Help me price this magic item: Bracelet of Silence/EDIT: Castrating the Fighter!

[Forrester]

Bracelet of Silence

A Bracelet of Silence comes with twelve emerald crystals which offer the wearer contingent protection against sonic effects. If the wearer is targeted by a sonic effect, or is in the area of a sonic effect, an emerald shatters, sending a brief wave of silence over the wearer that completely negates the effect. Spellcasting that round is not interrupted (assuming the spell isn't taking longer than a standard action to cast).

In essence, each crystal acts as a mini-bard, ready to countersong any nasty sonic effect that comes down the pike, such as a Command spell, the moan of a Cloaker, the gibbering of a Gibbering Mouther, or a Sonic Burst.

THE QUESTION: How much for the bracelet? Similarly, how much per crystal? I loathe the 1st level pseudo-Save or Die spell known as Command, and figured that item creators out there would have figured out some way of dealing with such nonsense.

I'm thinking the cost should be roughly 1000gp per crystal, maybe a little more. (There aren't a bunch of mages running around with Energy Substitution: Sonic in my world, or any other new sonic spells, else I'd price it higher).

What do you think?

EDIT: Let's see if my zippy new subject addendum gets me some responses!

 

[Forrester]

*BUMP*

Need to price this today, as it's possible that the party is going to try to pick one of these up at Ye Local Magicke Shoppe.

 

[Plane Sailing]

It sounds to me as if the ideal choice for handling this sort of thing would be the Ring of Counterspells, market price 4000gp. As it stands this can hold 1 charge of a counterspell for a particular 1st-6th level spell. the same (or a different) spell can then be placed in it to do a counterspell once more.

Your bracelet has limited charges, but can (effectively) counterspell a wider range of spells (those with sonic descriptor). You might be OK just leaving the price at 4000.


(incidentally you mention the Command spell, but that isn't a sonic spell and so won't be affected by the bracelet as you describe it! A ring to counterspell Command spells might be as low as 2000gp or less, if it can only hold the one kind of spell to counter.)

Cheers

 

[Forrester]

Thanks for the opin'. 4k for 12 emeralds . . . about 300gp per automatically countered Command spell or other effect is maybe a little cheap, but it's true that a Ring of Counterspells is also pretty damn cheap for what it does.

I based the effect of the emeralds on the Bard's song -- it's true that Command isn't officially a "sonic" spell, but it's one that is hostile to a target and requires the target to hear something, hence the reason I included it.

Come to think of it, I suppose that the emerald would counterspell a Suggestion as well.

 

[kreynolds]

How about 10,200gp? 1300gp per emerald? Essentially, 1000gp would get you a single use Rod of Absorption, but since these emeralds only absorb spells with the sonic descriptor, I droped it to about 800gp per use. But then, because you don't have to ready an action, I bumped each use back up to 1300gp.

So, 15,600gp for 12 uses. This is about in line with the Ring of Nine Lives (22,000gp).

That help any?

 

[Forrester]

Seems like it might be a little steep, as it's not protecting really against any spells that are higher than 4th level (Shout). Well, I suppose it protects against Greater Command.

Refresh my memory -- what does a Ring of Nine Lives do?

 

[kreynolds]

Seems like it might be a little steep, as it's not protecting really against any spells that are higher than 4th level (Shout). Well, I suppose it protects against Greater Command.

Sonic weapons are also a sonic effect. This puppy would protect you from 12 hits of a sonic weapon. In regards to sonic spell rarity, I need only mention Energy Substitution.

Refresh my memory -- what does a Ring of Nine Lives do?

Here ya' go...

A simple silver or gold band set with nine small gemstones, a ring of nine lives often sports a cat’s head motif. Any time the wearer is required to make a saving throw against a death effect, the wearer automatically succeeds at the save, and one of the gemstones on the ring disappears. When all the gems are gone, the ring is no longer magical. Such rings have 2-9 (1d8+1) stones when found. Newly created rings always have nine stones.
Caster Level: 11th; Prerequisites: Forge Ring, heal; Market Price: 22,000 gp; Weight: —

 

[Piratecat]

Kreynolds, where's that from? Not the core rules, is it?

Forrester, I've posted in Shirt Guy John's thread about the "Fixing the Fighter" title. Thanks for appending your joke instead of replacing the whole title with a fake one.

 

[kreynolds]

Kreynolds, where's that from? Not the core rules, is it?

It's a download from WotC. It was written by Stephen Kenson, one of the many writers of Dragon Mag, as well as a few other things.

You can grab it here.

 

[Piratecat]

Thanks!