Just comparing the (admittedly, just-guidelines) usual pricing rules to the item, it should be quite a bit more expensive, no? And it's not as though it's in any way underpowered.
Just ballpark: Freedom of Movement is a 4th level spell, so the cheapest form would be cleric 4, so caster level 7. So 4*7 = 28. Use-activated or continuous is 2k*CL*SL, and a duration of 10 minutes per level is *1.5. So 2k*4*7*1.5 = 84k. Book prices it at 40k. And I'm just not seeing any obvious reason for it to be so much cheaper.
seebs wrote: Freedom of Movement ... 84k. Book prices it at 40k. And I'm just not seeing any obvious reason for it to be so much cheaper. Things are priced based on similar items, then similar power, then fallback on the charts.
This is an example of similar power, it isn't worth 84,000 gp. It is priced such that people don't always buy it but can afford it before it becomes irrelevant.
Because FOM clocks in at 10 mins per level, long enough to do the dungeon when you cast it. So once you can cast it, the ring isn't worth that much more than a 4th level spellslot.
I guess the reason I ask is... If it were 84k, I'd totally buy it at that price. I don't usually expect to finish a dungeon in 70 minutes of game time... And in particular, the huge advantage of having it *always on* is that you can't be grappled. Otherwise, you'd have to try to get it brought up and applied to you after you were already grappled, and casting while grappled sucks.
Heck, our GM has nerfed freedom of movement because it was too good, *and* increased the price of the ring, and I'm still pretty happy with it.
Someone, again, using the custom magic item pricing Guidelines as the be all, end all formula, for all magic items.
There are a ton of magic items that do not exactly follow the written Guidelines.
This is on purpose.
Nothing wrong here.
Because it's most useful for humanoid arcane full casters, and they deserve nice things because of the narrative power they bring to the table as a tier-one class.
If it were 84k it would be way down the list of priorities hell even at 40k it's more of a nifty if I find it but otherwise not worth the investment item for most characters I've played. Simply because most characters have better options to spend their money on and their own ways to get around the issues FoM takes care of.
Very popular where I game. I too think it's cheap
blackbloodtroll wrote: Someone, again, using the custom magic item pricing Guidelines as the be all, end all formula, for all magic items.
There are a ton of magic items that do not exactly follow the written Guidelines.
This is on purpose.
Nothing wrong here.
Maybe my post was not clear enough, but the site doesn't let me use 144-point type:
I AM AWARE THAT THOSE ARE JUST GUIDELINES. I want to know whether there is any specific reason for which this item should be 40k instead of 84k. Because, see, I spend a lot of time talking about and/or designing magic items, sometimes, and I price them, and I usually start with the guidelines, and then adjust from there. And if I'd been pricing this, I'd have picked 84k as pretty reasonable.
If 84k is not merely "not pretty reasonable" but "over 2x too expensive", I want to know why this item is worth so much less than that, so I can do a better job of estimating the prices of other items.
One of the reasons I'm asking is that I know the books do sometimes have errors; I seem to recall someone asserting that a bunch of staves in some book got their prices off by a factor of two because someone used the cost calculations as price calculations, then used price/2 for cost. This ring costs about half what I'd expect it to, and it's entirely conceivable to me that this ring's pricing is also the result of a pricing error made by someone at Wizards back in the day.
Looking back, the pricing of this ring hasn't changed since 3E, and that may be part of why I'm confused. The grapple immunity was added to freedom of movement in 3.5, but this ring has existed since before that. And if you didn't have the grapple immunity property, I could see the ring as being worth a lot less; that power is a huge part of why the ring is so valuable.
Since 3E, grappling has become a much more viable and effective combat tactic, which is a lot more dangerous to casters than it used to be, and freedom of movement has acquired grapple-immunity. Without any change in spell level, or in the cost of the ring.
So my intuition would be that there is something wrong, which is that when the 3.5E team added grapple immunity to freedom of movement, they should have increased the price of the ring, but they didn't at that time. The 40k number might make sense given the original 3E spell, which was much less effective.
My apologies.
Too often, many forget those are guidelines.
All evidence showed me, that this was another case of such confusion.
So, your are looking to uncover the RAI?
I would say if the price was grand-fathered from 3.5, its probably because its was possible to craft it with a lower spell-level and/or caster level, resulting in the lower price.
BBT, what did you think "(admittedly, just-guidelines)" meant, if not that I was aware that they were guidelines?
I don't see any way it's possible to reduce either spell level or caster level for this, unless there's some critter out there which has freedom of movement as a spell-like ability.
But I was thinking about this more. In 3E, as-shipped (before splatbooks and such), there were virtually no rules pertaining to underwater anything. There was nothing corresponding to 1E's rules for spells which did or didn't work underwater, for instance. That made underwater adventuring less common than it might otherwise have been. Grappling rules were basically useless, and in any event freedom of movement didn't affect grappling.
If you completely remove the grappling effect, and effectively-remove the underwater effect by not having enough rules for underwater content, 40k seems a lot more reasonable for a ring that basically provides immunity to slow, entangle, and hold person.
So I think the issue may simply be that the price was reasonable originally, and nothing in the item's description has ever changed since; it's just that massive alterations to the rest of the game (and most especially to freedom of movement) have made the price seem a lot lower.
In original 3E, I could have made a good case for making freedom of movement into a 3rd-level spell, which would fit the 40k pricing pretty well...
Jailoy wrote: I would say if the price was grand-fathered from 3.5, its probably because its was possible to craft it with a lower spell-level and/or caster level, resulting in the lower price. It has always been a 4th level spell.
So, rules-wise, you know how it functions, and how much it costs.
You want to know why it functions, as is, and why, it costs, as is?
I don't think this really fits in as a Rules Question then.
Do you believe, that it is RAI, to cost more, or function differently?
Hmm. "Rules as intended" isn't quite the right phrase, although it's close. Sometimes when a change is made to the rules, it has implications for other rules. A significant change to the rules for a creature could reasonably alter its CR, if the change made it much more or less powerful than it had been previously.
I think this is a case where changes in the rules have not been fully propagated to other things which ought to be updated to reflect those changes. The very significant change in the power of the effect the ring grants seems to me as though it ought to be reflected by a change in the ring's pricing.
So, not a RAW, or RAI question?
This is a rules as I believe they should be thread?
You may have great points on why they should be one way, but that really does not change how they are, or how they were intended to be.
I am beginning to see that this may better belong in the General Discussion, or Hombrew/Houserules section.
In my opinion.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
There are many items that are not priced to the norm standard. A part of this is how the item effects may be an advantage over how the effects are gotten normally, other times the item will provide effects that are just as easy to come by for some characters as using said item.
There is also the usefullness of the item to consider, like a Ring of Invisibility or the Portable Hole, to raise the prices instead of lowering them.
I particular GM may even go as far as double the pricing for some items that are particularly useful for the gaming style he has in his world.
You ask Why.
I say Because.
bbt, I think I'm making a distinction you're not.
RAI is "what the writer intended to achieve by writing a given set of words".
I'm not asking about the intent of the words, there's no ambiguity here.
I am, however, asking whether the rules as written are *wrong*. And that's the sort of thing that Rules Discussion is often very good for. I'm not asking about homebrew, but whether this is a defect in the books that should get errata.
And I think that either the current price is a defect, or the 3.0E price was way too high, because there has been a huge change in the power of the item, with no change in pricing.
That isn't a rules discussion, that would be like me posting "Oh Rogues only have 3/4 BAB and are the only full martial class that are stuck with that the rules are wrong right?" And posting it to rules discussion.
That is an opinion, it can be explored in GD.
There's a very significant difference between "this rule is badly balanced" and "this rule shows clear signs of being an editing error".
seebs wrote: There's a very significant difference between "this rule is badly balanced" and "this rule shows clear signs of being an editing error". You're right there is, now if only the latter was true about your claim.
Well, my contention is that there is clear evidence of an error.
From the top:
1. The item is not priced according to the guidelines, therefore, it is priced based on an evaluation of the effectiveness of the item.
2. The effectiveness of the item has been dramatically altered between 3.0E and Pathfinder.
3. The price of the item has not been altered.
Conclusion: When they added grapple immunity to freedom of movement, the WotC editors should have increased the price of the ring to reflect that increased utility, but didn't.
And haven't done so the whole time PF has been out...no error...they feel 40k is plenty
40K is a lot guys. Beside, it eats up one of your ring slot.
Drejk wrote: ** spoiler omitted ** While you're here would you like to save 15% on your car insurance?
Drakkiel wrote: Drejk wrote: ** spoiler omitted ** While you're here would you like to save 15% on your car insurance? Meh. 15% out of 0 is still zero.
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