I was wondering if you could craft a magic item with the same enhancement twice. For example, could I make a shirt with the quickrunner quality twice and use it's ability twice per a day? I know I would have to pay extra to do so.
I understand you couldn't add frost twice to a sword,since it does the exact same thing. But a quickrunner shirt lets you move an extra 30 feet once per a day. Could that be enchanted twice so you can move an extra 30 feet twice a day? I can't find any specific rule that prohibits it.
No, what some people do is buy multiple shirts and then swap them out between combats. Personally, I think it is cheesy but oh well. :)
- Gauss
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I understand you couldn't add frost twice to a sword,since it does the exact same thing. But a quickrunner shirt lets you move an extra 30 feet once per a day. Could that be enchanted twice so you can move an extra 30 feet twice a day? I can't find any specific rule that prohibits it.
You mean other then your not even suppose to be able to change named items without the GM okay you mean? Custom magic items are PURE GM TERRITORY. The magic item creation guide is for GM USE ONLY as a guideline for if they want to add extra magic items to the game. So no, you can not do this without the GMs okay. No if and or buts about it. Even the option to upgrade named items is GM territory...so it no you can't by default make that celestial chain have +5 enhancement bonus to AC.
Not only that, but you are breaking the same enchantment twice rule anyways since your adding two quick runner shirt effects on the same item. it doesn't matter that the magic effect works once per day, it's the same effect...so even on that ground it's a no go.
But all that is meaningless if you can get a GM to say okay...so ask your GM for your munchkin shirt (seriously, switching out after each fight is bad enough).
Since everyone is saying "No" (or at least saying "Only if your DM allows it"), I thought I'd give you some ammo for talking to your DM.
First, getting an extra move action in a turn can be, well, maybe not quite game-breaking, but certainly it can be encounter-breaking. You could, for example, move up to an enemy and full attack him in the same round - something that is usually very hard to do. With the right full attacks, catching him flatfooted at the start of combat, the encounter could be over before the enemy even gets his first turn.
Doing this once per day is awesome, doing it multiple times per day is probably game-breaking.
That said, the CRB does give us guidelines for pricing the item you want.
First, figure out the cost of the ability. The best way for abilities that are not specifically mentioned in the Magic Item Creation rules is to find another item with similar ability and base the price on it. Fortunately, the actual Quickrunner shirt has a very similar ability. Lucky for us. It costs 1,000gp. Looking at the table, we see that "Charges per Day" means we divide the base price by (5/x where x is the number of daily charges) so in this case we divide the base price by (5/1) or just by 5. So the developer who came up with the shirt clearly thought the base price was 5,000gp for a shirt that could do this unlimited times. Talk about game-breaking...
Wow.
Just Wow.
Based on that, the pricing would be:
1 use per day: 1,000gp (as per the actual Quickrunner shirt)
2 uses per day: 2,000gp
3 uses per day: 3,000gp
4 uses per day: 4,000gp (seeing a pattern here?)
5 uses per day: 5,000gp but this ismeaningless as this would be exactly the same price as "Use activated" with no daily limits (so for the same price it could be made with 5/day or unlimited, so who would ever make it NOT unlimited?)
There you go, that's how we can use the Core Rulebook section on Crafting Magic Items to calculate the cost of what you want, by RAW, using their best suggested method.
As a DM I would never ever allow anyone to actually craft it like that. But you can start there with your DM; who knows, maybe you'll get lucky...
Now we get into houserule territory:
As a DM I would dismantle that way-too-low figure of 5,000gp. The book gives us the formula for a "Use Activated" unlimited item: Spell Level * Caster Level * 2,000gp and the spell required to craft the actual Quickrunner shirt is Haste. That is a 3rd level spell that wizards can cast at 5th level - those are the minimum numbers to cast the spell. Using those numbers in the formula, I get 3 * 5 * 2,000gp = 30,000gp for a "Use Activated" version created by the given spell cast at the lowest level it can be cast.
Now that's at least a little more like it. Recalculating the price using this base cost, it becomes the following, and yes, I would and in fact I am going to alter the price in my home game for the actual shirt:
1 use per day: 6,000gp (my new price for the actual Quickrunner shirt)
2 uses per day: 12,000gp
3 uses per day: 18,000gp
4 uses per day: 24,000gp
5 uses per day: 30,000gp
And I would immediately houserule that this item must always have a maximum number of daily uses so that nobody ever creates an unlimited use activated version.
Finally, as a DM, I would apply the "Staff" mechanics to this item regarding how it uses and replaces charges, just to minimize how often it can overwhelm encounters.
Specifically (taking this from the Staff rules, reworded for the shirt):
Recharging a Quickrunner Shirt: The shirt holds a maximum number of charges determined when it was crafted. Each time the shirt is used, it consumes one charge. When the shirt runs out of charges, it cannot be used until it is recharged. Each morning, when a spellcaster prepares spells or regains spell slots, he can also imbue the shirt with a portion of his power so long as the Haste spell is on his spell list and he is capable of casting Haste at least once this day. Imbuing the shirt with this spell restores one charge to the shirt up to but not exceeding its maximum number of charges, but the caster must forgo one prepared spell or spell slot of at least 3rd level. The shirt cannot gain more than one charge per day and a caster cannot imbue more than one such shirt per day. Also, this counts as imbuing a staff as well, so a caster with this shirt and a staff must decide which item will receive his one daily imbue.
Rules literalists will note that it is cheaper to craft a staff than an unlimited use-activated item, and that if this were a staff that could cast this ability it would have 10 charges and would only cost 12,000gp - this is deliberate on my part to control this item, as well as recognizing that using staves is not a swift action so it would be almost useless as a staff since using it would require a Standard action which would then merely leave two move actions for the recipient of the staff's benefit, hardly game-breaking.
If I were to remake a 10 charge staff that could grant this ability as a swift action, I would expect the price to be significantly higher than book price, just as creating a Staff of Fire that can use its abilities as a swift action would need a much higher base price as well.
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The above is useful to keep in mind, but I think it's inappropriate to price it based on Haste without modification. The Quickrunner shirt may have Haste as a prerequisite, but it does not grant Haste 1/day.
Further, Boots of Speed, which grant Haste 10 rounds a day (not necessarily consecutive) as a free action cost only 12,000 gp. Your chart prices an item with a Haste-inspired benefit at 30,000gp for 5 rounds a day (costing a swift, not a free action to activate), with the 10 rounds/day item at 60,000gp if the trend continues. For 12,000 gold by your chart you get 2 rounds/day. While the Quickrunner shirt does seem underpriced as-is, I do not think that a Quickrunner Shirt usable twice a day would be as useful an item as Boots of Speed. Maybe for TWF characters (and monks), but for everyone else the Shirt is giving you at most 6 extra attacks at decreasing BAB (20th level full-BAB melee character) compared to a potential 10 extra attacks at full BAB from the Boots.
Note that Haste is a round/level spell - the Boots aren't actually giving you 10 uses, they're giving you one use at CL 10, but allowing you to make that use nonconsecutive.
You're right, Weirdo, but Haste and Boots of Speed never give you the possibility of getting a half dozen extra attacks in a single round - they never give you more than one extra attack and, using just Haste, if you move more than 5' you only get one attack. That's it. So sometimes, with Haste, you don't get any extra attacks at all.
On the other hand, the Quickrunner Shirt will allow someone to move their full movement rate and still get all their attacks as a full-round action. It would stack with Haste, too, so anyone with TWF, even as low as level 5, could use this shirt to get 3 melee attacks on someone 60' away (assuming normal 30' movement rate), and at level 6 that becomes 4 melee attacks for some Hasted characters. If that guy also had Sneak Attack and used this in the first round of initiative when his enemy is still flatfooted, that's three sneak attacks on someone 60' away - a good way to take out many BBEG boss types before they ever even get a round.
Gods forbid a Magus get ahold of this...
Haste cannot do that.
Your post mentions a 20th level fighter getting at most 6 extra attacks, I assume that's using the once/day shirt and at most 12 extra attacks using the twice/day shirt? Assuming he's built for it with TWF, GrTWF, and Haste (and your use of the phrase "at most" certainly means he is built for it), he can use this shirt just one time and make 7 attacks, 6 more than he could with haste alone, using it twice will give him more extra attacks than Boots of Speed would give him in a whole day. And that's just considering two common feats and a common spell - I'm sure the build-masters around here can find ways to increase that without even having to go with a Monk's FoB.
No, I'm fairly sure that in the hands of a player who knows exactly what he's got here, this shirt is definitely encounter-breaking but fortunately only one broken encounter per day (and if they're not lucky enough to have any encounters that day that have a BBEG in it, then zero encounters will be broken, of course). Giving the shirt more daily uses just means it has the potential to break more encounters each day - unless the DM swaps out all the BBEGs with hordes of smaller monsters. I can just hear the players wailing now: "Aw, come on! I thought this was the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, why is it only full of a thousand orcs???"
I don't think it would be encounter breaking.
If you'll recall, the main gripe with martial characters at high level is that lack of Pounce makes them effectively worthless for at least one round after combat starts, while casters are barely inconvenienced.
An item like this is (potentially) the answer to that problem, and frankly if an enemy is going to die as soon as your Fighter or what have you gets in combat range anyway, it's probably not worth having around for that extra round it took for the Fighter to just GET there when he's just going to be pasted next round anyway.
In essence, if Pounce breaks your encounters, your encounters probably were not designed very well.
Maybe.
But so far I've never had a PC with pounce unless it transformed itself into a creature with it. So I haven't had to deal with that. Frankly, if one day I do have a PC with Pounce, and I redesign my poorly-designed encounters to handle Pounce, then those encounters would TPK every other group of players on the spot.
I know, around here, the DPR gang lives or dies by Pounce so every group is assumed to use it liberally and every encounter is "not designed very well" unless it can handle the Pounce. That's fine for them, and they probably won't care about a Quickrunner shirt with multiple uses. In the 5 groups with which I'm familiar, that's never been how anyone played. I also don't see APs designed to handle it either, so at least so far, I think Paizo is under the impression that Pounce is a corner case rather than a required build.
Heck, come to think of it, I've only known two players who use the word "build" at Pathfinder games, so not only is the concept of a "pounce build" virtually unheard of, but the idea of "building" a RPG character is too. At least in my vicinity.
But it would be funny if the next AP had every encounter properly designed to deal with Pounce, and a sidebar up front that said something like "Make sure the PCs make liberal use of Pounce or DMs will need to downgrade every encounter by 1-2 CRs".
Until then, I'm satisfied with my encounters that are not designed very well.
Don't get pissy Blake, it doesn't suit you.
You've willfully missed the entire point and gotten offended by something that shouldn't be offensive.
The point is this: If your monsters die in a single full attack, then they're not really a threat, are they? And if they die in a single full attack, does it really matter if they die in the first round or the second? No, it doesn't.
If they DON'T die in a single full attack, then Pounce has done nothing but ever so slightly increase the speed of encounters, which usually drag on far longer than they need to be at higher levels if they're not ended immediately.
Punce is not an encounter ender in and of itself, and there's a huge difference between "Is able to be killed in a single round" and "Will kill a party immediately if they don't kill it first". Pounce is a minor, but helpful force multiplier. So yes, if your encounter is immediately broken by a martial character doing something one round earlier than usual, it is poorly designed to be a challenging encounter. That is a simple fact.
Look at the facts objectively and argue against them if you will. Don't dismiss people's posts because you choose to be offended instead of doing something constructive with your time.
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Normally the only thing you have to do to mess with Pounce is add difficult terrain or obstacles - Pounce requires a charge.
Gods forbid a Magus get ahold of this...
Magi have a lot of swift actions, which means that they're giving up more than the fighter probably is to use the swift action activation.
Your post mentions a 20th level fighter getting at most 6 extra attacks, I assume that's using the once/day shirt and at most 12 extra attacks using the twice/day shirt? Assuming he's built for it with TWF, GrTWF, and Haste (and your use of the phrase "at most" certainly means he is built for it), he can use this shirt just one time and make 7 attacks, 6 more than he could with haste alone, using it twice will give him more extra attacks than Boots of Speed would give him in a whole day. And that's just considering two common feats and a common spell - I'm sure the build-masters around here can find ways to increase that without even having to go with a Monk's FoB.
No, that was using the 2/day shirt but explicitly excluding TWF.
Maybe for TWF characters (and monks) [the shirt would be better], but for everyone else the Shirt is giving you at most 6 extra attacks...
As I mentioned the Quickrunner shirt does come ahead for TWF characters because they get a greater number of attacks. However since TWF is generally considered an inferior combat style I do not have a problem with introducing an item that is unusually good for a TWF style. Even then you need a 20th level fighter with GTWF in order to get the 6 extra attacks per use of the shirt (12 for the proposed 12,000gp two-use shirt) while the Boots of Speed give the same extra 10 attacks no matter what your build is.
I might consider half your progression to be a fair price for the shirt. Another option would be to import the "bonus squared" method of cost used for weapons and armour, such that a Quickrunner shirt with up to 5 uses/day costs 1,000gp * uses squared. Then a 2/day shirt would be 4,000gp and a 5/day shirt would be 25,000gp.
Don't get pissy Blake, it doesn't suit you.
Don't dismiss people's posts because you choose to be offended instead of doing something constructive with your time.
Nah, I wasn't offended. I was amused.
In any case, it's not about getting a full round of attacks 1 round earlier, it's about getting a full round of attacks before the most dangerous BBEG in the encounter gets to act. Catching him flatfooted and destroying him with his lower AC, maybe with massive sneak attack from multiple hits, can easily remove the most challenging part of any encounter before that BBEG even gets to take a single action.
Since anyone with Craft Wondrous Items, 500 gp, and a day in town can whip up a shirt like this, every member of the party should and could have one by level 5. Save it for the boss, take him down before he acts, mop up the wimpy mooks.
At least Pounce takes some effort and commitment to get. This shirt is a "gimme" at level 5.
Will it break every encounter? No, of course not. Any encounter with a bunch of weaker monsters is pretty much immune to this shirt. On the other hand, every encounter with an obvious "boss", with or without minions, is susceptible to be broken by this.
But if that "boss" can get off a little battlefield control, or deploy some useful concealment or other miss chance tactics, or get his minions into a proper defensive position, maybe he can live for several rounds - but kill him in round 1 before he acts and the encounter goes from interesting to broken.
That's all I've been saying.
He won't be flatfooted though, it's not a surprise round. In fact, I don't think the shirt even CAN be activated in a surprise round, I thought it was only Move or Standard, never Swift?
And even then, it still goes on the Initiative order, so your boss COULD very well go before the Fighter and get off his stuff.
I wasn't talking about surprise rounds, the shirt won't help you much if you waste it in a surprise round. It's worth noting that they can be used to delay to the top of the initiative order in the main round though.
And true, when the BBEG wins the initiative (and isn't beaten anyway by the surprise/delay trick), then it's much harder for the shirt to beat him.
But you're incorrect about not being flatfooted in the first round. The flatfooted condition applies until you take your first action, regardless of whether it's a surprise round or the first round. Everybody is flatfooted until they get their first turn, so if you beat his initiative (or get a surprise round and delay to automatically beat his initiative), you can then use the shirt to catch him flatfooted with a full attack, assuming he's not too far away to reach with a single move action.
Here's the relevant text from Combat, Initiative, Flat-footed:
"At the start of a battle, before you have had a chance to act (specifically, before your first regular turn in the initiative order), you are flat-footed."
You can take swift actions during the surprise round. "You can take a swift action anytime you would normally be allowed to take a free action." But as DM_Blake mentioned, the shirt is of limited use in the surprise round.
H-uh. I must have missed that passage many multiple times.