Crafting a very specific, very powerful Staff

[Jowgen]

Magic Staffs come with 2 exploitable features: a) you can use your own CL/ability scores to determine the spell's effects, and b) via the use of things like Channel Charge you can use them without expending charges.

This makes them great for casters who have come into riddiculous casting numbers, and can serve as a way to cast expensive spells at no cost.

I want to design a staff that is geared towards exploiting the second thing.

The creation of this staff is going to be a massive upfront investment in terms of both GP and Exp, but once done it will last forever if no one is dumb enough to actually expend its charges. Eventually, with enough use, we will start seeing returns.

We're disregarding the thematic-spell-connection clause and custom item DM approval rules for now, but to keep things interesting, we'll be limiting to 6th to 8th level spells. So no Wish et al (and please no Sanctum spell), but Limited Wish is fair game, taking care of any 5th level or lower spells.

For funsies, lets assume said Staff is wielded by the Channel Charging immortal Sorcerer King, who uses it for the prosperity of his Sorcerous Kingdom that will last a thousand years. Let's call him... Hainz.

So some spells that immediately come to mind for inclusion in the Staff of Hainz.

True Creation: Hainz now has all the raw materials for stuff he could ever want, for unlimited profit.
Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos: Hainz now freely shuffles the feats of his loyal servants about for great profit.
Create Greater Undead: Hainz can now make any number of powerful undead minions... Death Knights or whatever.
Nar Fiendbond: Hainz can now turn humanoids into Half-Fiends.
Vile Death: Hainz can also make his Undeads into Fiendish Undead.
Resurrection: Hainz has the power to bring people back from the dead.
Revive Outsider: Hainz's power over life and death extends to Fiends, Angels and all them folks now.
Greater Restoration: Hainz is a benevolent ruler who can fix virtually any malady plaguing his citizens.
Vision: Hainz is now possessed of unfathomable knowledge.
Simulcarum: Hainz can now have decoys of his wander about and handle trivial matters.
Limited Wish: for all our 6th level Sorc/Wiz and other 5th level or lower spell needs (e.g. Revive Undead)


So, any ideas on this?

[Doctor Despair]

For funsies, lets assume said Staff is wielded by the Channel Charging immortal Sorcerer King, who uses it for the prosperity of his Sorcerous Kingdom that will last a thousand years. Let's call him... Hainz.

So some spells that immediately come to mind for inclusion in the Staff of Hainz.


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[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you succeed, you can sacrifice a spell slot or prepared spell instead of using a charge. The spell slot or spell sacrificed must be one level higher than the level of the desired effect from the item.

You'll need to have 10th level spell slots or spells that count as 10th level while prepared to use Channel Charge to cast a 9th level spell from the staff. Something like Sanctum Spell or Earth Spell only modifies the spell's effective level when it's cast, not while it's prepared or sitting as an unused spell slot, so neither will work to enable this. You would basically need to use circle magic to heighten some of your prepared spells to 10th level, so you would actually be better off doing this on a Wizard.

[Jowgen]

You'll need to have 10th level spell slots or spells that count as 10th level while prepared to use Channel Charge to cast a 9th level spell from the staff. Something like Sanctum Spell or Earth Spell only modifies the spell's effective level when it's cast, not while it's prepared or sitting as an unused spell slot, so neither will work to enable this. You would basically need to use circle magic to heighten some of your prepared spells to 10th level, so you would actually be better off doing this on a Wizard.

That be part of the reason I thought to limit this to 8th level spells max; i.e. avoiding the whole 9th level channel charge thing.

[JeminiZero]

Animate Dread Warrior always gets mentioned for Spellstitched Undead.

[Jowgen]

Animate Dread Warrior always gets mentioned for Spellstitched Undead.

As a 6th level Sorc/Wiz spell, luckily duplicateable with Limited Wish.

Though this does bring up the slightly irksome issue of how much extra gp/exp you have to expend when crafting a spell trigger/completion item of a spell with a variable extra component cost. Though that is mitigated by how, as far as I can tell, we can make a spell take up as many charges as we want and with that reduce how many instance of material component we need to pay (though I think the overall price reduction only applies once?).

If all the expensive spells take 50 charges to use, we don't have to multiply component cost (and somehow draining 1 charge then safeguards the thing against unforseen triggering).

[TheCount]

Move Earth is handy.

[Jowgen]

Thanks to Saintheart's Excellent Quarterstaff Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?595141-A-Hand-of-Staves-Options-for-Players-and-DMs-using-the-Quarterstaff), I have now become aware of this (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041221a).

By requiring 50 chargest for each spell and draining a sinlg e charge with Siphon, we can not only keep the additional component material cost down to the equivlanet of a single casting and prevent charges being used by non-channel-chargers, but we devide the cost for each spell by 50.


So our cost formula now is:

375*8*17*0.02 + 281.25*8*17*0.02 + (n8-2)*187.5*8*17+0.02 + (n7)*187.5*7*17+0.02 + (n7)*187.5*6*17+0.02 + spell material cost

EDIT: Preliminary calculations have come back with some rather startlingly low numbers. Using a CL of 20 for the Staff of Hainz the prices for the addtion of a given spell come back as follows:

8th level top spell (e.g. True Creation): 1200 gp and 96
8th level 2nd spell (e.g. Shun tDC): 900 gp and 72 xp
Any other 8th Level spell: 600 gp and 48 xp
Any 7th level spell: 525 gp and 42 xp
Any 6th level spell: 450 gp and 36 xp


Current selection of spells doesn't even break 10k in gold or 800 xp in crafting cost. The vast majority of our eventual cost is going to come from having to expend the GP and Xp for each spell we wish to include once, which accridng to the Creating Magic Items article, is going to be set to what we want to be the maximum capacity of a variable cost spell to be in the future (e.g. 5000 XP if we want True Creation able to make 10k gp items in the future).

It is SO cost effective. As expected of Hainz-sama


Move Earth is handy.

I suppose the Staff of Hainz doesn't have to be exclusively expensive spells. Some utility options are probably indeed prudent.

Move Earth for creating great Underground Tombs seems like a good fit indeed.

Also, Greater Plane Shift and Greater Planar Binding probably ought to be in there.