Wondrous Item of Mirror Image


Advice


How much would you price a Wondrous Item of Mirror Image, usable 2/day at caster level 3?


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As DM, I would be reluctant to open Pandora's Box on items like these. Once you start allowing relatively easy access to some of the best spells on a given class list to any joker with some coin you will risk introducing some power imbalances.

Having said all that, if you're the DM, or the DM is fine with the latter risk, the magic item creation guidelines found HERE suggest a price of 4,320gp (ie. spell level 2 x caster level 3 x 1,800gp, divided by 2.5 for the 2 charges/day). If it doesn't use an item slot, you'd double that cost, as I understand it (so 8,640gp).


I would start with "compare the new item to an item that is already priced, using that price as a guide" instead of the formulas. Cloaks of Displacement and Decoy rings have similar effects (miss chances). IMO 4320gp is way to cheap.


I agree with Valandil. At least a similar price to Cloak of Displacement.
I'd also make it an activated item so you have to use a Standard Action, which means its utility would be lower.
We're talking about an item that negates hit entirely and that is a powerful option.
Consider that for 50k you get 50% hit chance, while Mirror Image can be SO much better depending on number of images.

On a final note, I wouldn't allow such item. There are plenty enough items and there is no necessity to make new ones.


A Cloak of Displacement will negate, maybe 10-15 hits per day if you don't waste rounds not getting hit, and get swung on a lot. Probably less, though.

A 2/day CL3 Mirror Image will negate 2d4+2 hits per day, or on average 7 hits per day. Maybe a little less than a CoD, probably about the same. Considering a slotless item, I might price it at the same 50K, if I even allowed it in the first place.


Add me onto the 'wouldn't allow, period'. There's a reason spells are personal. Same reason we can't make potions of shield. It just opens up access to broadly, when these tools are designed for arcane casters not to simply explode when something looks at them hard.

If i did, I'd agree with Steve and suggest about 50k. It's better than a cloak of displacement because it's on demand, slotless, and provides much higher than a 50% miss chance. If not for the standard action I'd go higher


I'd recommend you to simply buy a wand of Mirror Image and a Wand Key Ring instead of creating a new item worth several times more.

If not, then one could base the price on another item granting a personal spell. Namely Bracers of Falcon's Aim.

4000gp for one use of a lv 1/Cl 1 personal spell per day.

If we assume that the price scales linearly with both CL and Spell level, then we'll land at 24,000 gp for one use of a lv 2 spell once per day. And then 48,000 for two uses.

So, yeah, 50,000 gp sounds alright.


I, personally, would go a different route: customizing the item.

Imagine, instead of a ring that casts Mirror Image 2/day, how about a ring that passively creates a singular mirror image (as the spell, but only one), that, once expended by taking a hit, takes one hour before it manifests again? This limits the item to only one hit absorbed per combat, while offering some useful longevity throughout an adventuring day.


I'm the DM and a player wants to make this item. He is unhappy with my price for the item. I am trying to get a feel for what others think the proper price should be.

Wonderstell;
thanks for the info on Wand Key Ring, that's probably the cheapest way. There are so many magic items anymore that it's hard to know them all.

Saethori;
with only 1 image 2/day, that would certainly be a cheaper option.

Everyone else;
I find the "would not allow" comments understandable. I have had a previous group go the wand/UMD route(sadly for them, this was before the Wand Key ring) and have experience with just how powerful mirror image on a warrior type can be. I am trying to not say no, but I also want to keep things challenging.

As a 2nd question;
As a player who wanted to make this item at the formula price(in this case 4320gp), would you rather be told
- it's not allowed
or
- a price much higher (at least x3+ as much) than the formula


Sounds like you've got this sorted out, then. The wand key ring is great- that'll be my go-to answer for spell-in-a-can requests from now on.


Yup, the wand key ring route is much, much cheaper than pretty much any custom-priced magic item on these boards. That said, it takes up a ring slot, and requires actions to draw, use, and then store the wand.

For long-term buffs/spells it's not that big of a deal, but for something like mirror-image, that action economy does hurt a bit. That said, someone with spring-loaded wrist sheaths who doesn't mind dropping the wand as a free action can significantly improve the action economy.


_Ozy_ wrote:

Yup, the wand key ring route is much, much cheaper than pretty much any custom-priced magic item on these boards. That said, it takes up a ring slot, and requires actions to draw, use, and then store the wand.

For long-term buffs/spells it's not that big of a deal, but for something like mirror-image, that action economy does hurt a bit. That said, someone with spring-loaded wrist sheaths who doesn't mind dropping the wand as a free action can significantly improve the action economy.

The Wand Key Ring, despite it's name, is slotless, which actually makes it much worse since you also have to draw it separately.


Quantum Steve wrote:
_Ozy_ wrote:

Yup, the wand key ring route is much, much cheaper than pretty much any custom-priced magic item on these boards. That said, it takes up a ring slot, and requires actions to draw, use, and then store the wand.

For long-term buffs/spells it's not that big of a deal, but for something like mirror-image, that action economy does hurt a bit. That said, someone with spring-loaded wrist sheaths who doesn't mind dropping the wand as a free action can significantly improve the action economy.

The Wand Key Ring, despite it's name, is slotless, which actually makes it much worse since you also have to draw it separately.

No, the benefit accrues to "the bearer," so it can be safely stashed in your sock.


Nah, it just says "the bearer". So wear it as a ring, slide it on the wand, or some other convenient method.


Per Wand Key Ring(slotless, ring, bearer);
That is odd, I wonder if that was an oversight or intentional.


Valandil Ancalime wrote:

Per Wand Key Ring(slotless, ring, bearer);

That is odd, I wonder if that was an oversight or intentional.

It's probably intentional. Otherwise it'd be way too narrow of a use for a ring slot.


My bad, should have reread the description. So, that just leaves you with the action economy of drawing, using, sheathing/dropping the wand. And making sure you can reliably hit a DC20 UMD with the +10 bonus.


Wand Key Ring wrote:
Each of these rune-carved brass rings is keyed to a specific spell at creation. When using the Use Magic Device skill to activate a scroll or spell trigger item based on that spell, the bearer gains a +10 insight bonus on the skill check.

+10. (3000)

Magenta Prism (Ioun Stone) wrote:
Cracked: This stone grants you a +2 competence bonus on checks with any one skill you choose, and you can change the skill modified once per day, as a normal magenta prism ioun stone. Price: 800 gp.

+12. (3800)

Masterwork Tool wrote:
This tool is perfect for its intended job. It grants a +2 circumstance bonus on a related skill check (if any). The bonuses provided by multiple masterwork items do not stack.

+14. (3850)


The wand key ring weighs 8 pounds. Three and a half kilos! You're not going to carry that on your finger.


Hmm, what would a UMD masterwork tool look like?


_Ozy_ wrote:
Hmm, what would a UMD masterwork tool look like?
Masterwork Tool wrote:
Some skills have no appropriate tool or masterwork tool—no non-magical item exists that grants a bonus for all uses of that skill. For example, just because a certain perfume is favored by local nobles (granting a +2 circumstance bonus on Diplomacy checks to influence them) doesn't mean that perfume has the same effect on a member of the thieves' guild, a foreign berserker, or a medusa. Likewise, just because a fake beard woven by dwarves out of the beards of famous dwarves may grant a +2 circumstance bonus on Use Magic Device checks to emulate the dwarven race doesn't mean the beard has any effect on using that skill to activate elven items or paladin items, or to decipher a written spell.

So maybe part of an accomplished wizard's spellbook for wizard spells?


Or a polished ebony 'wand holder' that contains a bit of fairy dust for a UMD bonus to wand activation. Not a bad idea.


if outside of pathfinder stuff is allowed you could give them an eternal wand of mirror image its slightly more expensive then a normal wand i think but has 2 charges per day


Valandil Ancalime wrote:

I'm the DM and a player wants to make this item. He is unhappy with my price for the item. I am trying to get a feel for what others think the proper price should be.

Wonderstell;
thanks for the info on Wand Key Ring, that's probably the cheapest way. There are so many magic items anymore that it's hard to know them all.

Saethori;
with only 1 image 2/day, that would certainly be a cheaper option.

Everyone else;
I find the "would not allow" comments understandable. I have had a previous group go the wand/UMD route(sadly for them, this was before the Wand Key ring) and have experience with just how powerful mirror image on a warrior type can be. I am trying to not say no, but I also want to keep things challenging.

As a 2nd question;
As a player who wanted to make this item at the formula price(in this case 4320gp), would you rather be told
- it's not allowed
or
- a price much higher (at least x3+ as much) than the formula

It all goes back to Magic users get the best of the best.

Investing in UMD is not hard, and with some money and 1 Trait you can get it up to decent levels if you put into some gold.
The action economy is always going to hurt for melee types, but can be fooled around with Wrist Sheath (Swift to retrieve Wand).

It all depends how your party plays eventually. Do caster supports melee or just end encounters?
A warrior with a wand is still a warrior, and most caster will just laugh at them.
Sometimes throwing flexibility to those melee ground based, can't fly at level 15 when Wizard are casting wishes, is a good idea.


Letric wrote:
Valandil Ancalime wrote:

I'm the DM and a player wants to make this item. He is unhappy with my price for the item. I am trying to get a feel for what others think the proper price should be.

Wonderstell;
thanks for the info on Wand Key Ring, that's probably the cheapest way. There are so many magic items anymore that it's hard to know them all.

Saethori;
with only 1 image 2/day, that would certainly be a cheaper option.

Everyone else;
I find the "would not allow" comments understandable. I have had a previous group go the wand/UMD route(sadly for them, this was before the Wand Key ring) and have experience with just how powerful mirror image on a warrior type can be. I am trying to not say no, but I also want to keep things challenging.

As a 2nd question;
As a player who wanted to make this item at the formula price(in this case 4320gp), would you rather be told
- it's not allowed
or
- a price much higher (at least x3+ as much) than the formula

It all goes back to Magic users get the best of the best.

Investing in UMD is not hard, and with some money and 1 Trait you can get it up to decent levels if you put into some gold.
The action economy is always going to hurt for melee types, but can be fooled around with Wrist Sheath (Swift to retrieve Wand).

It all depends how your party plays eventually. Do caster supports melee or just end encounters?
A warrior with a wand is still a warrior, and most caster will just laugh at them.
Sometimes throwing flexibility to those melee ground based, can't fly at level 15 when Wizard are casting wishes, is a good idea.

i agree martials only outshine casters till about level 3 or 4 then they are on par-ish till lvl 6-7 and then casters just plane out shine them more and more till lvl 20+


I want to go back to pricing the magic item the player asked for.

First, a Cloak of Displacement (book price, 50,000 gp).
By magic item creation pricing:
Spell level 3 x caster level 5 x 1,800gp = 27,000
x 3/5 (3 castings x 5 rds each for 15 rds/day) = 16,200
I had looked at it and wondered at how they could come up with so high a price. But when I consider the effect, it really is worth it. For this, you get a 50% miss chance, not for up to 15 attacks/day, no, it's 15 rounds/day. You come up against a 6th-level ranger with 2wf who can put out 2 regular attacks & 2 off-hand attacks. Now pair him up with his wolf, flanking of course, who has an additional attack. That's one foe (fairly well optimized for my example, I'll grant you) who can put out 5 attacks in one full-attack action. It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a monk with a flurry, a pair of fighters, and so on, who could dish out a lot of attacks in one round. All of them suffer that 50% miss chance, at the cost of 1 tick off the 15-round allotment. Furthermore, you only have to allocate use of the cloak one round at a time. "A fight only lasts 2 rounds? Well, I'll bank the other 13. The next one down the hall only lasts 5? I've still got 8 left! Let's keep going!"

Now for the Cloak of Mirror Image -- and I do think it should not be slotless, and should specifically be a cloak, to avoid stacking issues.
By magic item creation pricing:
Spell level 2 x caster level 3 x 1,800gp = 10,800
x 2/5 (2 castings/day) = 4,320 [doubled if you allow it slotless]

That does look cheap. You could reasonably get it at only 6th level, by WBL. But the very best you can get is a 4 on your 1d4+1 mirror images. That's the following miss chances, counting down every time one is used --
100% x (1-1/(5+1)) = 83%
100% x (1-1/(4+1)) = 80%
100% x (1-1/(3+1)) = 75%
100% x (1-1/(2+1)) = 67%
100% x (1-1/(1+1)) = 50%
100% x (1-1/(0+1)) = 0%
It sure looks impressive, and it sure is frustrating for a single attacker with only an attack or two a round. But remember, some of those miss chances are going to go *poof* just from an attacker missing by 5 or less, even though "missing" is in no way an effect of the spell. I can't do the math to figure out what that makes the actual effectiveness of the spell, but I can see that it really limits what the spell will do to protect against even a single level 6 fighter with two attacks/round. And vs. my ranger or monk or crowd of friends... It's pitiful. Downright pitiful.

So much so, that I don't even think that there has to be a limit on when you can trigger that second casting. But if you really feel impelled to cry "underpriced," say simply that you can't trigger it a second time while the first spell is in effect, even if all of its images have been destroyed. I will grant you that what you for sure do not want to do is to separate out the minutes and let the mirror images be triggered up to 6 different times for a minute apiece. I think that otherwise, it's worth what the formula says it's worth.

Edited for clarity: each casting of Mirror Image lasts 3 minutes.

What am I missing?


bitter lily wrote:
What am I missing?

The Cloak is not going to get full attacked by multplie twf npcs every round. Didn't get attacked that round? Wasted Round. Only got attacked once? Mostly Wasted Round. Enemy had to move and attack? Wasted Round. Fight only lasted two rounds? You spent half of it activating your Cloak. In practice, the cloak will rarely last for more than 20-30 attacks, 40 at the most. Due to the flow of battles and the fact you have to spend a standard to activate it the round before you get hit, you're going to be wasting a lot of rounds.

Mirror Image, on the other hand, is much more likely not to waste a single image. It has a much greater than 50% miss chance. It will prevent 2-5 hits per casting, and because of its 30 round duration it can be feasibly pre-cast with no loss of action economy.

An at-will Cloak of Mirror Image is at least as good (if not better) the the Cloak of Displacement. Therefore a 2/day Cloak should cost at least 20,000gp, if not more, and a slotless item twice that.


I would allow a version like the Copycat ability from the trickery domain for 20,000gp. Move action, one image, CL3, duration 3 rounds, useable 3 times per day.

Otherwise 50,000gp sounds about right to me for the full spell.


if your gona charge that much for it they would be better of with a normal wand at 4500 gold and activated as a standard action and a wand with 2/day charges instead would be about 4800ish based on the 3.5 calculations ive found were the actual item they may be looking for is from


One thing to consider about miss chance granting items, specifically, is that they have a chance of also negating crits/vorpal rolls. This means that you have to also consider comparable fortification abilities, due to this 'effective fortification' component in addition to the generic yet highly variable 'ac steroid' component (and they provide a larger 'effective-ac' number [pricing point for item creation guidelines] the lower one's actual ac is, making them highly desirous for characters looking to free up spell slots, and who have relatively few 'required' items to dump their gp on).

off-topic rant:
That last bit muddies the waters of item/pricing design considerably, and is one of the major issues I have with spell-in-a-can items. Much more fun to create something unique

EDIT: For further discussion I'd posit that not all spells at the same level are of equal value, and that mirror image comes close to topping the second level spell power/utility curve. This should be reflected in item cost compared to same-level spells.


Trekkie90909 wrote:

For further discussion I'd posit that not all spells at the same level are of equal value, and that mirror image comes close to topping the second level spell power/utility curve. This should be reflected in item cost compared to same-level spells.

That was my thought as well. Both True Strike and Mirror Image have effects that are well above their spell level when it comes to making magic items.


A command word activated True Strike item is usually overrated, especially at high levels. Give up a standard action so that one attack on your next round pretty much auto-hits is usually a bad bargain.

A Magus with the wand-wielder arcana can use a true strike wand to auto-hit for one attack each round, and it's still not considered an optimal, must have ability.

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