Constructs

[Stormborn]

Any one done a breakdown on why the various Golems and Constructs in the official WoC products cost what they do? Do they follow the rules for Wonderous Items? I have been trying to figure it out and would love to hear what some of the other posters on this board have done.

A related question: The text of the Golems in the MM suggests that they are esentially "powered" by a trapped elemental spirit, yet Summon Monster is not listed as a required spell. Any idea why that is? And how that might effect the price?

 

[FrankTrollman]

The constructs are, unfortunately, not purchased or created on any kind of point system - they just have arbitrary costs for no good reason at all.

Sorry. And yes, this does mean that some of the stranger Constructs like the Runic Guardian are really good deals and some of the others like Dread Guards are a complete waste of time.

As to why Summon Monster is not on the list of required spells - it's legacy. The spells required to give life to a Golem were set arbitrarily by Gygax in the nineteen seventies. The pseudo-scientific explanation that they are somehow powered by elemental spirits didn't show up until more than 10 years later. How or why elemental spirits come to be bound into the Golem's body has never been satisfactorily explained - nor should it be because it's just a lame backstory and Golems don't follow the rules for possessing spirits in the slightest (otherwise you could shut them down by getting them to walk into a magic circle).

-Frank

 

[Conaill]

Check out Encyclopaedia Arcane: Constructs by Mongoose. They essentially reverse engineered the (3.0) existing constructs in the MM, and built a point system to generalize and extend the construction rules.

$10.47 at Amazon...

 

[the Jester]

Actually, I believe there is a formula for pricing 3.5 constructs but I'm not sure what it is. There was one in 3.0, too.

I wish they'd post the details on the Wizards site...

 

[Conaill]

Actually, I believe there is a formula for pricing 3.5 constructs but I'm not sure what it is. There was one in 3.0, too.

Oh, I have no doubt WotC used *some* sort of guidelines to come up with their numbers, but I'm 99.9% percent sure there isn't anything published. Just like they had guidelines for ECL well before Savage Species came out. But I doubt they would publish those unless there is a strong demand for it (as they did with the ECL/LA guidelines).

In fact, the guy who wrote EA:Constructs talks a little about the process by which he tried to reconstruct WotC's formula for constructs. Seems like the primary factor was the *material* from which the construct was constructed. After that realization, "everything fell into place". (Paraphrasing here, don't have the book in front of me.)

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, I believe they repriced all the construct prices in the online product updates. I wish they'd put the method up, especially since I'm working on a book of (primarily) monsters.