Alarphon's Staff

[Pnumbra]

Dev(s):

Will this staff remain unusable by Warlocks or is this a text omission?

[Rhysem]

Dev(s):

Will this staff remain unusable by Warlocks or is this a text omission?

As level 20 gear for a warlock its trash. Why would you care?

[Pnumbra]

As level 20 gear for a warlock its trash. Why would you care?

Just need a placeholder staff. It won't be in operation for more than a week, tops.

[Ryan220]

I wondered about its restricted use as well when I looked at Alarphons - its strange how a Bard can use it yet a Warlock or Druid cannot.

[richieelias27]

I wondered about its restricted use as well when I looked at Alarphons - its strange how a Bard can use it yet a Warlock or Druid cannot.

A Druid is not an arcane caster.

Warlocks and Bards, on the other hand, are. Warlocks *should* be able to use the staff. If they can't, bug report it.

[lanthan]

A Druid is not an arcane caster.

Warlocks and Bards, on the other hand, are. Warlocks *should* be able to use the staff. If they can't, bug report it.

Despite using arcane spells, warlocks are effectively divine casters since their powers come from an external source. Their spell casting is even blocked by a quell's intercession debuff.

[richieelias27]

Despite using arcane spells, warlocks are effectively divine casters since their powers come from an external source. Their spell casting is even blocked by a quell's intercession debuff.

No, they are considered arcane by the D&D universe. Complete Arcane introduces Warlocks into D&D as an arcane class. End of discussion. If Turbine is trying to introduce them as a divine caster (and I'm 99% sure they are not trying to do so), they are wrong. Flat out wrong.

Warlocks are arcane casters.

Also, their abilities are not external at all. They are internal, supernatural abilities.
Quoted directly from Complete Arcane: "Warlock: A supernatural character whose sinister powers are inborn abilities, not spells."
If quell's intercession is blocking warlock spellcasting, it's either a bug, or Turbine does not know what they are doing.

Edit: Looked into 5th edition and see they changed it to being power granted from an outside source... blech, I was wondering where they got all that pact nonsense. I figured they pulled it out of imaginationland.
Regardless, it's arcane in 3.5, arcane in 4th, and reasonably certain they didn't change that bit in 5th

[ferrite]

Forgive the necro but I've concluded Alarphon's Staff truly is garbage

First the staff doesn't function correctly at all. Wielded by a bard, the staff does no damage in any of its evocation spell like abilities. Fireball, lightning and the ice effect visually appear, the attack occurs but no damage is taken or recorded by the combat log. There are no zeros, nothing at all. Just nothing happens.

Second, the hold monster spell like ability uses standard scroll DC of 15 instead of staff DC, even though the info popup clearly indicates its supposed to use staff DC. This level 20 epic staff thus fails to hold anything (tested against a group of CR 15 human fighters in the cogs, 14 casts resulted in 12 saves vs what was supposed to be a DC 45 hold effect. I suppose there could have been 12 rolls of 20 out of the 14 recorded, however the chances of such an event happening is probably 1 in a few trillion.

Third, the staff seems to have been broken for a long time. Years perhaps. Which leads me to think no one bothers with this item at all. At this point I fed it to a sentient jewel, which is all it seems good for.

[cru121]

nom nom nom