PATHFINDER UNCHAINED: Magic Items

If you're still not sure about Pathfinder Unchained, check out this preview from Paizo of a pair of magic items from the book. These items demonstrate the new magic item scaling rules - items which inprove as you level up, remaining an important part of your character through your adventuring career. "We've all been there. We've faced the sad crossroads when we realized that our favorite magic item just wasn't cutting it, and we couldn't justify keeping it instead of equipping the new and shinier item the party just found instead."

The two items shown are a Robe of the Faerie Queen, and a CrystallTiara. Each gains new abilties at various levels.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Holy crap, that Tiara is only 1,000 gp??? I don't think that's the acceptable level of power for such a price. And this is going to be a pain in the a** for DM's to keep track of.

Edit: Wait, I just noticed that the price is 1,000 gp, but the construction cost is 132,000? I played Pathfinder for a long while but I never noticed such a discrepancy.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There's no way to justify that sale price, for what these do, or for what's required to craft them.

It's become increasingly clear that the designers of this book have absolutely zero idea what they're doing.

 

[Thotas]

At least one of the prices (probably the tiara) is obviously a typo. Maybe a 1.000 was put in as a placeholder on all of the wonders and/or baubles and this one got missed when putting the real prices in? Probably too late to fix it in the book if that's true, though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

At least one of the prices (probably the tiara) is obviously a typo. Maybe a 1.000 was put in as a placeholder on all of the wonders and/or baubles and this one got missed when putting the real prices in? Probably too late to fix it in the book if that's true, though.

I get the sense that these are supposed to represent the item that is much more than it seems, so the buy price is based on its abilities for a level 1 character (which are the only thing that could be independently verified by the level 1 merchant). While it is a hard-coded rule for every currently existing class of magical item that the crafting cost is equal to half of the buying price, these are a new class of item, so they get to make up their own rules. (Presumably, there's just no reason for anyone to ever craft one of these. And they probably ignore the GP limit based on town size, so they aren't commonly available.)

And they also miss the whole point of scaling items. Nobody worries about trading out an old robe that give flying with poor maneuverability, for a new robe that gives flying with good maneuverability. The obsolescence of magical items is a numeric thing - trading out your old +1 flametongue because it can't hold up to the +4 scimitar that you found.

 

[jamesjhaeck]

I'm having Weapons of Legacy flashbacks...

 

[Aloïsius]

scaling magic item is the way to go IMHO, if one does not want his campaign to looks like a videogame where players sell tons of "obsolete" magic items to buy new ones.
That, and the possibility of giving powerful, important items to first level characters.

 

[Jester David]

There's no way to justify that sale price, for what these do, or for what's required to craft them.

It's become increasingly clear that the designers of this book have absolutely zero idea what they're doing.

1000gp for an item that grants continual endure elements against cold makes sense. The rest doesn't factor into the price; you can't be expected to buy it as if it were a level 20 item at level 2. I imagine the rest of the cost comes elsewhere, being spent to unlock the powers, or just through not handing out as much treasure. Having an item you purchased for 1k gold upgrade to allowing you to summon an ice elemental works provided you're awarding a few less thousand gp.

 

[Jester David]

I'm having Weapons of Legacy flashbacks...

Weapons of Legacy was a similar attempt to fix the WBL problem.

 

[Ace]

I've done this sort of thing for years ad-hoc in many different games, I am however glad to see something with the official Paizo imprimatur on it and maybe some guidelines.