A graded wand or staff can include metamagic feats. The metamagic feats apply only to spells activated from the wand or staff, count as qualities of a grade equal to the spell slot adjustment, and increase the number of charges needed to activate the spell. Below I present the wand of miltiary fire, and a maximized wand of military fire (the same wand with the Maximize Spell metamagic feat added).
Wand of Military Fire (CL 7, 7 charges)
- (4) wall of fire (4 charges, 2d6+7 points damage, concentration + 7 rounds; 1/day + 3 charges)
- (2) flaming sphere (2 charges, 3d6 damage, 7 rounds; 3/day + 1 charge)
- (1) burning hands (1 charge, 5d4 damage; 7/day)
Market Price: 24,500 gp
Adding the Maximize Spell metamagic feat (which requires the spell slot needed to cast the spell to be three levels higher) increases the wand’s grade and caster level to 10. This changes the activation options as described below.
Maximized Wand of Military Fire (CL 10, 10 charges)
- (4) wall of fire (4 charges, 2d6+10 points damage, concentration + 10 rounds; 2/day + 2 charges)
- maximized wall of fire (7 charges, 12+10 points of damage, concentration + 10 rounds, 1/day + 3 charges)
- (3) Maximize Spell
- (2) flaming sphere (2 charges, 3d6 damage, 10 rounds; 5/day)
- maximized flaming sphere (5 charges, 18 damage, 10 rounds; 2/day)
- (1) burning hands (1 charge, 5d4 damage; 10/day)
- maximized burning hands (4 charges, 20 damage; 2/day + 2 charges)
Market Price: 50,000 gp
The wielder cannot use Maximize Spell (from the wand) on other spells at all, nor even on the spells in the wand unless activated from the wand. However, adding metamagic feats to a graded wand or staff can add quite a bit of flexibility to the use of the item, especially if you add multiple lower-cost metamagic feats instead of one expensive one as I’ve done here. I can imagine metamagic feats might even be a good way to use up otherwise unassigned slots, but I’ll have to see how it plays out.