Wizard Bonded amulet

[Darc1396]

If I choose a Amulet as my bonded item what is the item creation feat associated with it? Also if it is Wonderous item, does that mean I could enchant my bonded amulet with any wonderous item ability or just ones that are also amulets?

[Lelomenia]

Craft wondrous. Any enchant that was not a standard amulet ability would be a custom item. Enchanting a slotted item with an ability associated with a different slot is sort of discouraged by the custom item rules.

[MrCharisma]

It's wondrous Item.

And you can only enchant it as an amulet.

As always, ask the GM. If they like the idea of you having an amulet of Deflection then great.

Also since you're crafting, you could give your amulet two specials for an increased price. You pay 50% more than usual (which is still only 75% of what you'd buy it forin a shop) for each extra ability you put on it. You pay the extra 50% on the cheaper of the two enchantments.

So if you had an Amulet of Protection +1 (1000gp to craft), and you wanted to make it also function as an Amulet of Mighty Fists +1 (2000gp to craft) you'd pay the 4000gp for the Mighty Fists, and then pay an extra 50% of the cheaper of the two enchantments, which is 500gp for the Protection (total cost 5500gp).

One more time though: For all these things - Ask the GM.

[Pizza Lord]

As the others have said, the appropriate item creation feat for amulets (at least all the ones I have found) would be Craft Wondrous Item. That means you will have to be at least 3rd level to add magic abilities to your bonded amulet.

Since you can add abilities to your bonded object as though you had the appropriate item creation feat, it's really a moot point except to make sure you are the required level for the feat (which maybe you knew), so if there was a specific type of magical ability for an amulet that somehow required Craft Magic Arms and Armor, you would also be considered to have that feat (in regards to enchanting your bonded item), though you would need to be 5th level for that.

[MrCharisma]

MrCharisma wrote:

It's wondrous Item.

And you can only enchant it as an amulet.

As always, ask the GM. If they like the idea of you having an amulet of Deflection then great.

Also since you're crafting, you could give your amulet two specials for an increased price. You pay 50% more than usual (which is still only 75% of what you'd buy it forin a shop) for each extra ability you put on it. You pay the extra 50% on the cheaper of the two enchantments.

So if you had an Amulet of Protection +1 (1000gp to craft), and you wanted to make it also function as an Amulet of Mighty Fists +1 (2000gp to craft) you'd pay the 4000gp 2000gp for the Mighty Fists, and then pay an extra 50% of the cheaper of the two enchantments, which is 500gp for the Protection (total cost 5500gp 3500gp).

One more time though: For all these things - Ask the GM.

Derp. I was using the cost-price, not the craft-price there =P

[Quixote]

MrCharisma wrote:

...you can only enchant it as an amulet...If they like the idea of you having an amulet of Deflection then great.

I'd love to hear the argument against that.

The "inappropriate slot" concept has always baffled me, for the large part. You can have a tiara that grants you a bonus to intelligent or charisma and a necklace that boosts your wisdom, but not the other way around?

Now, if you want boots of force shield or a belt of fog, you get right out. But for the most part, there's a lot of room for flexibility.

[MrCharisma]

What's the necklace of wisdom?

[Meirril]

Quixote wrote:

MrCharisma wrote:

...you can only enchant it as an amulet...If they like the idea of you having an amulet of Deflection then great.

I'd love to hear the argument against that.

The "inappropriate slot" concept has always baffled me, for the large part. You can have a tiara that grants you a bonus to intelligent or charisma and a necklace that boosts your wisdom, but not the other way around?

Now, if you want boots of force shield or a belt of fog, you get right out. But for the most part, there's a lot of room for flexibility.

The notion centers around certain slots being intended for certain kinds of enchantments, and moving them around allows players to avoid expensive items.

The largest potential exploit would be to use 2 or 3 different slots to get cheap single stat enhancement bonuses instead of being forced to purchase a much more expensive 2 or 3 stat headband (or belt).

Sure there are some items that fall outside of those slots that kind of do what the belts/headbands do, but they lack flexibility. Most of them are only +2 or +4 and they don't have options to go to +6. These items are usually unique and introduced as part of an adventure instead of some stand alone collection of magic items.

Still, the though of moving around enchantments from their usual slots to other slots isn't as egregious as making those items slotless. Slotted items have limits. You're trading away other potential items when you move an item that normally takes up a slot to a different slot. Making them slotless basically means the character can now equip an item that they wouldn't have access to before. Slotless items are priced differently.

For a good example look at the ioun stones that increase stats and also stack with the same stone. If you dig into the costs and compare them with other items that boost stats you'll see that those stones are priced as if you were creating a +6 item, the cost split between the 3 stones.

[Quixote]

MrCharisma wrote:

What's the necklace of wisdom?

The periapt of wisdom from Pathfinder's predecessor. Reincarnated as yet another headband, which just kind of illustrates the point. Especially with things like anulets and rings; they're less strongly associated with a given set of powers.

A cloak of natural armor. Bracers of deflection. A ring of resistance. Even boots of the mountebank. All fine by me.

Meirril wrote:

The notion centers around certain slots being intended for certain kinds of enchantments, and moving them around allows players to avoid expensive items.

I'm well aware. And if my players appeared to be making an attempt to take the system for a ride, I'd put a stop to that.

But I'm not going to treat the symptom by saying that only rings can grant a deflection bonus to AC and only amulets can grant natural armor bonuses. It's foolishness on it's face.

More than that, it makes magic items feel cheap.
Even in an over-the-top, whimsical world where you can head across town to the Vorpal Barn for the cheapest magic items in town and dig through bins of +1 keen longswords or peruse racks of cloaks of resistance (+1 through 3), I'd like my magic items to feel a bit more magical.

[blahpers]

What criteria do you use to determine whether a given request is "taking the system for a ride"? When is it okay to take an ability across slots and when it is not okay?

[Quixote]

blahpers wrote:

What criteria do you use to determine whether a given request is "taking the system for a ride"?

I have been fortunate in that players who sought to abuse the system at my table were rather forward about their intentions. They thought themselves very clever for exploiting loopholes and getting ahead of the group's power curve. It's part of the main reason that I started having a Session 0. Now, I just weed out those players before the game even starts.

blahpers wrote:

When is it okay to take an ability across slots and when it is not okay?

I just use my best judgment. I mean, what else is there? I'm always willing to sit down and explain my thought process with a player, so everyone's been cool about it so far.

But even if I had to choose between making a few off-the-cuff decisions that a few people were unsatisfied with or strictly following a rigid system with no room for interpretation, I would choose the latter. I think it's one of the most important aspects of the game, and the downsides are easily outmatched by the ups.
But like I said, it hasn't been a problem for me. My players trust me enough to go along with my final call.

[blahpers]

If it works for your players and it works for you, then you're doing it right.

As I see it, the principle behind the slot appropriateness thing is that some GMs aren't going to have enough design mastery to balance custom items in that fashion, so "slot appropriateness" is a sort of guideline that, if followed, ought to help more than it hurts. It can certainly be overkill, though--nobody is going to break the game because their GM said they were allowed to craft their arcane bond amulet into a greater amulet of disguise. More experienced GMs (like yourself) know that they are empowered to break that guideline and are free to decide when to do so. (I mean, they're empowered to do so anyway, but this empowerment is more explicit than the usual Rule 0 hammer.)

[Meirril]

Since we're talking about slots, lets talk about the downsides of the current system. Because certain bonuses are mostly restricted to certain slots it means there are 'best items' that more or less make other items in the same slot meaningless.

The biggest offender is the shoulder slot. Resistance bonus to saves is just too strong to ignore. Which makes all of those other cloaks trash. Either they include a resistance bonus, you pay extra to add resistance, or you walk around as person with the worst saves in your group. And there are a lot of nifty cloaks that do unique things. Passing them up for a boring +save item is painful.

One thing I'd recommend is if you want to allow your players to use other slots, tell them its ok to ask about creating items in different slots. Sure they need your approval, but its possible.

I'd also recommend making a group of slots that have similar attributes. Like thinking that shoulder, body and chest items are very similar so most items from one slot could probably be made for the other two as well. Most necklaces could also be headbands, maybe helmets and you might even consider eye slot depending on what the item does. Wrist, Ring and Hand items should be very similar. Foot items are generally going to be stuck in the foot slot, but specific items might feel appropriate for other slots.

One thing you could do for anyone that takes Forge Ring is allow that feat to make items other than rings. Basically if you want to take a ring and move it to a different slot, you need Forge Ring not Wonderous Item. That adds more utility to the very limited Forge Ring feat. On the other hand if you want to move a Wonderous Item to the Ring slot, I'd still insist on Forge Ring since that feat does so little.

Then again, if I was going to do a lot of house ruling I'd condense craft wand/staff/rod into a single feat. Make potions and scrolls a single skill. Maybe split Wonderous Item into two or three feats. Leave Weapons and Armor alone. The way those feats were created to mirror the loot tables is an injustice.

[MrCharisma]

Meirril wrote:

Since we're talking about slots, lets talk about the downsides of the current system. Because certain bonuses are mostly restricted to certain slots it means there are 'best items' that more or less make other items in the same slot meaningless.

The biggest offender is the shoulder slot.

This is one of the reasons I love thr Occultist class - the Abjuration implement acts as a Cloak of Resistance. Sure a Cloak of Resistance isn't an expensive item (so you're not saving that much money), but it's a slot that never gets used for anything else.

For your other suggestions, I might lump Amulets into Forge Ring to add utility to that feat (and also because amulets seem closer to rings than they are to boots/backpacks/cloaks/lanterns/etc).

[Quixote]

I've just allowed people to craft half of the magic items with one feat, abs all the rest with another.

But really aside from consumables, I've moved away from PC's crafting magic items at all in 90% of my games. Most of the time, the pressure to move forward is toone great to stop and rest for more than a night. Letting them take a month off to build a golem just wouldn't make sense.

Of course, I'm always asking my players what sorts of magic items they'd like and coming up with something similar.

[Cevah]

While it states you should make things more costly for inappropriate slots, they never stated what slots are appropriate.

In 3.5, there is Body Slot Affinities, and you can use this as a start for your game.

/cevah

[Azothath]

I'd agree that it is Craft Wondrous and in general to use the body slot affinities (that didn't get reprinted).
I'd craft an Aegis of Recovery as soon as you can.