So I was browsing some threads about sundering weapons and gear, along with make whole and I cant seem to wrap my head around what to do when you have someone break their shiny stick if its real nice. Except say "well, its broken. Guess that dragon had another one just like it in his horde" to keep wealth by level normal, which feels a bit kludgy to me.
Make whole works great, and seems pretty reasonable if the broken shiny stick is just broken, but when it's destroyed you need double caster level to repair it; So a +3 weapon needs an 18th level caster to fix it.
That sounds fine and well, except I don't know any downtime way of boosting caster level. You can either go for the 1/2 cost and time of making the item rule and try to figure out item creation or try to hire the in town magic weapon and armor smith, or you can shove the busted piece of junk into your treasure horde to be sold when you have enough caster levels to make make whole work.
Is there any higher level spell that would be appropriate that doesn't require you to hire a 30th level caster to fix a busted +5 weapon for example? All I can guess is death knell, which sucks as its only +1 caster level and is limited to clerics and witches that don't mind pissing off the party paladin, or limited/full wish, which is GM adjudication depending on weather or not he's having a bad day.
It seems like there should be something between 2nd and 9th level to make repairing items go from 1/2 cost to something a little less expensive, even if it isn't free.
Just wait for the wealth-by-level to normalize again over time as more treasure is found in later encounters.
Alternatively, a wish spell probably sorts the problem out for you too.
Well, yeah. I just think there should be something between "Hey it was great, but now its garbage... Hey look, a brand new shiny stick." and cast the spell as a standard and poof its all better. Ritual magic to raise caster levels or something, I dunno. Or a higher level spell that can make the shiny stick shiny again that isn't quite as pricy and arbitrary as a wish.
It just seems to me there's a hole here between make whole, item creation, and wish.
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Sorta found it for RAW, but its not awesome flavor wise IMHO, because the best man for this is a neutral cleric.
You get prayer beads for that +4 CL karma bead, prepare death knell, use a moon circlet and an orange ioun stone. Use death knell on some bad guy, and then you can cast at +8 caster level altogether. Enough to repair a +4 weapon at level 16 I guess.
The prayer beads are cheap enough to use at lower levels though, enough to pump caster level from 7 to 12 to repair destroyed +2 weapons or to repair destroyed +3 weapons at level 13. Probably worthwhile so PC's can sell them I guess, since a PC is probably using something more valuable than a +3 weapon at level 13