Staff as implement (Do I need two hands?)

[Nichwee]

If your implement belongs to a Weapon Group (Heavy Blade, Light Blade, Staff, etc) it is a weapon too.

Thus it can carry weapon enhancements and be effectted by weapon damage feats.

I play a Spiral Tower Wizard and as such my implement is a longsword - I can only enchant it with Heavy Blade usable magic effects, but I get to use those effects as much as if I was using the sword to melee with (unless a given enchantment states it only effects melee attacks/Weapon powers).

 

[DracoSuave]

A staff requires two hands to be used with Weapon powers, and does not for Implement powers.

It's really that simple.

Check keyword of the -power- you use it with. That tells you. Two-handedness is -only- applicable to Weapon powers.

So everyone is saying that an implement is a weapon??? I would have thought that an implement is not a weapon and therefore is not eligable to any of the feats or magic that is applied to weapons.

The swordmage and sorcerer classes would like a word with you. An implement -is- a weapon if it's a weapon group or a specific weapon type. Light blade is a weapon group. Staff is a weapon group. Dagger is a specific weapon type.

No where have they said or even inferred that staffs were not weapons. In fact, both the implement staff entry and the introduction to magical staffs tell you that they are also usable as weapons.

 

[VinAlanson]

Ok this is good new then as an Eladrin Wizard I have longsword proficiency and I intend to go down the path of Spiral Tower Wizard.

So do you get the proficiency bonus to attack with a staff as a wizard?
or is my assumation that the proficiency bonus only applies to melee attacks.

 

[Nichwee]

No proficiency bonus on implement powers even if you use a weapon as an implement (this is stated on things like the Pact Blade explicitly, and somewhere more generally, but I can't recall where).

However your WotST Lvl 11 and Lvl 20 powers are actually Weapon powers, not implement ones so they will use the proficiency bonus (I play a WotST who actually took Melee Training : Int so I made sure to keep track of what does and doesn't get allowed when you cast with a longsowrd vs swing with it).

 

[DracoSuave]

Im going to go out on a limb and say that nothing in existence or in any possible parallel dimension is going to convince me that quarterstaffs can be held in one hand while being used as an implement but greatswords cannot be held in one hand while being used as an implement.

Check the mass of a staff. Compare to the mass of a greatsword.

The difference is not minor. Greatsword might not be two-handed implement-wise because of it's weapon class.

 

[keterys]

Quick googling for wizards with staff images and 7 of the first 8 are using a staff (and I mean a big taller than they are staff, not a pseudo rod) staff in one hand.

Hard to argue with him, right?

 

[Garthanos]

And Gandalf is sometimes portrayed with a staff in one hand and the two handed weapon glamdring in the other (so we call it a bastard sword and don't worry about it

.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Check the mass of a staff. Compare to the mass of a greatsword.

The difference is not minor. Greatsword might not be two-handed implement-wise because of it's weapon class.

Well.... Yeah, this is actually an interesting question which I haven't seen answered anywhere yet. Is a two-handed weapon (staff aside) usable one-handed as an implement? Maybe this is answered somewhere in the Swordmage rules but I don't have the FRPG and really haven't bothered to read them.

 

[Flipguarder]

Check the mass of a staff. Compare to the mass of a greatsword.

The difference is not minor. Greatsword might not be two-handed implement-wise because of it's weapon class.

You don't have to wield the weapon as though it WERE a weapon. I imagine a badass wizard who uses his greatsword implement as his walking stick. Channeling arcane power through a weapon does not mean you need to be even able to wield it effectively.

 

[Garthanos]

You don't have to wield the weapon as though it WERE a weapon. I imagine a badass wizard who uses his greatsword implement as his walking stick. Channeling arcane power through a weapon does not mean you need to be even able to wield it effectively.

Religious knights used the handle up as being a visual symbology of the cross ... stab it in the ground and kneel before it....