Opinion about special magus armor cost

[Xiviar]

Hi everybody,

A magus player of my campaign has taken the craft armor feat and wants to forge a [+1 suit] granting him 2 extra arcane pool points. He asked me about the price.

I think a 2 extra arcane points bonus roughly equals a +1 ability, thus toatal price should be

4000 gp + masterwork armor cost (like a +2 armor)

Seems fair? He argued that he should get a little discount because Arcane pool is a class restricted ability, what do you suggests?

Thanks in advance!

[Imbicatus]

4000 seems cheap when compared to a Ring of Ki Mastery that does something similar for Ki Points.

[Mojorat]

I'm not sure on th over all price but most of th time PFS can't utilize th discount option. I would charge hime full price at least.

[ryric]

I would go with a flat price rather than +s simply because the ability doesn't help the armor be better at being armor.

Comparing to the ring of ki mastery Imbicatus mentioned seems like a good starting point. The ring stores points, but doesn't refill itself. The ring also gives some extra abilities. No extra abilities, but if it refilled on its own? Seems similar.

So I'd say 8000-10000gp, in addition to the +1 armor.

I wouldn't give a discount. "Only useful to my character" is a boon not a disadvantage.

[avr]

A Ring of Arcane Mastery cost 20K, stores 4 points of arcane pool and has a few extra uses for them. If the cost for such a ring would be 16K without the extra uses (chosen to make the math easy) and it scales at the usual exponential rate, then the cost for an item which stores 2 points of arcane pool would be 4K. So in the same ballpark anyway.

Edit: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-arcane-mastery for reference.

[Claxon]

Don't let players use restrictions as a justification to lower price, when it isn't a restriction on them. Only you, as a GM, should ever use the class or ability restriction as a cost-reducing measure for custom loot you give to players.

Or else every character ever should have all their items restricted to people of their alignment and class to have a 60% discount on everything! WHICH SHOULDN'T HAPPEN!

Next, consider this item and what it does:

Quote:

Ring of Arcane Mastery

Price 20,000 gp; Aura strong abjuration and evocation; CL 11th; Weight —

This ring is a thin but sturdy piece of forged steel crafted to resemble a serpent swallowing its tail, and is magically imbued to reveal the secrets of arcane mastery to its wearer. The ring allows a wearer with an arcane pool to store up to 4 points from his arcane pool in the ring as a swift action. These points remain in the ring until used. A wearer can spend arcane pool points stored in the ring as if they were his own, or can spend them in each of the following ways.
•As a free action, the wearer can expend 1 arcane pool point stored in the ring to gain a +2 bonus on Concentration checks for 1 round.
•As a standard action, the wearer can expend 1 arcane pool point stored in the ring to use the pool strike magus arcana using his own magus level to determine the effect.
•As an immediate action, the wearer can expend up to 4 arcane pool points stored in the ring to use the reflection magus arcana .

Construction Requirements

Cost 10,000 gp

Firstly you have to store the arcane points yourself, which means the day they're stored you effectively have no larger pool (meaning you can't benefit from an increased pool everyday). Secondly, it costs 2.5 times as much as your player estimated. Thirdly, you shouldn't allow players to basically reshuffle the functionality of items. Since a ring like this exist, I would say only rings can hold similar functionality unless another item with a similar funciton can be found.

[LazarX]

Discounts are only merited when a character's use of the item is negatively impacted. A wand of magic missles that only a wizard can use is not a reason to discount it's price.

If anything the value of the arcane pool ability should be INCREASED by at least 50 percent as it's effectively a slotless item by freeing up a ring slot in comparison to the item it's being compared to.

[Rerednaw]

Xiviar wrote:

Hi everybody,

A magus player of my campaign has taken the craft armor feat and wants to forge a [+1 suit] granting him 2 extra arcane pool points. He asked me about the price.

I think a 2 extra arcane points bonus roughly equals a +1 ability, thus toatal price should be

4000 gp + masterwork armor cost (like a +2 armor)

Seems fair? He argued that he should get a little discount because Arcane pool is a class restricted ability, what do you suggests?

Thanks in advance!

Well at least he isn't asking for wyroot club shenanigans.

Class-limited? So which other classes use arcane pool points? Hmmm doesn't pass muster....sorry no discount.

Second, base cost? Well assuming you treat 1 arcane point on par with a spell slot (say a Pearl of Power) then it's bonus^2 x 1000. But do a little digging.

maths:

Is an arcane pool point just 1 spell slot? A 10th level magus based on a 20 point heroic point buy will have a 20 or so int. So he would have 5+lvl/2 = 10 arcane pool points. 2 more points is 20%.

Compare that to spell slots.
5x1, 4x2, 3x3, 1x4 = 5+8+9+4 = 26 spell levels. A 1st level POP adds 1 or 1/29 or 3.4%. For 1000k. A 2nd level POP adds 2/29 or 6.9%.

So based on that these arcane pool points are worth 3x as much as a class feature...considering that they can be used as a 2nd level POP OR 2 first level POPs OR other magus arcane features.

And added to a non-standard (armor) slot...which increases the cost again.

Charging POP rates for the first couple of arcane pool points is a bargain. How many other places does he plan on doing this? Add it to bracers? Add it to boots? Add it to gloves?

Ultimately it is your game so I guess it is up to you. How much power are you okay with?

If it was my game I'd charge 4,000 per point. With a limit that total extra pool points cannot exceed his normal maximum.

[Darth Grall]

Claxon wrote:

Thirdly, you shouldn't allow players to basically reshuffle the functionality of items. Since a ring like this exist, I would say only rings can hold similar functionality unless another item with a similar funciton can be found.

See I always allow magic to be cross slot myself... but you gotta pay at least the 1.5 cost for a nontraditional slotted affect.

So yeah... he wants 30k as an armor ability, I'd let him :)

[Xiviar]

Thank you guys, you gave me great insight!

It seems that extra arcane pool points are quite expensive! Considering ring of arcane mastery for comparison I think 8000 gp should be a fair price for the suit. He could get a +2 armor and a +2 headband of Intelligence for that price, which would mean just 1 arcane pool point less but a lot more bonuses. Still he would have to fill two slots instead of one, thus it seems a fair trade IMHO.