Most expensive item submitted?

[thrikreed]

Midrealm DM wrote:

Holy Bag of Holding!

Nice... Made me laugh. I laughed some more when I thought of 'The Holy Handbag of Holding!'

Logos wrote:

Am I the only one that aimed to be useful from level 1?

Nope. I did too.

The campaigns that I run or that I'm in usually run a little on the light side for treasure. I've stared long and hard at the DMG's magic items list, specifically wondrous items, trying to figure out what to give out to players or get made by one of my characters... What items are both incredibly useful and inexpensive?

Because of these experiences, I've come to the conclusions A) there aren't enough of these items, and B) that any item I submitted would be both handy to have while preparing for an encounter, facing the encounter, or for cleaning up after the encounter; and cost 3k or less.

How many times am I going to go out and buy or have crafted an item of 50k or more during the course of a single campaign? How many times will I go out and buy or have crafted a Wand of Cure Light Wounds with its 750gp price tag? I know I've paid as much as 3,000gp, yes 4 times its value, for this simple magic item and still considered it a steal of a bargain. Would you say the same of most other items?

[Clinton Boomer]

Darkjoy wrote:

My entry is cheap. I figure that cheap equals "used a lot" while very, very expensive equals "not used at all".

And "not used at all" equals "200 words that could have been put to good use" in my opinion.

Hmm. You know, I've been thinking about this observation a LOT over the past week or so, probably more than is ENTIRELY healthy, but I think that I've come to a conclusion. Let me see if I can get it on paper:

I most wholeheartedly agree, up to a point. To me, however, the major exceptions to that hard-and-fast train of thought outweighed the drawbacks, and I had many reasons for deciding on my high priced item.

Let's be clear: no one opinion on this topic is really the ONLY opinion (unless the Judges feel like weighing in, in which case I'll gladly learn at the feet of the masters), but I contend that there are some VERY rarely-seen, QUITE rarely-used pocket-change Wondrous Items, and a few several-tens-of-thousands-in-gold Uber-Items that show up (at least in my experience) with semi-consistency, even if only as MacGuffin-esque set-pieces.

Por Ejemplo: One shot of Elixir of Love is both fluff-ful and cost effective, priced in a range where any 2nd-level scoundrel could get his grubby, commoner mitts on one (and with a pretty formidable save DC, now that I look at it), yet I have never, EVER seen one used in play. Ever. Same with most of the Feather Tokens, sadly.

Yet the nut-rupturing, jaw-dropping prices on the Helm of Brilliance, the Cubic Gate or, god help me, the Iron Flask have never kept them out of play for any of MY many campaigns, played or run. Hell, the appearance of THAT level of power tends to kick PC-fear and paranoia into over-drive, because, as the Bad Boys put it, "The s@$% just got real."

Now, I'll never, ever poo-poo the greatness that is Hand of the Mage over the waste of cash that is the Mirror of Life Trapping. And okay, sure: my formative gaming years were a mess of PlaneScape, Mountain Dew, Ninja Scroll, FF7 and Reel Big Fish, so maybe I'm a bit of a munchkin. Yes, I like ninjas, demons, boobs, undead and explosions, in that order. And my OTHER hobby is making silly movies about sex and D&D, so maybe I'm not the best guy to ask about this stuff.

Still, I think that there's plenty of room for awesome, earth-shattering, cost-prohibitive items of Truly Wondrous Power, that shake the pillars of heaven and spatter poisoned arrows from the sky like darkening rain.

And I felt like throwing my 200 words towards that.

[Maurice de Mare]

thatboomerkid wrote:

Darkjoy wrote:

My entry is cheap. I figure that cheap equals "used a lot" while very, very expensive equals "not used at all".

And "not used at all" equals "200 words that could have been put to good use" in my opinion.

Por Ejemplo: One shot of Elixir of Love is both fluff-ful and cost effective, priced in a range where any 2nd-level scoundrel could get his grubby, commoner mitts on one (and with a pretty formidable save DC, now that I look at it), yet I have never, EVER seen one used in play. Ever. Same with most of the Feather Tokens, sadly.

1) I made an impression, cool!

2) My gaming experience has been filled with feather tokens, never saw a helm or a iron flask though.

So it turns out that every game is different. But still I feel like a high priced item is not going to be used in a game, because its price will only be appropiate at a certain level. And cheap items are available sooner and therefor it can gain 'traction' faster.

[Clark Peterson]

I should point out that we judges do use the helm of brilliance as sort of a "top end" cost comparison item. That thing is bad to the bone. Same with iron flasks and cubic gates. They are good top end comparison items that we use to eyeball higher costed items. If your items are better than those, you are getting real close to artifact territory.

[Clark Peterson]

The price list gives some interesting top end ideas: +5 to ability scores should be about 130,000; +5 to attack and damage about 150,000; big multi-power items should be between 125,000 and 160,000 (helm of brilliance to chaos diamond); etc. We definately use those to eyeball the prices on the bigger items we received. If you are at 200k, man that thing better be good. If you are over 200k, that is real close to an artifact.

[Clark Peterson]

I will admit that I am a bit leery of this thread. I posted my comments about pricing, but I didnt really read the prior posts in great detail. I am not sure that it is appropriate. I dont want to be able to tie an item to a particular person on the forums. Not that I would. But I dont even want to be subconsiously influenced here...

I might even have Vic/Gary remove this thread, or at least hide it until after the winners have been announced.

[Erik Mona]

Just don't bother reading it closely. I didn't.

Everyone needs to understand that we're reviewing 855 items. After a while all of the prices kind of run together, and there is almost no chance we could identify you by price, even if we wanted to.

And trust me, we don't want to.

--Erik

[Steven Helt]

I don't think anyone could make accusations about tying an unkown object to a vague description. Surely more than a few of your entries forgot to post crafting costs and requirements. It wouldn't be possible to connect an anonymous entry to such limited information in one author's post. And if someone posted "I submitted a magic wooden monkey that banged drums and stole keys, but I forgot to price it", I would think that person would be disqualified, then autorejected, then made fun of. And in no way would that be the fault of the judges.

For the record, I did not submit a magic wooden monkey. And no, I don't want to touch yours.

[Clark Peterson]

I'm pretty sure there is at least one 200,000gp or more valued item that is in the keep pile now. Whether or not it/they get into the top 32, I dont know. I think there are also several 250 or 500 gp items in the keep pile. We really ran the gamut. I can tell you, price, while interesting, had nothing to do with our rubrik (so long as the price was well done). An amazingly-designed simple item could wow us just as much as a teriffic helm of brilliance-style power item.