Can somebody price this item for me please?

[MerakSpielman]

Amulet of Sending. Once per week, this amulet can send a message (as Sending cast by a 7th level cleric) to another individual. Activating the amulet is a standard action.

Once per week generally assumes a 7 day week. How would the pricing change if the weeks in my campaign world were 10 days long? Is there a simple percentage I can apply to the cost of items with a weekly activation?

 

[BSF]

Amulet of Sending. Once per week, this amulet can send a message (as Sending cast by a 7th level cleric) to another individual. Activating the amulet is a standard action.

Once per week generally assumes a 7 day week. How would the pricing change if the weeks in my campaign world were 10 days long? Is there a simple percentage I can apply to the cost of items with a weekly activation?

Ack! There isn't a hard & fast formula in the books. The Artificer's Handbook accomodates this though.

Anyway, most people will advise to compute the cost based on the charges/day formula. I think this comes out a bit too cheap. I am assuming this is for your game, and that it is a command word type item so anyone in the party can use it.

Base cost is 4 x 7 x 1800 = 50400
Charges: 50400 x 1/5 = 10080 (This brings it down to 1/day)

That's where the core rules get you to. I have been toying with this and I think diminishing discounts are appropriate. If you just extrapolate everything out, it rapidly becomes cheaper to make use/month items rather than scrolls.

So, I would give it 10080 x 1/4 = 2520 for a week.
If you wanted 1/month, I would say 2520 x 1/3 = 840 Which is still a little more expensive than a scroll of the same level.

Hmm, to summarize, I would extend the charts from the core rules in the following manner. Note: Allowing people to create 5 use/week options is broken! They can derive the same benefit as a 5 use/day option at a reduced cost. Only allow /week or /month reductions if it is a single use in that time frame.

1/week = 1/20 of normal cost ( 1/5 then 1/4)
1/month = 1/60 of normal cost ( 1/5 then 1/4 then 1/3)

Maybe somebody else has a better solution?

 

[Pyrex]

The problem with pricing /week /month /year items is that they quickly become far too cost effective. Especially when any character can use them.

IMO the cost for these items should never be less than 3x to 5x the cost of a single-use, use-activated (i.e. a potion) wonderous item of the same type.

So (IMC) a 1/wk Amulet of Sending wouldn't cost less than
4 x 7 x 100* x 3** = 8400gp

*Single-use, use-activated is x50 for lvl 1-3 and x100 for lvl 4+ spells
**As Sending is not game breaking, I'd use the cheaper bound. If they wanted Cure Critical Wounds, I'd use at least x5.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Pyrex, your equation looks to work better than the standard rules for these cases.

Would you make it (fractionally) cheaper if once per week meant once every 10 days instead of once every 7 days?

 

[Pyrex]

Would you make it (fractionally) cheaper if once per week meant once every 10 days instead of once every 7 days?

It still gets back to the whole diminishing-returns problem. The DMG suggests that a Amulet of Sendings useable once/day be priced at 10,080gp. Extrapolating the cost downward from there using the same formula quickly becomes absurd as the cost for creating reusable items drops towards and below the cost for producing single-use items.

I would never allow players to create (or purchase) reusable items that cost less than 3-5x the cost of a single use of the spell, it's just unbalanced. Even at 3-5x most parties will more than get their money's worth out of it in a standard campaign.

Just out of curiosity, is this an item one of your pc's is planning on creating or something you're giving to a party you're DM'ing?

 

[MerakSpielman]

Currently the party has one of these amulets, given to them by me the DM as a plot-dependant item. The weekly charge is used up every week as the characters, in turn, report back to their respective organizations.

One of the players - last in the rotation cycle - complained that since my weeks are 10 days long she has to wait 60 days between reports, instead of 48 days. This, to her, makes the Amulet of Sending less useful. She plays a cleric, and I can already see the wheels turning in her head to make one of these herself for her own, private use. When this happens, I want to be able to quote her the original price of a 7-day amulet of sending as well as the slightly discounted price for a 10-day amulet.

 

[der_kluge]

Artificer's Handbook cost:

10gp(4 + 7 -1) * 5^2 = 100*25 = 2,500gp

That's as a spell completion item (which means the user has to be able to cast the spell). For a spell trigger item, the cost is:
100*6^2 = 3,600gp

These are creation costs. The market costs would be 5,000gp and 7,200gp respectively.

How I derived it:
4 = Spell level, 7 = Caster level. The -1 is part of the formula. 5 is the number of spell slots required -> 2 for spell completion (3 for spell trigger) and +3 for "1 use per week" That's a total of 5 (or 6) spell slots, which is then squared.

There is no provision for a 10-day week, but you could reduce the cost by some percentage. A 10 day week is 42% longer than a 7 day week, and you could choose to reduce the cost of the item by that much if you so desired.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I'm not going to give a 42% discount in price for just a few more days of waiting! That would cut the cost from 3600 to 2448! By that logic, if they made it usable once every 14 days it would be free!

I was thinking more like a 5-10% discount. Too bad I don't have any rules to fall back on to back it up, though...

 

[Pyrex]

The number I posted above (the 8400gp) is intended as the minimum-bound for repeatability, consider it to be bottom-of-the-barrel 1/month use value.

Scale up from there to find what you feel appropriate for 1/7day or 1/10day repeat use.

Personally I think 8400gp for 1/7day is fine for use in most games.

As you need to have a "base" of 1/10 day, I would call 1/10day 8400gp and scale up to 1/7day @ 10k even.

 

[the Jester]

I have a 9-day week in my campaign, and I don't discount anything for it. I figure it evens out whenever they have a week to get something done or a week duration on something.