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I was reading up on magic item creation, because I am playing a magus who is taking the Archmage Crafting Mastery feat, when I stumbled onto the bit on adding new abilities to a slotted item for +50% cost of making it, so 75% market value. (Forgive me if I can't post text, the PRD functions weird with my ipad. The text is at the very end of here)
This... This changes things.
As long as someone is crafting, you don't have to worry about only having 2 ring slots. You can have Muleback Cords built into your Cloak of Resistance, with no extra cost beyond the enchanting. You can combine a Ring of Sustenance and Regeneration to be the most awesome survival item ever, and still have a ring slot open. You could make add a Phylactery of Channeling to your mental headband. You could add they tiny rings onto each other (Feather Falling, Counter-Spelling, Protection, skill enchancements, etc), and make an awesome ring of power
Am I reading the rule right? If I am, why have I never seen this used before on the boards? Seems like an awesome rule to me.
Crafting items takes two resources: Time and Money.
In many games, at least one, often both, of those resources can be limited. If a GM allows his players all the time in the world to craft items whenever they want, and if they have enough money to pay 50% extra for all those add-on abilities, then yes, this is something you can do.
However, in my experience, that's almost never the case. For example, when I'm the GM and I have a player who takes crafting feats, I make sure he has some time to work on items (otherwise I'm invalidating his feat) but I also make sure the game moves a pace that is fast enough, sometimes urgent, so that he cannot simply craft up an entire inventory of half-price items and destroy Character-Wealth-By-Level (WBL) guidelines.
And I don't allow starting characters to begin with more than one custom item per crafting feat, subject to my approval of course - but this is never a problem because every player I've ever had create a higher level character with a pre-set amount of gold for item purchases has always maximized the benefit of that gold by purchasing exactly the set of items he needs the most and making every GP count (in other words, I've never had anyone pay +50% for one item with two abilities when they could just get two items for cheaper).
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Sure, that average adventurer might prefer to make multiple items. However, let me bring up the context I was looking it up in: I am taking the Legendary Item ability several times, getting a powerful artifact that is loyal only to me and is nigh-indestructible. With me taking the Crafting Mastery ability (I am treated as having all the crafting feats, and if I have the feat, I take half as much time and can roll twice and take higher), I can add anything I want to the ring. I was going to start it with a Ring of Wizardry, then make it Legendary, with the Upgradeable quality. While adding different types of abilities, they would cost the normal amount for enchanting cost and time. However, when upgrading something to a higher level, with the Upgradeable quality, it costs the normal amount and 8 hours. Also, the inexpensive (yet useful) rings are easy: Feather Falling (1500, 16 hours), Counter Spelling (3000, 3 days), Mind Shielding (6000, 6 days), all of which benefit from being on a single ring. On the other hand, if I were to splurge, the aforementioned Regeneration/Sustenance ring is pretty awesome, especially when paired with any form of immortality, easily obtainable with Mythic stuff, still obtainable without.
Normally, making them separately as 4 different rings:
Wizardry I: 10,000 gp, 20 days.
Feather Fall: 1,100, 3 days
Counterspells: 2,000, 4 days
Mind Shielding: 4,000, 8 days
Total: 17,100 gp, 35 days
Normally, making them together as one ring:
Wizardry I: 10,000 gp, 20 days.
Feather Fall: 1,650, 4 days
Counterspells: 3,000, 6 days
Mind Shielding: 6,000, 12 days
Total: 20,650 gp, 42 days
With Crafting Mastery and the Craft Ring feat, making them together as one ring:
Wizardry I: 10,000 gp, 10 days.
Feather Fall: 1,650, 2 days
Counterspells: 3,000, 3 days
Mind Shielding: 6,000, 6 days
Total: 20,650 gp, 21 days
So you'll see that your cost goes up by 3,550 gp, which isn't much, but remember that these are fairly small costs for fairly low-level abilities. Your time also goes up by 3 days (from 18 days with Crafting Mastery to 21 days), also not a really big deal.
It becomes more significant when considering more expensive abilities.
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Well, a non-custom item with those stat boosts is impossible. I would disallow it, because existing items only boost one type of stat at a time. He would have to get a Headband of Vast Intelligence +6, and a Belt of Physical Prowess+2 (keyed to Dex and Con). This thread was about stacking custom items: For example, a cleric with a Wisdom-boosting headband crafting in a Phylactery of Channeling.
Well, a non-custom item with those stat boosts is impossible. I would disallow it, because existing items only boost one type of stat at a time. He would have to get a Headband of Vast Intelligence +6, and a Belt of Physical Prowess+2 (keyed to Dex and Con). This thread was about stacking custom items: For example, a cleric with a Wisdom-boosting headband crafting in a Phylactery of Channeling.
You can disallow any item in your own games; conversely you can permit any item. Therefore claiming that a particular item is impossible is meaningless.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Healer, I would be very wary of allowing odd stat boost items. They intentionally don't exist normally. Making all stat boosts even ensures that everyone gets the same game effect from using the item.
So a ring of +6 int, +2 dex, +2 con you can first just disallow. If you are not comfortable with item crafting I'd say just to limit your players to book items only.
Presuming you wish to allow it you'd be looking at 36k+12k = 48k (24k out of pocket to create), + 48 days of crafting time. You'd be well within your rights to increase it even more for being an inappropriate slot.
They've expressly said that different stat bonus combinations on items are possible, and you don't HAVE to put them in the slots they use. Remember, 3.5 ports over, and Dex was on gloves, Con on amulets, cloaks for Charisma, etc.
They condensed them down to 2 slots to open up the other slots for cool things. If you look at the multi-Stat items, they are all priced PRECISELY to the guidelines for adding extra abilities (+50% to the cost).
So yeah, you can make an item +6/+2/+2.
They expressly said you should NOT allow +1/+3 and +5 Items, for the reasons mentioned above.
==Aelryinth
+Competence items have the unintentional effect of making skill ranks worthless.
Why take UMD ranks when I can just make a Ring of +20 to UMD for 40k? Etc.
It's cheap and devalues skills, which is why you rarely see miscellaneous items above +5, and +10 and +15 items are fairly pricey for what they do.
There's good reasons for it. I would personally restrict +Competence items to the maximum ranks of the Wielder...you can't give a level 1 guy a +20 bonus, but you could give the 15th level guy with Ranks an appropriate +15 bonus.
==Aelryinth