Hello baronesh,
In Discourse, what you are given is what you get in terms of staff (admin/moderator) permissions. They are set - you cannot change them.
There are now category moderators available in Discourse. What they can do is trust level dependant but again, they are given a set of tools as standard. You can allow them to have more via this plugin
Furthermore, instead of using trust levels, many settings now use groups for permissions.