A staff is a long shaft of wood that stores several spells. Unlike wands, which can contain a wide variety of spells, each staff is of a certain kind and holds specific spells. A staff has 50 charges when created.
Staff Basics
Physical Description
A typical staff measures anywhere from 4 feet to 7 feet long and 2 inches to 3 inches thick, weighing about 5 pounds. Most staffs are wood, but a few are made from exotic materials such as bone, metal, or even glass. A staff often has a gem or some device at its tip or is shod in metal at one or both ends. Staffs are often decorated with carvings or runes. A typical staff functions as a walking stick, quarterstaff, or cudgel. It has AC 7, 10 hit points, hardness 5, and a break DC of 24.
Special Qualities
Roll d%. A 01-30 result indicates that something (a design, inscription, or the like) provides some clue to the staff’s function, and 31-100 indicates no special qualities in its appearance.
Activation
Staffs use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a staff uses the same action as it does to cast the spell normally and doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. To activate a staff, a character must hold it forth in at least one hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures).
Staffs use the wielder’s ability score and relevant feats and abilities to set the DC for saves against their spells. Unlike with other sorts of magic items, the wielder can use his caster level when activating the power of a staff if it’s higher than the caster level of the staff.
This means that staffs are far more potent in the hands of a powerful spellcaster. Because they use the wielder’s ability score to set the save DC for the spell, spells from a staff are often harder to resist than ones from other magic items, which use the minimum ability score required to cast the spell. Not only are aspects of the spell dependent on caster level (range, duration, and so on) potentially higher, but spells from a staff are harder to dispel and have a better chance of overcoming a target’s spell resistance.
A staff can hold a spell of any level. The minimum caster level of a staff is 8th.
Recharging Staffs
A staff holds 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.