Magical staff

Version 0.27: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Magical staff (type varies)
Skill	Staves
Damage	5
Accuracy	+5
Base delay (%)	12 (120%)
Min delay	6 at skill 12
Hands	1H
Size	Large
Ranged?	No

A staff improved with arcane powers of unknown nature.

A magical staff is a device which enhances your spells in one of a variety of different ways. It occupies your weapon slot and can be used as a +0 staff in combat if need be. Unlike normal weapons, they cannot be enchanted in any way; instead, some magical staves deal additional elemental damage based on your skill in Evocations and the corresponding school of magic and/or provide other effects such as resistances or additional abilities.

Enhancer Staves

The following staves all serve as spell power multipliers for spells of their respective spell school. Some may also add elemental damage or other effects when used in melee:

Damage Dealt: 0 to 1.25×(School+[Evocations/2])
Chance to Activate: (Evocations + School/2)×6.66% per hit

• Staff of fire: Fire damage, grants rF+.
• Staff of cold: Cold damage, grants rC+.
• Staff of earth: Physical damage, which is strongly reduced by armour.
• Staff of air: Electricity damage, grants rElec.
• Staff of poison: (50+Poison Magic×12.5)% chance to poison the target (can even affect poison-resistant living targets, but has to pass a Poison/16 chance), grants rPois.
• Staff of death: (12.5+Necromancy×12.5)% chance of negative energy damage (does not affect targets with negative energy resistance or drain the target), grants rN+.
• Staff of conjuration: Irresistible damage, which is reduced by AC.

There are also a number of artefact staves, but they are technically classified as weapons rather than magical staves. See here for more details.

Images

History

• Prior to 0.27, magical staves could be cursed, like other weapons.
• In 0.26, staves of summoning, wizardry, and energy were removed. Staves of conjuration got the melee effect of staves of earth (irresistible damage that's reduced by AC once); staves of earth got a higher base damage, but with the shrapnel effect of being affected 3 times by AC.
• In 0.25, staves of power were removed.
• Prior to 0.19, staves of fire, earth, air, and cold would act as negative spell enhancers for their opposing elemental school.
• Prior to 0.18, staves of summoning granted the warding property.
• Prior to 0.17, staves of summoning could abjure summoned creatures in melee.
• In 0.13, the Staff of channeling was removed. Its ability to channel MP was given to staves of energy.
• In 0.12, the Staff of enchantment, which enhanced the power of Hexes and Charms, was removed.
• Prior to 0.8, the chance of a magical staff auto-identifying when wielded depended on the skill of the wielder in its corresponding school (or Spellcasting if none applied).

See Also

• Staves
• Rods and List of rods
• Evocable staves
• Unrandart staves