Crafting Legendary Staves and Rods

The items in Staves of Ascendance are actually fairly standard d20 System magic items—they're just not standard magic staves. The design goal is the same as it was for Swords of Our Fathers, to give a character an item that the player values for the life of her character.

So when the GM gives a character a magic item that's supposed to be "special" in some way, it really is—and the player treats it specially, too.

Creating these items takes a little bit of thought, but if you're moderately familiar with the d20 System (especially the DMG), you can design a fairly standard wondrous item (not a magic staff), and then start layering improved abilities on it. You need to be careful not to go overboard, though; when that character reaches the final level of the prestige class for the weapon, it shouldn't be so powerful that a character of that level couldn't have purchased it himself.

Choosing a Prestige Class

The first step is to choose which classes are the most likely candidates to become the wielders of the item. The staff scion prestige classes are divided up by the four d20 System fantasy character archetypes: battlestaff scions (encompassing fighters, barbarians, rangers, and paladins); spellstaff scions (wizards and sorcerers); faithstaff scions (clerics and druids); and swiftstaff scions (rogues, bards, and monks).

So, if you're designing a rod or staff that you want to be used by a wizard, you'll almost certainly want it to be a spellstaff; a rod or staff destined for a fighter should be a battlestaff, and so on.

Choosing Prestige Class Requirements

Requirements, as with all prestige classes, determine how easily a character can get into a staff scion prestige class. Essentially they fall into two categories: Minimum level and flavor. Minimum level requirements are important because they tell you just how powerful the item should be when the character first advances into the staff scion prestige class for it. Flavor requirements focus the prestige class in certain areas, and the prestige class should continue to support them. For instance, a battlestaff prestige class that requires Tumble should provide Tumble as a class skill and should provide bonuses to Tumble checks and related abilities (like Evasion and Improved Evasion).

For example, Bramblethorn's minimum level requirement is its base attack bonus minimum: +4. A fighter, barbarian, ranger, or paladin can meet that requirement by 4th level, and be ready to advance into it at 5th level. However, the other requirements are most easily met by rangers and barbarians. So the 1st-level ability of Bramblethorn has to be commensurate with the abilities of a 5th-level ranger or barbarian.

Similarly, the initial character level determines how soon the character will be able to access the item's 10th-level abilities, since, naturally, the character could plow right through all ten levels of the battlestaff scion prestige class without multiclassing into anything else. In the case of Bramblethorn, that means that the wielder will be 14th level when he gains the weapon's final abilities. Knowing this range gives the GM some boundaries about what sort of powers and abilities the item can have.

All of this, of course, is part and parcel of creating prestige classes, but it is important for purposes of designing the item's abilities.

Choosing Abilities

Legendary staves and rods have two aspects: the "public" abilities that any wielder can use, and the "private" abilities that only staff scions can access. The public abilities mainly determine the apparent value of the item, but they can also set the "theme" of the item. (Étincelle, for example, allows the wielder to cast flare, even if the wielder isn't a swiftstaff scion.)

The GM can determine the legendary item's apparent value using the charts in the DMG (but the best means of determining a magic item's value are located in the Tome and Blood sourcebook). Keep in mind that if a group of 3rd-level heroes finds an item worth more than about 10,000 gp, they're more likely to sell it than keep it, unless it's just terribly enticing to one or more members of the party. So make an effort to keep the apparent value of a legendary item within reach; that is, if a character couldn't buy it, you might consider cutting a few public abilities to cut the price. But remember: Selling a magic item as treasure only nets the seller half the actual value. That aforementioned 10,000 gp item is only really worth about 5,000 gp, most likely divided four or more ways. That might sound like quite a haul-but look at what the party is giving up by selling it!

Abilities by Level

Start choosing abilities based on the theme of the item-which is also a good time to fill in that text that introduces the item. The theme of the Staff of Doors is travel and entering locked or secured places, so most of the abilities will apply to planar travel, opening doors and locks, and peering into places where the character might wish to travel.

First decide whether or not the item is a weapon and what type. Staves function as quarterstaves. Rods function as clubs or some type of mace. If the staff or rod is also a weapon, it must stay "competitive" with the kinds of challenges the party faces. Monster Damage Reduction numbers go up as monster Challenge Ratings go up, so as a weapon the item has to keep up. So begin every item's abilities by deciding when the weapon's enhancement bonus increases.

List out the staff scion's character level alongside the prestige class level, with the assumption that the character entered this class as soon as he qualified. It should look something like this, using Bramblethorn as an example:

Enhancement Bonuses

Now, since a weapon begins with some sort of enhancement bonus, you have a starting point. Bramblethorn presents an additional challenge, since it's a quarterstaff and each end can have a different enhancement. You want to bump the bonus from +1/+1 to +2/+2 around the time the character reaches 8th level. (That's about when the occasional +4 weapon could show up in the average campaign.) Using that same logic, +3/+3 weapons would start becoming available around 11th level, and +4 weapons would begin appearing somewhere around 14th level.

Bramblethorn looks something like this:

The enhancement bonus for the longspear form lags behind the bonus for the staff. While the longspear provides reach, the staff provides an additional attack and a higher bonus. It's likely that characters will switch back and forth between forms depending on their needs and the situation, and that's ideal. You certainly don't want to design a staff that spends most of its life as a spear!

Spell Progressions

Arguably, a spellcaster prestige class should not have a spell list. If the focus of the class is casting spells, it should have access to either arcane or divine spells comparable to that of clerics, druids, sorcerers, or wizards as appropriate. On the other hand, if you want to add spellcasting to a character that would not normally have such ability, a short spell list is appropriate. Such a spell list should always have more spells at lower levels than it does at higher, and it should always have more spells than the character can cast. For example, there are three 3rd-level spells on Bramblethorn's spell list, and the scion's spell progression never offers more than one 3rd-level slot (though the character may have more courtesy of a high Wisdom bonus). If your spell list only has a few spells, or only one at its highest level, you might consider making those spells available as class abilities rather than as spells.

The Player's Handbook provides any number of examples of spell progressions. Bramblethorn uses the ranger spell progression.

Special Abilities

A magic staff or rod is either a weapon or its not. Bramblethorn is a weapon, with enhancement bonuses shown above. It's also a battlestaff, so it's important to remember that battlestaff scions gain bonus feats at levels 1, 4, 7, and 10. Coincidentally, these are also the levels at which Bramblethorn's scion gains access to another level of spells. Rangers and barbarians have the easiest time entering this prestige class, so special abilities that duplicate or emulate class abilities can further focus the prestige class. In this case, Bramblethorn belongs in the hands of rangers so the special abilities should be comparable to those of rangers and should occur at roughly the same levels.

When a staff or rod is not a weapon, it's important to look the function fulfilled by more traditional magic staves. They provide a limited number of spells to arcane or divine casters so those characters do not have to prepare those spells. Alternately, the item may provide spells the character wouldn't normally prepare but desperately needs in some situations. In the case of the Staff of Doors, the wielder could cast the spells it provides even without the staff. Possessing the Staff of Doors gradually allows the wielder to travel the planes more often. The first spells available are far below the level of spell a 7th-level character could cast. As the scion advances, the spells increase in level quickly.

Look at the caster level of the character and how often she can cast spells of each spell level. Let that guide how often your staff or rod provides spells. The less combat-oriented the item, the easier it is to err on the side of providing spells more often. Since the Staff of Doors doesn't provide spells that do damage, having them is more a matter of convenience for characters and the item remains balance.

Adding the Capper

None of these abilities so far have addressed the "destiny" part of the weapon, so an ability related to the wielder's destiny goes into the 10th-level ability slot. It makes sense to put it there thematically and mechanically: thematically, because the destiny of the battlestaff scion is to reach 10th level; and mechanically, because every prestige class should have some sort of payoff for seeing the class through to the end.

Now the trick is to know when to stop. It isn't necessary to fill in every ability slot for a prestige class—especially one that grants a lot of powerful abilities. At least some of the ability slots, then, can be less than optimal choices. For example, Bramblethorn can supply class abilities shared with rangers at later levels than a ranger would receive them.

The Final Details

Eventually, you'll need to know some hard data about the item, such as its hardness and hit points, and its cost. Cost, as has already been mentioned, is a function of the item's public abilities. How to determine hardness and hit points is covered in the DMG, but it's easy to summarize.

Determine the hardness and hit points of a normal item of the same type, then simply add the item's enhancement bonus (if any) to the total. For legendary items, use the maximum possible enhancement bonus; even if the hero hasn't learned how to get the most out of his staff or rod, the item is still very potent. For staves and rods that aren't weapons, compare them to weapons of similar material and use their hardness and hit points.

Filling in the Backstory

Finally, you need to provide a way for the players to determine that the staff or rod they have found is, in fact, a legendary item—and which one. The backstory provides a means of doing this, by presenting the item's history in legend form-then giving the characters a chance to know the legend.

Each legend includes a Knowledge check DC (or several, in the case of longer legends) that the characters can try for, to pick up a little clue about the item's origins. Eventually, smart players will put these clues together and catch on that the item they have fits the description of the item in the legend—and they'll also have a good idea of what the drawbacks of wielding it are.

That last part is important; if the item has some kind of terrible curse, it's worth the characters' time to find out about that as soon as possible. Certain divination spells could get them that information—but it's more fulfilling to the player if they actually get some use out of those ranks they put into their Knowledge skills.