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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 448262" data-attributes="member: 1149">[/B]</blockquote>Quitr well. We often get "solo" discussion out of the way without causing others to sit and wait. Loot distribution and item ids and shopping is usually done offline, tho sometimes the need for face to face resolution occurs.All in all, it is a plus.Such special staus in my games is reserved for items that go above the normal. its hard to get my player all gooey and gahhhey over a unique item if that item can do nothing more than their fellow PC could early on. Sure, in the case of the headband it can do it more often but that does not imbue such for specialty in our games.Sounds like for your game you have decided to make potions and wands and scrolls the "commonly available" items while other such items, such as cloak of resistance +1" or "+1 sword" are into the  rare category. (Even tho such may be under the 3k common limit and even if they are under the towns gp per item limit they would not be for sale because there are not NPCs with the feats to make them commonly.)Thats fine and a cool house rule. Its probably part of the reasson between our different impressions. i did not see the craft item feats other than the spell batteries as problematic to allow for use. i did not see any reason to have spellusers across the board find the non-battery ones unacceptable or off limits. +1 swords are not more rare than wands of bull stenngth, the reverse is avtually true since the BS wand is bigger (more expensive and above the 3k limit) and requires a tougher prereq to meet.Since i dont make "in the book" vs "not in the book" anything of importance, then i dont have that to deal with. Gauntlets of charisma +2 ate not some rare unique thing while cloaks of charisma are available, in my games.Thats what i was figuring you were meaning. It just seemed like this was sounding more important than a case of "sometimes the enemy spellcasters will only have dispel magics to throw and wont have anything better to dispel than a 5 point cure." which, for my games, would be such a low occurance as to be practically meaningless. If throwing a dispel they would more often belooking to counterspell a powerful spell or to cut down the party buffs or even to try and nerf some other item. If a spell caster able to throw dispel magic has as his best thing to dispels as a 5 hp effect, then he is probably better off using his crossbow, his bow, or his flask of alchemists fire or something rather than use an action to stop 5 hp. a fifth level or more cast who takes an action to "cause" 5 hp is probably seriously underperforming, in my games at least.This is an old pet peeve of mine.Identify will only ID the simplest of items, one function items.it costs a lot of coin and takes a long time even to do that.AD at sixth gives more but requires a level of spellcaster way above what is listed as available by the "highest npc levels" stats they give for populating NPCs for their setting.Yet magic item commerce is established and expected.I go to a magic shop in the new town. he has a wand labelled "cure light wounds 750 gold." In order to verify that this is indeed such a wand and that it is full of charges and such we have to spend 100 gold and 8 hours. this makes no sense.If he has a sword labelled "sword of flame" then we need a 12th level caster to take the time.If i want to seel him my sword of wounding we need the same 12th level guy.the difficulty in iding items and that they are not cursed  does not seem to mesh with the idea of a magic commerce being as readily available as they ascribe for their setting.When comparing like items if one would be chosen over the other then the one chosen is too cheap. of course there will be situational exceptions. You should be able to weed those out.If a guy has a coice between wands of cure light and this headband and has the ability to buy either, he should choose this headband because it is unlimited. Why use wands when this item is available IF both are available?The cpmparisons do not work this way.you cannot take "but he might need something else right now" as an issue for comparison.A ring of invisibility is 20k. A ring of feather falling is much less. in some cases, where you just fell off the back of a dragon in flight, then the ring of feather fall might well be far more "powerful."if, while you have 2k gold in your pocket, you need something else, if you are not in the market for healing, then you wont buy this item.if you are in the market for healing, this headband beats wands and scrolls and potions all to heck.it should be priced on the latter, not the former.Two character buy items...One buys a wand of clw, a wand of MSum and a wand of exp ret.the other buys the headband.time moves on... for a short while, the clw guy has three options while the other guy has one...time kmoves on... they get to buy more wands, the clw wand is empty and so he buys a replacement. the headband guy picks up his msum wand.now, for a short time, the first guy has three otpions and the headband guy has two.time moves on... they buy more wands... the clw wand is empty again so he buys a third... the headband guy buys a expeditious retreat wand... now both guys have exactly three options... from this point on, the headband guy will be in a superior position.The player who bought wands was shortsighted and made an error. EXCEPTION: if he had reason to know he needed those other wands right now, like the guy falling off the dragon knows he needs the ring of feather falling, then it was a good call.but prices are not set by men falling off dragonsI think the 5 to 1 thing is an oversimplification. Then again it only comes in for items properties that they already say their charts are very unreliable for.here i believe is the logic... for most effect, say like a poly self or a detect magic or a fire shield or even a circle vs evil, the frequency with which you will need to use it more than once per encoutner is rare. They do not expect you to have more than 4 or 5 encounters per day since the "challenging encounters" should drive you to rest after 3-4. So the price reflects that many times per day more than 3-4 is not really gonna help.what the charts did not account for is that some effects are cumulative or able to be spread around. A cure light wound item is providing a new 5 hp per use and these just stack... a bull strength rod with uses per day can zap more than one guy, buffing perhaps the entire party, so it will be able to provide as a service more than 1 use per encounter... net result 4 encounters might see benefit from 25 uses per day.but regardless, the SPELLS were not built to fit into the items rules. Every spell description was not constructed to make "use", "command", "trigger" charged vs not charged and all that work, so the charts will not normally work better than a guess. (Actually, to boil it down, the further the item kmoves away from spell castng restrictions -- very limited per day, takes action, requires class, etc) in how it does its moagic the more unreliable the chart is to work.campaign changes to the item availability rules will definitely affect pricing and value. this should, however, make the charts even LESS relaible, not more.Exactly, rapid healing between scenarios without ongoing expense would be bad for many of my encounters and force me to change the camapign to fit the item. i see that as a definite tail-wagging-dog.Well the ones in the DMg are not problematic... their values are appropriate and i have seen no headaches.Since i make every custom items go thru me and not the charts, the notion of custom skill items has not been a problem. my players are smart enough to think that +20 spellcraft is not going to be cheap because it is very powerful. Same for concentration and so on.Right now the custom items for skills in my game include...a nigh artifact ring which gives as one of it bonuses a +5 spellcraft. It also serves as a ring of wizardry 3 and allows arcane sight once per day. thats it.The other item is one character i gave a ring of knowledge Drow as part of his introduction... he was sent to the party under the guise of a drow expert, so his patron needed to give him some actual drow knowledge. The ring allows him to ask 5 questions per day about drow and get a knowledge roll at +10 to see if he gets an answer.thats about it.[/QUOTE]

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