Price of an item useable once a year

[poilbrun]

Hello all!

The fighter in my group has asked me how much it would cost to create a wondrous item (because non-adventurers would use it) that enables the user to cast plant growth once a year. She plans to offer the items to her family, so I am willing to be fair about the price, since it is only for roleplay purpose and not at all for personal power that she wants that object. I looked at the object creation guidelines in the DMG, an item that duplicates a spell effect and that uses a command word would cost spell level * caster level * 1800 gp; in this case 3*5*1800 = 27000 gp. What modifier would you apply for the once a year limitation?

Thanks for any help!

Edit : I think this particular item should cost more than, say, an item that enables to use fireball once a year. Out of curiosity, what modifier would you use for the same item but replacing plant growth by fireball? After all, plant growth once a year is much more useful than fireball once a year...

 

[GenLang]

I had something similar crop up in one of my games. I decided rule of thumb to make items of that nature cost twice as much as a scroll of the particular spell. Feel free to tweak from there.

 

[Pax]

Well, let's see. Third level spell, command-word activated, once per DAY, woudl cost (3x5x1800)/5, or, 5400gp.

Obviously one usable once per YEAR, would cost less. Perhaps ... 3,000gp ... ?

And I can easily see more prosperous villages and towns owning one or more of these, to ensure a good harvest each year ...

 

[Hygric]

...until the local priests get into there druthers because they can no longer fulfill that function at the planting festival.

 

[Pax]

...until the local priests get into there druthers because they can no longer fulfill that function at the planting festival.

And, who do you think it is that MADE said item ... ?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

And that's why the DMG/T&B pricing guidelines don't work for such an item. It's no disadvantage for an item that only needs to function once a year to function once per year. This kind of an item could be Spell Trigger or something else and it wouldn't change its utility. So the local priest of nature and agriculture has to perform a ritual to bless the crops in order for it to work. Big deal. That's what priests do.

I think that the cost of this item should be commensurate with the kind of campaign you want to run. Do you want to run a campaign where prosperous villages can ensure a good harvest every year? Or do you want to run a campaign where the threat of famine comes from more than just locusts, blights, and war? If the latter, this item should cost more than a +1 sword.

More significantly, do you want a campaign where a few farms can feed a prosperous metropolis or a campaign where the majority of the population is rural? The ability to grow more food on less acrage won't make the market for food any larger. What it will do is reduce the need for farmers (or free them to do other work, depending upon how you look at it). So, a world in which plant growth spells are regularly used for crops will support larger urban populations vis a vis rural populations. If you don't want relatively modern demographics, the item should be pretty pricey.

On a more general level, WRT the DMG pricing tables, they don't adequately address the value of long duration spells that only need to be cast occasionally. An item that cast Extended Mage Armor at 12th level 1/day would cost 8640gp. Bracers of Armor +4 cost 16000gp. Obviously there's a disconnect between those prices. (And I don't think that dispellability is the deciding factor--the 1/day item IS dispellable (but has a good enough caster level that it probably won't be dispelled too often at mid levels) but also takes up no slot--thus it can be combined with bracers of archery or bracers of health; in any case the difference in utility certainly doesn't justify a 50% discount). Similarly, an item that cast Endure Elements (lvl 1, clvl 1) once per day should be worth more than 360gp. And an item that cast it 5/day should be worth more than 1800gp. (Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid and Sonic Resist 5 24 hours/day). I suspect that an item that an item that absorbed the first 32 points of (any) elemental damage taken each day would be worth more than 16,200gp. However, that's the price of a command word activated 1/day item of Energy Buffer (T&B, 24 hour duration).

I think that the DMG/T&B tables work fairly well for pricing short duration spells (Fireball, Prot Evil, as x/day command word items). They are spells for which x/day is a significant restriction. Spells with long durations, OTOH, don't seem to be well evaluated by the system.

Well, let's see. Third level spell, command-word activated, once per DAY, woudl cost (3x5x1800)/5, or, 5400gp.

Obviously one usable once per YEAR, would cost less. Perhaps ... 3,000gp ... ?

And I can easily see more prosperous villages and towns owning one or more of these, to ensure a good harvest each year ...

 

[Pax]

WRT teh BRacers of Armor vs Item of Mage Armor 1/day --- always always price thigns according to the bonus they give.

That'd be +4 armor bonus, no slot required, or 64,000gp.

Of course, in the FR, you could simply get a Rune of Extended Mage Armor, 1/day (caster level 12) from a cleric with access to Anyspell (meaning, a cleric of Mystra), and keep it in a smallpouch. Touch said rune every morning when you wake, and voila, Mage Armor for the day. THAT would cost (3x12x400) 14,400gp. A touch less than the bracers, and no slot required, but ... dispellable.

Of course, you'd have to buy it from a Cleric(5+)/Runecaster(8+) of Mystra ... which could turnout to be the harder thing to find, compared to just buying the bracers to begin with!

 

[green slime]

But this does pose an interesting question.

What if the item functions once per year, on a particular day of that year? On a particular hour?

secondly, small villages can't afford items runnning in the thousands of gp; those rural folk are nothing if not poor.

 

[kramis]

quest instead

I think this is a really good example of an item that you should not be able to buy. I think it's great that the player wants to do it for role playing purposes, and for the same reason you should have at least a small adventure associated with it. It's a bit too esoteric to get into the fine print of the rules on something like this.

Why not have some druids have such an item, but will only part with it in return for some favor. Or they know the location of such an item, but you have to get it from some guarded cave, or you need to retrieve a branch from the tree of whatnot which is in the huanted grove of poopydoopy.

It seems a waste of a good hook to argue on these insane boards over strange rules to find a good gp value for something like this. Pretty pointless actually.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I'm going to choose to view this question from a slightly different angle from those given so far.

Personally, I like the fact that the player/PC is looking out for family, and willing to put his gp where his mouth is. This is money that the PC could be using for magic items that help himself. Instead, he's basically sacrificing wealth to stay in character. I like that.

So for me, I would take a look at the item's suggested price from the DMG, then adjust that a bit for what I see as a commendable act. Not so much that the gesture becomes meaningless, but more generous than I would be if the player were looking to create an item that casts Wish once per year, and a Tuning Fork attuned to a Fast Time demiplane.

So I'd be inclined to go with Pax on this one, and price such an item at 3000gp. The reason every village doesn't have one? The item costs 3000gp. Most farmers earn wages in sp. 3000gp is likely more than a lifetime's-worth of savings to them.