A question about magic item creation?

[mseds99]

thanks for all of the great replies and input. I need to do a thorough review of eveything that has been said.

The campaign is high magic and high powered, since most of my players are munchkins. I don't really mind though. THey usually just crack me up with the ridiculous things they try and come up with.

Another guy in my group wants to take the Manyshot feat and combine it with shot on the run. What a bunch of jokers!

 

[Saeviomagy]

If making an item intelligent is 'just something that happens', and not something that a creator can decide, then why is it given a range of prices, and a minimum caster level?

And furthermore, why not just let them have it. After all, think how much fun you can have with an intelligent item who's purpose is to 'defend azzadar kassul'?

"No, I'm not going to heal you. You'll just go off and try to fight that guy again. I'm not going to help you recklessly endanger your life. We're teleporting to your bedroom right now, where you can think about what you've done".

Mseds99 - yeah, what a bunch of jokers, imagine that, players trying to follow the rules to create powerful characters!

 

[dcollins]

It sounds like you're (the DM) fine with this, and are happy with a campaign that includes these items. Hoever, I'll just point out that you're under no obligation to allow "new items" into your campaign which are laughable like this (or even any "new items" whatsoever). If pricing is truly so murky, the easiest response for many DMs may to simply say "no -- I'm not making an exception to allow that item".

www.superdan.net/dndfaq3.html

 

[Hypersmurf]

My understanding was that a crafter decided to make an item intelligent, but the results and powers were randomly rolled...

-Hyp.

 

[mseds99]

Actually, based on the number everyone is throwing around, the PC's never have that kind of resources available to them in the first place. My style as a dm is to never really say "no" to the players, but to let them have something they want as a goal for the future. I feel the same way about these magic items. His character is extremely knwoledgeable about magic item creation, so I'd like to him to be able to figure out what he needs to do to create items like this. Wil it ever occur? Probably not, but I'll let their own actions decide their fate. His request will be extremely difficult to attain, but not impossible (how he would ever get that much money together is beyond me, but this guy has surprised me before with his muchkinism/ingenuity!). After all, they are the main characters in the story, I'm just the backdrop!

I was really curious about the mechanics of the pricing, because I had never dealt with any magic item creation to that scale.

Great, great replies from everyone! Muchas gracias. I gave him the link to this post. I'm sure he'll think of SOMETHING to say.

 

[loki1loki1]

The Torc:

Minimum price to get armor of Heavy Fortification woudl be 36,000gp. Double it, because it's being put into a nonarmor item; that's 72,000gp.

Hmmm...where do you get this number? According to my research, heavy fortification is a +5 value to armor, which equates to a +25,000 GP valuation. As the heavy fort. will be the "base" power of the torque, the 25K should be considered to be the "base" price of the item. I am not aware of this "doubling for being non-armor" rule you reference.

Ring of Counterspells (with four uses), well, double the cost of four rings. IIRC (I don't have my DMG to hand), the RoCS costs, what ... 50,000gp? Four of them could cost 200,000gp? Double that to 400,000gp. we have roughly 481,000gp. DM fiat, round it to 500,000gp.

You are WAY off base here. Ring of Counterspells is 4,000 GP. If one were to triple the uses, so-to-speak, that would end up being:

- 4K for original ring, doubled as it is "stacked" onto the heavy fort. from above.
- 8K for each additional counterspell "slot" (doubled base, per DMG, pg. 246)

Total would then be 32K for the counterspelling aspect.

Now, here's where you shut this silly thing down: it's market value is over 200,000gp, so you're witin your rights to declare it Epic ... and multiply the price by 10.

Like I said, either validate your assertions (your contentions regarding the RoCS have already been proven fallatious), or reassess your "research".

Thus, the Torc costs 5,000,000gp. Cost-to-create would be 2,500,000gp and 60,000XP; prerequisites would be Caster LEvel 21 (Epic, after all), plus ALL the non-feat prerequisites for each seperate function, plus Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Epic Wondrous Item ...

Wrong.

The Ring:
...

You are all sorts of wrong here. Check the DMG for Intelligent item powers. The base price for such an item as I describe in the ring is 90,000 GP. That price subsumes ALL of the powers delineated. Where you get your wild assertions I have no idea, but they were entertaining to read.

-------------------------------------------------

Oh, the final price: being beaten over the head with a stick. Those items are silly, foolish, and blatant attempts to win purely mechanical advantage, without any sense of flavor or storyline purpose. Bah.

Quite an insightful close to your misinformed post.

BTW, I am that "munchkin" player that the original poster refers to. How about everybody do me a favor and at least try and figure out the definitions to words before they attempt to employ such in their posts.

A munchkin is somebody that breaks the rules, usually with wanton abandon.

Me, I'm a min/maxer

 

[mseds99]

As a response to Saeviomagy - it really is a matter of game style. Some players want powerful characters and they make the numbers match the concept. Some players focus in on a charcater concept and try to make the numbers match that. Most of my players are of the first school. I am of the second. I certainly don't resent them for that. They're pretty creative with what they come up with and it certainly is ALWAYS amusing. That's why I put the joker comment in there.

 

[mseds99]

I'd like to introduce Azzadar Kasul .. an evoker/red wizard of undisputable power and a blatant munc...ooops...min/maxer of the first order.

He really is one of my favorites. He cracks me up to no end with this stuff.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Hypersmurf - I'd go so far as to allow the creator to determine the items alignment and purpose, but yes, the powers would indeed be rolled randomly.

I'd much rather just work out a pricing scheme for each individual power - it seems like a really terrible throwback to have random rolling on something which would seem to be quite as controlled as magical item creation, especially when there is such a disparity in the relative powers avaliable.

mseds99 - I made the comment about the combining feats thing. By the book, it's a perfectly legal combination. I personally cannot see any reason not to allow it that isn't also a reason to simply ban the multishot feat itself. It seemed like you were laughing at your players for something which is really your own fault.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Hmmm...where do you get this number? According to my research, heavy fortification is a +5 value to armor, which equates to a +25,000 GP valuation.

Except that it is unavailable except on armor of at least +1 enhancement, so the minimum price of heavy fortification is the price of a +6 armor enhancement less the price of a +1 armor enhancement. 36,000 - 2,000 = 34,000 minimum.

You are all sorts of wrong here. Check the DMG for Intelligent item powers. The base price for such an item as I describe in the ring is 90,000 GP. That price subsumes ALL of the powers delineated. Where you get your wild assertions I have no idea, but they were entertaining to read.

If the DM allows the player to choose the powers etc of the item, then what's to stop him selecting "Roll twice on this table" for all four Primary Abilities, followed by a few more "Roll twice on this table"s, and a couple of "Roll on Extraordinary Powers instead"s, ending up with a couple of dozen primary abilities... likewise for all his Extraordinary Powers?

After all, you're already assuming that you can just assign a Special Purpose, which isn't a part of the base 90k price... it's the result of a 10% chance of an Extraordinary Power.

My understanding of intelligent item creation is that the crafter chooses how much money he's going to pour into the crafting, and then the DM either selects or randomly assigns the powers etc as he sees fit.

A lot like having a child, really - you can decide to bring life into the world, but you can't guarantee how it turns out...

-Hyp.