Mage Staffs

[Deleted]

let's say my mage just knocked over another mage that had one of those nifty mage staffs that can absorb fatigue. can i use it to absorb fatigue?

imagined uses:
1. my staff replenishes itself from what remains in the other staff.
or
2. i tuck the other staff in between my back and my backpack to carry it along. when my staff is depleted, i swap staffs.

yes, no, maybe? pretty please?

[mister frau blucher]

In past editions of the rules we had a little more detail on staves - maybe we should do that again. A mage's staff is a personal item, that he is attuned to. That is why you can increase the capacity through experience. Another mage's staff will not work for you. (in TFT, if you picked up another staff, it blew up in your face for 3d6).

None of this is really spelled out, though, so if your vision of magic is a little different, that's cool. The major sticking point is that the adventures were playtested with mages having access to their own staffs only.

Now that being said, there are also powerstones lying around that give mages extra fatigue, and there are vagaries in the dice rolls themselves, so it would probably not wreck the game if you opted to play this differently.

[Deleted]

blew up...ouch! unless otherwise stated in the game text, i will always assume that the staff has been depleted and is just a normal staff at that point. if i attempt to store some of my essence in it, it comes out of my other staff first. (therefore, it would be a pointless excise.) (you can have only one magic staff and it has to have your 'essence' in it)

[klingor]

I've always taken the view that a staff is personal , and particular, to the wizard that created it, and could only be used as a staff, rather than just as a club, by that wizard (as in TFT). I wouldn't go as far as a staff exploding when someone else picks it up however, as a staff could be any piece of wood.
Perhaps a way to go is that if a wizard picks up a staff and attempts to access its fatigue, he takes d6 damage for each fatigue point currently left in that staff. The staff then becomes attuned to him (if he survives) and he now has a second staff, with its original fatigue limit, which recharges independently of the other, and is subject to the same limitations as regards max fatigue it can hold, although if its current fatigue limit was higher than its new owner's IQ, it would recharge to its own limit. Its own limit would only be increasable if its new owner's IQ was raised higher than its current limit.
It is an really interesting idea, especially as you could have a wizard wandering around with a bundle of firewood over his shoulder, except that each of the sticks is a captured staff.
Who would then attack a woodcutter?
All the best, and thanks for a really interesting idea.
Colin

[Deleted]

that is a funny picture of the wizard wandering around with a bundle of sticks. that's why i decided to handle it as i did above. also, i think of the staffs like this:
it's just a staff, an otherwise ordinary, long piece of wood shaped to be carried around or wielded. what makes it special is it's ability to absorb fatigue. i prefer to think that its ability to absorb fatigue comes from the mage that wields it. he holds, he strokes it, he coddles it and sleeps with it. he takes it everywhere. it is his 'blanky' he also mutters strange and cryptic phrases over it, periodically. as he does so, a faint, warm light issues from deep within his chest, passing like smoke from his mouth. the wisps of warm smoke-light seem drawn to the staff, writhing like ethereal snakes around it before finally calming and slowly seeping into it.

the mage stores some of his 'essence' in the staff. as such, there is only so much 'essence' the mage can store outside of himself. he _could_ split that essence up between 2 staffs but the total essence stored would be no greater than if he had stored it all in one staff...so why bother.

[Deleted]

Aug 7, 2012 18:49:37 GMT -5 klingor said:

It is an really interesting idea, especially as you could have a wizard wandering around with a bundle of firewood over his shoulder, except that each of the sticks is a captured staff.
Who would then attack a woodcutter?
All the best, and thanks for a really interesting idea.
Colin

uh oh! i see the gleem of a Barbarian Prince->LAW conversion idea in your eye!

note to self: play nice with the woodcutter in klingor's BP adaptation

[Deleted]

now, an 'uber' staff would be a staff that has its own life-force, some poor mage soul imprisoned within the staff as punishment...or the last act of a desperate circle of magi, an attempt to consolidate their combined powers into one mighty instrument of power to be wielded by a champion of last hope.

[jlv61560]

I seem to recall Steve Jackson addressing the issue of exploding staffs in his Designer's Notes for TFT (published in an issue of the Space Gamer, as I recall) and he said it was simply put in as a deterrent to someone picking up another wizard's staff -- sort of a booby trap that he could see any wizard worth his or her salt putting out there to keep honest people honest, or something like that.  It actually did make sense at the time (and still, frankly, does to me).  It also prevented precisely the point you guys raised here; someone running around with 20 other wizard's staffs like so much kindling.  I could see the winning wizard keeping the enemy's staff as a trophy or something (and thus forcing the loser to start over again creating a new one), but not being able to use it.

I actually kind of like some combination of the old TFT rules plus the new LAW rules.  The Wizard's Staff and Staff of Power still have the same damage effects (including the booby trap effect) AND they can be used as a FAT battery to store fatigue for the wizard.  The staff storing 1xST number of FAT points, and the Staff of Power storing up to 2xST FAT points (as well as doing the greater damage in combat that the Staff of Power brought to the table in TFT).  That would make a wizard's staff something very dangerous to anyone else and would give rise to all sorts of attempts by players who managed to kill or incapacitate a wizard to try and drag off the defeated wizard's staff (or maybe they just trap a rat and toss it onto the staff, I don't know).  Such a set of rules would probably require re-instating the old "Staff" and "Staff of Power" spells from TFT (which may or may not be something Brett and George would be interested in), and that in turn might also lead to a new high-level spell -- something like "Break Wizard's Staff" that might be an automatically opposed 3/IQ vs 3/IQ contested spell result.

The Staff of Power would at least be a partial answer to ewookie's "uber" staff too.

All of that is pure speculation on my part, of course, but it could make for some interesting issues for the Wizards in the party to have to address in a campaign....  I can imagine a staff-breaking villain periodically popping in in a puff of smoke and breaking the Wizard's Staff, forcing him/her to spend precious time and effort (and Experience!) creating a new staff every so often.  After about the fifth time that happened, I could see the entire party swearing bloody vengeance on the villain and chasing him to the ends of the earth to kill him for it.