Lesser Wyrm Rods?

[thundershot]

Back in BECMI, the PC's had a Rod of the Wyrm that ended up becoming part of the family, so to speak. It took until Epic that we got the return of it, but it was MUCH more powerful than before.

SRD:Wyrm Rod - D&D Wiki


What I'd like to do is make lesser variations of the rod so that I can use it again in my Pathfinder campaign. Unfortunately, I have no clue where to start. A good start is probably making the weapon (mace, more than likely) +1 instead of +5, and make the dragon significantly smaller, probably based on CR.

Anyone want to take a shot at it? I've never built a magic item from the ground up before... Any advice is welcome!



Thanks
Chris

 

[Glade Riven]

A good baseline to start with would be the Figurine of Wonderous Power.

There are a couple of different options:
1. Make a dragon based off of the griffon. Easiest to do because of repurposing.
2. This item will have to have costs calculated based off of all the dragon types, since each dragon seems to have a different CR for a young dragon.

Not quite sure how to go about #2.

 

[Kvantum]

When I was playing around with them in the past, I think I figured out the mathematics behind them. A Rod of the Wyrm is basically created around it having a caster level equal to the dragon's hit dice, and a cost equal to 48,600 gp * Caster Level, plus the cost of a +5/masterwork quarterstaff (50,600 gp).

Now I would think you should get a much greater discount on a Rod of the Wyrmling than just 48,600 gp per hit die, maybe something like 16,200 gp per hit die, so you'd end up with the items costing around 100,000 gp total. Assuming a +1 light mace as the base item, with my math a Rod of the Silver Wyrmling (7 HD) would cost 2,305 + 7*16200 = 115,705 gp.

I'm not sure what you're going for, price-wise, but you can adjust that price per HD to what you feel comfortable with.

 

[Kaisoku]

A young dragon is CR 7.

The figuring of wondrous power of a Marble Elephant creates a CR 7 elephant as a mount, beast of burden or combatant (ie, used as if it were a real elephant), for 4x per month, up to 24 hours each time.
This costs 17,000gp.

The twin lions (16,500gp) create a CR 5 encounter (two cr 3 lions), up to 1 hour per day, although if one dies they can't be called for a week.

I'd say that if you were doing a wyrmling, it'd be priced similar to the Elephant, and useable more like the lions as it's primarily a combatant (1 hour per day, week downtime if killed).

If the thing doubles as a weapon (since it'd be a rod), then I'd just tack on the price of the enchanted weapon as well. A +1 heavy mace would be 2,312gp.
No increases in cost, since you can't use the +1 heavy mace at the same time as it's a dragon.

Because it's a dragon, and not an elephant, I'd probably tack on an extra 5,000gp because it can fly and has a breath weapon (more options in combat than the elephant). That and the lions were two CR 3 at the elephant price, so probably a jump in pricing is appropriate.

Since it's normally a statuette, and you probably don't want it to be intelligent, you could probably stat it up once, and just change the breath weapon to whatever dragon the rod is supposed to be attuned to.

So something around 24,312gp... or 25k if you want to round up.

 

[Adam Shepherd]

I've been running a conversion of "Where Chaos Reigns", and kept this item in the game (chapter 4). I added a couple of limitations to the description in the SRD version.

1) Instead of the killed wyrm being reactivateable (that's a word now ) in 3 days, it is destroyed if this happens
2) The rod can only be in wyrm form for up to 15 rds in a day
3) The dragon called was a young adult. not a "Wyrm"

I removed the alignment restriction as a Lawful Evil oard would not have been able to summon a Lawful Good gold dragon otherwise