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Post by Kayse on Jul 3, 2015 12:52:13 GMT -7
The current ruling is that you can not make generic staves using the formula here. That only the specific staves listed here can be created. With all due respect, but this ruling is unnecessarily stricter than the similiar reading of Craft Magic Arms and Armor rules, which allows the creation of both generic magic weapons and armor AND the creation of specific magic weapons and specific magic armor. And seems to ignore the feats: Create Potion, Create Wand and Scribe Scroll, which have almost zero printed items and can only create generic magic items which reproduce spell effects. As well, currently, DG allows a mage to recharge 4 charges to staffs per real world day without spending a downtime day. ------- I would suggest allowing for the creation of generic staffs, but with the following caveats/changes. 1st: In order to recharge a staff, the character must spend a downtime day (reflecting the opportunity cost of pouring some of a mage's likely highest level spells into an item), which allows the character to fill up to four charges into staffs that they could recharge. Even if you have the ability to recharge staves through alternate means (such as from Staff Magus' 'Staff Weapon' class ability), you are limited to recharging 4 charges to staffs, much like the DG rules for scribing spells. 2nd: The most charges that a spell in a generic staff can consume to produce a spell is 4. Printed staffs which exceed this charge cost remain as printed. Since in DG, recharging a staff is relatively cheap (costing a downtime day in my rules or happing passively in the current rules), creating a staff which has a high level spell but takes 10 charges to activate would be a bargain. My rule would create a real opportunity cost for having high charge spells and caps it as a limit which is reasonable (and matches most of the printed staves). 3rd: A staff may be upgraded (by adding new spells or increasing the caster level) by paying the cost difference between the two versions of the staff. This allows a staff to be upgraded as the character progresses in the same fashion as a magic weapon or a magic armor. 4th: The caster level of the staff cannot be higher than the lowest caster level of any spells used in its creation. This limits a CL 11 Crafter to a max staff of CL 15 (by paying a CL 15 NPC mage to provide all of the spells). If you upgrade the caster level of a staff via rule 3, you must resupply every spell at the new caster level. (I think this is how RAW staffs are meant to be, but I'm restating it here). 5th: If a spell on a custom staff uses a number of charges other than 1, there must be a spell on the staff that uses one less charge to cost. In addition, 0th and 1st level spells may not require more than one charge to activate. For example, if someone wants a staff with a spell with 4 charges, they must have 3 other spells on the staff: a spell of at least 2nd level that uses 3 charges, a spell of at least 2nd level that uses 2 charges and a spell that uses 1 charge. ((This is to try to encourage the building of staffs like how most of the printed staffs are build, with a mix of high charge, high level spells and lower level spells with lower charge costs, and a ramp down between the two. This is actually stricter than the printed staffs, in order to try to 'pay' for the privilege of picking the spells.)) 6th: All spells on a custom staff uses the formula: 800 gp * Caster Level * Spell Level. Custom staffs no longer use the 600gp and 400gp base for 2nd and additional spells. ((SaintYin, this seems to be why you used a staff that had 10 spells on it for your spell ratios, to try to get a staff that uses 80% weighted average of the least cost formula. I suggest removing that 'exploit' to try to make it hopefully better balanced.)) 7th: Custom staffs can only hold a maximum of 5 charges. ((Saint Yin and tkul both raised how many times that staffs could be used in a session as the second largest objection after cost discounts. I would suggest lowing the maximum charges in order that custom staffs should not heavily extend the endurance of the party. This has the side effect of making the high charge spells effectively 1 per session, turning theoretical penalty of having high charge cost on a spell into one that matters every session)). |
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Post by SaintYin on Jul 3, 2015 13:25:05 GMT -7
Custom magic items are disallowed to prevent abuse.
And they cannot mix. Specific armor or weapons cannot be upgraded even if it states "as a +1 weapon". "Custom" weapons or armor have a limited scope of effects, and as a result, are easy to consider the best or worst case scenario from a player gaining such items.
Staves have access to over 1200 different spells, all with different effects and arguably more or less power creep dependent on the spell(s) selected. Comparing the potential customization of staves with the current iteration of arms/armor is not a good strategy.
Create Potion has a limited scope, is single-use, and cannot use a large portion of spells within its scope due to the targeting requirements.
Create Wand has a limited scope, can only use one spell at a time, and burns out once all charges are consumed.
Scribe Scroll is single-use and is generally cost-inefficient to alternatives after a certain caster level/spell level ratio.
The problem with Custom Staves is that it falls into the same area as custom traps. While there would be a lot more use out of the ability if custom stuff was allowed for it, the range and utility gained breaks the game when an optimizer gets their hands on it. In addition, the exclusive nature of recharging staves means only spellcasters would truly benefit from increasing staff options, and they really don't need it. As to your suggestions, they're decent balancing factors if custom staves were allowed, but I'd still rather see it opened to more general usage instead of wanting another caster-only boon.
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Post by Kayse on Jul 3, 2015 14:20:42 GMT -7
Custom magic items are disallowed to prevent abuse. And they cannot mix. Specific armor or weapons cannot be upgraded even if it states "as a +1 weapon". "Custom" weapons or armor have a limited scope of effects, and as a result, are easy to consider the best or worst case scenario from a player gaining such items. Staves have access to over 1200 different spells, all with different effects and arguably more or less power creep dependent on the spell(s) selected. Comparing the potential customization of staves with the current iteration of arms/armor is not a good strategy. Sorry if my post wasn't clear, but I don't think specific staffs should be mixed with custom staffs. The intent of my suggestion was to allow generic staffs at all. If there is a spell that is broken, it is broken regardless of if it is in a staff, a wand, a scroll or cast from a spellcaster. In that case, ban THAT spell. Don't nerf staves into uselessness just because some spell somewhere might be broken. Generic staffs are banned under the rule of "Only printed magic items can be crafted." yet we don't apply that rule to Magic Weapons, Magic Armor, potions, wands, scrolls or magic tattoos. Create Potion has a limited scope, is single-use, and cannot use a large portion of spells within its scope due to the targeting requirements. Create Wand has a limited scope, can only use one spell at a time, and burns out once all charges are consumed. Scribe Scroll is single-use and is generally cost-inefficient to alternatives after a certain caster level/spell level ratio. DG currently allows the False Priest sorcerer archetype, meaning that anything that a staff can potentially do, a False Priest can already do cheaper (at the cost of a higher spell slot) with a scroll, an unlimited number of times. If the recharging portion is what is broken, then the current state of staffs is worse, since staffs recharge at a rate of 4 charges per real day, at no cost to the users (not even a downtime day). My suggestion /fixes/ that, making all staffs more balances in DG, since they don't passively recharge between games. Downtime days have value for casters, so this makes the recharging of a staff have a cost. The problem with Custom Staves is that it falls into the same area as custom traps. While there would be a lot more use out of the ability if custom stuff was allowed for it, the range and utility gained breaks the game when an optimizer gets their hands on it. In addition, the exclusive nature of recharging staves means only spellcasters would truly benefit from increasing staff options, and they really don't need it. As to your suggestions, they're decent balancing factors if custom staves were allowed, but I'd still rather see it opened to more general usage instead of wanting another caster-only boon. Any character with Use Magic Device or with access to a spell can use a staff. This would help paladins and rangers get access to spells that clerics and druids can already use. Or allow bards or magi *cough* a chance to pay to perform some of the roles that wizards have been doing for several levels for free, such as having emergency dispel magics or such. Would you please give me an example of something broken that an optimizer could do with my suggested restrictions on staffs? I am open to add further restrictions to block loopholes, to prevent such broken staffs while allowing magic staffs to be a decent set of magic items. In my opinion, the current version of staffs are too costly and too strong. In DG, they recharge without hindering the character using them in any way, since you can always say that you recharged it 'off screen' and without costing any downtime time. And too costly, since you will often have to buy a printed staff with extra spells that you don't want but must pay for. |
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tkul
Death Knight
Banned
Posts: 406 
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Post by tkul on Jul 3, 2015 20:34:49 GMT -7
Current staves are hindered by being horribly suboptimal and ridiculously expensive. lets look at the staff you used an example in IRC, one that just casts Teleport, lets say it costs 2 charges per casting, that's 5 Teleports off of one staff. That completely frees up those 5th level slots that casters were having to devote just to moving around which correspondingly increases their combat and utility power due to the opened slots, and that's a very lackluster spell to put on there.
Lets put Fireball on that staff, also at 2 charges a pop, that's 5 Fireballs per session on top of whatever else they have for the low low price of 3000 GP, and unlike Wands, which burn up and die once you use them up, this staff will be ready to go every session and, also unlike the wand, it'll grow with the wielder since it uses their stats to effect the spell.
Lets go with the magus favorite of Intensified Shocking Grasp. We'll go ahead and make that assuming the intensified metamagic feat's cost isn't waived, even though every magus will have the talents to do so, That's 1200GP for 10 extra intensified shocking grasps every session. heck lets do one better and make that Snowball so it's useful to people that aren't maguses, same price 10 extra ranged touch spells per session that ignore SR and Stagger the target.
Again these aren't even extreme examples, these are very basic ones but they highlight the kinds of shenanigans that you can get up to if you're able to make whatever Staff you want. Everyone agrees the printed staves are god awful, but they're only god awful because the combinations of spells they put on them are suboptimal, but even as written they can still give you a surprising amount of versatility.
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Post by SaintYin on Jul 4, 2015 0:39:38 GMT -7
On custom staves:Staves are effectively pages of spell knowledge, runes, or some other equivalent to giving a spellcaster +1 uses of a spell. I ran the numbers here, and as expected, the staff is notably higher value than the page of spell knowledge. Even first-level spells are more cost efficient via custom staves, and it has the worst ratio of the set. As Tkul has mentioned, it's more about the utility added and not the specific power of any one spell. Casters with a custom staff can now prepare other spells, or they don't have to worry about utility spells that aren't used that often because they have a staff for that. Wands and potions still have an upper level limit, and scrolls still get consumed on use and thus aren't the most effective/efficient use of economy. Optimizers would simply pair together relevant spells to milk more value out of staves compared to spell pages. Due to the wording for staves, I'd like to additionally point out the abuse that can occur by crafting a staff with spells on both the divine and arcane lists. It means that since a caster has one of the spells on their list, they can activate any of the spells on the staff using their own caster level as applicable. On downtime:While the downtime day requirement is a slight nerf to staff viability, what is the real opportunity cost associated with giving up a downtime day? As a caster, it's at most 150 gold by crafting for someone else. For a non-caster to recharge a staff, they'd need to spend either scrolls or hire a spellcaster. The scrolls are more costly, and getting a spellcaster to cast 4 2nd level spells ends up being 240 gold. Basically, the downtime requirement, while useful, is not enough to truly offset the boons granted by custom staves.
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Post by Kayse on Jul 4, 2015 8:05:06 GMT -7
Current staves are hindered by being horribly suboptimal and ridiculously expensive. lets look at the staff you used an example in IRC, one that just casts Teleport, lets say it costs 2 charges per casting, that's 5 Teleports off of one staff. That completely frees up those 5th level slots that casters were having to devote just to moving around which correspondingly increases their combat and utility power due to the opened slots, and that's a very lackluster spell to put on there. Lets put Fireball on that staff, also at 2 charges a pop, that's 5 Fireballs per session on top of whatever else they have for the low low price of 3000 GP, and unlike Wands, which burn up and die once you use them up, this staff will be ready to go every session and, also unlike the wand, it'll grow with the wielder since it uses their stats to effect the spell. A) All of your numbers are incorrect. You assume that it is possible to make a staff with any caster level. Staffs must have a minimum caster level of 8, per the rules. The caster level of all spells in a staff must be the same, and no staff can have a caster level of less than 8th, even if all the spells in the staff are low-level spells. This makes your 2 Charge Fireball staff cost (to make) 4800gp instead of 3000gp. Or a base value of 9600gp (since the formula for staffs is to determine the cost of the crafting at 50%, not for the base value). And under my rules, it costs a downtime day to recover two fireballs (4 charges). Assuming that the caster has an item creation feat, that's a day that they aren't crafting and is costing them, say, 400gp in missed profit to place two charges back into the staff. A scroll of fireball costs 375gp; so this would make make staffs have both an initial cost and an opportunity cost to recharge. For your fireball staff, it's compare it to the printed Ember Staff. The Ember staff will cost three times as much, but will recharge between sessions without any effort from the player. It just passively regains 4 charges per day, on top of any other downtime actions that the player can do. So every game, the players will almost certainly have 2 fireballs to throw around or 5 Scorching Rays. Whereas for my rules, sure they can throw two fireballs, but it'll cost them two downtime days afterwards to recharge the staff and until then, they have a mostly useless club. Lets go with the magus favorite of Intensified Shocking Grasp. We'll go ahead and make that assuming the intensified metamagic feat's cost isn't waived, even though every magus will have the talents to do so, That's 1200GP for 10 extra intensified shocking grasps every session. heck lets do one better and make that Snowball so it's useful to people that aren't maguses, same price 10 extra ranged touch spells per session that ignore SR and Stagger the target. Again these aren't even extreme examples, these are very basic ones but they highlight the kinds of shenanigans that you can get up to if you're able to make whatever Staff you want. Everyone agrees the printed staves are god awful, but they're only god awful because the combinations of spells they put on them are suboptimal, but even as written they can still give you a surprising amount of versatility. B) The rules already do not allow the storing of metamagic feats onto staff: C) Your staff of shocking grasp cannot use the player's traits to reduce the metamagic slot increase of a spell. I'm not sure where you're getting this from. D) The minimum caster level of a staff is still 8, so your staff of a hypothetical 2nd level spell would cost to make 6400gp (2nd level spell * 8 CL * 400gp), aka a base value of 12,800gp. I'm not even sure how you got 1200gp (1st level spell * 3 CL * 400?), since you explicitly said that you were not waiving the metamagic cost. E) As an aside, not every magus has Magic Lineage shocking grasp. Heck, some don't even use scimitars.  F) The base price for a staff of snowball (1 charge) is 6400gp. The minimum caster level is still 8. Sorry for keeping repeating this, but you keep making this mistake and you keep citing biggest evidence as how staffs are broken with the price of low level spells on a staff. For 6400gp, you could buy 6x 1st level Pearls of Power, which could regain any 1st level spell, not just snowball and wouldn't take downtime days to recover afterwards. |
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Post by Kayse on Jul 4, 2015 9:02:04 GMT -7
On custom staves:Staves are effectively pages of spell knowledge, runes, or some other equivalent to giving a spellcaster +1 uses of a spell. I ran the numbers here, and as expected, the staff is notably higher value than the page of spell knowledge. Even first-level spells are more cost efficient via custom staves, and it has the worst ratio of the set. As Tkul has mentioned, it's more about the utility added and not the specific power of any one spell. Casters with a custom staff can now prepare other spells, or they don't have to worry about utility spells that aren't used that often because they have a staff for that. Wands and potions still have an upper level limit, and scrolls still get consumed on use and thus aren't the most effective/efficient use of economy. Optimizers would simply pair together relevant spells to milk more value out of staves compared to spell pages. Due to the wording for staves, I'd like to additionally point out the abuse that can occur by crafting a staff with spells on both the divine and arcane lists. It means that since a caster has one of the spells on their list, they can activate any of the spells on the staff using their own caster level as applicable. On downtime:While the downtime day requirement is a slight nerf to staff viability, what is the real opportunity cost associated with giving up a downtime day? As a caster, it's at most 150 gold by crafting for someone else. For a non-caster to recharge a staff, they'd need to spend either scrolls or hire a spellcaster. The scrolls are more costly, and getting a spellcaster to cast 4 2nd level spells ends up being 240 gold. Basically, the downtime requirement, while useful, is not enough to truly offset the boons granted by custom staves. " Spell trigger items can be used by anyone whose class can cast the corresponding spell." (underlining mine) I would take that to mean that if you want to use a spell from a staff, you either need it on your spell list OR to make a UMD check. That seems to be on a spell by spell basis, not on a per item basis. It doesn't seem to matter that the staff also has, say, Detect Magic magic on it, if you're trying to use Cure Light Wounds (or whatever). When you use the staff for Cure Light Wounds, that is the spell that must be on your spell list to use it. If you would like, I can add "you must have a spell on your spell list to use it from a staff, even if there are other spells on the staff are on your spell list" to my suggested restrictions. I hadn't done so because my reading of the rule already took it as true. Ok, it took me a while to understand your spreadsheet. You seem to be comparing staffs with 10 spells of the same level to the ratio of a wonderous item that recharges spell (like a pearl of power). So for a 1st level spell, your staff seems to have 1 spell at 400gp*1*8, 1 spell at 300gp*1*8 and 8 spells at 200gp*1*8, for a total material cost of 18400gp or a base price of 36,800gp. Your logic appears to be "10 more spells known, 10 more spell slots". ((Sorry, your formulas are all in material cost, rather than base price, so I will be switching to base price, since DG is based on a 70%/80% of Base Price standard.)) You're comparing this to 10x pearls of power, for a base price of 1000gp x 10 or 10,000gp and are somehow claiming that the staff is more efficient. I'm not sure how you're coming to that conclusion, since your own table for 1st, 2nd and 3rd level comparison (starting at C23) seems to give the advantage to the wondrous items . For first level spells, you could even have a sorcerer with ten different spell pages (10,000gp) and ten runestones of power (20,000gp) and be cheaper than your 'broken' staff of ten 1st level spells (36,800gp). Not to mention, by the time you can afford any of these things, you are likely past the point where 1st level spells should be mattering. Even at 4th level spells and above (basically past the point where the minimum CL of 8 stops being a limit), on your very own spreadsheet, the price difference seems to be about a 12.5% price advantage for staffs. Which isn't broken. Staffs can ONLY work as spell triggers, where as Wonderous Items can be used for so much more. Considering that the difference buying an item from a PC crafter and crafting it yourself is also a 12.5% price advantage, per your own spreadsheet, it would be roughly equal for someone to be a wonderous item crafter and make the pearls/spellpages/whatever for themselves than to buy your "broken" staffs from another PC crafter. AND they would have the feat that allows them to craft the largest variety of magic items in the game as a "secondary" benefit. In addition, everything that staffs can apparently do to break the game (spend GP for extra spells so that casters have more utility), you can already do with scrolls. For the price of a 4th level spell staff (25,600gp base), a thirfty caster could buy 18 different 4th level scrolls for emergencies and keep using their spell slots for the spells that they want to cast every session. Yet no one is screaming to ban scrolls. And honestly, if a caster is focusing on a spell enough to put it in a staff, they likely want to keep a copy of it prepared in memory (or on their spells known), just in case they get disarmed (since casters have that great CMD vs disarms and all) or separated from their staff (such as via stun). |
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Post by SaintYin on Jul 4, 2015 10:24:15 GMT -7
10 pearls of power still require those 10 spells to be on your prepared spell list. 10 spells on a staff means none of those spells need to be on your prepared or known spells list any more. If you can't understand how that is more powerful, then there's no point in continuing this conversation. First level spells are nothing for casters and not the focus of where the power creep begins, but I am pointing out that if a caster had to choose between 10 castings of 2 spells and 10 pages/pearls to do the same thing, the staff blows it out of the water.
By using the absolute worst case scenario through sticking 10 spells on one staff, it only took 3 spell levels before a staff became more cost efficient, and that was ignoring further optimization that could be done through making the casting cost 2-4 charges instead. Using actual optimization, I'd probably just stick teleport or emergency force sphere on a staff and call it a day. Or I'd make a staff with 2-3 offensive spells so I could use my own slots to prep more utility. Or I'd use a staff with 10 higher level utility spells because it gives me up to 10 uses of 10 corner case spells that'd only be eating a prepared spell slot.
And for the last time, scrolls are sunk gold. The scrolls are burned on use. The scrolls have a set caster level. The scrolls use minimum attribute to set the DC. The scrolls cannot be resold once the caster finds a better use for them, or recharged indefinitely to get more than 18 uses out of it.
Staves can. This custom staves suggestion is essentially asking for casters to get another, more powerful pearl of power, and I disagree with that being needed in the game at this time.
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Post by Kayse on Jul 4, 2015 13:10:55 GMT -7
10 pearls of power still require those 10 spells to be on your prepared spell list. 10 spells on a staff means none of those spells need to be on your prepared or known spells list any more. If you can't understand how that is more powerful, then there's no point in continuing this conversation. First level spells are nothing for casters and not the focus of where the power creep begins, but I am pointing out that if a caster had to choose between 10 castings of 2 spells and 10 pages/pearls to do the same thing, the staff blows it out of the water. By using the absolute worst case scenario through sticking 10 spells on one staff, it only took 3 spell levels before a staff became more cost efficient, and that was ignoring further optimization that could be done through making the casting cost 2-4 charges instead. Using actual optimization, I'd probably just stick teleport or emergency force sphere on a staff and call it a day. Or I'd make a staff with 2-3 offensive spells so I could use my own slots to prep more utility. Or I'd use a staff with 10 higher level utility spells because it gives me up to 10 uses of 10 corner case spells that'd only be eating a prepared spell slot. And for the last time, scrolls are sunk gold. The scrolls are burned on use. The scrolls have a set caster level. The scrolls use minimum attribute to set the DC. The scrolls cannot be resold once the caster finds a better use for them, or recharged indefinitely to get more than 18 uses out of it. Staves can. This custom staves suggestion is essentially asking for casters to get another, more powerful pearl of power, and I disagree with that being needed in the game at this time. You're comparing a hypothetical optimized staff against wonderous items used in the least optimized way. Fine, exploiter wizard with Quick Study and 10 pearls of Power. Now each pearl can either change the spells known (by consuming a spell and regaining it with the pearl) or outright power the spell directly. Or a cracked Vibrant Purple Prism ioun stone to store a first level spell on a non-session day. That's a non-prepared spell, since you can prepare different spells on the sessions. Scrolls are usually sunk gold, but not when used by a False Priest (which DG happily allows). You can use scrolls for abilities which do not rely on caster levels and save your real spell slots for the level dependent, save DC dependent spells. Scrolls and wands are "sunk gold" but Pathfinder's wealth by level assumes that players are spending gold on those "sunk gold" expendable items. They are they cheap (but wasteful) method to do the same thing as staffs (a more expensive with a initial buy in but less wasteful). Just because you personally don't think people use scrolls or wands doesn't mean they aren't an apt comparison to use to compare to staffs. Many characters are willing and happy to use consumable magic items, in the vein of potions, wands and staffs. You may not be, but it is still a valid playstyle. I personally think it is a valid comparision to compare a consumable wand or scroll to a staff, since they are the closest RAW comparison in some fairly common use-cases (using low levels spells repetitively and emergency high level spells, respectfully). You claim that staffs were better for all spell levels, I used your own numbers to so that it wasn't and now you're moving the goal posts to say that now it's only broken for higher level spell. And now you're claiming that your numbers were purposely bad for staffs. I'm trying to see where you're coming from. You gave me a mostly unlabeled spreadsheet and I'm presenting how I don't think it's reasonable and how I don't think your own numbers are showing that staffs are "broken" and now you're changing the assumptions that your spreadsheet was based on and saying With all due respect, YOU made the comparison between spellpages or pearls to staffs, I tried to speak to your comparison and now you are insulting me for how bad of a comparison they are to each other. I cannot meaningful discuss if staffs are balanced with the other magic items if you keep changing the means that we are comparing them to each other and insulting me with each switch. Yes, staffs are better than wands in certain comparisions (caster level, save DCs, able to recharge), because they are the more expensive upgrade from wands. And wands are better than staffs in other comparisons (for cheap low level spells which do not need save DCs or caster levels, such as Shield, Mage Armor, Cure Light Wounds, Lesser Restoration, ect) Yes, staffs are better than scrolls in particular comparisons (caster level, save DCs, able to be recharged), but scrolls are better in certain other comparisons (when you do not plan on casting a spell more than 18 times ever, when the spell does not need a high caster level or save DC, or if you are a False Priest) Yes, staffs are better than pearls of power in certain cases (when you sometimes need to cast the same spell a large number of times, but only very rarely) but they are worse in others (when you only need a second cast of a spell and you're not sure which spell it will be. Or you are an exploiter wizard). In all cases there are pros and cons for each type of magic item. If you have a specific exploit that staffs can enable, I would love to hear it and try to block that loophole. However, most of your critiques seem to boil down to "I don't want generic staffs because casters use staffs". I'm sorry. I'm not sure that I can block the exploit that casters use staffs. Maybe you can suggest that any means of regaining spells or adding spells known can be blocked, including from wonderous items or staffs. If you would like to suggest a different conversation rate for downtime days to recharging staff slots, we can discuss that. Or if you think the max charges for a spell in a staff should be a different number than 4, we can discuss that as well. Or if you would like to add a way for non-casters to recharge a staff by spending a downday, I would love to hear it. |
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Post by SaintYin on Jul 4, 2015 18:40:04 GMT -7
A false priest can get 1 additional use out of a limited-use spell by sacrificing a spell slot one higher at the time of using it after 10th level. It's grossly inefficient for action economy purposes with a heavy feat investment just to help with the action economy requirements. It is an extremely poor comparison toward allowing custom staves, as even members of this group would benefit more by having a staff over a consumable item.
An arcanist/wizard with quick study is a corner case to casters at large that still vastly benefits by having a spell castable 5-10 times per day without impacting their spell pool at half the cost of 5-10 spell pages/pearls. If action economy is not a problem, I'd have to agree that a pearl is probably worth slightly more to a class that can consume spell levels for a larger pool. Regardless, this is an poor example for the argument toward allowing custom staves.
My comparison showed the basic ratio and you immediately skewed the results by comparing only 1st level spells in a worst case scenario for the cost efficiency at early levels and 9th level spells for the cost difference after the 4th spell level swapping point, and went on further to incorrectly state the percentage savings was 12.5% when the range of savings from 4th to 9th was 20% to 14%.
The sheet's design is sufficient as long as you understand the mechanics of staves at large for the purposes of this discussion, which is part of why I'm not too surprised that you managed to misrepresent the information collected. To confirm, I'm not insulting you; I'm dismissing your argument as faulty and based on nothing but hot air. As with all decent calculations, the best and worst case scenarios were shown (staff with 1 spell versus 10 pearls, staff with 10 spells versus 10 pearls). The fact that a staff with 10 spells is cheaper than 10 pearls after 4th level should be something of a warning sign, since that is the absolute worst case for the staff.
To be quite frank, your misuse of the calculations made has been insulting to me.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on Jul 4, 2015 21:20:29 GMT -7
Lets keep it civil, at least.
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Post by Kayse on Jul 6, 2015 7:50:36 GMT -7
A false priest can get 1 additional use out of a limited-use spell by sacrificing a spell slot one higher at the time of using it after 10th level. It's grossly inefficient for action economy purposes with a heavy feat investment just to help with the action economy requirements. It is an extremely poor comparison toward allowing custom staves, as even members of this group would benefit more by having a staff over a consumable item. An arcanist/wizard with quick study is a corner case to casters at large that still vastly benefits by having a spell castable 5-10 times per day without impacting their spell pool at half the cost of 5-10 spell pages/pearls. If action economy is not a problem, I'd have to agree that a pearl is probably worth slightly more to a class that can consume spell levels for a larger pool. Regardless, this is an poor example for the argument toward allowing custom staves. My comparison showed the basic ratio and you immediately skewed the results by comparing only 1st level spells in a worst case scenario for the cost efficiency at early levels and 9th level spells for the cost difference after the 4th spell level swapping point, and went on further to incorrectly state the percentage savings was 12.5% when the range of savings from 4th to 9th was 20% to 14%. The sheet's design is sufficient as long as you understand the mechanics of staves at large for the purposes of this discussion, which is part of why I'm not too surprised that you managed to misrepresent the information collected. To confirm, I'm not insulting you; I'm dismissing your argument as faulty and based on nothing but hot air. As with all decent calculations, the best and worst case scenarios were shown (staff with 1 spell versus 10 pearls, staff with 10 spells versus 10 pearls). The fact that a staff with 10 spells is cheaper than 10 pearls after 4th level should be something of a warning sign, since that is the absolute worst case for the staff. To be quite frank, your misuse of the calculations made has been insulting to me. Ok, looking at your delta numbers, it seems that we're calculating savings differently. I'm calculating it as "Savings = Difference in Price/more expensive price" and you are calculating it as "Savings = Difference in Price/least expensive price". So for 5th level spells, I would get a 17.2% savings and you were getting a 20.7% savings when we compared a 103500gp material cost to a 125000gp material cost option. To explain where I pulled the 12.5% number from: My 12.5% was not the result of purpose skewing. I assumed the ratio was stabilizing at higher numbers (effectively taking the price as a limit as spell level approaches infinity), looked at the 9th level numbers and noticed that the ratio seemed to be roughly 7:8 (or 350,000gp to 400,000gp). My bad, I was truncating the numbers to 2 significant figures to make them easier to compare. A more accurate number (using my definition of savings) would be 13.1% for the actual numbers (351.900gp to 405,000gp). --- If I may, the crux of the issue seems to be the worry that custom staffs could be made much much cheaper than printed staffs and the secondary issue that 10 charges is a lot of magic to sling around in a session. May I suggest the following additional rules just for the creation of custom staffs? 5th: If a spell on a custom staff uses a number of charges other than 1, there must be a spell on the staff that uses one less charge to cost. In addition, 0th and 1st level spells may not require more than one charge to activate. For example, if someone wants a staff with a spell with 4 charges, they must have 3 other spells on the staff: a spell of at least 2nd level that uses 3 charges, a spell of at least 2nd level that uses 2 charges and a spell that uses 1 charge. ((This is to try to encourage the building of staffs like how most of the printed staffs are build, with a mix of high charge, high level spells and lower level spells with lower charge costs, and a ramp down between the two. This is actually stricter than the printed staffs, in order to try to 'pay' for the privilege of picking the spells.)) 6th: All spells on a custom staff uses the formula: 800 gp * Caster Level * Spell Level. Custom staffs no longer use the 600gp and 400gp base for 2nd and additional spells. ((SaintYin, this seems to be why you used a staff that had 10 spells on it for your spell ratios, to try to get a staff that uses 80% weighted average of the least cost formula. I suggest removing that 'exploit' to try to make it hopefully better balanced.)) 7th: Custom staffs can only hold a maximum of 5 charges. ((Saint Yin and tkul both raised how many times that staffs could be used in a session as the second largest objection after cost discounts. I would suggest lowing the maximum charges in order that custom staffs should not heavily extend the endurance of the party. This has the side effect of making the high charge spells effectively 1 per session, turning theoretical penalty of having high charge cost on a spell into one that matters every session)). --- How's that look?  |
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tkul
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Post by tkul on Jul 6, 2015 11:01:24 GMT -7
Ok, since the point I tried to get across last time was apparently lost I'm going to start with the thesis this time - Custom staves allow for a level of flexibility, and raw throughput that is unmatched by any other object in the game short of artifacts. More importantly, the boost in ability they grant is not on a curve, unlike an incremental item such as stat belts, weapons, or armor, they do not grant a minor steady increase in power, they grant sudden spikes of power that are nearly impossible to compensate for.
Alright going back to what I used in my earlier post, we'll start with the Intensified Snowball staff because it's honestly the throughput spell that makes the most sense for someone to load into a staff. Now, you had stated previously that you can't put metamagic on a staff but that's not actually listed anywhere in the rules, it does however specify the following in the magic item creation guidelines (emphasis mine) -
While item creation costs are handled in detail below, note that normally the two primary factors are the caster level of the creator and the level of the spell or spells put into the item. A creator can create an item at a lower caster level than her own, but never lower than the minimum level needed to cast the needed spell. Using metamagic feats, a caster can place spells in items at a higher level than normal.
We'll take that clause to mean that you can't use your traits to reduce the Metamagic's spell level adjustment just to have the worst case scenario on this staff. That means we're sticking 10 charges, of a 2nd level spell, at caster level 8, for 1 charge per casting. The formula looks like this -
400*2*8 = 6400 *.7 = 4480GP (5120GP if you can't make it for yourself).
This staff can now, fresh off the cart, do 8d6 Cold Damage on a Ranged Touch Attack, with a Fortitude save or staggered with a DC of 11+the activators Int/Cha/Wis(Empyreal Sorcerers)/Con(Scarred Witch Doctors) mod or 12 whichever is higher. 5120GP is easily within the reach of a 3rd level caster if they have a supporting craft skill, or a 4th level character of any class. Any caster that can afford it can recharge it for free, any other character will need to spend 60GP a charge to recharge it, but can recharge it to full in a single day by purchasing spellcasting services.
This is a problem, a staff like this should not exist. You're looking at a 3 or 4th level character showing up with an item that has a near guaranteed 28 damage/round or 280 damage per session (8-48 damage range * 10 charges) ranged touch attack that has a fair to excellent chance of staggering the target each time it hits, and more importantly, this is an item they won't grow out of. Unlike a magic missile or snowball wand that is stuck doing it's level 1 damage for it's entire existence, the staff grows with the user since it feeds off the staff's caster level and minimum casting stat or the users caster level and casting stat to generate it's results. The staff above will continue to grow until it caps out at 10th level and even then an on demand 10d6 snowball is still pretty damn good.
Lets get a little nuttier though, pure damage is generally the worst way to handle an encounter, and why violence will eventually solve any problem it's generally not the most favorable outcome. Lets look at something that has a few more dimensions to it and make a Staff of Greater Invisibility. Now we're looking at -
400*4*8=12800*.7=8960GP (10240GP if you can't make it yourself).
Now my wizard, for example, could afford this staff at level 4 (as of this posting I've accumulated 28,0018GP on him just from downtime income and session reward GP, not including capital or item earnings), but lets say most people can't get this item until 6 or 7. This staff coming out of the gates grants the user the ability to grant unbreakable invisibilty 10 times for 8 rounds each. Combat generally doesn't last more than a minute and the average party size is 5, so that's 2 fights of full invisibilty if you use it on the entire party. At CR 6 there are almost no opponents with the ability to pierce it short of class leveled humanoids. Once you start hitting CR 8 you get a flood of outsiders that can see through it but now you're making it so CR 8 is the default challenge rating for a game with this staff in it, meaning you're either invincible or very dead. This isn't a good or fun swing for anyone, and again this isn't even the craziest thing that could happen with a custom made staff.
Lets kick it up a notch and make death irrelevent in the game. Staff of Breath of Life, Spell Level 5, Caster Level 9, 1 charge per cast.
400*5*9= 18000GP*.7=12600GP (14400GP if you have to buy it).
10 casts per session of Breath of Life, even if no one dies that's 14-49 healing per charge in it's inefficient mode. Even at full market price there will be characters like mine, that can buy two of these by level 6 if they really wanted to, but this is easily in the price range of someone in the level 8-9 range. This one item makes it so death becomes irrelevent, and can function as a fairly decent healing item for normal damage. Now, chances are you're never going to need 10 casts of breath of life, so lets knock that down to 3 charges per cast, or 3 casts per staff, now it's 4200GP (4800GP to buy), back into the range of a level 3-4 character. This helps bridge the weak range for a lot of builds, and is a more potent raw healing item than characters in that range normally have access to. More importantly, by moving this spell off onto a staff, the actual 9th level Cleric can now start preping spells that will move them into a full blaster/controller while maintaining their support role as well. This same aspect travels through all builds, if your evoker no longer needs to memorize phantasmal killer because he can cast it 10 times off a staff for free, why not prep 5 emergency force spheres? Heck he can even prep a staff with dimension door specifically to get out of his EFS once it's cast so he doesn't even have to worry about getting stuck once he pops one. This means Arcanists can Potent magic more because they no longer need to dimensionally slide to get out of their spheres as well.
I'm not going to attempt to find every single way the game could be broken by allowing fully open staff creation, it's probably impossible for one person to find them all, and unlike a home game your GM can't look at what you're doing and say "No that'll ruin the game" because there's over a dozen of us now who are GMing for characters that come at you cold. It's also not worth devoting someone solely to reviewing every single item that gets made to try to find the loopholes and ban the things that could break the game because, again, it's impossible for one person to catch everything. No one enjoys losing or taking things away from people once they have them which leaves us with the status quo, printed staves only. Yes they're inefficient but they still have some pretty cool powers tucked away on them, and they're still effectively infinite as it sits. Staves are an investment, you spend the gold hoping you'll run into enough situations where you can use the staff and make your money back. As written they're not in danger of breaking the game, they're far from useless, and they're definitely not a negative impact, so I'm not seeing any reason they need to changed.
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Post by leary93 on Jul 6, 2015 11:20:46 GMT -7
Im reading this, quite interesting, but tiny note, tkul, its x800, not x400, x400 is at 50% creation cost.
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tkul
Death Knight
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Post by tkul on Jul 6, 2015 11:24:35 GMT -7
Ok even doubling all of those numbers only moves most of the staff examples up one or two levels, and poor Roald can only just barely buy 2 greater invisibility staves.
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Post by leary93 on Jul 6, 2015 13:13:29 GMT -7
Ok even doubling all of those numbers only moves most of the staff examples up one or two levels, and poor Roald can only just barely buy 2 greater invisibility staves. Just wanted to point it out. I read through the stuff a bit and such, and even tho it would be extremely convenient to be able to make your own staves, it's kind of strong in it's current state. And Im not talking about the damage options, because honestly, im running a blaster arcanist, and it's not overpowered, nor would I even benefit much from a staff, but it is going to be powerful with utility spells. Ill elaborate a bit by that comparing "custom" staves to current staves: Damage Staves:As I stated I don't think these are much of a problem, but the current "better" damage staves imo are the Staff of Minor arcana and the Staff of Fire (lower price levels). The reasons for that are the magic missiles and the Fireball. Not only can you downgrade the prices of those staves significantly by allowing Custom staves, respectively from 8000 gold including shield to 3200 with just magic missile, and 18950 gold down to 9600 for just fireballs. Now, this ain't much of a problem, being able to fire off 5 more magic missile barrages or 5 more fireballs a game (if you happen to spend 2.5 downtime days each that is), will just increase the sustainability of the caster a bit more, whereas they usually, at lower levels run out quicker. But, what's my main issue, is that you can get the use of metamagic feats on those spells, without actually having to invest in metamagic, or a rod. Let's look at one of my favorite things to do: Topple Magic missile. Let's put it in at CL 8, and 2nd level spell, and leave it at 2 charges. Now you have a staff of 6400 baseprice, allowing you to fire 5 Toppling magic missiles a day, which usually requires you to either get the feat, costing second level spell slots, or a rod, which costs 3000 gold for 3 uses a day on the magic missiles. That means, you save out on, not getting the rods, 6k, or 5/6 of 6k=5k, Reducing the "effective" price of the staff down to 1.4k gold. That is an effective 2 wands of CL 1 magic missiles. This is quite a bit stronger than that. Hence, the oppertunity cost is a lot less for Staves if you use with metamagic than if you don't. Brings me to my first point: Custom Staves should not allow metamagic spells. Daily Buff Staves:
I am talking about stuff like Mage Armor, Nondetection, Life bubble, Age Resistance, etc... Buffs that last for hours/level. There aren't even that many of those. Damn... Staff of Stealth and Staff of Dark Flame are the only lesser staves I could find just looking for a bit. Nondetection and False life respectively. Tho I do agree these kinds of buff staves are probably better with other stuff in them too, let's simply look at 4 charge staves with these spells in them. False life gives a price of 3200, Nondetection 4800. For casters, they will have the option to actually replace those with Pearl of Power, or a Runestone of power + Spell lattice/Page of spell knowledge etc etc. Now, Im not even going to put down numbers to show what is the better option at higher levels. It is, in my opinion quite clear that daily buff spells are honestly one of the strongest things you could use a staff for. Brings me to my second point: Yes, your charge option is a way to deal with the price. but, tbh, a false life staff for 12800 is still cheaper than an emerald elipsoid. And both can be used by non-casters too. Custom staves should not allow spells with a longer duration than 1 min/level or set durations longer than 30 minutes. Even a simple barkskin lasting 80 minutes is a really strong thing, allowing you to have a neck-slot and saving some money even. Short Buff Staves:
Probably a lot less easy to break, but I'm still going to do it, not looking at custom staves in this case: Haste staff, CL 8, lasts 8 rounds, 3 charges per cast, costs 6400 gold. Buyable at level 3 or 4, depending on how you are on WBL. If you spend some decent downtime, halfway level 3 isn't a bad guess. Some characters CAN UMD that at least somewhat constistently at that level. 8 rounds of haste, 3x a day isn't really "balanced" at lvl 3. Of course, you doing your trick, but simply adding a lvl 1 spell of 2 and 1 charge(s) adds a mere 8k to the price allowing it at lvl 5. This is a partial solution, as you'll still be able to have a non-caster (utility knife/diplo person/whatev you want to make him) to cast spells that should be somewhat limited in their use. Quick draw makes it even worse as it won't even cost you action economy. Granted, it will cost some, but a little bit of downtime investment can easily outwork the cost of it, since you aren't spending your DT reloading the staff. Third point: Well, I don't even know how to fix this. UMD-ing is a thing and such, and to be honest, it's not even the non-caster that would have to provide the staves. If you are a caster, you can easily bring a haste staff with you, and look for someone to use it instead of you. I mean, it'll not work as intended occasionally, but when it does work, it'll break action economy and thus the encounter. And Im not even speaking about the other imbalanced stuff. Pricing is the biggest issue here, but how to fix pricing where it is still reasonable to make the other custom staves. I mean, the whole idea was to make staves be viable right? Lastly, Divine and Arcane mixed Staves:What's worse than UMD-ing a stave to cast spells you normally can't and a caster being able to cast spells with even more flexibility? A caster that can cast spells with more flexibility, UMD spells that are not on his spelllist AND recharge the stave without problems, I think the most broken possibilities lie here. Divine/arcane mixing should simply not be possible at all. Which brings me to my last point: I don't think custom staves are at all doable without missing at least a broken thing possible behind. Tho I really really agree Custom staves should be possible, I do not see how it won't be broken at least somewhere. Maybe there is an option to allow more staves to be designed and such, but in the current state with designing stuff for DG only, is that even a possibly good idea? |
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Post by SaintYin on Jul 6, 2015 13:21:45 GMT -7
I've also been thinking of possible solutions to making staves comparable to alternatives, and I did come to some similar conclusions. Mine was a bit simpler, being:
1) Reduce the maximum number of charges on a custom staff to 5.
2) Change cost from 800*CL*(Spell level) to (Spell level)*(Spell level)*3500.
I believe those two changes would keep it within the same power level as alternatives while having a niche of its own, which is to say it'd grant access to spells without needing them prepared while being cheaper than competitors if the spell is expected to be used multiple times in a day. I believe the charge count reduction is necessary to keep it in line with the amount of resources potentially gained from a single item, and the cost change is necessary to keep it scaled to the same level as competing equipment. A consistent 30% seems like a fair ratio for 5 uses or less of a limited set of spells.
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Post by Kayse on Jul 6, 2015 14:50:20 GMT -7
Tkul, first, the rules already do not allow the creation of a custom staff with metamagic spells (although there are printed staffs that break this rule, I'm taking it as a written rule for custom staffs). You can create metamagic wands just fine, but staffs are NOT on the list of allowed metamagic items. Metamagic feats
That is also not including the fact that per FAQ, metamagic spells use the spell level that is more hindersome to the caster unless otherwise stated, in this case it counts as a 2nd level spell for the purposes of pricing. Second, you keep halving all of the costs for all of your staffs. The base price of a staff is 800gp * Caster Level (Min of 8) * Spell Level With all due respect, but I disagree. ----- Staff of SnowballAn illegal staff of Intensified Snowball. Price: 12800gp (800 * 8 (CL) * 2 (Spell level) A legal staff of Snowball (Max of 5d6 damage) Price: 6,400gp (800 * 8 (CL) * 1 (Spell Level) A legal wand of Intensified Snowball Price: 12,000gp (750 gp * 8 (CL) * 2 (Spell Level). A slightly saner Wand of Snowball CL 5 Price: 3,750gp (750 gp * 5 (CL) * 1 (Spell Level). The perfectly legal wand of Snowball CL 5 is 3.41 times cheaper. Compared to the illegal staff, that means you could buy 3 wands, buy a pearl of power (1st level, 1k gp) and still pocket 550gp. You do slightly less damage per spell, but you can spam more than 10 of them in a session, so that's likely a wash. You could take some build choices to use your casting score modifiers for the save for snowball, but it's possible. Or you could be happy with your SR no, touch attack 5d6 damage. And until you have cast it 150 times (from the wands) + 1/day (from the pearl of power), you're not any worse off goldwise. Or you could simply go the Pearl of Power method from the get go and buy 12 pearls for what the illegal staff would cost. Or 6 pearls for what the legal Staff of Snowball (max 5d6) would cost. Pearl of Powers are legal with Magical Linage and Intensified. I will admit that the Pearls have some minor action economy faults for using to spam a battle attack spell, but they have the advantage that you can use the Pearls after combat to recover your innate spell, meaning unlike a staff, you don't have to draw the staff (or risk getting disarmed of the staff) in order to use it. ----- Staff of Greater Invisibility.Rather than switching between 50% RAW construction price vs 70% self crafter in DG vs 80% player crafted in DG and 100% base price, I will be presenting all of my numbers in the 100% base price for ease of comparison. If you wish to bring up the balance of 70% crafter vs 80% player crafted vs 100% base price, I would kindly ask that you take that to another thread, rather than mixing through the numbers. In your case you are presenting 50% RAW and taking a 70% of that 50% value. It is very hard to present a clear discussion when one side is using 100% base price and the other side is mistakenly using 35% crafter price. I do not think that you are doing it on purpose, and I thank you for your understanding. Staff of Greater Invisibility: Price 25,600gp (800gp * 8 CL * 4 Spell Level). Wand of Greater Invisibility: Price 21,000gp (750gp * 7 CL * 4 Spell Level). Staff of Stealth: Price 36,800 gp (It's actually one of the better printed staffs. The spells have great synergy). Ring of Invisibility: Price 20,000gp. (Hafling tested, ring wraith approved) Wand of Vanish (CL 5): Price: 3,750 gp (750 gp * 5 (CL) * 1 (Spell Level). This one is actually a hard choice. If I were talking about a low level rogue, I'd suggest that they get the Ninja trick: Vanishing Trick, which is a swift action and uses 1 ki point). There is in fact a pearl of power-like material for ki points called Wyroot. I would suggest attack (breaking stealth), swift action vanish, then move to a new position. Next turn, they can hopefully be in a flanking position to break invisibility with a full attack or they can repeat the first round action with another swift vanish at the end. This gives them the protection of being invisible when its not their turn and one invisible attack per round. A higher level rogue would probably be better off with the Ring of Invisibility. Admittedly, neither are as good as Greater Invisibility, but Greater Invisibility can be beaten by a goodly number of things that I wouldn't suggest spending a large portion of your wealth on it. If you're a moderately high level spellcaster (assuming you spend 100% of your wealth by level, you could get it at character level 7, but that's not advisable), you might get the Staff of Greater Invisibility (perhaps with a wand of CL 5 Snowball). If you start off at level 10 and it fits your build; perhaps you're a Greensting Slayer Magus 5/Arcane Trickster 5. Of course, this would be fairly situational, since Arcane Trickster level 9 grants the Greater Invisibility option. In fact, it might be worthwhile to get the wand just to last until level 14. Alternately, by level 10 or 11, the Arcane Trickster might want to get the Staff of Steatlh, since those are all spells that fit the role fairly well. The Arcane Trickster might outgrow the Greater Invisibility portion of the staff, but the other three spells are quite good, especially the nondetection, which our hypothetical Greensting Slayer Magus/Arcane Trickster wouldn't normally have access to. And they would have the staff of stealth's greater invisibility to fall back to if they happen to use up their class's Invisible thief ability. ----- Staff of Breath of Life:See my above comment regarding using base price for magic items. Staff of Breath of Life: Price 36,000gp (800gp * 9 CL * 5 Spell Level) First Aid Gloves: 4,500gp (grants two times ever Breath of Life spells). Scroll of Breath of Life: Price 1,125gp (one times ever Breath of Life). Scroll of Reach Breath of Life: Price 1,650gp (one time ever, close range, Breath of Life) 5th Level Pearl of Power: Price 25,000gp (once a day recovering of a 5th level spell). Staff of Life: Price 109,400gp (twice a day Raise Dead or 10x a day Heal). Staff of Healing: Price 29,600gp (Most of the spells that will keep you alive in one staff). First off, lets talk about the limits of Breath of Life. It will not fix death due to Death effects nor from con damage. It requires that the caster be able to get within touch range within one round. And even if the spell can work, if whatever caused the target to die is still there, it may kill the death character on their next turn (and possibly the caster of Breath of Life too). That said, Breath of Life is a very VERY nice spell in certain circumstances. Now some ground rules for comparing of magic items, I will be comparing them on a single basis at a time. First there is the action to draw the item needed for Breath of Life. That's likely a move action for the staff and the scrolls, but not the first aid gloves or the pearl of power (assuming the cleric has Breath of Life prepared, they can recover the spell after combat). Of these, the First Aid Gloves likely wins due to always being 'at hand'. Secondly, there is the fact that your caster using the item needs to have access to the spell in order to make it work. So you already will be having a caster who /could/ be casting Breath of Life in order to use the staff or the scrolls (You REALLY don't want to be making a UMD check with an item of Breath of Life if there is even a chance you can fail). A single failure means the target is invalid for further castings since 1 round as passed. In most of these cases, you will want a cleric who can cast Breath of Life to use the item (and to recharge the staff). In this case the First Aid Gloves win again. Third, lets compare the spell range. Breath of Life is a touch range spell, so anything that requires a cleric to try to tumble through a battlefield to save an ally is likely to result in a dead cleric before they can get there. In this case, the Pearl of Power (aka, casting from memory, likely with a Reach rod or Spectral Hand) or from the scroll of Reach Breath of Life wins. Fourth, lets compare the shear number of times you can raise someone from the dead. In this case, the Staff of Breath of Life wins hands down (potentially 10 times per day (by RAW) or 5 times per day (by my rule #7), assuming your party helpfully manages to die on different rounds), with the pearl of power (2 times per day, with the caveat of your party members must stay alive for a round after the first Breath of Life) or the Staff of Life (2 times per day, but they can be fixed after combat). Lets compare prices. Lets assume all of these deaths are happening within the same day. Maybe this is the final boss fight and everyone knows that the bodies are going to hit the floor. The First Aid Gloves are the gold standard at 2250gp per Breath of Life. The staffs are all more expensive (although the Staff of Breath of Life is still a bargain at 3,600gp per Breath of Life). However, the scrolls are better at 1,125gp per Breath of Life. The biggest bargain is the cleric casting it from memory at 0gp per Breath of Life. Assuming this is the fight to bring out the Staff of Breath of Life, maybe the cleric should prepare a few of them, just in case. In summery, I'd probably suggest picking up a pair of First Aid Gloves. That said, a Breath of Life staff is still a huge bargain at 36,000gp. However, if an intelligent monster sees someone bringing people back to life in the middle of a fight, I would hope that the monster focuses on the cleric. Use disarm, sunder or just kill the cleric. We can theorycraft all we want, but most people don't even spend the 4,500gp for the gloves, let alone spend 36,000gp to /maybe/ bring someone back to life, if they didn't die to con damage or death effects. But you think this is an issue, we can suggest banning staffs of Breath of Life. In that case, we should also ban scrolls of Breath of Life since you could buy a stack of 32x scrolls for the price of the staff. Or one scroll with a False Priest Also, by the level of play that staffs of Breath of Life typically exists (that would be exactly 1/3 of the Wealth by Level of a level 12 character), DG already allows the Worm the Walk template, which is 50,000gp to the 36,000gp of the staff and will keep the character that the player is most concerned with alive (their own). ----- Bonus Round: Staff of Breath of Life (3 charges)Since this thread has been me trying to balance staffs into DG's setting, I have already suggested a fix for this use set, but I will walk through it with your example to see if you approve. RAW Staff of Breath of Life (3 charges): Price 12,000gp (800gp * 9 CL * 5 Spell Level * 1/3 for charges) My Houseruled custom staff (Breath of Life 3 charges, Lesser Restoration 2 charges, Cure Light Wounds 1 charge): 12,000gp (800gp * 9 CL * 5 Spell Level * 1/3 for charges) Breath of Life + 7,200gp (800gp * 9 CL * 2 Spell Level * 1/2 for charges) Lesser Restoration + 7,200gp (800gp * 9 CL * 1 Spell Level * 1 for charges) Cure Light Wounds = 26,400gp base price. And in my suggested house rules, custom staff only has 5 charges, not 10. So you start a session with your shiny full staff and someone gets poisoned. They fight it off but take some con damage, so you use 2 charges (leaving 3); they have a bit more con damage left, but you refuse to lower the staff below 3 charges since you might need that Breath of Life. They shrug and you keep adventuring, someone gets hurt but there's no way that you'd use the charge for the Cure Light Wounds since that would also take you below 3 charges. Someone breaks out the Cure Light Wound/Infernal Healing wand and you keep going. You complete the adventure without anyone dying but everyone feels better because they had the staff to fall back on. Yet the staff provided some tactical decisions (multiple spells on a staff but the numbers of charges was low enough that it wasn't just spam everything) and they basically carried around a 15,840gp worth of unused magic item (3/5 of the price of the staff), just in case. ----- Why? Why have any houserules to make staffs balanced but customizable? Honestly, because I think staffs are cool. They are an iconic part of a spellcaster (along with the wizard hat and robe). I'll be honest, I've been building my character towards using staffs since day one. I enjoy the act of designing just the perfect item to fit a need; it's fun for me in the same manner that building a character is fun. It's a mental exercise in trying to get the item or character to match the goal in my head. Because we have 95% of a balanced rule system that works for generic pathfinder (where the GM controls the rate of time passing) and I genuinely think that we can find a set of rules that will most almost everyone happy with staffs and make them balanced to DG's persistant world setting. Even if we don't use the rest of my rule suggestions for staffs, I still think recharging a staff should take a downday, and not just happen passively. |
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tkul
Death Knight
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Post by tkul on Jul 6, 2015 17:47:19 GMT -7
Costs were already addressed. precedence allows for it, the custom item rules allow for it. Going to go ahead and disagree with you on this but not worth debating since in the end all of the custom item rules are arbitrated by fiat anyway. So you're contesting that your 50 charges of 5d6 snowball is better than 10 charges per day of minimum 8d6 snowball? Yes you can buy three of them, and if you used them 10 charges a game you'd be out of them after 15 games where as the staff is still trucking. The point where the wands beat the staff is occasions where you may want to use more than 10 of them in a day, and in that situation the wand is definitely the clear victor. Your pearls of power argument is also flawed in that you're still requiring your caster to be able to Memorize and cast Snowball making it unavailable to spontaneous casters, as well as unUMD-able and thus completely unavailable to everyone else. You're also eating a spell slot that you could have filled with something else so you've now cut into your flexibility and a standard action, which cuts into your action economy whereas the staff has not. Don't get me wrong 12 pearls of power are kinda awesome, arguably less so for level 1 spells and interestingly you made all the comparisons on the worst case scenario but this one but I'm sure you weren't trying to skew the numbers since 3 pearls sounds less impressive than 12. But again, in either case you've just jacked up your action economy and wasted a spell slot to try to combat what the staff is doing and you've cut off ~91% of the classes from being able to match the value in this option, whereas the staff is open to anyone with a few skill points to spend. Not a good edge case. This one's the ball buster but first let me cover your alternatives - Wand of greater invisibilty - Doesn't scale. You cheated again, remember we're comparing likes, this wand should be 24,000 GP, and still inferior as it's consumable and the second the staff user hits level 9 they're getting more bang for their buck. Staff of Stealth Staff of Stealth - Pretty nice staff I'll agree, also more expensive and half as effective in the goal of not being seen, but it does have more versatility on it, not a bad buy at all. Ring of Invisibility - Breaks on attack and eats a ring slot. Wand of Vanish - Short duration and breaks on Attack, AND consumable. Ouch. Your break down of the actions it would take to maintain invisibility on the people that would really want it, rogues and other sneak attackers is kinda ridiculous. You're arguing that single attacks, moves, and swift actions is superior to being able to full attack with impunity while landing that delicious sneak attack damage? Then you go on to talk about how other casters can out perform the staff, but in every case you're conveniently forgetting, you're wasting those classes resources to beat what this staff can do for free. What makes it funny though is that you're Arguing the higher level casters do it better but you're forgetting, the staff grows with the user. A 14th level wizard's Greater Invisibility is exactly the same as a 14th level Fighter's greater invisibility using a staff, and again you've burned the wizard's spell slots, and potentially standard actions to recall said slots in order to match the staff, where as the fighter has used approximately none of his resources to do the same thing. You cheated again, ok working from the top - First Aid Gloves - You need 5 of these to match one fully charged staff that's 22,500GP, they also eat your glove slot meaning you're wasting full rounds pulling out fresh pairs and swapping the out as you use them up. The second the staff is recharged it's immediately better than these gloves. Scroll of Breath of Life - Again, consumed, and you need 10 of these so 11,250GP, and yet again once you start recharging that staff these are hilariously out valued. Scroll of Reach Breath of Life - 16,500GP, but the same as above essentially. Fifth Level Pearl of Power - Wasted a spell slot and a standard action, you also need 9 of these, we'll cut a break and say you're going to exactly match the staff and end up minus 1 spell slot and 19 standard actions to match the staff. Also 225,000GP, sure it just slipped your mind. Staff of Life - Snazzy staff, roughly 3x as expensive. Heal is nice but for the record a staff of just heal 10x would be 52,800 GP, and a Staff of Ressurection x10 would be 172,000 GP. Heal is a definitely a better pick me up than Breath of Life in the healing department but breath of life is kind of a crummy heal spell, it is awesome that at being a standard action put the fighter back in the fight spell though which neither of these spells do. Again apples to apples, I do like this staff though. Staff of Healing - Fun staff too, less fun when you're reduced to -con HP since you're kinda dead and this staff doesn't help with that. Incidentally cure serious wounds is actually an inferior raw healing spell to breath of life. Ok onto your bullet points - First - Staves are weapons, you can already have it out if you prefer, you can also draw it as part of a move action, meaning you can go from having it stowed, to the person that went down in one action and bring them back with the next. The gloves have the benefit of being worn thus already ready but unless you happen to be standing right next to the guy when he keels over you're using the exact same action economy and you gloves go poof after you do it twice. Second - UMD yo Third - Clerics get ghost touch? news to me. You know who does get ghost touch? Wizards! You know what else Wizards can have? UMD! ruh roh, wizards officially best healer in the game with custom staves. Fourth - Resurrection has the benefit of you not having to be there to bring their butts back, but you can only do it twice, it also takes a minute to cast. Breath of Life is a standard action which means you can make the enemy play whack a mole with your barbarian for quite a while. Bonus points if you can get him to scream "Why won't you let me die!" in between pummelings. All kidding aside, you're continuing to ignore the flexibility that the custom staves allow. Everyone can potentially use them, UMD 20 is fairly reachable by anyone that decides to put some points into it, and if you find a staff you like you can even get a Wand Key Ring which gives you a +10 to activate your spell trigger item getting you half way there right off the bat. you fasten that bad boy to the staff and suddenly anyone you hand it to, with at least 1 rank of Use Magic Device, can activate the staff right around 55% of the time. Lets see you do that with a pearl of power. The rest of your examples were consumables, which definitely with the in the use:cost ratio in the short term, until you recharge the staff, then they're just not even close to being in the same ball park. Moving down to your house rules. Yes you have successfully limited the amount of raw power in a staff with them, but you're still ignoring the flexibility that custom staves give since you're basically giving magic to everyone that never runs out. cutting it down to 5 charges does halve the number of times you can pull your gimmick, but 5 times is generally still enough to blow encounter challenge out of the water unless the GM forces you to run over a multiple day period and eat your resources recharging the staff. All this really does is push staves strictly into the support category and remove them as viable tool for blasting, which is kinda meh since blasting is an inefficient way to overcome encounters. You can keep cutting and hacking at the rules for them but you're never going to be able to remove the fact that the staff gives you a pool of resources that anyone can tap and use. That's dangerous stuff and unless you're going to severely limit what can be on staves, essentially make a list of DG printed staves that are locked in and unchanging, there's no real way you can get away from that. |
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Post by Kayse on Jul 6, 2015 19:39:13 GMT -7
I like both wands and staffs on Faust and think that they are roughly balanced against each other. Depending on the implementation the difference between 50 charges and 1 or 2 uses per session should be roughly equal in price. Maybe the specifics of recovering charges might need tweaked for DG, but I think the system was relatively good.
With respect, I cannot balance implied benefit of "never run out". The value different people apply to "never running out" will vary drastically. It's basically the same argument about Warlocks from 3.5. Or the Kineticist in Occult Adventures. (It'll be interesting to see how DG handles that book coming out).
I concede defeat. Maybe I'll pick one or two of the better printed staffs and buy them from an NPC, but it won't be worth the feat to make staffs. Oh well.
o7
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