enchanting mage armour

[stormborn125]

i would be surprised to not eventually find this answered already but i can't be assed to go through the entire history of this forum

what are your suggestions for if i want to enchant a piece of armour with the spell mage armour

i get that RaW would be costing 2000gp as it a lvl 1 spell with no benefit for casting at higher levels but to create a piece of armour to +4 would cost 16000gp

[Tarik Blackhands]

First off, literally enchanting a piece of armor with mage armor would do absolutely nothing since both armor and mage armor provide armor bonuses and explicitly don't stack.

Second, the item crafting rules are also very explicitly downright last resorts and should only be done if there's no comparable items to gauge the price (There's a reason the ring of constant true strike is the gold standard for why you rarely ever want to trust the item creation formula). Fortunately, +4 to armor (which is what I imagine your intention is) has a very comparable item around in the form of a +4 armor enchant which happens to be 16,000gp and a smattering of ghost touch (+3 enchant) albeit probably not worth +3 since only 4 of that AC would count. We'll settle it at +2 for kicks even if that makes it a relative steal for light armor.

So in total, we'll say it costs 36,000gp aka a total of a +6 enchantment or 49,000 if your GM isn't the charitable sort.

[LordKailas]

You could probably cost out something like that. But I'm not sure anyone has bothered to do so because there are easier ways to get the same result. The following solutions are readily available without having to create a custom magic item.

Bracers of armor (at +4 they function like mage armor and cost 16,000gp)

A mithral buckler, a haramaki and silken ceremonial armor can all be worn without penalty since they have no arcane spell failure and no armor check penalty. These can be enchanted like normal armor resulting in a bonus to AC that is higher then anything mage armor provides. If you want you can add an armored kilt to either of the armors without adversely effecting the ACP or ASF.

For high level characters there are items like Robe of the Archmagi which make mage armor obsolete.

[Wonderstell]

Here you go. The rulebook section about determining the price of new magic items has your exact question answered.

Magic Item Creation: Magic Item Gold Piece Values wrote:

Example: Patrick’s wizard wants to create bracers with a continuous mage armor ability, granting the wearer a +4 armor bonus to AC. The formula indicates this would cost 2,000 gp (spell level 1, caster level 1). Jessica reminds him that bracers of armor +4 are priced at 16,000 gp and Patrick’s bracers should have that price as well. Patrick agrees, and because he only has 2,000 gp to spend, he decides to spend 1,000 gp of that to craft bracers of armor +1 using the standard bracer prices.

You should find this text directly above the "Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values" table (on the SRD), which I assume you've read.

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Unless you're actually trying to cheat the system, I'd avoid Use-Activated/Continuous magic items.