In eons of playing the game I’ve rarely ever played a mage of any sort, so I’ve found myself scratching my head when it comes to which feats work when casting spells from an item. The webs are full of contradicting information, and the wikis are ridiculously silent about it, so I turn to the community now, to finally put the matter at rest! Metamagic, of course, cannot affect wands or staves, or any other spell cast from an item, but what about Spell Focus, Spell Penetration, etc.?
NWN out of the box is barely passable for item-based casting [although this may not be the case if you’re going to be playing on a PW that’s modified crafting and item use]. even caster levels aren’t taken into account, to say nothing of metamagic and spell foci; nwn assigns fixed caster-level values for various spells, and those that haven’t been set up that way use the lowest caster level applicable to the spells’ ‘inherent’ levels. the end result is that many magic items end up having a ‘shelf life’ after which they’re no longer very useful. [so your mage picked up a rod of horrid wilting when she was lvl 13? great! but 10 levels later, your opponents will simply laugh at your attempts to harm them w/your rod’s inherently 15th-level caster level – regardless of whether or not you’ve focused in necromancy.]
imho the best use for casting-orientated feats is… casting. 
your hasted mage will be able to fire off two spells in the time it takes you to read a single scroll, zap your wand once, etc. and while you might blanche at the thought of AOO’s while you cast, maxing your concentration and using the right gear can mitigate this well. i’ve found that feats like the spell focus tree, combined w/a maxed prime req, can be very helpful in ruining the day of my nastier opponents, and there are several other approaches to viable character building that have worked for me as well. but again, none of that is really applicable to item-based casting.
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So, you’re saying none of the feats affect spells cast from items? The thing is internet searches offer contradicting answers. Some say Spell Focus does work, while Spell Penetration doesn’t, and viceversa. Hence my confusion.
They can be made to do practically anything.
On any given thing, probably just a scripting oversight, since PNP that’s done when a scroll/whatever is made, not at cast unless it’s a pick from option type of spell (outside say Sudden X metamagic or Archmage abilities).
no. spell focus etc. won’t affect the dc of a spell cast from an item, nor will the user’s actual caster level [assuming the user can actually cast the spell]. the dc of the spell is related only to the spell level ; the user’s spell foci aren’t taken into account. as for the effective caster level, you can see what it is if you look at the item description ; it’s the number in parentheses after the name of the spell [example: “negative energy ray (1)” is cast at first level from the ‘wand of negative energy’.] it’s true that this information is merely an entry in the tlk table, but to date i haven’t seen a contradiction with what’s actually listed in iprp_spells.2da. this is why you might run across a potion of barkskin with an effective caster level of 3 or 6 or 12, but never 40 – these are all individual “item spells” [i.e., bioware cheated…] and not simply level variants of the same spell, as common sense would dictate.
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Thanks for clearing that up!