Pricing Exotic Slaves like fey, outsiders and powerful NPCs

[RogueMortal]

I'm running a campaign with an evil party and a couple of the players are interested in acquiring a few slaves. Not just commoners or experts to do the heavy work for them, but bottled pixies, bound celestials and captured heroes who dared to stand against them.

I've seen a chart for slave costs around, but I'm hoping to get suggestions on something more suited to slaves with potentially powerful magic at their disposal. For example, pixies are little piles of SLAs, and certainly worth more than an npc with a few levels, but trying to price them like an item for all their powers results in rather expensive critters.

Any and all suggestions welcome, and thanks ahead of time.

[Liz Courts]

Moved thread.

[Whale_Cancer]

I would suggest pricing them in a manner similar to magic items. As it stands, a specialized slave costs 500. If you assume that is for a level one PC character (or a 1/3 CR with special abilities rating), then you could go (CR+1) * 500 * arbitrary scale factor.

The 'arbitrary scale factor' corresponds to a spell caster's level. Treat it as if the slaver is 'casting' a slave; the arbitrary scale factor is the level a wizard must achieve to cast a CR+1 spell.

For instance, a standard Pixie is CR 4. So, (CR4+1) * 500 * 9 ( the level a wizard needs to be to cast a fifth level spell). That comes out to 22,500.

Your mileage may vary, but that seems like a logical starting point.

Spoiler:

PS: I've got a setting in the works where slavery of this kind is important (though less fantastic than what yours appears to be aiming at), so I will be watching this thread.

[Moorluck]

I'd think they would be rather expensive. If for no other reason than how damn hard it would be to keep a being with that kind of magic subservient. It would take some pretty intense "supplication training".... and if you figure that out let me know, I wanna try it on my wife. :P

I did in our last Kingmaker game allow slavery, and priced one PC(it's a long story, but she belonged to another PC) at 250gp per class level, over her base value of 500gp for being a "prime specimen".

[RogueMortal]

Thanks for the suggestions, Whale Cancer and Moorluck. And thanks to Liz for getting this thread where it belongs.

I'll see where the system Whale Cancer is suggesting gets me, though I'm leery of the party capturing and selling off exotic slaves later on. Of course, I can probably make it just as much work to capture them as opposed to item crafting, so maybe it can work out.

As to keeping them under control, there's an Enchanter in the party. I also have some house rules on terrorizing and traumatizing those beneath them, which can result in Wisdom damage. Taken far enough, it could break the will of those they keep working at.

I'll be sure to update the thread on how things go at least, and share in the likely amusing tales to come of dragon wrangling and angry angels.

[Knight Magenta]

From a game-play perspective, It depends on why the PCs want a bottled pixie or whatever. If its just a desire for bling, and the slave won't do anything combat-wise, then price it the same way you would price an art object. That is by GM Fiat.

If the bottled pixie will be used for its SLAs, then figure out how the pixie is compelled to obey and how it could escape.

Then, price it as a magic item with a discount based on how likely the pixie is to escape, and how easy it is to get it to use its SLAs.

Some ideas from the pricing guidelines:
- Maybe getting the pixie to use its abilities requires an Intimidate check (10% discount)
- Maybe once it uses its detect X spell, you have to make a sense motive to see if it is lying (10-20% discount). I'd give this a bigger discount than just needing a skill, since you can get wrong information.

For escaping:
First, don't tell the PCs about the escape mechanic. The slaver will swear that his Magic bottle is fool-proof. Only the owner can open it.

So say that for every four hours that the Pixie is unobserved it can make a UMD check to escape. Higher-quality prisons have higher DCs. Whenever it escapes, it will seek out the enemies of the PCs and reveal the PCs secrets. Make sure they know why their foes have the drop on them. Whether it can be recaptured or not is up to you.

This works best if you are not using XP per encounter and are just levelling the players at story points, and if you are not afraid of killing PCs.

Depending on how much effort you are willing to put into this, that could be worth a discount of 50% or more i think.