Player wants to make a nifty ice-based staff. I am using the following numbers and think they are incorrect, please share your insights.
From d20 SRD:
Creating Staffs
To create a magic staff, a character needs a supply of materials, the most obvious being a staff or the pieces of the staff to be assembled.
The cost for the materials is subsumed in the cost for creating the staff—375 gp × the level of the highest-level spell × the level of the caster, plus 75% of the value of the next most costly ability (281.25 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster), plus one-half of the value of any other abilities (187.5 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster). Staffs are always fully charged (50 charges) when created.
If desired, a spell can be placed into the staff at only half the normal cost, but then activating that particular spell costs 2 charges from the staff. The caster level of all spells in a staff must be the same, and no staff can have a caster level of less than 8th, even if all the spells in the staff are low-level spells.
The creator must have prepared the spells to be stored (or must know the spell, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) and must provide any focus the spells require as well as material and XP component costs sufficient to activate the spell a maximum number of times (50 divided by the number of charges one use of the spell expends). This is in addition to the XP cost for making the staff itself. Material components are consumed when he begins working, but focuses are not. (A focus used in creating a staff can be reused.) The act of working on the staff triggers the prepared spells, making them unavailable for casting during each day of the staff’s creation. (That is, those spell slots are expended from his currently prepared spells, just as if they had been cast.)
Creating a few staffs may entail other prerequisites beyond spellcasting. See the individual descriptions for details.
Crafting a staff requires one day for each 1,000 gp of the base price.
...
The player wants the staff to be 15th level and using those numbers:
Polar ray 375 x 8 x 15 = 45,000
Cone of cold 281.25 x 5 x 15 = 21,094 (21,093.75)
Ice Storm 187.5 x 4 x 15 = 11,250
Wall of ice 187.5 x 4 x 15 = 11,250
For a Total Cost of 88,594
And the player character pays 44,297 gp, 3544 XP and takes 89 days to craft. This crafted staff expends one charge for each of the above listed spells.
Now if the charges were determined as such:
Polar ray 5 charges
Cone of cold 2 charges
Ice storm 1 charge
Wall of ice 1 charge
Would the cost then be?:
Polar ray 375 x 8 x 15 = 45,000 divided by 5 = 9,000
Cone of cold 281.25 x 5 x 15 = 21,094 (21,093.75) divided by 2 = 10,547
Ice Storm 187.5 x 4 x 15 = 11,250
Wall of ice 187.5 x 4 x 15 = 11,250
For a Total Cost of 42,047
And the player character pays 21,023.5 gp, 1682 XP and takes 43 days to craft. This crafted staff expends five charges for the polar ray, two charges for the cone of cold and one charge each for ice storm and wall of ice.
Have I made an error in applying the charges to the item cost? Thank all in advance for sharing your thoughts.
I don't think you're supposed to be halving the cost for what your character pays. The base cost you calculated is what he pays in materials; purchasing said staff would cost double that.
Thanks Rez for your clarification. May I confound the issue?
According to the DMG:
A staff is a long shaft of wood that stores several spells. Unlike wands, which can contain a wide variety of spells, each staff is of a certain kind and holds specific spells. A staff has 50 charges when created.
Physical Description
A typical staff is 4 feet to 7 feet long and 2 inches to 3 inches thick, weighing about 5 pounds. Most staffs are wood, but a rare few are bone, metal, or even glass. (These are extremely exotic.) Staffs often have a gem or some device at their tip or are shod in metal at one or both ends. Staffs are often decorated with carvings or runes. A typical staff is like a walking stick, quarterstaff, or cudgel. It has AC 7, 10 hit points, hardness 5, and a break DC of 24.
Could the staff be also made as a melee weapon, such as a quarterstaff? As the DMG states it is a typically a walking stick, quarterstaff or cudgel. Assuming that this is allowable, what would the cost and where would these enhancement applications be applied.
The Ice Staff of the Jester King, +2 frost darkwood quarterstaff, which includes the previous spell-like functions. I know that a +2 darkwood quarterstaff value is 8,640 and to add the frost description would be an additional 10,000.
So would the math sum to 60,226 gp (50,906 + 9,320) to craft with a XP cost of 2,409 and 61 days to manufacture and 120,452 gp to buy?
Where did my thread go?
This is great. I've always wanted to have a wizard craft his own staff, but it's been very difficult pricing my creations. This clears things up nicely. I was always particularly perplexed about the DMG's passage concerning decreasing crafting costs by uping required charges. It specifically states what happens if you require two charges for a spell, but never indicates what happens with three or more, or that this can even be done (although specific staff descriptions obviously allow for this). The pattern is easy to guess, but I find it strange that they didn't explicitly state it in the book.
EDIT- Here's something that sort of coincides with Jester King's second question about weapon enhancements on staffs (which, by the way, there are such staffs in the Complete Arcane). It's an idea out of WoW, which is to combine ability boosts into a weapon or staff. So, how would you factor in adding a +2 or +4 enhancement bonus to Intelligence on this staff (or to Strength on a sword, for that matter)? There aren't really any non-artifact examples of this that I'm aware of.
Thanks Rezdave, your insights are well reasoned as are your clarifications.
I am thinking the combined +2 frost darkwood spell-ability imbued quarterstaff is also not in the spirit of the Craft Staff feat. I tend to agree that it bends some of the boundaries of the described feat. Crafting a melee weapon should fall under the tenets of Crafting Arms and Armor.
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Just a note on dissimilar abilities:
Multiple Different Abilities
Abilities such as an attack roll bonus or saving throw bonus and a spell-like function are not similar, and their values are simply added together to determine the cost. For items that do take up a space on a character’s body each additional power not only has no discount but instead has a 50% increase in price.
So, by the default pricing, the weapon plus should probably be either normal price or +50%. Since the benefit of having this in the same item as the staff is so minimal, I'd use the normal price.
Also, you'd need to create the spell-trigger component of the staff separately from the weapon bonus (much like an item and its masterwork component are separately crafted with normal items), and each would need the appropriate feat. They need not be done by the same caster.
My turn. I want to create a magic item with which I can cast a spell with True Strike's +20 attack bonus on it. My original idea was that it would work like a metamagic rod, though it seems it could also work similar to the Boots of Speed, being a swift action use-activiated item taking up a slot. The idea is that I could cast a certain number of spells per day with a +20 bonus to the ranged touch attack that so many spells require. Here's what I've got so far. Please advise.
Use-activated spell effect item with 5 charges per day.
(effective spell lvl 5 x CL 1 x 2000gp)/(5/5 per day) = 10,000gp
That seems clear-cut enough, unless you factor in that you have to be a 7th level caster to cast a 5th level spell. Then it becomes a 70,000gp item. However, when I try to follow the rules on how the Boots of Speed were made to compare to that route, it seems to me that 12,000gp is way lower than I can calculate following the item creation rules.
Boots of Speed
Use-activated spell effect item with 1 use per day (CL10 = 10 rnds)
(spell lvl 3 x CL 5 x 2000gp x 4*)/(5/1 per day) = 24,000gp
*multiply by 4 because the spell has a duration measured in rounds
How can the boots only cost 12,000gp when, by my estimation, they should cost 24,000gp. What am I missing?
Anyone?
True strike is a horrible spell to be placing "as is" into spells-in-a-can. Especially quickened spells-in-a-can. But if you're intent on doing this, quickened true strike is a 5th level spell, and so you should be treating it as a 5th level spell, with the 70,000 gp starting price tag.
The reason the boots of speed are 12,000 gp and not 24,000 gp is basically that the designers didn't think they're worth 24,000 gp. A part of this is likely because they don't really reproduce the haste spell. Haste affects a number of targets, whereas the boots affect just the wearer. So they're slightly less useful than another reusable 3rd level spell rounds/day item.
Edit: The magic item creation pricing tables aren't "rules", they are guidelines. Some items - such as anything that has to do with true strike - are seriously underpriced when you use the guidelines, and should have their value inflated. Other items are severely overpriced when you use the guidelines. It's all more of an artform than a science.
Yes, if you're using a quickened true strike into an item, it would require an appropriate caster level as well. For a wizard, this would be CL 9 for the 5th level spell slot. SL 5 * CL 9 * 2,000gp * 5/(charges per day)= base price of the item. If you're basing the thing on a metamagic rod, then the charges per day should be 3. 5 * 9 = 45 * 2,000gp = 90,000gp * 5/3 = 150,000gp.
That seems quite steep to me. If you're making it for a wizard to use with his touch spells (which seems well within the intent of the spell as written, since it's effect is limited to the caster), I would put in a class restriction to sorcerer/wizard and drop the price significantly. Still, it looks like this kind of item is going to cost you a good chunk of change in return for some essentially auto-hit ranged touch spells per day.
Thanks, Atrus. I had figured that I was either missing or misusing some calculation rule, or that the writers had simply changed the price to fit it better. That makes sense.
Saern, I like the idea of putting a limitation on it to lower the price. I'll bring that up to my DM. One thing though, you calculated the charges wrong. You said "times 5/3" when it's "divide by 5/3" in the rules. That would put it at 54,000gp. Much more manageable, but still a "good chunk of change." Thanks for your help. You'd understand why I want this item if you saw how I roll. Haha!
Thanks, Atrus. I had figured that I was either missing or misusing some calculation rule, or that the writers had simply changed the price to fit it better. That makes sense.
Saern, I like the idea of putting a limitation on it to lower the price. I'll bring that up to my DM. One thing though, you calculated the charges wrong. You said "times 5/3" when it's "divide by 5/3" in the rules. That would put it at 54,000gp. Much more manageable, but still a "good chunk of change." Thanks for your help. You'd understand why I want this item if you saw how I roll. Haha!
Thanks! I thought that price seemed awfully high, but I know there are many items which have a very large price tag for their effect, and I wouldn't be COMPLETELY surprised if the rules indicated the same for this item; +20 is nothing to scoff at!
That being said, I was thinking 50,000 would have been a better base price anyway, perhaps lower with the class restriction. You may want to ask your DM about putting a clause on how this item interacts with real rods of metamagic. If you made lesser, normal, and greater versions of it, you may be able to get some for your lower level spells like ray of enfeeblement and scorching ray for relatively cheap. You may also want to put a clause in about not being able to stack the effects of this rod with any rod of metamagic, claiming that it is related to them and they don't stack with themselves, so this wouldn't either. The point being clarifying limitations that don't affect what you actually plan to do with the rod in order to drop the price. Let us know what you and your DM settle on!