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A player in my game recently got a Lightning Bow from Ultimate Equipment as the culmination of a long quest. He likes the bow, but he wants to add Evil Outsider Bane to it. I'm trying to figure out how much that should cost, but I have no idea how the pricing works on this thing.
The Lightning Bow has a price of 54,300 gp. This seems shockingly low.
The base bow is a +3 adaptive composite longbow. +3 is 18,000, adaptive is a flat 1,000.
However, it creates ammunition, either +3 brilliant energy arrows or +3 shock arrows, on command; it is, essentially, a +3 brilliant energy adaptive composite longbow. Brilliant energy is a +4 property. This would be 99,000 gp base, plus at least some amount (probably half?) for the Shock property. (It wouldn't be full because you can't use both at once.)
There's a heck of a difference in price between 99,000 and 54,000. And that's all before the spell-like abilities and the bumps for it being an intelligent item.
Even if they gave you half off the price of Brilliant Energy, it still comes to at least 58,000 gp before spell-like abilities or Shock.
Any ideas how on this pricing works, and how much I should charge my player for a +1 property?
The what now from the where now? I can't find that on the prd or in the book.
The what now from the where now? I can't find that on the prd or in the book.
Ultimate Equipment. Its not with the normal magical weapons, its an intelligent weapon.
Without the free arrows, its a 40,500gp item. (Assuming the lightning bolt and true strike abilities are item powers, that the item can use as directed by the wielder. As it really needs to be, as a 3/day CL 17 lightning bolt ability costs over 55,000gp by itself.)
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I agree, the pricing on this item seems very broken. If we follow the book's very bad pricing, it would cost 16,000 gp to go to +3 Evil Outsider Bane, so that would be the RAW price increase.
But if you want to fix this bow's pricing, here's how I see it:
475 - masterwork composite longbow
18,000 - +3
1,000 - adaptive
500 - Intelligent
200 - WIS 11
200 - CHA 11
1,000 - Senses up to 120'
1,200 - True Strike 3/day
18,000 - Lightning Bolt 3/day
40,575 would be the price for this if it didn't have that fancy arrow ability - that's the broken bit.
We already know that a missile weapon with a property (like shock, bane, or brilliant energy) applies that to whatever missiles are fired. So it doesn't matter if we say "+3 Brilliant Energy bow" or "+3 bow that fires magical Brilliant Energy arrows" - it is exactly the same thing.
Well, no it isn't exactly the same thing, for the following reasons:
1. A +3 Brilliant Energy bow could run out of arrows and be useless
2. A +3 Brilliant Energy bow is useless against undead, constructs, and objects
Both of those are weaknesses of a +3 Brilliant Energy bow that are not weaknesses of the Lightning Bow, so really, the way the Lightning Bow does it is actually BETTER than a +3 Brilliant Energy bow. Furthermore, when the user feels like Brilliant Energy is the wrong ability (fighting a lich, for example), he can still go with Shock instead.
Brilliant Energy is a +4 modifier. But I think this modified Brilliant Energy with no weakness, the option for Shock, and the ability to never run out of (or even have to carry) ammo, nets at least an additional +1, bringing the effective enhancement up to +8.
But by RAW this Brilliant Energy is even stronger than the normal one and it only costs less than 14,000 GP!
Very, very broken. I would say that pricing the Lightning Bow at anything less than 120,000 is ridiculous.
Using my calculated +7 the price of the bow is 98,000 gp + the intelligence stuff (22,575) = 120,575 and it would cost 30,000 gp to add Bane.
Using my estimated +8 the price of the bow is 128,000 gp + the intelligence stuff (22,575) = 150,575 and it would cost 34,000 gp to add Bane.
Side note: I bet the author originally intended the arrow-creation effect to be a standard action or maybe a move action. This would limit firing the brilliant energy arrow only once/round. It would also require carrying ammo to fire the bow normally when not using this special ability (so one brilliant energy arrow at the start of each attack but the rest are the arrows from your quiver). Given that limitation, I could argue that 14,000 for the ability might be close to reasonable since anyone who should have this bow would be able to fire 3-6 arrows every round so he would only be getting about 20% of the Brilliant Energy benefit on any round). I bet this was the original plan but the wording got changed from "As a move action" to "With the pull of the string" but nobody every fixed the price.
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I mean, I think Brilliant Energy is a wildly overpriced property anyway... Maybe they just decided to eyeball it rather than follow the formula. But it's hard to tell.
Mainly I just feel bad for my player... He traded in a +2 evil outsider bane bow for this, but this campaign (Savage Tide) gets more and more demon-heavy as we go along. Brilliant energy doesn't actually do anything against most demons, since they're just a pile of natural armor...
I mean, I think Brilliant Energy is a wildly overpriced property anyway... Maybe they just decided to eyeball it rather than follow the formula. But it's hard to tell.
Mainly I just feel bad for my player... He traded in a +2 evil outsider bane bow for this, but this campaign (Savage Tide) gets more and more demon-heavy as we go along. Brilliant energy doesn't actually do anything against most demons, since they're just a pile of natural armor...
Agreed Brillant is over priced.
I would agree that Brilliant Energy is probably overpriced too, but I wouldn't put it lower than +3. Except for natural armor, it basically lets every attack be a touch attack against most enemies, with the obvious blind spots. For the price, nobody who is anywhere even close to the WBL table would likely have this until they are into triple digit levels and anyone who would want it has iteratives at -5 and -10 that don't hit very often. Now they will. Much more often against many enemies.
But you're right, against high-CR monsters, those usually have much of their AC from natural armor so it declines in usefulness as the CRs get higher.
So yeah, it seems overpriced. I would never deliberately pay to add it to a character's weapon because there are other things I can get for that +4 price that are less situational.
The problem is, make it lower in price and it becomes more common at lower lovers where armor and shields are used much more often. Reduce the price too much and it becomes the default enchantment for all weapons, particularly in any Earth-like (but with magic) game where most enemies are armor-clad villains rather than monsters.
Houseruling it to +3 would make sense and not break much, probably fix rather than break. But houseruling it to +2 would be fairly risky - At something like 8-9th level, I would take a +1 Brilliant Energy weapon over a +1 Flaming Burst in almost any campaign.
Any ideas how on this pricing works, and how much I should charge my player for a +1 property?
Perhaps the solution is to keep the bow's base as a +3 for pricing the property, but making the Evil Outsider Bane just one of the options for the arrows? Meaning now the player could choose between a +3 shock, +3 brilliant energy or +3 evil outsider bane?
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That's what I ended up doing. I charged him 30k to add it on, my logic being it was like bringing his bow up to +4, but half again as much for being a secondary property, sorta. (So 32k x 1.5 = 48k, -18k for the +3 he's already paid for.) That way he can still have Outsider Bane, he just can't combine it with Brilliant Energy or Shock.
Maybe, but see my calculations above. I got 120,575. Your assumption would have it overpriced. At that price, I would just buy a +3 Shock Brilliant Energy bow and a ton of arrows in an Efficient Quiver and still save 30k.
I bet it's more likely that someone screwed up. They calculated the price of the bow not counting the mega arrows. Then they calculated the price of those mega arrows as if they were just Brilliant Energy (32k, or 50k if we assume +1 Brilliant Energy). Then they did some fuzzy math to arrive at a price based on those two things without ever considering that having an unlimited supply of Brilliant Energy arrows is exactly what the bow would do if it had the Brilliant Energy property itself and so it should be priced accordingly.
Lightning bow is a special ittem (a named one). You cannot ad further abilities to a special object. They have a fixed set of abilities that cannot be changed and they have a fixed price. Either you like as they are or you don't.
Perhaps for that reason they have lesser prices....
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Lightning bow is a special ittem (a named one). You cannot ad further abilities to a special object. They have a fixed set of abilities that cannot be changed and they have a fixed price.
OK, I looked. I can't find it. Where did you find this rule? I'd love to have a cite.
The rules I did find contradict the one you quoted:
Adding New Abilities
Sometimes, lack of funds or time make it impossible for a magic item crafter to create the desired item from scratch. Fortunately, it is possible to enhance or build upon an existing magic item. Only time, gold, and the various prerequisites required of the new ability to be added to the magic item restrict the type of additional powers one can place.
and
Construction: With the exception of artifacts, most magic items can be built by a spellcaster with the appropriate feats and prerequisites. This section describes those prerequisites.
Both of these quote seem to say it's quite possible to create and upgrade any magical item except artifacts, and the Lightning Bow is not an artifact.
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Lightning bow is a special ittem (a named one). You cannot ad further abilities to a special object. They have a fixed set of abilities that cannot be changed and they have a fixed price. Either you like as they are or you don't.
Perhaps for that reason they have lesser prices....
People really need to stop saying this. There is absolutely no rule anywhere in the books that disallows someone from further enchanting a specific item. Not a single one anywhere. (Nor was it a rule in 3.0 or 3.5 D&D either.)
The only thing that does stop it is that doing so makes a custom item, meaning its entirely up to the DM whether its allowed or not. It also can not be done in a Pathfinder Society game, as the Society does not allow custom making items of any type.
It also can not be done in a Pathfinder Society game, as the Society does not allow custom making items of any type.
I cannot find the rules stating what I said, so I probably misread them and/or I was mixing them with PFS rules.
Anyway, good luck finding a way of doing this consistently because the pricing of specific items is a mess. I suppose that is why people that I know houserule them unmodificable.