Increasing Magic Item Power DCs?


Rules Questions


Does anybody know of any way (outside of house rules) to increase the DC for spells and effects generated by magic items? There are a lot of really neat and unique powers for some magic items, but it seems that by the time the item becomes affordable the DC is trivial for the enemies you're fighting. Any info is appreciated.


Make it an intelligent item? Its stats should effect DC's then.(not sure of the strict RAW on that suggestion however.)

Silver Crusade Contributor

It sounds like you're talking about wondrous items primarily. Unfortunately, I don't know of many ways. Only one comes to mind: Instrumental.


Meta Magic feat Heighten Spell when creating object?


Rathendar wrote:
Make it an intelligent item? Its stats should effect DC's then.(not sure of the strict RAW on that suggestion however.)

You are right, intelligent item powers do base their DC off their caster level and modifier. However I can't seem to find any rules for crafting intelligent items (assuming there are any rules to be found).

Silver Crusade Contributor

Chance Wade wrote:
Rathendar wrote:
Make it an intelligent item? Its stats should effect DC's then.(not sure of the strict RAW on that suggestion however.)
You are right, intelligent item powers do base their DC off their caster level and modifier. However I can't seem to find any rules for crafting intelligent items (assuming there are any rules to be found).

Scroll down to Designing an Intelligent Item here. I think you just add that to the item's price, which you generally pay half of during creation.

That's the best I've found so far.


Scrapper wrote:
Meta Magic feat Heighten Spell when creating object?

That's a good point. With Heighten Spell crafting you could theoretically push an item's power DC to 23. [10 + 9(spell level) + 4(Minimum modifier)]


Kalindlara wrote:
Chance Wade wrote:
Rathendar wrote:
Make it an intelligent item? Its stats should effect DC's then.(not sure of the strict RAW on that suggestion however.)
You are right, intelligent item powers do base their DC off their caster level and modifier. However I can't seem to find any rules for crafting intelligent items (assuming there are any rules to be found).

Scroll down to Designing an Intelligent Item here. I think you just add that to the item's price, which you generally pay half of during creation.

That's the best I've found so far.

Designing an Intelligent Item:
An intelligent magic item has a base price increase of 500 gp. When determining the total value of an intelligent item, add this value to the sum of the prices of all of its additional abilities gained through being intelligent, before adding them to the magic item's base price.

I think that's only for GM pricing, but if not, that's a lot easier than I would have thought.

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