Combining magic items

[Grogg of the North]

I'm running a home brew D&D 3.5 campaign. One of my players is playing a warlock. She's currently running around with a Staff of Fire. Recently she came to me and asked if she could hire someone to combine the effects of the Warlock's Scepter (+1 to hit, bonus damage on Eldritch Blast) to her Staff of Fire.

Her reasoning was that 1) She didn't want to have both her staff and a mace and 2) It sounded better thematically to her (and me) to have her warlock running around with her "staff of power".

I have no problem with her doing this, I just have no idea how much it would cost. The MIC lists the warlock scepter at ~8K. But it seems that if she's tacking this onto her Staff of Fire it should cost a little more.

If anyone has any advice on how to handle this, I'd greatly appreciate it!

 

[kitcik]

Since it's not "out of slot" I would just let her add it on at cost.

It would be slightly more efficient than carrying both, but also slightly more risky (like having a TV / DVD, where if the TV breaks you just lost your DVD as well).

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

There is an official formula for figuring this, and a source that can be referenced. I don't know either, but some other people here do.

 

[marcielle]

Does it give her a SIGNIFICANT advantage over wielding both? Then just tack on the normal price. If it gives her a large advantage then you gotta use the dang quadratics. Figure out the rough bonus. Clossest approx I have of Staff of fire and Warlock's Scpetre should be +3 (2000 x 3*2=18,000) and +2 respectively. So the combination would be approximately +5 and hence the price is 50,000gp. Yeah... I don't think you should use quadratic. Just add the prices together.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their input! I decided to just tack on the cost as you suggested here.

Thanks again!

 

[Dandu]

Why not just duct tape them both together and call it a day?

 

[skyth]

Combined items typically cost (Highest Cost)+2*(Lower Cost)

So combining an item that costs 2000 gp and an item that costs 3000 gp costs 3000+2*2000 or 7000 gp.

 

[Tilenas]

Combined items typically cost (Highest Cost)+2*(Lower Cost)

So combining an item that costs 2000 gp and an item that costs 3000 gp costs 3000+2*2000 or 7000 gp.

Almost:

If the item is one that occupies a specific place on a character’s body the cost of adding any additional ability to that item increases by 50%. For example, if a character adds the power to confer invisibility to her ring of protection +2, the cost of adding this ability is the same as for creating a ring of invisibility multiplied by 1.5.

 

[Wyvernhand]

Yea, given that the markup for an UNSLOTTED item is *2, adding X to Y would never be more than that. 50% is the appropriate value.

The MIC relaxes this a fair bit, by allowing player to add common attributes such as stats and armor to other items for no markup. The situation you are describing isn't one of the situations allowed by those rules, but its close enough to the intent that it would work.

While a staff is generally something that is relatively large, Dungeonscape has a weapon modification called a Wand Chamber which can be added to any long handled weapon for +100g. It allows you to store a single wand or similar item within the weapon and then activate it as if you were holding it. Assuming her Staff of Fire isn't a full sized Gandalf style walking stick of a weapon, it would fit inside. Even if it IS, perhaps for a small mark-up (say, 500g or so), she could unlock the "power core" from the Staff of Fire and load that into the Wand Chamber. That way, she could eject the spent core when the Staff of Fire is depleted and reload it with a fresh clip power core.