Staff Countermeasures
 

This creative use of magic came up in a game recently: A relatively humble wizard took away the souped-up wooden staff of a superior enemy mage by maneuvering adjacent to him and hitting it with a Fire spell. It was a dangerous move, but it paid off; the victim, not knowing Destroy Creation, Magic Rainstorm, or Fireproofing, was left without his favored hand weapon and mana reservoir and was thus far more vulnerable to the PCs.

Any other reports of interesting ways to neutralize these arcane toys?

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

Fire is not a break weapon spell. If the staff was dropped into a fire hex and left there for the full minute it would burn up, but not after a few seconds exposure to fire.

The classic way of de-staffing a wizard is to engage him in HTH which forces him to drop his Drop Weapon resistant stick.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

The Fire spell gave the wizard a choice: hold onto the burning staff and suffer the consequences, or drop the staff and avoid injury. So, Fire accomplished what Drop Weapon could not.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

Brilliant!

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

That's what I told the (relatively new!) player who came up the tactic. If he keeps up like this, he's going to be one cunning player.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

Just put the enemy's robes on fire instead.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

That would be bad, but it leaves them holding their deadly staff with all its mana.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

Very few wizards cast Staff on a torch that will catch fire with a spark.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

This might be one of those times when the GM could use the to hit roll of the spell to judge how well it works. If the roll for the Fire spell barely succeeded then maybe the flame goes out when the staff is dropped. If the roll succeeded easily the the staff is fully engulfed in flames.

Re: Staff Countermeasures
 

Wizard is jumped by a dozen spiders and casts fire everywhere in his hex except his own body...