Are Magic Plants for 0-level spells free? (UW)

[.Hate9]

According to the formula on page 247 of Ultimate Wilderness, Magic Plants have a price of SL x CL x 2000 x yield per day x growing season multiplier (where growing season multiplier is the number of growing seasons the plant goes through, and the cost to actually create the plant is equal to half of the value from the formula).

If this formula is to believed, it seems as though a plant based off of a 0-level spell would be literally free to make. That doesn't sound terribly overpowered to me, but it does seem out of character for Paizo to make it work that way.

Does anyone know if this is actually how the Magic Plants are priced, or if there is some exception I'm just missing?

[quibblemuch]

I don't have the book in front of me to know if they included the verbiage, but usually for calculations like that, 0-level spells are treated as .5 when multiplying. Source.

[Set]

I think you'd need a caster level of 1, at the minimum, so even if the spell level is zero, the cheapest cost would be 2000 gp.

[.Hate9]

quibblemuch wrote:

I don't have the book in front of me to know if they included the verbiage, but usually, for calculations like that, 0-level spells are treated as .5 when multiplying. Source.

I remember something about that. Do you know if the other types of magic items based on spells include that clause in their text?

.Hate9 wrote:

quibblemuch wrote:

I don't have the book in front of me to know if they included the verbiage, but usually, for calculations like that, 0-level spells are treated as .5 when multiplying. Source.

I remember something about that. Do you know if the other types of magic items based on spells include that clause in their text?

The entire thing is multiplied, meaning that the minimum value is 0 (providing any factor in the calculation can be 0).

Anything multiplied by 0 is 0.

[quibblemuch]

.Hate9 wrote:

I remember something about that. Do you know if the other types of magic items based on spells include that clause in their text?

That text is a foot-note on the Estimating Magic Item Prices table, so I think it's meant to apply to all magic items. Usually I rule that unless explicitly stated otherwise, things like that carry down through future additional rule books. So like if they came out with a new item slot or something, it'd still be estimated the same way. I don't know if that's the mandated way to use the rules, but it seems the most reasonable to me.

[.Hate9]

quibblemuch wrote:

.Hate9 wrote:

I remember something about that. Do you know if the other types of magic items based on spells include that clause in their text?

That text is a foot-note on the Estimating Magic Item Prices table, so I think it's meant to apply to all magic items. Usually I rule that unless explicitly stated otherwise, things like that carry down through future additional rule books. So like if they came out with a new item slot or something, it'd still be estimated the same way. I don't know if that's the mandated way to use the rules, but it seems the most reasonable to me.

That, it definitely does. I'll probably go with that rule until further notice.

[Diego Rossi]

.Hate9 wrote:

quibblemuch wrote:

.Hate9 wrote:

I remember something about that. Do you know if the other types of magic items based on spells include that clause in their text?

That text is a foot-note on the Estimating Magic Item Prices table, so I think it's meant to apply to all magic items. Usually I rule that unless explicitly stated otherwise, things like that carry down through future additional rule books. So like if they came out with a new item slot or something, it'd still be estimated the same way. I don't know if that's the mandated way to use the rules, but it seems the most reasonable to me.

That, it definitely does. I'll probably go with that rule until further notice.

Note that it is not a note for one of the different formulas. It is a general, not hyphenated, note. So it should apply to all the formulas, even those not presented in that page.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

It's not just a (unnumbered) footnote, it's also spelled out a bit after the end of the footnotes.

Magic Item Gold Piece Values wrote:

0-Level Spells: When multiplying spell levels to determine value, 0-level spells should be treated as 1/2 level.

So I would call that a hard-and-fast rule---at least insofar as anything in that subsection can be called that....

[James Risner]

+1 on Fuzzy Wuzzy

[Azothath]

I agree with the fine small print hidden in RAW, so the original poster is missing a fine detail. For calculation purposes (such as scribing, scrolls, magic items) a value of 1/2 is used for the Spell Level of Zero level spells.