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Magic item pricing should be based on effect rather than the specific spell used: A permanent item that casts Mage Armor 20+ times per day should never be cheaper than the 16,000g price of Bracers of Armor (+4), regardless of what the formulas might say.
The essential question to ask yourself is: Why would anyone make a 50 charge wand when you could make an unlimited charge item for just twice the price?
Pricing of Custom Magic Items is more of an art than a science, which is why I generally recommend avoiding it entirely
Not to mention that an infinite cure light wound item would be severely overpowered and never allowed by any halfway competent GM.
if the price should follow the table, would you allow at the same cost for an infinite true strike item? (+20 to attack, insight, and no miss chance for concealment etc).
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Yeah, this is one you’re not going to find an exact formula price for. It’s going to have to be priced by comparison. Let’s try to come up with items that provide an unlimited amount of healing, pros and cons vs an unlimited use CLW wand, and figure out where this would fall.
Ring of regeneration - 90,000 gp. Only 1 HP per round and only affects the wearer but does not require an action or any spellcasting ability.
Staff of Cure Light Wounds - 3,200 for CL8. Would be 400 gp if CL1 was legal. Max 10 charges and only refills one per day (and requires a spellcaster to give up a slot each day to refill that charge).
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What healer in their right mind wouldn't want something like this?
If you have to ask that question, you've probably got an overpowered item...
The Custom Magic Item pricing rules* have been around for 20+ years now and they've always been pretty easy to break, so you really need to balance the end effect against existing items for your world to make any sense..
*They're more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules...
Do you then prohibit the party from taking rest periods because they want to go into encounters at full strength?
Yes I do, encounters should use party resources. If the party is allowed a rest after every encounter, then no resources are ever being used up.
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What healer in their right mind wouldn't want something like this?
Every healer would want this, which is why it either shouldn't exist or should be prohibitively expensive.
Personally, I don't see the existence of such magic items to be game breaking.
Nothing is game-breaking if the GM is countering with equal-power enemy options.
Do you then prohibit the party from taking rest periods because they want to go into encounters at full strength?
Nope, of course not. However if they aren't using fast but limited resources (spells, channels, wands, etc.) and are taking an overnight rest to heal up, there may or may not be consequences. (Ambushes, BBEG flees when the guards they defeated don't report in, Diabolical Plan gets closer to completion, etc.) Even if they are using limited resources some very close-by or time-critical encounters may be impacted by pausing for a few minutes of clw wanding.
Aside: True Strike has a duration measured in rounds, so it'd use a 4x multiplier.
So yeah. Making a true strike item is the classic example of what you shouldn't do. Every attacker would want this (see above).
In the same sense that you should never put a handgun in the hands of a 5 year old child, I say "you shouldn't put a true strike item in your game." Yes, if you know your 5yo very well and know he or she can handle it responsibly, that's up to you, but rather than adding that caveat every single time this comes up (and I've addressed it many, many times), it's easier and simpler to say "don't do it, it's dangerous."
Why, in the 11-year history of D&D 3E and Pathfinder, has a reasonable multi-use not-spell-trigger-or-limited-charges true strike item never appeared in an official Wizards or Paizo product?
Because the designers realize that giving combat-oriented characters routine and easy access to a +20 attack bonus is a big, big problem, and pricing an unlimited-use version of that spell pushes well beyond the 200,000 gp maximum value for most wondrous items.
That said, do what you want in your campaign.
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After thinking on the item what I would do - assuming you still want to put it in your game - is make this item a minor artifact. Let the party acquire it sometime around 9th level (around the time that healing cost or spell/channel usage for healing starts to become minor anyway).
The artifact would be keyed to a maximum number of creatures - say 6 - that could it could be used on. Adding or changing a keyed creature (including adding the party when they first find it) would require a ritual that costs about 2,000 gp in rare materials per creature.
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Pricing New Items
The correct way to price an item is by comparing its abilities to similar items in the Core Rulebook (see Magic Item Gold Piece Values on page 549 of the Core Rulebook), and only if there are no similar items should you use the pricing formulas to determine an approximate price for the item. If you discover a loophole that allows an item to have an ability for a much lower price than is given for a comparable item in the Core Rulebook, the GM should require using the price of the Core Rulebook item, as that is the standard cost for such an effect. Most of these loopholes stem from trying to get unlimited uses per day of a spell effect from the “command word” or “use activated or continuous” lines of Table 15–29 on page 550
of Core Rulebook.
I'm reworking some of the material in my Homebrew Campaign, and I'm trying to figure out the actual cost of an infinite use Cure Light Wounds item...
Would it not be simpler to have the party return to max HP after every battle? That is what your effectively giving them with an unlimited wand of curing.