How... how how how..
I have a character that wants to add the properties of the sword of subtley (core p. 477) to his +1 weapon. I can't for the life of me even figure out how the developers came up with the costs for the listed product, let alone find out the cost to add it.
This is what I can figure:
material cost: 310 (10 gp for the sword, 300 for masterwork)
Enchantment bonus: +1, 2,000 gp
situational bonus (sneak attack damage): +4
This one I have questions about... per the rules, p. 549, if the power is dependent on a class ability, there is a 30% reduction in price... so is this a reduction on a +4 weapon (32,000 base gp price) or +5 (50,000 gp price) since this would be classified as a +5 on the weapon chart?
if so, the price will either be 22,400 (+4) or 35,000 (+5).
So, right now we are looking at either: 24,710 or 37,310 to buy or a create price of 12,355 or 18,655 (based off create is 1/2 of base price).
Am I doing this right? The book values are 22,310 purchase and 11,310 creation. How did they come up with these numbers?
Also, how did they come up with a CL of 7th level? This has me completely confused. Help....
The developers have previously stated on these forums that magic item pricing is less about math and more about art. So, for the specific magic items they created, they pretty much decided upon a price that seemed right for the item, rather than calculating the cost.
The bonus to sneak attack damage is not an enhancement bonus to the weapon, since it does not increase it's effective enhancement bonus (which would help in overcoming DR if it did) so pricing it like one does not really work.
The bonus is an untyped bonus to a class feature, we can remove the 2310 from the price (removing the +1 bonus and sword cost) which leave us with 20,000 for the bonus. we know that bonuses are usually done as such (bonus^2)*x which gives us (4^2)*x=20,000, so we are left with 16*x=20,000 and can then say that x=1250, which means that using this item as a guideline we can extrapolate that an untyped bonus to sneak attack costs: bonus squared times 1250 gold. This cost should be the same for any untyped bonus to attack and damage on a conditional class feature. Of course whether this bonus could be increased or decreased is up to an individual GM. You can also consider subtlety to be a special weapon modifier that adds 20,000 to the base price; Similar to how many armor special abilities work, with just a flat increase in price.