Player of mine wants weapons similar to the Sun Blades property of being a bastard sword but wielded as a short sword. He doesn't want the rest of the properties of the sun blades. Is there an existing property out there or how would one recommend breaking the sun Blade down for cost and create magic item requirements?
This is a tough one. Each GM might see it differently.
Seraphim84 broke this down very nicely in this thread here..
Bastard Sword: 35gp
Masterwork: 300gp+2 effect
holy:+2 its good aligned and deals extra damage so this is by far the closest +2 hit and damage is easily worth the same as +2d6 damage
Daylight: 54,000 but since it only last while in use I would divide by 3 or or so lets say 18000.
There is nothing like the short sword thing so lets just say they gave that for free or rolled it into the daylight.+4 effect is 32,000 and the Daylight is 18,000 so with the weapon and masterwork we come out at 50,335. Which happens to be the cost of the weapon.
I did this off the cuff and was totally surprised when I nailed the number. But it all makes sense. I would consider this a +4 weapon for enchanting purposes.
OK, so his generalizing the bonus to hit and damage as "Holy" is a bit fast and loose, but it's not far off, and also so is ignoring the short/bastard sword trick which is really what you want to separate out.
If I were to split his breakdown even further, I might do it like this:
So I might edit his list as follows:
Bastard Sword: 35gp
Masterwork: 300gp
+2 enhancement
holy:+2 its good aligned and deals extra damage so this is by far the closest +2 hit and damage is easily worth the same as +2d6 damage
Daylight: Intelligent items can cast a 3rd level spell once/day for 6,000gp so this is a fair price even though the weapon is not intelligent.
There is nothing like the short sword thing so lets just say they gave that as a flat cost of 12,000gp (allows it to be used in the off-hand for 1d10 damage, allows Weapon Finesse and other light-weapon benefits, etc.).
So it's effectively a +4 weapon with 6,000 gp for a single Daylight spell each day and 12,000 gp for a light, off-hand bastard sword.
That might be a little overpriced for the final ability, but it is a very nice ability for the right character (a dual-wielding Weapon Finesse user, for example), so I'd keep the price fairly high for wielding a d10 weapon as a light weapon. I wouldn't go lower than 10,000gp for that.