Hey everyone, someone brought this up on my last session and I honestly hadn't thought about it before nor seen anything about it so I didn't know what to say.
The most obvious example would be the rings, most races have 10 fingers, but only 2 magic ring slots. So the question is, what happens if they equip a third ?
While that is the obvious example, there are a lot of characters in media that wear multiple necklaces or belts or bracers, etc
The only thing I could find giving an exact answer to this is in the DMG for DnD 2e that states if you have 2 rings and equip a 3rd one, all of them become nonfunctional until you remove one. To me, this seems like the most reasonable thing that would happen, but I was wondering if there's another ruling for Pathfinder or at least DnD 3.5.
Thanks in advance :)
Found in the magic item rules:
Many magic items need to be donned by a character who wants to employ them or benefit from their abilities. It’s possible for a creature with a humanoid-shaped body to wear as many as 15 magic items at the same time. However, each of those items must be worn on (or over) a particular part of the body, known as a “slot.”
A humanoid-shaped body can be decked out in magic gear consisting of one item from each of the following groups, keyed to which slot on the body the item is worn.
Of course, a character may carry or possess as many items of the same type as he wishes. However, additional items beyond those in the slots listed above have no effect.
So in your case, you would wear 2 magic rings, and if you put on a 3rd one, it simply won't function, but the first two would still work.
I remember to have read somewhere, that it doesn't depend on which you put on first, but which has the higher Caster Level.
So for example if you would wear a magic ring with CL 8, one with CL 5 and would put on an additional one with CL 10, the ring with CL 5 would stop working.
Bit it might be, that that was just something I read here or a houserule as I couldn't find an official rule like that right now.
search Rules thread as this is an old topic.
in summary, PCs can wear hundreds of magic items but only so many will work. It is usually FIFO(first in first out) but double check with your GM.
Magic items interfering with each other might be the best answer you can give. If 2 or more magic items are too close to each other, then none of them work. To take this idea further, its not just a limit of 2 rings per person, its a limit of 1 ring per hand. However, this is not a perfect explanation as gloves and rings are really close to each other. Maybe they have different enough wavelengths or something...
There are ways to get around these limits. One of which is to stuff multiple magical abilities onto the same magic items. This raises the price of the added abilities by 50%. The exception of this is the most expensive ability on the magic item; it gets to keep its normal price.
Slotless is another option. It doubles the price of the magic item, but then you don't have to worry about slots at all. Ioun stones are a good example of this.
At least, thats how I rule it.
Ultimate Equipment page 166
Quote: A character can only effectively wear two magic rings. A third magic ring doesn’t work if the character is already wearing two magic rings. Ultimate Equipment page 206
Quote: When a character wears a slotted wondrous item he cannot gain the benefit from a wondrous items [sic] of the same slot until the first item is removed.
I resolve this issue by allowing characters to combine the effects on magic items through the crafting magic item mechanic. If they want the effects of three rings, combine two of the rings into one ring so that you don't exceed the item limit.
My hard and fast pricing for this is:
1.5x(Most expensive magic effect) plus cost of (next most expensive magic effect) = Market price of new item
If the effect they want is not meant for the magic item slot, the final price is increased another 1.5x (ie, 150% normal market value).
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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Custom items combining multiple magical effects is one way, if your GM allows it.
Specifically for rings, there are also the meridian belt (wear 4 rings, choose which two are "active" as a swift action), hand of glory (have a third ring active, although the hand occupies the neck slot), and ten-ring sword (gain the benefits of an attached ring when wielding the sword). They may not suit every character, but there are some RAW ways to "wear" multiple rings even in campaigns where the GM doesn't allow custom magic items.
DeathlessOne wrote: My hard and fast pricing for this is:
1.5x(Most expensive magic effect) plus cost of (next most expensive magic effect) = Market price of new item
You might want to reconsider that quick rule. There are circumstances where that might actually be the cheaper way to price magic items. If you made a headband of mental superiority +6 that way, you would save 18k.
Normal way: 36k + 54k + 54k = 144k
Your way: 54k + 36k + 36k = 126k
diff of 18k.
I did say it was a hard and fast pricing guide. It is not meant to cover every instance or potential abuse players might try to make use of clever combinations to outwit the existing prices of items.
To clarify the matter entirely, the GM prices the items, not the players. And if an item already exists with those effects, it has precedent.
But to finesse the math a bit more: Each time you add a new effect to the item, you are taking the NEW base market price and multiplying it by 1.5 to get your new market value. 54k + 36k = 90k, 90k*1.5= 135k, 135k+36k=171k
OmniMage wrote: DeathlessOne wrote: My hard and fast pricing for this is:
1.5x(Most expensive magic effect) plus cost of (next most expensive magic effect) = Market price of new item
You might want to reconsider that quick rule. There are circumstances where that might actually be the cheaper way to price magic items. If you made a headband of mental superiority +6 that way, you would save 18k.
Normal way: 36k + 54k + 54k = 144k
Your way: 54k + 36k + 36k = 126k
diff of 18k. Isnt it like every new effect gets the x1,5?
So it would be 36 +(36 x1,5) +(36 x1,5) = 144k.
Which would be the exact value it is descripted in the books.
And most item I did the math are made with this rule.
(some are just priced randomly and some are rounded up or down, which is really confusing for someone who like me who likes mathe a lot, but I get the reason for it).
That said: Pricing is something you have to work out with your GM. The formulas are nice and it works in most cases, but not in all.
If you craft an item from scratch and it has differnt effects, like one with 20k one with 30k and one with 40k, you would have to do the mathe like: 40 +(20 x1,5) +(30 x1,5) = 105k.
If you have an item with an existing effect (say 30k) and you add new effect (which are worth 20k and 40k), than you would have:
30 +(20 x1,5) +(40 x1,5) =120k
So it would be possible to have the same item, with the same effects, but it is priced differntly, just because you took an alternative route to get there.
A ring of invisibility (20k) which gets the effects of a ring of featherfall crafted on (2,2k) would be 20 +( 2,2x1,5) = 23,3k
A ring of featherfall which get the effects of a ring of invisbility crafted on would be 32,2k (2,2 + (20 x1,5)).
If you were trying to get to the same end result as the book, that way is the most ideal for the player. My method is not meant to be ideal for the player. They are already attempting to 'game' the system by using more magical items then normally available. As a somewhat permissive GM, I'm not against allowing them to do so but they will pay a (literal) price for it.
Belafon wrote: Ultimate Equipment page 166
Quote: A character can only effectively wear two magic rings. A third magic ring doesn’t work if the character is already wearing two magic rings. Ultimate Equipment page 206
Quote: When a character wears a slotted wondrous item he cannot gain the benefit from a wondrous items [sic] of the same slot until the first item is removed.
yep - that's the RAW on the topic
Thanks for all the replies.
To add more context, I'm the DM for this campaign, and while we are playing mostly Pathfinder 1e rules, we are playing in the Warcraft universe using the old rpg books and some 3.5 things.
There's an item called healing belt that let's you heal (dur) others or yourself and one player asked if he could have 2 or 3 on top of each other so he doesn't need to equip a new one to use it and just has to remove the empty one. I said I didn't like this because it felt to me, like a really cheesy way to try to beat the action economy system, but it seems to be the RAW that he can do that.
Toshy wrote: I remember to have read somewhere, that it doesn't depend on which you put on first, but which has the higher Caster Level.
So for example if you would wear a magic ring with CL 8, one with CL 5 and would put on an additional one with CL 10, the ring with CL 5 would stop working.
Bit it might be, that that was just something I read here or a houserule as I couldn't find an official rule like that right now.
I liked this idea though, be it a houserule or not.
comment
one of the descriptive changes that got implemented by Paizo was adding that (some) items had to be donned and worn 24hrs before they became usable. It stopped some abusive swapping.
It is really a matter of Game Balance and the increased cost for one item having more 'powers' along with the action economy of switching magic items around.
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Narxzul wrote: Thanks for all the replies.
To add more context, I'm the DM for this campaign, and while we are playing mostly Pathfinder 1e rules, we are playing in the Warcraft universe using the old rpg books and some 3.5 things.
There's an item called healing belt that let's you heal (dur) others or yourself and one player asked if he could have 2 or 3 on top of each other so he doesn't need to equip a new one to use it and just has to remove the empty one. I said I didn't like this because it felt to me, like a really cheesy way to try to beat the action economy system, but it seems to be the RAW that he can do that.
Toshy wrote: I remember to have read somewhere, that it doesn't depend on which you put on first, but which has the higher Caster Level.
So for example if you would wear a magic ring with CL 8, one with CL 5 and would put on an additional one with CL 10, the ring with CL 5 would stop working.
Bit it might be, that that was just something I read here or a houserule as I couldn't find an official rule like that right now.
I liked this idea though, be it a houserule or not.
All magic items should be revisited with the GM.
Their are too many ways to break the system (ring of true strike) if you use it 1:1 every time.
So if you feel like its to powerful, its not possible, or you just make it more pricy.
My wizard started to craft a LOT of effects on top of each other.
GM was ok with it, but after some time, I was like... well I think its too broken with just +50%.
So I proposed the idea that the first extra effect was +50%, the next two are +100%, the next three are +150% and so on. Also add a +5 for the craft check.
That way stacking became a lot harder and pricy over time.
On the other hand, an item that works only 1/day has his own formula to get to its price.
You craft the item like it works infinite times per day (Caster level x spell level x 2.000) and divide it by 5 (so /5). Now multiply it with the number of times you think it should be used per day.
So an item that can only be used once a day costs as much as an permanent item divided by 5.
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