Reading staff listings

Staff name

Staff description. This text explains what the staff looks like, its functions, how many charges each function uses (if not specified, a function uses one charge), and any other relevant information, such as save DCs for powers that allow saving throws.

Staffs

Staff of conjuration

Grasping this device enables a mage of sufficient level to immediately recognize any arcane conjuration spell. This power of the staff uses no charges, but can’t be used by a wielder who fails to meet the staff’s activation requirements.

The staff also has the following spell-like powers, which use charges:

• Unseen servant (1 charge, DC 23 activates): As the spell. The servant remains for 8 hours, and cannot venture more than 60 feet from the staff’s wielder.
• Monster summoning (3 charges, DC 30 activates): As summon monster VI. The summoned creatures remain for one minute.
• Curtain of blackness (2 charges, DC 26 activates): Conjures a veil of total blackness that absorbs all light. The curtain may cover up to 600 square feet, but it must stretch from ceiling to floor, wall to wall. No light can penetrate it, short of sunbeam? or similar. The curtain offers no barrier to physical passage or attacks, nor does it extend to the Ethereal plane. It lasts for one hour.
• Prismatic barrier (variable charge cost, DC 30 activates): Enables the wielder to construct a prismatic wall? or prismatic sphere?, one color at a time (red to violet), at a cost of 1 charge per color. Erecting each layer of the barrier takes a standard action, requiring separate activation of the staff each time. The prismatic barrier lasts for 2 hours.

Staff of power

Carved from magically hardened wood, and usually topped with a glistening gem or orb that burns from within with a flickering red light, the staff of power is a very potent magic item, with offensive and defensive abilities. It has these powers:

• Continual flame (1 charge, DC 22 activates): As the spell.
• Magic missile (1 charge, DC 26 activates): Launches five missiles.
  1. or,
• Lightning bolt (1 charge, DC 28 activates): As the power of a wand of lightning, but dealing 10d6 points of electricty damage (Reflex save, DC 18, for half).
• Darkness (1 charge, DC 27 activates): Creates intense darkness in a 10-foot radius around a designated point in space, for 15 minutes. This darkness causes the illumination in the area to drop three steps, possibly creating supernatural darkness.
• Ray of enfeeblement (1 charge, DC 30 activates): Fires a coruscating ray out to a range of 60 feet, requiring a ranged touch attack roll to hit. A creature struck takes a penalty to Strength, equal to two steps on the Strength damage track, for 2 minutes (Fortitude save, DC 20, halves the penalty). Multiple such penalties do not stack.
• Levitation (1 charge, DC 30 activates): Allows the wielder to levitate himself, or a willing creature or object within 60 feet, for 15 minutes. Up to 1,500 lbs. can be levitated; as a move action, the staff’s wielder can move the levitating subject up or down 20 feet in a round. This power is otherwise as the levitate? spell.
• Fireball (1 charge, DC 30 activates): As the power of a wand of fire, but with a 1,000-foot range, and dealing 10d6 points of fire damage (Reflex save, DC 18, for half).
  1. or,
• Cone of cold (1 charge, DC 30 activates): As the power of a wand of frost.
• Force shield (2 charges, DC 30 activates): As a wall of force?, but a 10-foot radius hemisphere around the wielder only. Last for 2 minutes.
• Globe of invulnerability (2 charges, DC 30 activates): Creates a stationary 10-foot-radius spherical emanation around the wielder, that excludes spell effects of 3rd level or lower, and lasts for 2 minutes. Otherwise as the spell of the same name.
• Paralyzation (3 charges, DC 30 activates): Sends forth a wave of paralyzing magic in a 40-foot cone. All living creatures within the cone are paralyzed for 1d6+2 rounds (Will save, DC 20, negates). On each round after the first, all affected creatures may attempt another saving throw as a full-round action; success means that a creature breaks free of the paralysis.

(Alternative powers, separated with “or”, may be determined randomly by die roll for a staff of power discovered as treasure. Variants of such staves exist with any combination of these alternate powers. The crafter of a staff of power choose which of the alternate spell effects to imbue into the staff, of course.)

The wielder of a staff of power gains a +2 luck bonus to Armor Class and saving throws. The staff strikes as a +2 quarterstaff; the wielder can also expend charges to cause the staff to deal more damage, as a staff of striking. (However, a staff of power cannot be recharged in the way that a staff of striking can, only in the usual way.)

A staff of power can be used for a retributive strike, requiring it to be broken by its wielder. (If this breaking of the staff is purposeful and declared by the wielder, it can be performed as a standard action that does not require the wielder to make a Strength check.) All charges currently in the staff are instantly released in a 30-foot spread. All creatures and objects within 10 feet of the broken staff take an amount of damage equal to 20 × the number of charges in the staff, those between 10 and 20 feet away take an amount of damage equal to 15 × the number of charges, and those between 20 and 30 feet away take an amount of damage equal to 10 × the number of charges. All those affected can make DC 20 Reflex saves to reduce the damage by half.

Staff of striking

A staff of this kind strikes as a +1 quarterstaff. As a free action, a wielder can expend one or more charges to energize the staff for one round. Expending one charge makes the staff deal double damage on a hit (2d6+2); expending two charges makes the staff deal triple damage (3d6+3); expending three charges (the maximum) makes the staff deal quadruple damage (4d6+4). When energized, the staff also ignores the hardness of any material with hardness of less than 10, allowing it to easily smash objects of common (unenhanced) wood or stone (but not iron, steel, or hardier materials).

No command word is needed to energize the staff, only the intention of using it thus. A wielder with the Combat Reflexes feat, or an elf, may energize the staff as an immediate action (e.g. to use its striking power on an attack of opportunity).

A staff of striking may easily be recharged, by channeling spell power into it. A mage or priest of the requisite level may sacrifice prepared spells or unused spell slots to recharge the staff; every two spell levels thus sacrificed replenish one charge. The process takes one hour per charge replenished; no more than 8 charges may be restored per day.

Staff of winter

This steel pole is constantly coated with a thin layer of frost, and is deathly cold to the touch; living creatures holding the staff take 1d4+1 points of cold damage per round as its powerful magic leeches heat from the body. The staff has a circular metallic headpiece 6 inches in diameter, through which a scene of a raging snowstorm is always visible, and which is constantly surrounded by a swirling vortex of snow and ice to a radius of 1 foot.

A staff of winter has the following powers:

• Ray of frost (at will, no charge cost, DC 20 activates): Projects a ray of freezing air and ice to a range of 60 feet. The ray deals 1d3 points of cold damage, and requires a ranged touch attack to hit a target.
• Cone of cold (2 charges, DC 38 activates): As the power of a wand of frost, but dealing 20d6 points of damage (Reflex save, DC 24, for half).
• Freeze water (1 charge, DC 35 activates): A tiny, frigid globe of cold streaks from the staff to the location the wielder selects. If it strikes a body of water or a liquid that is principally water, it freezes the liquid to a depth of 6 inches in a 40-foot radius. This ice lasts for two minutes. Using two charges on this power makes the ice last for two hours; using three charges makes the ice permanent, until it is melted by some heat source.
  • Creatures that were swimming on the surface of a targeted body of water become trapped in the ice. Attempting to break free is a full-round action. A trapped creature must make a DC 25 Strength check or a DC 25 Escape Artist? check to do so.
  • A water elemental (or similar creature composed largely of water) struck by the frigid globe takes 15d8 points of cold damage and is staggered for 1d4 rounds (no save).
• Ice storm (2 charges, DC 35 activates): As the power of a wand of frost, but damage, range, and area are doubled, and lasts 10 times as long.
• Polar ray (2 charges, DC 42 activates): Fires a blue-white ray of freezing air and ice to a range of 240 feet, dealing 24d6 points of cold damage, and requires a ranged touch attack to hit a target. Creatures struck by the ray also take 1d4 points of Dexterity drain.

The staff’s most awesome power is the ability to create a fimbulwinter once per day. A staff of winter casts this spell automatically each day at sunset, unless it has already been used that day to create a fimbulwinter. (Regardless of whether this power is activated deliberately, or automatically by the staff, it uses no charges; however, it cannot be used if the staff is drained of all charges.) This effect changes the weather in a 25-mile radius to a state of permanent winter, or strengthens winter conditions already present. It takes 10 minutes to activate this power, and an additional 10 minutes for the effects to manifest themselves.

The current, natural weather conditions in an area are determined by the DM. The staff’s wielder then chooses what wintery conditions he wants to manifest; the strength of the winter depends on the existing climate and season of the area. (See page 93 of Frostburn: Mastering the Perils of Ice and Snow for more details on the effects of a fimbulwinter.) The effects last for 4d12 weeks. Thus, the mere presence of a staff of winter generates a 25-mile-radius zone of eternal winter.

A staff of winter is a minor artifact. It is rare that more than one staff of winter is known to exist on a single world. As the secret of these staffs’ creation has been lost, a staff of winter cannot be recharged in the usual way. Such a staff recharges naturally, when it is in a region of natural (not magically created) winter and allowed to lie undisturbed, buried in natural snow or ice. For every winter month the staff spends in this way, it regains a charge. (The staff does not use its fimbulwinter power during such periods.)

Staffs