Unique item value challenge...

[Story Archer]

Good morning :)

I prefer to almost always give my characters unique, custom magic items that exhibit an ability to grow with them... for a variety of reasons this skews the traditional values of magic items (is a slotless item really that valuable when there's no way the PC is going to fill up all of his slots anyway?). Even so, I like to have a general idea of how valuable the items I create are when I can, and I thought this might be an interesting challenge for some of you mathematicians who are more experienced with the rules of crafting than I.

Force Orb
This crystal sphere must be held in the hand to be used, and can serve as a Bonded Item for those who have the Arcane Bond class feature (treat it as a wand for crafting purposes, but only spells with the 'force' descriptor may be invested). It also has the following additional abilities:

Cast Emergency Force Sphere 1/day (caster level = character's caster level)

As a swift action, the bearer can modify a spell cast that same round with either the Extend Metamagic feat or the Toppling Metamagic feat. This does not increase the casting time of the spell or the level of the spell slot necessary to cast the spell, but may only be applied to spells with the 'force' descriptor. This ability may be used a number of times per day equal to 1/2 the caster's class level (minimum 1).

I'm very interested to hear what you guys come up with, and how you arrived at that conclusion. I'm not expecting anything definitive, btw, just an educated guess from people more educated on the subject than I.

[Story Archer]

Too much?

[Claxon]

I would say it's definitely too much. Especially the free scaling metamagic part.

I'm not sure how many force descriptor spells there are, but lets imagine there are 9th level spell versions.

You're giving up to 10 free metamagic increases to 9th level spells. This is a value of up to 3 greater toppling or extend rods, which cost 24,500 gp each.

So that alone is worth 73,500 gp.

Emergency force sphere effect is a 4th level spell * 7th caster level (normal minimum) * 2000 gp * 4 * 1/5 = 44,800 gp.

I need to go into more depth, but don't have time at the moment.

[Esban Silvermoon]

This item seems to follow the rules for staffs (caster level = character's caster level) and rods.

Focusing on just the Emergency Force Sphere 1/day.
Command word magic item; (Spell level (4)× caster level (7)× 1,800 gp) = 50,400 gp.
Charges per day; (Divide by (5 divided by charges per day)) 50,400 gp /5 = 10,080 gp.

Rod cost
Lesser toppling metamagic rod 3,000 gp, Lesser extend metamagic rod 3,000 gp
Toppling metamagic rod 11,000 gp, Extend metamagic rod 11,000 gp
Greater extend metamagic rod 24,500 gp, Greater toppling metamagic rod 24,500 gp

I am going with the middle ground rod, thinking that levels 0-6th are the range you are going for with spells.

Multiple different abilities; Multiply lower item cost by 1.5 (10,080 gp x 1.5) = 15,120gp and (11,000 gp x 1.5) = 16,500 gp

11,000 gp + 15,120 gp + 16,500 gp = 42,620 gp

No space limitation; double the cost 85,240 gp

I would not add anything to the cost for allowing it to be an arcane bond item. However, for having the caster level equal the character caster level that may be an issue. If this item was a staff the Emergency Force Sphere would cost 12,800 gp for just that one spell, but then you could cast it 10 times per day.

I think 85,240 gp is the price I would set this item at.
If you are going for the greater rods then the price would be (36,750 gp + 24,500 gp + 15,120 gp) x2 = 151,740 gp
This follows the 3/day rule for the rods. More than that and you are asking your players to home-brew force spells, actually they would be fools not to do that if you give them this item.

[Link2000]

I've done these before, and a word of caution, a lot of times these have some undesirable effects later in game when they scale to a level that maybe wasn't fully planned.

Claxon's got the money thing down, but I would be more concerned with how will the players use it at your expected "end level".

I once gave a player a sword whose enhancements grew based off of enemy CR, and boy did I regret that. He knocked out 2/3 of the BBEG's hp at the end of my questline in his first attack against him, out of his 3.

I would scale your items to your intended "finished" level, and see what ways they can be abused, and then make adjustments as necessary.

In regards to the first item you have show, I would say either drop the 1/day ability or cap the uses of the free metamagic to 2 or 3 a day.

EDIT: You can ignore me, I misunderstood your question. Sorry.

[Joey Cote]

The metamagic ability is way, way too much. If it was once per day it would be more reasonable, especially on a slotless item. Letting it apply to the caster's spells without limit lets it grow with the caster. Maybe make it once every 4 levels if you absolutely want the ability used multiple times a day.

Emergency force sphere is an extremely powerful defensive spell. Its the kind of effect where you probably won't use it more then once per day, but for that once per day, its utterly invaluable. Having it on a slotless item makes it even better.
Most people will fill every slot given the chance, each item may not be strong for the class, but usually useful.

[Bob Bob Bob]

So, straight by the book values first.

The bonded item thing is worth nothing.

The closest magic items we have to 1/day Emergency Force Sphere are the Cube of Force (62,000) and the Bead of Force (3,000). The Cube is a charged item and has enough charges to last 6 minutes on full power. It's also exceedingly customizable and burns charges instead of taking damage. So it's a much better item in general, barring the immediate action part of EFS. The Bead is a one-shot that also does damage, it'd be 120,000 in an at-will version (2000xSLxCL use-activated, 50xSLxCL single-use use-activated) so 24,000 for 1/day. But the damage probably adds to the price. Then finally the formula. Emergency Force Sphere 1/day at CL=Level, 1800*4*X*1/5 (X>=7) or 1440*X (min 10,080). In terms of the other options that's not entirely out of line.

Swift action somehow makes this worse than metamagic rods but that's still our best choice. Stacking two rods should incur the 50% increase for combining abilities ("held", while not technically a slot, behaves in many ways like one). And each use of a metamagic rod is worth 1/3rd the overall price (so 1,000, 3,667, 8,167). So X=1 2,500, 1<X<7 (1,000)*2.5*floor(X/2), 7<=X<13 3,667*2.5*floor(X/2), 13<=X 8,167*2.5*floor(X/2). You might also divide those by two (as you're combining two metamagic rods into one but the charges per day are shared).

So the cost is 12580 at level 1 and 1440*max(X, 7)+2.5*Y*floor(X/2), where X is the level and Y is the cost per unit of the appropriate metamagic rod (1<X<7 is 1,000, 7<=X<13 is 3,667, 13<=X is 8,167).

Solve for Z.

Now, that all being said, that's not how I'd actually price it. Spell-in-a-can EFS is way too powerful. Even at 50k or 100k I could still see every high level player picking it up. It's much too useful as a defense. In terms of value that's artifact (i.e. priceless) stuff. So I'm going with "artifact".

Edit: Whoops, forgot the 50% markup for the 1/day EFS, but only when the value of the EFS becomes lower than the metamagic rod. Before that the rods should be multiplied by 3 instead of 2.5.

[Walter Leeuwen]

Illl buy it of you for 50 gold

[James Risner]

Story Archer wrote:

mathematicians who are more experienced with the rules of crafting than I.

First tip, items are not generally created by math. That would be using the chart which is your last resort. You use the chart when you can't find items with similar abilities nor similar power.

In this case the metamagic rods are similar. You'd be better making the metamagic effects identical to some rods. The force effect is powerful, check other items with force effects. I believe all items with force effects are charged items. Is there a reason for that?