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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Persiflage" data-source="post: 5371904" data-attributes="member: 73597">Your memory is not off  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The feat in question is Metamagic Spell Trigger, it can be found in Complete Mage, and the pertinent text from same answering Mr. Curmudgeon's question runs thusly:The feat allows you to modify a spell cast from a staff with any (one)  metamagic feat you know, therefore by implication this isn't something  you can do without the feat.Furthermore, the text in the DMG is actually:Following on as this does from the text about using "the wielder’s ability score and relevant feats to set the DC for saves against their spells" *, it's clear that only feats appertaining to caster level are relevant.  That Spell Penetration should apply is intuitive: overcoming spell resistance is a caster level check, staffs allow modifiers to caster level possessed by the wielder in whatever context, ergo Spell Penetration (a bonus to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance) logically also applies.(*)  It should be noted that an earlier discussion of staffs in the DMG is slightly more broad in its categorisation of "things that apply to spells cast from staffs".So a Master Specialist Illusionist's +2 to the DC of "Will disbelief" would apply to spells cast from a staff, as would sundry other PrC benefits.  The Archmage's Spell Power ability would also certainly apply: it's not a metamagic feat, it's a flat +1 increase to the wielder's caster level, and the wielder's caster level is explicitly used by the staff: the staff doesn't care how you got that caster level.  Consider Ultimate Magus and the Arcane Spell Power "increase-my-caster-level-for-no-good-reason" class ability.As for the other High Arcana: definitely not.  The relevant abilities don't meet any of the listed criteria (express or implied) for what can be used with a staff: they don't affect caster level and don't affect save DC's.  Hell, they're not even metamagic by any standard definition: they're just stuff an Archmage can do.  Arcane Reach is a supernatural ability modifying the caster's spells in ways unrelated to the staff's functioning, so there's no reason on Oerth to suppose it interacts with a staff.  So is Arcane Fire, of course, but nobody will ever care.And yes, clerics using a staff get caster level boosts from domain granted powers too.  Taking a strict reading of what's in the DMG, they'd get the increases to caster level from items (orange prism ioun stone, bead of karma) or even spells when casting from a staff.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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