I need help pricing these possibly unbalancing boots

[jaker2003]

Ok, I've been wanting to make these for a while and finally fleshed it out last night. They're boots for a guy whose devoted himself to killing drow after a squad made off with his family. This guy is a pyromaniac/mancer and favors fire magic, so his equipment will reflect this. It's also a part of a bigger set of items that grant synergistic abilities when used together. Well, here's the boots:

_______Firebrand’s Boots: These rugged boots are sewn with red thread and sport flames on the sides. These boots have magic abilities:
Flaming Trail: The boot prints made with each step burn for one round with illusory flame.
Sure Step: The boots do not allow the wearer to step into holes, off cliffs, or press down on floor pressure traps. The boots hover just above where the wearer would step, readily supporting him should the ground not. If the wearer steps off a cliff, he finds himself standing in the air as if on solid ground, but his horizontal speed is reduced to 5 feet until back on solid ground. A climber who loses his footing does not fall.
Quick Jump: The boots also negate penalties to Jump checks from speed. The wearer is always considered to have a speed no lower than 30 feet (even if he is moving slower due to weight or bindings). The wearer does not face a doubled Jump DC if he does not move 20 feet before a jump. The distance jumped does not count towards the wearer's movement for the round. These boots provide no bonus to Climb checks should the wearer’s jump fall short. Because the boots can hasten a jump, the wearer can easily use a Jump check to make a charge attack, ignoring all the terrain in the way.
_______Faint transmutation; CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, expeditious retreat, (levitate or air walk), haste, silent image; Price ?10,000? gp; Weight 1 lb.

 

[Aleolus]

...Just going off your description, I would say flesh out his using them to battle the Drow more, and make them an Item of Legacy, gaining various powers and so forth as the person using them levels up, but they need to do certain tasks to unlock those powers. Plus they have to meet certain prerequisites. For example,

Prerequisites: Ability to cast arcane spells, including at least two spells with the Fire descriptor.

Least Legacy: To unlock the Least Legacy abilities, you must successfully destroy a minimum of one Drow, using only spells that have the Fire descriptor. The encounter must have a total CR of no lower than your character level.

And that's just an example, but you get the idea.

 

[Slapzilla]

p. 285 DMG. Use-activated or Continuous spell effect formula is spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp. Prices are modified by spell's duration.

Base prices:
Expeditious Retreat. 1 x 1 x 2,000 x 2 (duration modifier) = 4,000gp +
Levitate. 2 x 3 (Wiz) x 2,000 x 2 = 24,000 +
Haste. 3 x 5 (Wiz) x 2,000 x 4 = 120,000gp +
Silent Image. 1 x 1 x 2,000 x 1 (concentration isn't listed for pricing, so we'll wing it) = 2,000 +
Lovely masterwork boots. At least 20 gp, maybe 50. Whatever.

The base costs for creating this using the Multiple Similar Abilities sidebar, the Haste is 100%, the Levitate is 75% and the other two are 50% each. 135,000 gp. Base price, not market value. Yikes!

Caster level is set for minimum to cast the spells in question. p. 282 DMG talks more about setting caster levels.

With Expeditious Retreat, I don't see the need for the Haste effect. Brings it to 28,000 gp base, 56,000 market.

Also the flaming trail is cosmetic and the other two powers are somewhat DM dependent in that if the DM doesn't put the wearer into those situations, the boots are less useful. I don't know if that changes the market value or not.

 

[jaker2003]

I figured they were just slightly more powerful than the other boots listed in the DMG and priced them accordingly.

 

[eamon]

The DMG pricing guidelines aren't very accurate and you shouldn't follow them as gospel. That said, they are an interesting point to to look at. However, the guidelines specify prices not for prerequisites, but for effects: for boots which duplicate the haste effect the silent image effect etc. These boots don't simply duplicate an existing effect, so you can't just "apply" the guideline. MIC has a bunch more items you could compare against to improve the comparison, but you won't be able to get out of the "just wing it" area.

Oh, and base price is market value - at least normally. If your fantasy economy is somehow special, then item prices could vary wrt the base price, but all published prices are simply base prices.

 

[eamon]

Ok I looked at the effects, and I think you should probably tweak them some more, though I'm not sure exactly how...

The boots negate penalties to jump from speed, but don't negate bonuses from speed. That leaves you in the odd situation that two characters with the same speed and the same boots might jump wildly different distances. In any case, it's not clear to me if the penalties you're negating include those caused by a lower base speed: would these boots be great for a halfling, say? Further, they negate penalties do to "bindings". Clearly, however, you can't jump if you're completely bound - so does this mean that you can jump even when grappled? Can you jump right out of ropes and avoid escape artist checks?

I'd limit the effect more clearly, and make this aspect less absolute in general. To balance that loss in power, just grant a competence bonus to jump additionally. I think the flavor you're aiming for is that the boots let you jump even when others couldn't. Also note that a DM's best friend for adjudicating circumstances - just applying a modifier on a roll - is much harder to justify if the boots simply remove modifiers completely.

Perhaps you can just negate penalties to jump caused by medium or heavy load, and remove the armor check penalty to jump checks. That way, mostly the character has no penalties to jump, but if special circumstances change his base-speed, or otherwise reduce his mobility, they'll still have effect.

I like the fact that jumped distance doesn't count towards movement. But combined with the lack of running start - can a character jump multiple times during one move? Can he jump once during a move but twice in a double move? Normally, the rules don't provide for this limitation (so you can jump as much as you want) since you're limited by the obvious - movement speed.

I think you should reconsider the anti-pressure-plate feature as well. Generally, magic items can't penetrate illusions any better than any other creature, and certainly can't determine future consequences with some sort of divine insight. Such a feature is a powerful divination ability and should be explicitly mentioned. How can the boots distinguish between an intentional jump down and accidentally jumping down? I'd say, let the wearer walk on all sorts of surfaces ALA Horseshoes of a Zephyr - i.e. it's not that the boots determine whether somethings dangerous, they just support you even on water or any other surface - the advantage is that the effect is well-defined, there's no question of when it kicks in (how deep does the hole have to be? what if it's filled with water?)

Also, note that the air walking ability these shoes confer is quite powerful. Normal Air Walk would be about 42000 gp (using DMG guidelines - they should be less, of course), but these boots only provide a 5ft movement speed (upwards too?) Still, 10000 is too cheap. If you reduce the effect to a feather fall, instead of a stable but slow fly, it's much less game-breaking and hence much cheaper.

 

[jaker2003]

Ok I looked at the effects, and I think you should probably tweak them some more, though I'm not sure exactly how...

All good points, thank you.