I'm trying to get my head around how magic item pricing is actually supposed to work in 3rd edition/v3.5 Dungeons & Dragons.
As my first example, I can't seem to retrofit the rules in the 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide to match with the figure for the acid fang dagger in the Arms and Equipment Guide. (In particular, I'd like to work out how to update it to v3.5!)
It's a +1 dagger which does an additional +1d6 acid damage, permits the use of animal friendship once per day but only on reptiles and snakes, and speak with animals when holding the dagger but again only with reptiles and snakes.
(Obviously, the animal friendship will become charm animal in v3.5, but that's not going to help sort out the pricing.)
Final price should be 19,102 gp.
Right - the easy bits: a masterwork dagger is 302 gp and the +1 modifier contributes 2,000 gp to the price.
The rest needs to be priced presumably according to Table 8-40 in the Dungeon Master's Guide (or Table 7-33 in v3.5 version). But I've no idea which row to use to price the +1d6 acid damage. For the other two, I presume we treat them as requiring command words?
If so, the animal friendship prices as: 1 (level) x 4 (CL) x 1800 = 7200, divided by 5 for charges per day (it can be used once): giving 1440 gp
The speak with animal prices as: 2 (level) x 4 (CL) x 1800 = 14,400gp.
When I add that all up, I get: 23,902 gp + whatever the +1d6 acid damage is worth.
Which is already 4,000 gp more than given in the original book.
So what am I doing wrong / not understanding?
As my first example, I can't seem to retrofit the rules in the 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide to match with the figure for the acid fang dagger in the Arms and Equipment Guide. (In particular, I'd like to work out how to update it to v3.5!)
It's a +1 dagger which does an additional +1d6 acid damage, permits the use of animal friendship once per day but only on reptiles and snakes, and speak with animals when holding the dagger but again only with reptiles and snakes.
(Obviously, the animal friendship will become charm animal in v3.5, but that's not going to help sort out the pricing.)
Final price should be 19,102 gp.
Right - the easy bits: a masterwork dagger is 302 gp and the +1 modifier contributes 2,000 gp to the price.
The rest needs to be priced presumably according to Table 8-40 in the Dungeon Master's Guide (or Table 7-33 in v3.5 version). But I've no idea which row to use to price the +1d6 acid damage. For the other two, I presume we treat them as requiring command words?
If so, the animal friendship prices as: 1 (level) x 4 (CL) x 1800 = 7200, divided by 5 for charges per day (it can be used once): giving 1440 gp
The speak with animal prices as: 2 (level) x 4 (CL) x 1800 = 14,400gp.
When I add that all up, I get: 23,902 gp + whatever the +1d6 acid damage is worth.
Which is already 4,000 gp more than given in the original book.
So what am I doing wrong / not understanding?