What's to stop someone...

[Saeviomagy]

Oooh, excellently evil point, evil halfling.
But wait...
Aren't they cheaper than scrolls already, charge per charge? I mean, that's the entire point, right?

My mathematical process went as thus:
Check out the price of X scrolls of the highest, most powerful spell on a staff at minimum caster level.

Compare that with the price of the staff.

In all but 4 cases, it was significantly CHEAPER TO BUY THE SCROLLS.

This is talking about the powers on the staff that are the most expensive to replicate. If you don't use nothing but the most powerful spell, then you are getting even LESS bang for your buck, and buying the scrolls becomes a far more appealing option.

Typical savings were on the order of 50% to 60% if you bought scrolls instead of staves. IOW - you could afford to buy scrolls with caster levels 3 or 4 times the minimum required for the spell (in most cases 7+), or apply multiple metamagics to your scrolls.

So no, the point doesn't appear to be to make them cheaper than scrolls...

I think that, possibly, if you use my model for creation, then you might actually end up getting a benefit for making spell staves, because you can make staves that stick to the low-end of the rip-off scale. If you stick to book items, for most staves you're being ripped off badly.

 

[moritheil]

1. A flaw in logic is not the same as a flaw in interpretation. Which are you arguing?

2. Does the SRD state that a sorcerer gets a certain "number of spell castings per day" or number of "spells per day?" Which is it?

Oh, so it's fine that the term "spells per day" could indicate five magic missiles being cast by a sorcerer, but it's suddenly not fine that it could indicate five magic missiles from a staff? Doesn't that seem a little arbitrary to declare?

Nope. Not with that phrase. You have to take the most reasonable interpretation, not a silly one.

"But there is more than one spell in the magic missile only staff. There are 50."

This is the flaw in your logic.

There is only one spell in the Magic Missile Only staff.

There can be 50 castings of that one spell, but there is only one spell.

The casting of a spell does not equate to the number of spells, it equates to the number of castings.


"A staff is a long shaft of wood that stores several spells. Unlike wands, which can contain a wide variety of spells, each staff is of a certain kind and holds specific spells."

It does not state that it stores several castings of spells. The second sentence here goes on to further explain what they mean by the word "spells". You do not get a wide variety of spells in Wands EXCEPT with relationship to the many different types of wands (i.e. many different types of spells), one for each spell. Staves, on the other hand, hold specific spells. You do not get a Staff of Abjuration with a Fireball spell in it. The meaning here is clear.

You are taking the word "spells" out of context here. That is the flaw of your logic. Your definition does not mesh with the entire paragraph here. People generally do not shift gears on what they mean with a word from one sentence to the next unless they tell you that they are doing that. There is nothing here to indicate that the designers were doing it this time and in fact, we have evidence to the contrary.

(snip)


This is crystal clear.

Does it seem "reasonable" to you that just because you're putting a spell in a length of wood, as opposed to a scroll or wand, it can't be put in by itself? Is there some sort of intrinsic magic property that wood has that causes it to be unable to hold only one spell, but capable of holding multiple spells just fine? Is this the "reason" you speak of?

I don't think it's crystal clear at all, or why do so many people come down on both sides of the issue?

 

[AuraSeer]

Does it seem "reasonable" to you that just because you're putting a spell in a length of wood, as opposed to a scroll or wand, it can't be put in by itself?

Absolutely. Why ever not?

In gameworld terms, the item types clearly involve distinct magical processes, because they require different feats and have different manufacturing costs. Giving them distinct behaviors is more than reasonable. Declaring that a staff cannot be made with only one spell is no less reasonable than declaring that potions cannot be made with area-effect spells. This isn't physics, it's magic, so a certain level of arbitrariness is expected.

In rules terms a staff has certain advantages over wands and scrolls. If there were no counterbalancing drawback, there would be no reason ever to have wands or scrolls, and all adventurers would carry staves instead. Forcing a staff to contain multiple spells, and therefore to be a more expensive item, is the tradeoff for its low per-charge cost and its other significant benefits. A similar tradeoff is the 3rd-level limit on potions, which compensates for their extreme ease of use. This isn't science, it's a game, so a certain amount of balance between items must be maintained.