Opening up Staff Creation a bit

[Quidam]

According to the staff creation 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."

My DM has already agreed to allow custom staffs in the game. I'm asking my DM if he'd consider houseruling the above restrictions away to make staffs more accessible to lower level characters, and to make it easier to have staffs made for warlocks, who can take 10 on UMD rolls and could therefore use a staff with spells from several different class lists.

Do you think this'd have a negative effect on the game?

 

[Pyrex]

The key difference between staves and wands is that staves allow the caster to use their own CL and Save DC.

Allowing a) Lower CL staves and b) individually CL'd spells in a staff is a significant powerboost for Wizards and Sorcerers (not so much for anyone using UMD though, as they're stuck at base caster level).

OTOH, staves are kinda inefficient anyway.

In my game I'd probably allow lower CL staves as long as all spells still had the same CL (i.e., a staff with spell levels 1-3 could have a min caster level of 5) with the further ruling that said staff contain at least three spells.

 

[Quidam]

Allowing a) Lower CL staves and b) individually CL'd spells in a staff is a significant powerboost for Wizards and Sorcerers (not so much for anyone using UMD though, as they're stuck at base caster level).

Unless the UMDer has a caster level, which a warlock does.

I like your idea of keeping the 'same caster level' requirement and adding the 'at least three spells' bit. Each spell in a staff, while increasing versatility, also increases the per-charge cost. I'll point this thread out to my DM and see what he thinks.

 

[Pyrex]

I don't think that works, because the Warlock doesn't actually have the spell on his spell list.

*goes looking*