I'm having a bit of trouble making sense of the prices for certain magical items. I want to make improvements, and mix and match powers, but thats hard to do when you don't know the formula.
Some of the items I'm interested in:
Metamagic rods - I want to know how much it would cost to increase or decrease charges a metamagic rod has. So I could make rods with 1 charge, 2 charges, 5 charges, or even infinite. I also want to make more powerful rods, such as rods for the ascendant spell metamagic feat.
I've noticed that rods are priced upon how much many spell levels the metamagic feat would increase a spell by. So its easy to figure out the prices for new rods that modify the spell level by 1 to 4 levels. Any metamagic feat that raises a spell level by 1 is 3000 for minor, 11000 for normal, and 24500 for greater. If you looked really hard, you will find that there is a version for +0 (such as the merciful spell) which are priced half of +1. However, there isn't any versions for a +5 metamagic rod, which would be required for the ascendant spell metamagic feat (turns spells into their mythic versions).
Rings of Wizardry - These are more expensive than they need to be. A ring of wizardry 1 costs 20000 gp, but 4 pearls of power would cost 4000 gp and gets nearly the same effect. The ring yields additional spell slots to prepare spells in, while pearls recharge used spell slots. I'd be willing to accept a 50% or 100% cost increase for the improved effect, but not 5 times the cost. RoW 2 costs 40000 gp but 4 pearls of level 2 is 16000 gp. 3 is 70000 vs 36000. 4 is 100000 vs 64000. On top of that, they're using ring slots (instead of slotless like the pearls) so shouldn't they be cheaper?
Ring of Wizardry
Caster Shield - This is a magic shield that has a leather patch on the back that allows you to craft a scroll on it for half crafting cost. Works for any spell 3rd level or lower.
After removing all other effects, - (3 gp shield + 150 gp for masterwork + 1000 gp for +1 enhancement bonus), the remaining cost is 2000 gp. Unfortunately, I don't why its 2000 gp for the effect.
Greater Caster's Shield is more problematic as after you cut away all the other effects, you are left with 1000 gp for an effect that applies to up to 5th level spells. How is it cheaper!?
Caster's Shield
Caster's Shield, Greater
Mythic Magic Items - There are no guidelines for making mythic magic items. Not even for how to price magic items that use charges of mythic power to use.
By the way, if you have your own magic items that you want to figure out, post them and maybe we'll figure out how they are priced.
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Just walk away: Only Death and Madness await you in the realm of custom magic items...
If you must follow this path, remember that items are generally priced by the impact they have on the game rather than any specific formula, which makes custom items more of an art than a science: If you are a player, your GM has the final decision on all facets of custom magic items.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
I wouldn't go quite that far (death and madness), but for many magic items how the pricing was determined seems to be a black box. There are some items that are relatively straightforward to reverse-engineer (boots of striding and springing) and others that look to have additional considerations on pricing that are not spelled out in the magic item creation guidelines (ring of force shield).
For rings of wizardry your analysis misses an important point when comparing them against pearls of power: despite the name, they are usable by any arcane caster, not just those that prepare spells. A sorcerer would gain up to 6 extra spell slots of a given spell level; based on the market price of runestones of power, a ring of wizardry (type I) (20,000 gp) is still more expensive than six runestones of power (1st) (12,000 gp), but higher-level rings are more cost effective:
- ring of wizardry (type II) (40,000 gp) vs. six runestones of power (2nd) (48,000 gp)
- ring of wizardry (type III) (70,000 gp) vs. six runestones of power (3rd) (108,000 gp)
- ring of wizardry (type IV) (100,000 gp) vs. six runestones of power (4th) (192,000 gp).
The slotted vs. slotless consideration still makes the rings a little pricey, but this is one of the cases that a direct equivalence is probably not worth trying for. A more frustrating item would be the ring of psychic mastery: 50,000 gp for the equivalent of one runestone of power each from levels 1st to 4th (2,000 + 8,000 + 18,000 + 32,000 = 60,000 gp).
While 3.x/PF1 was an improvement over 1st/2nd Ed AD&D (which had no real guidelines on magic item creation/pricing), there is no way to perfectly model the pricing formula of every possible and published magic item. At least, without basically completely starting from scratch on both spells and magic items to create a more unified system on bonuses and other effects.
Rods for +5 spell levels should coat about:
27K for lesser
98K for normal
220K for greater.
Metamagic rods have base cost 3000 with multipliers of 1, 3, 5, 7 for +1, +2, +3, and +4 level metamagics, respectively, so i’d assume a multiplier of 9 for +5 metamagics. Multipliers are 1, 3.67, and ~8.1 for lesser, normal, greater. Only metamgic rod that doesn’t follow this is the lesser metamagic rod of quickened spell; not sure if that’s a 3.5 holdover or a tweak from playtesting.
Dragonchess Player wrote: For rings of wizardry your analysis misses an important point when comparing them against pearls of power: despite the name, they are usable by any arcane caster, not just those that prepare spells. Sorry. Forgot about sorcerers. I just thinking about them and the rings of wizardry the other day.
While we are on that topic, what are the magic tools available for both wizards and sorcerers? In terms of casting spells.
-Pearls of power
-Rings of wizardry
-Runestones of power
-Pages of Spell Knowledge
-Rings of spell knowledge
Is that all or am I missing something?
OmniMage wrote: Dragonchess Player wrote: For rings of wizardry your analysis misses an important point when comparing them against pearls of power: despite the name, they are usable by any arcane caster, not just those that prepare spells. Sorry. Forgot about sorcerers. I just thinking about them and the rings of wizardry the other day.
While we are on that topic, what are the magic tools available for both wizards and sorcerers? In terms of casting spells.
-Pearls of power
-Rings of wizardry
-Runestones of power
-Pages of Spell Knowledge
-Rings of spell knowledge
Is that all or am I missing something? Spell Lattice
Staves are effectively spells known and extra spell slots. Spell storing weapons and armor (and even rings) are like extra spell slots too.
OmniMage wrote: Where's the fun in that? If you surveyed GMs / players about what 'broke the game' in their experience, the top three responses would probably be: - 1) High Level Casters,
- 2) Custom Magic Items, and
- 3) The Mythic rules
I played an Oracle in Wrath of the Righteous with watered-down mythic rules and no custom magic items (we did allow combining published items with the appropriate pricing rules), and towards the end I learned I had to not use my most powerful spells because it made the game really boring for the other players (and the GM). Even with me 'holding back' none of the other players was interested in actually finishing the AP: We never even started the last module.
Our GM had earlier run another group of non-optimized characters though WotR with the full mythic rules and claimed that (outside of initiative and saving throws) he maybe got to actually roll dice for NPCs twice in the entirety of the last two modules.
Be careful what you aim for: You might find the game isn't really 'fun' when there is no longer any challenge...
@ Lelomenia
Thanks. Your formula seems to work for metamagic rods. Its not perfect, but its real close.
As for the lesser quicken metamagic rod, I've traced it all the way back to the 3.5 DM guide. Thats when it first shows up (nothing in the 3.0 book). It has the same price as it does in the pathfinder book, so it looks like it was carried over.
@ Taja the Barbarian
I'll be careful then. Fortunately, I enjoy creating characters, even if I won't get to use them.
I was playing around with some numbers, and now I think the formula for metamagic rods is this.
500 * rod level * metamagic level increase / 5 * 3
The 500 seems to be the base rate.
The rod level is, 10 for lesser, 36 for normal, and 81 for greater. I think it was derived from the highest spell level it'll work on (like 9 for greater) and then square it. However, they seemed to have raised the price on lesser rods from 9 to 10 (maybe WotC didn't think it was high enough).
Metamagic level increase is of course 1, 3, 5, or 7. Basically the number of levels the metamagic effect will raise the spell level by * 2 - 1.
The last part is / 5 * 3. It is charges per day. Thats right, charges per day. Mess with this and you could get 2 charges per day, 4 charges, or even infinite.
They did appear to fiddle with the numbers afterwards, so this formula won't get the exact numbers you find in the book.
I tried looking for other examples for +4 metamagic rods in DND 3.5, but I found nothing. We might be stuck with only 1 example.
I haven't forgotten about this thread yet. I was looking to see if DND 3.5 had any other items for recovering spellslots. It piqued my interest at the time. I found 2 things of interest in the Magic Item Compendium.
Memento Magica - These recover spell slots used by spontaneous spell casters. It makes it clear in the description that its for sorcerers, not wizards. The base rate is 1500 gp, as opposed to 1000 gp for pearls of power, so these are 50% more expensive.
Runestaff - These function a little bit different than DND 3.5 staves. Runestaves hold spells that you can cast by sacrificing or expending spellslots and prepared spells. The expended spellslots needs to be at least as high as the spell you are trying to cast. Each spell on the spellstaff can be used 3 times per day (or less if you want to save on construction costs). The spell also needs to be on your class list. You otherwise cast the spell normally, so you use your CL and save DCs.
They had a number of drawbacks, but they are much cheaper that normal staves, and provide more flexibility at low levels. They had no min caster level keeping the prices high, so you could design your own for less than a 1000 gp.
That all said, I don't think they'll be contributing much for this thread's project.
I wrote up a post explaining my thoughts on my work in detail, but I figured I wouldn't bother you with it. The short version is I made the rings of wizardry be priced by using this formula: spell level ^ 2 * 2000 gp * 4 spells. That makes them priced the same as having 4 runestones of power for the same level. These rings only bestow 4 spell slots of a level, not double what you have.
Ring of Wizardry
Aura moderate (wizardry 1) or strong (wizardry 2-4) (no school);
CL 11th (1), 14th (2), 17th (3), 20th (4)
Slot ring; 8,000 gp (1), 32,000 gp (2), 72,000 gp (3), 128,000 gp (4); Weight –
Description
These rings come in 4 kinds (ring of wizardry 1, ring of wizardry 2, ring of wizardry 3, ring of wizardry 4), all of them useful only to arcane spell casters. The wearer gain 4 additional spell slots for a given spell level. Wizardry 1 adds level 1 slots, wizardry 2 adds level 2 slots, wizardry 3 adds level 3 slots, wizardry 4 adds level 4 slots. If the wearer is a multiclass character with multiple arcane spell casting classes, the wearer will need to choose how these extra spell slots are divided among those classes.
Construction
requirements Forge Ring, limited wish; 4,000 gp (1), 16,000 gp (2), 36,000 gp (3), 64,000 gp (4)
Any thoughts?
The reason for rings of wizardry being more pricey than pearls/runestone of power is due to how they work. The pearl/runestone restores a previously spent spell, it doesn’t allow you to prepare more spells, simply reuse ones you already prepared for the day. The ring on the other hand grants multiple extra spell slots that can be prepared however you see fit. Sure this distinction is meaningless to a spontaneous Spellcaster, but for a prepared caster (who the item was originally designed for) this distinction means a lot. Preparing more spells in general allows a wizard to have greater versatility for upcoming encounters, whereas a pearl/runestone just lets them prepare some spells in fewer spell slots if they know they need to cast it multiple times and have the pearls/runestones for it. For this reason the ring has a higher base cost... plus the fact that it is a passive effect verses a use activated item.
I view Mnemonic Enhancer as a useful benchmark here; with a 4th level Pearl of Power, a wizard could prepare three additional 1st level spells. With 3 of those Pearls, he could prepare 3 additional 1st and 3 2nds, or three 3rds.
That’s 48K for 3/4 of a Ring of Wizardry 3 or 3/4 of both Roing of Wizardry 1 and 2. Pretty comparable pricing to the actual costs.
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