Can I get a little hand-holding through magic item creation?

[Felon]

I've been DM'ing 3e since it hit the shelves, but I have assiduously avoided wading into the morasse of magic item creation becaue I see them as deeply flawed. Now I have a player who is a fan of finding cool spells and making them into wondrous items.

For instance, he wants to see what it would take to get Heart of Earth (Spell Compendium) built into an item that's usable once per day. The duration is 1 hour per level and its range is "personal", but it doesn't look like the item creation system takes that into account. Costing seems to derive from a combination spell level multiplied by caster level which is in turn multiplied by some number that represents the type of item it is.

So, in this case here's how the formula looks to me:
Spell level 4
Caster level 7
Command-word Spell Effect (x 1,800)
One charge a day (x 1/5)
So, 4 x 7 x 1800 x 1/5 = 1080 gp

Spells include controls such as casting time, duration, and range, but that stuff seems to get stripped out of the magic item creation process without becoming a cost consideration. Am I missing something? Am I looking at section of the DMG while there's some vital component squirreled away on another page?

 

[starwed]

You mean 10080gp, right?

Spells include controls such as casting time, duration, and range, but that stuff seems to get stripped out of the magic item creation process without becoming a cost consideration.

I'm not quite sure why you think the duration isn't taken into account; that's presumably taken care of by the level of the spell. (If an item duplicates the spell, then it has the same duration. A ring of invisibility, for example, only has a duration of 3 minutes, and a ring of blinking has to be renewed every 7 rounds.)

You're right about the casting time and personal range, though. If a spell has a casting time of more than 1 round, it should probably be more expensive to make into an item. And a spell with Range: Personal should also be more expensive to make into an item. (Psionic tattoos cost double if the power is normally personal, and that's a good place to start.)

But remember that the actual power of the item is what sets the price. If the guidelines in the DMG result in an item which seems too powerful or too weak for the level you'd aquire it, you can just ignore them.

 

[Jack Simth]

Your calculation is missing a 0 - your math list 4*7*1800*(1/5)=1080, should be 10,080.

I'm not familiar with the spell; if there is a material component cost, you add on 50 times that. If the spell grants bonuses, it may be easier to estimate the effect based off of that. What's the spell do?

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Am I missing something?

Yeah.

Not all items adhere to these formulas directly. The reasons for this are several. First and foremost, these few formulas aren’t enough to truly gauge the exact differences between items. The price of a magic item may be modified based on its actual worth. The formulas only provide a starting point. The pricing of scrolls assumes that, whenever possible, a wizard or cleric created it. Potions and wands follow the formulas exactly. Staffs follow the formulas closely, and other items require at least some judgment calls.

If a scroll with the same spell on it costs 700 gp and a wand of it costs 21k gp, then the item he wants is probably somewhere closer to 10k, not 1k.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Your calculation is missing a 0 - your math list 4*7*1800*(1/5)=1080, should be 10,080.

I'm not familiar with the spell; if there is a material component cost, you add on 50 times that. If the spell grants bonuses, it may be easier to estimate the effect based off of that. What's the spell do?

Yeah, that looks better. Math for the win!

 

[Felon]

Yes, I missed a zero. I'm lousy with typos when I don't have my contacts in. 10,080 is still pretty cheap for the effect. It's actually disapponting if that was the sole mistake.

So, if the item was usable at will (infinite charges), then you'd just not bother with the 1/5 reduction?

 

[Jack Simth]

Yes, I missed a zero. I'm lousy with typos when I don't have my contacts in. 10,080 is still pretty cheap for the effect. It's actually disapponting if that was the sole mistake.

So, if the item was usable at will (infinite charges), then you'd just not bother with the 1/5 reduction?

Theoretically.

However, they are guidelines for a reason.

See, by guidelines, an at-will command word Widget of Cure Minor Wounds (clerical cantrip) costs 900 gp. The infinite healing aspect of it, however, breaks game balance something fierce. The Ring of Regeneration has some pesky limitations, is considerably less useful, and costs more than a full order of magnitude more. Widget of Cure Minor Wounds is broken compared to Ring of Regeneration (or even Wand of Cure Light Wounds - you can run out of the Wand).

A Use-activated Widget of True Strike (whenever the wielder makes an attack roll) similarly breaks the game - and theoretically costs 2,000 gp when done as a slotted spell-duplicating item (4,000 gp as an unslotted item). Fighter doesn't miss (except on a nat-1), even doing full power attack, for basically every opponent. Full Power Attack All The Time. It's more useful than a +10 sword (which, book value when you go Epic, is priced at essentially 2,000,000 gp). Widget of True Strike is broken compared to a very expensive sword.

A continuous caster level 1 Widget of Mage Armor theoretically costs 2,000 gp - and provides exactly the same protection as a +4 Bracers of Armor at a cost of 16,000 gp. Widget of Mage Armor is broken compared to Bracers of Armor.

At caster level 7, with a duration of an hour/level, it's going to be active basically always, even at 1/day. Something smells fishy? Don't price it by the cost of a spell, price it by the bonuses it provides. I don't know the spell. What does it do?

 

[Felon]

At caster level 7, with a duration of an hour/level, it's going to be active basically always, even at 1/day. Something smells fishy? Don't price it by the cost of a spell, price it by the bonuses it provides. I don't know the spell. What does it do?

At caster level 7, heart of earth would give the caster 14 temporary hit points and +8 to resist trip, overrun, and bull rush attempts for seven hours. As a swift action, the caster can activate a stoneskin effect that lasts 1/round level (or until depleted), but this ends the spell prematurely.

It's pretty nifty, although I'm more concerned about future attempts to put spells like enlarge person and true strike into items.

Personally, I'm somewhat dubious about the wisdom of providing magic item creation rules with big gaps and then duck under the umbrella of saying "they're not so much rules as what ye call guidelines". Obviously, rules are what folks flipping to this section are looking for, and while it's impossible to cover all the angles, the formula should at least make some effort to account for the discrepency between a ring of regeneration and ring of cure minor wounds. By emphasizing caster levle and tossing out other factors, the guidelines will often misguide.

But so it goes. I'll try to get fellow gamer to see that perspective.

 

[hong]

See, by guidelines, an at-will command word Widget of Cure Minor Wounds (clerical cantrip) costs 900 gp. The infinite healing aspect of it, however, breaks game balance something fierce. The Ring of Regeneration has some pesky limitations, is considerably less useful, and costs more than a full order of magnitude more. Widget of Cure Minor Wounds is broken compared to Ring of Regeneration (or even Wand of Cure Light Wounds - you can run out of the Wand).

Although that's more because the ring of regeneration is uselessly weak, as opposed to the widget of CMinW being overly strong.

 

[Jack Simth]

Although that's more because the ring of regeneration is uselessly weak, as opposed to the widget of CMinW being overly strong.

So compare to the Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Both would be used primarily out of combat, where the time factor doesn't much matter. The Wand of Cure Light Wounds is expended - completely - after 50 charges of 1d8+1 points of healing (average 275 points of healing). Takes five minutes. A Widget of Cure Minor Wounds is still useful after healing 275 points of damage (takes 27.5 minutes). If you use the Widget of Cure Minor Wounds for a meanginful amount of out-of-combat healing on three or four adventuring days, the cost per point of healing drops below that of the cost per point of healing on a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (which is the core most gold effecient healing stick; a Wand of Lesser Vigor does slightly better, but takes the same amount of time as a Widget of Cure Minor Wounds - just fewer actions). After it has paid for itself (which doesn't take long), the Widget is free healing. Wands you have to pay to replace. If, over the course of an adventuring month, you'd go through six Wands of Cure Light Wounds for out-of-combat healing, the Widget of Cure Minor Wounds would have saved you 3,600 gp - which is a big deal, for an item that costs (estimated value) of 900 gp. That's a Cloak of Resistance +2 instead of a Cloak of Resistance +1.