Wizard Staff

[EKB]

I stick close here to the classic rules with a few ruffles and flourishes.

A wizard staff is usually wood, but can be made of any non-ferrous material (e.g. an ivory wand or a silver dagger).

The underlying object may not be a magic item, but can be enchanted as one after being turned into a wizard's staff

A wizard may only have one staff at a time.

A wizard's staff may have the form of a weapon (e.g. a quarterstaff, a club, or the aforementioned silver dagger). The wizard's staff damage adds to the weapon damage in that case, but the wizard will need the appropriate weapon talent to attack with the staff. The classic quarterstaff-wizard's staff is thus a 2-handed weapon that does 2d+2 damage for an investment of 3 IQ points (1 IQ for the Staff spell and 2 IQ for the Quarterstaff talent)

The other common & classic form of a wizard's staff is a short (30 cm) wand. It requires no weapon talent to use, and can be used in HTH combat, just like a dagger.

A wizard's staff can be upgraded to a Staff of Power if the wizard knows that spell.

My current house rule is that the wizard must decide whether his staff explodes or not when picked up, plus handwaves against dropping a staff while 'wanting' it to be picked up. I've never been completely happy about that, and the comments here have me thinking about dropping the exploding staff rule, probably to replace it with something else.