I was wondering how much to price one before giving it as treasure in one of my games. I know it is not as simple as making a permanent duratrion cost off the item chart give what force effects do vis a vis etheral and out of phase targets and so forth so I am looking for other opinions on what to price it at.
The concept item is a small rod made of mithril, long enough to fit both hands if necessary, that has a simple on/off toggle jewel to activate and deactivate the blade as a free action. The top 4" of the rod would split into two halves and fold down to horizonal opposites and then the blade would spring forth from this 'crossguard'.
Ideally it would be available in three varieties of +1, +2 and +3 at Caster Levels 3, 8 and 13 as per the spell.
What would you price such an item at?
Here is the spell for reference.
Probably worse than a ghost touch long sword. Difficulty in being broken is nothing compared to being deflected by spell resistance. Breaking spell res without CL scaling off lv is to hard. It is a good item if the spell resistance portion is removed
Without Spell Res
Price as a +1/+2/+3 adamantine ghost touch longsword
The concept item is a small rod made of mithril, long enough to fit both hands if necessary, that has a simple on/off toggle jewel to activate and deactivate the blade as a free action. The top 4" of the rod would split into two halves and fold down to horizonal opposites and then the blade would spring forth from this 'crossguard'.
So...you basically want a Lightsaber from Star Wars? Do I have that right? Because you just basically described exactly what a Lightsaber from Star Wars is.
If that's the case, there are many ways to make it, but they would probably include Ghost Touch, Brilliant Energy, and any enhancement range from +1 to +5. A more solid solution would be to invent a "Greater Brilliant Energy" enhancement as a +5 property, which functions as Brilliant Energy, but can be used against any creature to full effect, including Undead, Constructs, and Incorporeal/Ethereal creatures, and work from there.
So...you basically want a Lightsaber from Star Wars? Do I have that right? Because you just basically described exactly what a Lightsaber from Star Wars is.
If I wanted to duplicate the lightsabre I would have used the words lightsabre.
I want pricing on a permanent item of Force Sword.
To be clear I am not looking to recreate all the powers and abilities of the lightsabre from the Star Wars universe. I merely want a simple item that recreates the Force Sword spell and to price it properly.
Is the spell (and by extension item) clearly inspired by lightsabres? Sure. But I am not looking to make a Brilliant Energy, plasma blade that has Sharpness and/or Vorpal properties.
Clear enough?
Alright, I think I'm done being snarky about it. (Yes, I'm not a very happy camper when it comes to Star Wars, if it wasn't obvious enough.) On to a more palatable solution.
Now, do you want it to be as an At-Will Force Sword Wondrous Item? Or do you simply want a Longsword that has constant effects of the Force Sword spell? If it's the former, the pricing becomes quite simple to do, and can include the 3 versions that have the different Enhancement bonuses. If it's the latter, it's tough to price because then it falls into pure GM FIAT in the pricing.
For the former, you'd go based off of minimum caster level. A Lesser Force Blade Hilt would have a price of 3 (Caster Level) X 2 (Spell Level) X 2,000 (base cost) X 2 (multiplicative cost of at-will effects) = 24,000 Gold. Increasing the Caster Level to 8 and 13 for the Force Blade Hilt and Greater Force Blade Hilt will increase the price to 64,000 and 104,000 gold, respectively. That becomes a fairly expensive Wondrous Item really fast, and it has a limited duration. The good news is you can deactivate and reactivate it every round if you somehow fail a Spell Resistance check. The bad news is, those are Standard Actions each round that could be spent to do something else.
To that end, it's best to make it as a unique weapon with a flat gold cost independant from enhancement bonuses to signify the effects of Force Sword.
The big question then comes down to "How much does a weapon of pure force cost?" It's ultimately a GM FIAT call, because most Force effects aren't of actual weapons.
However, there is a more conservative route; if we follow the above formula for the Wondrous Item, you could simple subsume the weapon enhancement costs and factor in the base cost of the spell (which would be 22,000). Then, you simply pay for the Mithril material component for the Hilt (AKA the full price of a Mithril Longsword), treat the Force Sword effect as a permanent effect of the Sword, and then pay for enhancement bonuses to the weapon individually. This means that a +1 Force Sword would still be 24,000 Gold, a +2 Force Sword would be 30,000 Gold, and a +3 Force Sword would be 40,000 Gold. This is a significantly cheaper and more powerful route. There's also a basic description for its effects in relation to the spell property:
"The Force Sword is treated as a Force effect for all intents and purposes, such as for affecting incorporeal creatures, being affected by physical attacks, dispel magic, a rod of cancellation, and so on. When attacking enemies with Spell Resistance, the wielder must make a Caster Level check, using the wielder's BAB as the caster level, and if it fails, is treated as if dispelled for 1D4 rounds. While dispelled, the Force Sword is no longer a Force effect and cannot be wielded properly, meaning any such attacks with the Force Sword during this time is treated as a normal one-handed improvised weapon until the dispel effect wears off and the weapon's abilities resume."