guys, I'm giving you this item to help you out. So please don't sell it."
Could also make it a stolen item, and one very recognizable. ex: The Hope Diamond is worth a fortune, but everyone would recognize it as stolen, so you wouldn't be able to sell it.

[LTwerewolf]

Don't forget bout eternal wands. Also you can Curse them that they are essentially bound to the character's soul. Any time the wand gets out of a certain radius, that character starts taking cumulative negative effects.

[Karoht]

The staff could be replaced with just a chest full of Eternal Wands. That is a distinct possibility. The party will likely outgrow certain wands and sell them off incrementally, rather than all at once. It also means that the action economy could be spread around rather than the responsibility being on just one person.

@Party of 4 Fighters
That is essentially what I'm building this for. I'm not expecting that to be my next player party, but you get the idea.

Story wise, the party will break into the local HQ of (insert badguys) and their barracks. They find a chest with basically all the 'get ready for battle' prep gear. Possibly a standard loadout given to the badguy squads. The purpose of this is to get the buffs into the hands of the player party, while emphasizing that the enemy is in fact smart enough to be doing things like distributing access to buffs and other such survival enhancing magical items to all the organization members, rather than just the high ranking types.