Innate Item Bonuses Pricing [Unchained]

[ranmyaku262]

So my group has been looking into these innate bonuses and the one thing we're not certain about is the table regarding adding the bonuses to items.

So for example if someone bought a mask of stony demeanor which is 500gp does this mean for +4000 you can add +2 to one score.
Or does this mean it needs to minimum cost 4k to put a +2 to one score on it as the range is 4k -9k

Second example if you bought a crown of heaven which is 150k does this mean you can't put +2 to one score for 4k more
or is this only valid to add +6 to all 3 for 144,000 because its at the highest tier.

The unchained book doesn't really specify too heavily what these price ranges mean to the user based on how much they need to spend.

One of the theories in the group was you treat it a bit like enchanting a weapon, such as if you allow someone to boost an existing magic item from +1 to +2 you'd only pay 6000 rather than 8000 as 2000 was already sunk into it.
While this would make sense the starting price range suggests otherwise.

[Mark Seifter]

ranmyaku262 wrote:

So my group has been looking into these innate bonuses and the one thing we're not certain about is the table regarding adding the bonuses to items.

So for example if someone bought a mask of stony demeanor which is 500gp does this mean for +4000 you can add +2 to one score.
Or does this mean it needs to minimum cost 4k to put a +2 to one score on it as the range is 4k -9k

Second example if you bought a crown of heaven which is 150k does this mean you can't put +2 to one score for 4k more
or is this only valid to add +6 to all 3 for 144,000 because its at the highest tier.

The unchained book doesn't really specify too heavily what these price ranges mean to the user based on how much they need to spend.

One of the theories in the group was you treat it a bit like enchanting a weapon, such as if you allow someone to boost an existing magic item from +1 to +2 you'd only pay 6000 rather than 8000 as 2000 was already sunk into it.
While this would make sense the starting price range suggests otherwise.

With innate item bonuses, if you have an item in a certain price range of the appropriate, you must (not optional) also add precisely the benefits for that range to that item as well, for the appropriate price.

So the mask of stony demeanor will not hold a mental ability bonus, and the crown of heaven holds precisely +6 to all 3 mental ability scores (no less and no more, not that there is any more to go).

Helpful Do It Yourself Unchainer Side Note: Why?:

You might wonder why it doesn't work like you thought where you can just put whatever you want onto a mask of stony demeanor, say +6 intelligence for 36,500 gp. The mask is an excellent example of why that rule fails; you just find the cheapest thing possible and you're back to the same Big 6 with a tiny tack-on power.

If there's a little power that is SO useful that you must continue to have it, consider allowing higher Big 6 bonuses onto a lesser item for a total item cost equal to double the Big 6 component's usual cost (so in this example, 8,000 gp for a mask of stony demeanor with +2 Charisma and 32,000 gp if it had +4 Charisma). Incidentally, if you use this variant and find any items where players are consistently willing and even eager to pay this enhanced price, let me know! It probably is majorly underpriced to begin with.