price for creating a staff

[Zorayas]

what exactly is meant by "the level of the caster" when making a staff??? Is it the class level of the character, the lowest level needed to cast the spell, or something else?

 

[mercucio]

If you're trying to determine the caster level for magical staff, the staff's CL defaults to the minimum caster level required to cast the highest level spell the staff can use. Thus a staff whose's highest level spell it can cast is chain lightning (6th level spell) has a default caster level of 11th (minimum wizard level to cast chain lightning).

 

[Zorayas]

ok, can you explain why the staff of self alteration is 6,500gp when it is only 2 first level spells (enlarge and reduce) which you only need to be caster level 1 to cast?

 

[Zodar]

Here's why:

From the SRD:

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.