Question about ST cost when using a staff occult attack

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Helborn

According to Death Test 2 pg 43 #259, Wizard's Staffs are Magical Weapons even before the Immunity to Break Weapon (Staff II).

But that's because (like ITL 148) they were written for original TFT, where staffs were weapons you hit things with to do magical damage, no matter what their shape was. No one's arguing that the occult attacks of new staffs isn't magic damage. Hcobb and I disagree on whether bonking things with a new staff's underlying item's physical properties counts as doing magic damage or not.

Your ruling that you could hit with a staff to do the damage without using ST seems reasonable enough to me, though I don't think the rules say that. It is an upgrade of capabilities - e.g. compare Staff I, where otherwise there would usually be almost no reason to spend 1 ST, since hitting with the staff would usually be the same effect, but not cost ST with your ruling. Or see hcobb's ST 6 cacklers above.