I've been digging through my rulebooks trying to find some kind of reason why you shouldn't be able to make something like a cloak of resistance +6 or a belt of giant's strength +8. A number of items like this have level requirements, but in principle these could be beaten by high caster level creatures like half-fiendish Rocs with little difficulty or just increasing the DC of the spellcraft check to make it.
Are the values actual hard caps in order to maintain game balance, or are they just guidelines that are intended to be surpassed, and simply weren't included in order to create more space in the books instead of cluttering them with simple high-level variants of basic items? What kind of an impact would extrapolating the trends make on a game?
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They are caps (not sure if I would use the word "hard") intended to maintain game balance.
The published upper value of the item is the maximum that exists in a "by the book" campaign like PFS. However in a home game the GM is free to ignore this rule - just like every other rule in the book.
The impact is that if the GM does allow it, expect to see more challenging enemies brought in to balance out the increase in player power.
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In 3.x those were epic items and had an additional factor of x10 to their cost. So a cloak of resistance +6 would run you 360000gp. Similarly, a +8 stat booster would be 640000gp.
Those caps almost certainly exist for balance reasons. I'd be very leery as a GM of casually allowing higher numbers at extrapolated prices.
Thanks for those quick responses!
Sounds like it's probably not a good idea to boost those further without due consideration. You've convinced me pleasantly quickly.
I do like the idea of increasing their cost rather than denying access to players, and will probably go with that, but probably won't do it to the extreme that 3.x did. How do you think something like a formula like normal trend x (1 + bonus above 5) would work? That is, 72000gp for a +6 cloak and 147000gp for a +7 cloak.
Just noticed Mythic Adventures had items like the Cloak of Quick Reflexes +5/+6 Reflex, which gives a +6 resistance bonus to reflex saves and +5 to the others, so it's not unheard of, it seems, but Mythic isn't exactly a great example of balance.
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The real issue I see is that there is one character type that doesn't spend a lot of money on high-level magic equipment - the dedicated caster. A high level martial wants a really nice weapon(up to 200000) and armor (up to 100000), as well as wanting several stat bonuses, AC bonuses, and save bonuses.
A wizard just wants Int and saves, really.
So a fighter gets his +6 stats items, and his multiple +5 AC items, and his +5 cloak, and then dumps most of his high-level wealth into his weapon and armor.
A wizard gets his one +6 Int item, and +5 cloak and has little else to spend money on. In normal play he diversifies, picking up staves and scrolls and items with neat abilities. However, with bigger stat/save items why do that? Now he can get +10 Int and +7 saves so he'll go for that. Fighter guy won't get those, he doesn't have the budget.
So if you make these thing, be aware that they will be the province of high level casters, mostly, and they will make those casters more powerful(which they don't really need).
Yeah, those caps exist for balance reasons.
If you follow rules established in DnD they become incredibly more expensive to the point where even 20th level characters wouldn't want afford them (assuming WBL).
360,000gp represents 41% of a 20th level characters wealth.