Ok, I'm not gonna lie; I have a huge deal of trouble with anything but the simplest arithmetic. I'm a pretty smart guy, but math baffles me to the bone. I've been trying to calculate the cost of creating my own magic items, and while the instructions are right in front of me and someone even explained it to me like a 5 year old, I still don't get it. I've even tried breaking down existing magic item prices and it made no sense at all to me.
So my questions are these: Has anyone used the Dynamic Magic Item creation rules from Pathfinder Unchained? Did you like one over the other? How does ease of use compare between the two?
Thanks in advance for your time and consideration in this matter.
What are you trying to price? Toss it out here and I'm sure you'll get a few people making some good suggestions. Lots of really smart and knowledgeable people here.
I have looked at them, but I haven't actually tried using them. Mostly because they are the sort of rules that require the entire table to understand what they are doing, and my table does not, so they aren't very useful to me. However, if you are looking for something easier then the unchained rules are not for you. The unchained rules take the standard item creation rules and add a couple of layers of complexity on top. You get a system that's a little more "deep" than "just cross off 2kgp and you have your belt", but I don't think "lots of complexity and a little more interesting" is what you are looking for.
Well, just trying to figure out how to break down the Cloak of the Wyvern caused me to take a Xanax. I was thinking of something like a cloak that granted the wearer the fiery breath and enhanced senses (locate gems and detect evil in particular) of a gold dragon or something along that line. It's very late for me and I'm thinking in a pretty cloudy fashion, but that's the gist of it.
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Well, just trying to figure out how to break down the Cloak of the Wyvern caused me to take a Xanax. I was thinking of something like a cloak that granted the wearer the fiery breath and enhanced senses of a gold dragon or something along that line. It's very late for me and I'm thinking in a pretty cloudy fashion, but that's the gist of it.
The unchained rules won't help with that.
Here is my advice:
Forget about the pricing guidelines.
Figure out what level you think it would be reasonable for a PC to have the cloak at, decide how much of their money they need to spend to get it, and price it based on that. The formulas are a last resort, and they break just as much as they work anyway, so it's not much loss if you don't use them.
Believe me, I considered doing something very much like that.
That's pretty sound advice... lol
Well, the Xanax is kicking in. I'm off to Snoozapalooza. Thanks, everyone!
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From what I am seeing you use the Core Book rules to determine the base price of the item and then the Dynamic Item Creation from Unchained can cause that price to fluctuate.
If I were designing such a cloak using the core book rules I would do the following:
Detect Evil at will
Detect Evil = 1(Spell Level)*1(Caster Level)*1800 = 1800
Locate Gems at will
Locate Object = 2(Spell Level) *3(Caster Level) * 1800 = 10,800 + 50% because it is a slotted item with multiple abilities = 16,200
Allows user to breath 15' cone of fire doing 4d6 damage 3/day
Fire Breath = 2(Spell Level)* 3(Caster Level)*1800/(5/3 uses/day)= 6,750 + 50% because it is a slotted item with multiple abilities = 10, 125
For three differing abilities you just add the costs together.
16,200 + 10,125 + 1800 = 28,125gp round to 28,000 for the base price. Not familiar enough with the dynamic creation rules from there to help out with that part.
OldSkool is off to a good start there.
I would always price the most expensive ability first (this is the one that doesn't get the +50%) then the other, cheaper abilities after that so that the 50% price bump always applies to the less costly abilities.
That isn't exactly in the RAW, but think about it, if you're making the item and it costs you your own gold, wouldn't you make those exact three abilities as cheaply as you can or would you deliberately make them more expensive with no change in the final item? Doing it this way saves 4,500gp off the total base price (see below).
Did I miss where we said the breath weapon should only be used 3x per day? Assuming it isn't limited, it would be priced at 10,800 just like the Locate Objects. Since we have a tie for most expensive, I'll just pick this one to be first since it's more interesting:
10,800 + (10,800 x 1.5) + (1,800 x 1.5) = 29,700. Let's round that up to a flat 30,000 because that's a nicer number.
Note that this is almost the same price that OldSkool came up with, but also note that his Fire Breath is only usable 3 times per day while this item is unlimited. Making his item unlimited would have priced it at 34,200 so, by making the most expensive ability first, we can save exactly 4,500gp and have exactly the same item.
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Note that I did say that an example of how I would design such an item so the OP could see the processes. I would not give my players unlimited AoE fire breathing. Also I prefer to overprice custom items rather than under price from a game balance perspective so I start with the lowest price even though it may not make sense from a purely in world perspective. Of course, those decisions are purely dependent upon my GMing style and DM_Blakes is a perfectly legitimate approach as well. Between the two you should be able to tweek to suit your campaign and figure out about what such an item would be priced.
Thanks guys. You've been really helpful. Now I can attempt such madness myself!