Staffs

[bradley.m.morto]

Hello! I have been wondering if there is a way for a staff to have more than 50 charges, recharge, or somehow be used more than fifty times. This would be for an epic character I'm building, so any restrictions would most likely be irrelevant.

[Flickerdart]

Buying additional staves should be pretty affordable by that point.

There's some Eberron stuff for using action points instead of wand charges, but I'm not sure if it works on staves.

[DrMotives]

Recharging a staff costs XP & gold equal to an appropriate fraction of the charges you're putting back, so it wouldn't be out of line (or any different price) to add more than 50 to the same staff as building extra staves. I know it's against RAW, but it's really a minor point, and you're already epic.

[HunterOfJello]

the Power Surge artificer infusion gives a staff or wand temporary charges that can be used

there aren't many methods overall

[Evolved Shrimp]

There is a feat for that in Epic Level Handbook, Master Staff.

The feat allows you to trigger spells stored inside a staff using one of your own spell slots instead of a charge from the staff. The slot must have at least the same level as the spell from the staff, but does not need to be the same spell (obviously) or indeed even the same kind of spell ist – you can trigger a sorcerer/wizard spell with a divine spell slot.

Compared to adding more charges, the main disadvantage of this method is that it does not give you more uses of staff functions that are not the direct equivalent of a spell. (The feat description gives the Staff of Power’s ability to double melee damage as an example.)

There’s a similar feat for wands, Master Wand. And Lost Empires of Faerûn contains a single feat that covers both staves and wands, Channel Charge. However, that feat is inferior IMHO because it requires you to use a spell slot one level higher than the spell you want to trigger. (And it requires a Use Magic Device check, but that should be an automatic success at epic levels.)

[Kraken]

If Dragon is on the table, Dragon 338 has the recharge staff feat. First, a wizard needs to give up their familiar at first level in exchange for an ACF that gets them a staff. Then you need to take craft staff to enchant said staff with spells (craft staff is also a pre req for recharge staff). Then, once you finally get the recharge staff feat, it allows you to expend unused spell slots for the day to recharge your staff, at a rate of one charge per five spell levels. Yes, that means if a staff has a level 6-9 spell in it that costs 1 charge, you can expend a 5th level spell to get a charge back to cast that spell. Also great if you make your staff have spells with expensive material components that you want to spam regularly. Edit: the enchant staff feat is also worth mentioning. Requires the imbued staff ACF as recharge staff does, but when you take enchant staff you choose a spell one level lower than the highest level you can cast (yes, earth spell and similar shenanigans are applicable here). You may cast that spell as an SLA once a day as a standard action, and it functions as if you had cast it yourself. So at the cost of a feat and 100*spell level GP in a ritual, pick a spell that has a casting time of longer than a standard action, expensive material component or focus, and/or a high exp cost. You can now use it once a day for free as a standard action. The feat can be taken multiple times to add a selection of different spells, but it can't be applied to the same spell more than once for multiple uses of the same spell in a day.

[Chronos]

There are also Runestaves, which are non-epic items which are powered by your own spell slots (up to 3 times per day, IIRC).

[Mr Adventurer]

Here's what I'd like to do:

Staff of Power (211,000gp)
Add Rod of Absorption power (75,000gp)
Squint a bit to make Absorption power work on staff charges as well as your spells
Make staff an intelligent item so it can count its own charges and let you know what the score is (~4000gp and up).

Eat your heart out, Staff of the Magi!