So, a player in my game is planning on making a ring of cure light wounds, which would, in theory, allow him to cure the entire party at the end of every fight, to full, circumventing the party's need for potions, or healing spells, or resting ever.
This ring will only cost him 2000gp to make.
I thought this sounded wrong, but everything he told me sounds legit and I can't find ANYTHING in the book to disprove him. Is this actually possible? To make a simple ring with infinite uses of Cure Light Wounds that can just heal a party infinitely after battles?
Something sounds really wrong, so I thought I'd check here. Any help or clarification is welcome. Thank you!
Edit: I, for some reason, put $2000 instead of gp.
Impossible, there is nothing in the rules about making a infinite daily use of a spell item, the most is 50 charged one.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Magic-Item-Creation
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So, a player in my game is planning on making a ring of cure light wounds, which would, in theory, allow him to cure the entire party at the end of every fight, to full, circumventing the party's need for potions, or healing spells, or resting ever.
CLW replenishes spells and replaces sleep....
I've been doing it wrong...
Impossible, there is nothing in the rules about making a infinite daily use of a spell item, the most is 50 charged one.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Magic-Item-Creation
So? The custom magic item rules exist for a reason - to make new magic items. Thats the entire reason the formula for continuous use spell effects exists.
But all custom magic items must be approved by the DM. And remember, the formulas are only guidelines, and are actually the last place to look for an items price. Always compare the new item to existing items first. (Though I don't know of an existing item that allows unlimited healing except for the Ring of Regeneration.)
XD Well, not what I meant. I meant for just mundane healing. I know it doesn't do all those things.
He'd likely be using Forge Ring. The calculation seems like it'd be:
Use-activated or continuous, which is Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp, such as Lantern of revealing. (Paraphrased from the magic item creation table on page ... 550 I think it was?)
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So, a player in my game is planning on making a ring of cure light wounds, which would, in theory, allow him to cure the entire party at the end of every fight, to full, circumventing the party's need for potions, or healing spells, or resting ever.
This ring will only cost him $2000 to make.
I thought this sounded wrong, but everything he told me sounds legit and I can't find ANYTHING in the book to disprove him. Is this actually possible? To make a simple ring with infinite uses of Cure Light Wounds that can just heal a party infinitely after battles?
Something sounds really wrong, so I thought I'd check here. Any help or clarification is welcome. Thank you!
Yes. It casts Cure Light Wounds once per day. Done.
Oh, and I think he said he was going to create it at caster level 1st. So it would simply be Spell Level (1) x Caster Level (1) x 2,000 GP. Which is still only 2,000 GP. Something just sounds wrong there.
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What level is the party? Which classes?
A level 10 party with a Paladin, a good cleric, and a curing oracle? It'd be a waste of money.
A Party with no healing abilities...like a summoner, a fighter, a monk and a rouge? I'd let them make one just so they didn't die.
Of course, I'd make him make it a rod.
Lets look at the closest existing magic item (that I know of) to this CLW item. The Ring of Regeneration heals 1 hit point per round, and also regenerates lost limbs. Since loosing a limb is mechanically impossible with the rules (besides losing your head with a vorpal weapon, which would make healing useless anyway), lets say the full price of the ring is for the healing part. So it costs 90,000gp to heal a single hit point per round continuously.
A CLW item that functions continuously would heal 1d8+1 hit points per round. If 1 hit point per round costs 90,000gp, then 1d8+1 hit points per round should cost 1d8+1 x 90,000gp. Assume an average healed of 5.5 hit points/round (the average of 1d8+1), thats 495,000gp for the CLW item.
(Even if we assume the regeneration part of the Ring of Regeneration accounts for half the cost, thats still 247,500gp for an item that uses CLW continuously.)
And that is why you always compare to existing items first instead of going straight to the formulas.
I assume they're talking about the unlimited use version on that table.
Other than the GM fiat those item creation rules encourage you to use, you could point out the subscript 2 there. It does not list a multiplier for any duration less than rounds, so no instant or 1round durations allowed.
Looks like that doesn't help if they take the command activation version, though, which would actually price it at 1800, 3600 if it's held instead of worn. So, back to GM discretion. Before using that table, the first step is finding a similar item and price accordingly.
A wand with 50 charges is 750, so an unlimited charge item should be 50 or 100 times that, and at least double for being usable by anyone instead of being spell trigger. So, I'd price that at 75000 minimum.
(Edit: I'm a terribly slow typer, apparently.)
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You need rules? We got rules.
Not all items adhere to these formulas. First and foremost, these few formulas aren't enough to truly gauge the exact differences between items. The price of a magic item may be modified based on its actual worth. The formulas only provide a starting point. The pricing of scrolls assumes that, whenever possible, a wizard or cleric created it. Potions and wands follow the formulas exactly. Staves follow the formulas closely, and other items require at least some judgment calls.
Yeah. The party is going to be level 1, it's a new party for Rise of the Runelords.
From what I can tell from ideas so far, we'll have:
An alchemist, a druid, a two-weapon-fighter, and a sorcerer, if I recall. (They've kinda been flip-flopping).
A wand with 50 charges is 750, so an unlimited charge item should be 50 or 100 times that, and at least double for being usable by anyone instead of being spell trigger. So, I'd price that at 75000 minimum.
Well, making an unlimited-use item have 50 charges instead only halves the cost. So making a charged item have unlimited uses should therefore cost double, not 50x to 100x.
Hehehe, okay, excellent :) I think that gives me sufficient evidence to try and tell him no without him spazzing at me, because that is very true.
The problem is that the item she/he is wanting is not a use-activated or continuous item. The lantern of revealing uses a spell that has a duration measured in time; cure light wounds has no measurable duration. This means that an item that uses the spell cure light wounds needs to follow the rules for other items that have instantaneous effects, that is wands or scrolls or charged items. It's fine to be able to cast cure light wounds X/day, using the same formula but divided by 5/X. So, 2000 gp would let you use it 5/day forever.
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[IMO]
The magic item creation rules are a set of guidelines, mostly for the GM to adjudicate his own creations.
Rings of always on (or at will) true strike or cure light wounds or infernal healing or whatever are pretty much always going to be impossible, not because the formula prevents it, but because the GM has to prevent it.
Whenever a magic item stops being a situationally useful magic item and starts being a 'I do this every round' super-power, that becomes your optimal action round by round over your actual class abilities, that's a problem.
In-game rationales (such as cursing the ring to steal the hit points it heals from the wearer, or accidentally summoning unfriendly positive energy creatures from time to time, like ravids, or infusing objects in the area with positive energy so that they animate and attack) tend to become more trouble than they are worth, and it's better to say out of game, 'no, you can't make that,' than complicate the situation even more by having the item be possible, but with a drawback that may prove *even more* of a problem in the long run.
[/IMO]
TL;DR - 'It's not so much a rule. More of a guideline...'
That all being said, the game is about having fun. If nobody wants to deal with casting cure spells, if nobody wants to wait around for hit points to recover, then allowing an item like this is little different, in the final analysis, than switching to a Health/Vitality mechanic (like from Star Wars or Unearthed Arcana), or allowing other healing options such as the 'take a breather' option from the Book of Experimental Might, or 4es Healing Surges, or cheaper skill-based healing (from a beefed up Heal skill and better alchemical options), etc.
If that makes your game more fun for your players, and it isn't stomping on a pure healer PCs toes, then go for it.
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How does he have Forge Ring at level 1, or 2000 gold for that matter?
If it's a thing... if there is a worry about healing, just let one of them take rich parents trait, take a cure light wand... and poke them with a stick every once and a while to get potions and scrolls of cure spells when given the option to buy.
It's honestly been my experience that you need to set your foot down as the game master early if the players talk item crafting. Item crafting rules should be more of a game master tool box.
I haven't run a game of pathfinder with a player crafting items that wasn't a headache.
High level characters (10+) it doesn't matter. At level 1, they shouldn't be able to make anything but scrolls, and even then it kind of a waste of money.
I know it doesn't replace the other uses of rest. Just meant for simple mundane healing and recovery time.
Well, he was going to get it EVENTUALLY. Not necessarily now. I just meant that I don't want him to be able to do this at all if I can find sufficient reasoning to stop him.
By the sounds of it, yeah, this all sounds proper and reasonable.
Creative Director
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As folks have pointed out... the magic item pricing rules are a starting point. Once you calculate that cost, you then compare the item to other items in the game to see if it's too expensive or not expensive enough. That also is where the GM's preference for the item's cost comes in as well. An item that allows cure light wounds to be cast at will is VERY good, and while the formulas in the Core Rulebook do indeed say it costs 2,000 gp... that's still inappropriate for the majority of most games. You'll note we don't have an item like this in the Core Rulebook—inexpensive healing is pretty much limited to wands and scrolls and potions.
For example—take invisibility. An item that lets you use this spell at will would normally, according to the tables in the Core Rulebook, cost 2 x 3 x 2,000 gp, for 12,000 gp. Yet the ring of invisibility, which does this exact thing, is priced in the Core Rulebook at 20,000 gp.
An item that allows you to cure light wounds at will should be similarly inflated in price.
A good way to consider pricing items is to find a similar item from the Core Rulebook and compare your item to it. If you'd rather buy the Core Rulebook item, your item is too expensive. If you'd rather buy your item, then it isn't expensive enough. If you have to stop and think and make a conscious choice and there's no obvious BEST choice, the price is about right.
For a cure light wounds item... the best compassion is a wand of cure light wounds. The cure light wounds item is better because it can be used by anyone and because it's got limitless charges. A fully-charged wand of cure light wounds is 750 gp... what would you rather have? 10 wands of cure light wounds or a cure light wounds 1/day item? I'd still take they 1/day item, I think, which means that it needs to cost more than 10 wands—more than 7,500 gp. Probably a lot more.
And there are some items that just shouldn't exist, frankly. Such as a gauntlet of true striking that casts a quickened true strike on you each time you attack. That's a 5th level spell, and so it would, in theory, be 9 x 5 x 2,000 to create such a gauntlet, which gives you a +20 bonus on one attack a round for a mere 90,000 gp. Even at that price, such an item is just too good and shouldn't be allowed to exist in a game. The cure light wounds item might be in the same category, honestly.
In any event... in the end, no player gets to create an item until the GM says it's allowed.
Thank you all :D I talked to him and he said he didn't notice the ring of regen as a comparison and that he has no qualms about me saying no to an item that doesn't exist in the core.
I was just worried if it was possible or not, but glad to hear it's all guidelines as a starting base. Thank you :)
Man, if I had a dollar for every post and comment on these boards about some player exploiting the magic item creation "guidelines" I could retire and buy a small island.
Or a big island.
The magic item system is broken from concept to the latest errata. Custom magic item creation is just one of the more horribly broken parts of a broken system.
Tell the player "no". Then move on.