Pricing an item

[Greenfield]

I want to create an item for our campaign.

It's to be a crown, or perhaps a torque (worn around the neck) that grants bonuses to Wisdom, Charisma, and the Leadership feat.

The stat bonuses are easy to price, but I'm not sure how to price that particular Feat.

Anyone know of a source I can reference for such a thing?

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

To my knowledge, there's no pre-defined general RAW rule for feats..?

I know that OKC Stephens in his "Loot 4 Less" series priced a feat at 5000gp. His reasoning was as follows (yoinked from L4L vol 1 for 3.5e):
[sblock]BEHIND THE COUNTER:
Pricing Feats
Many of the rings in this book (such as the ring of warning) are priced based on being as effective as part of a feat, and thus priced as a fraction of what the feat itself would cost. The assumption made is that a magic item that grants a feat costs 5,000 gp.
This supposition can be supported with the price of the gloves of arrow snatching. These gloves, which cost 4,000 gp, allow the wearer to act as if he had the Snatch Arrows feat twice per day. Since the Snatch Arrows feat is only useful in conjunction with Deflect Arrows, the gloves really grant two feats twice a day. Since 2 charges per day means dividing the base cost by 2.5 (5 divided by charges per day) the base cost of 2 feats is determined to be (2.5 x 4,000 gp) 10,000 gp, which means one feat is worth 5,000 gp.[/sblock]I suppose you could run a similar analysis on other magic items and approximate a general rule. Or, possibly, get hopelessly discouraged by the non-existence of such a generalized price scheme.

 

[James the Newbie]

The arms and equipment guide, page 128 has help with the rules.

A general rule for non mechanical feats (like greater fortitude) is that they cost 10,000 gold +5,000 gp to 10000 gold per prerequisite.

 

[Greenfield]

Thanks for the pointer.

Looking at Metamagic rods, Lesser Empower costs 9,000. That's a limited use of a feat (third level or less) three times a day.

Doesn't quite fit the formula from Arms and Equipment guide.

A Rod of Lesser Maximize, which as a feat has no more pre-requisites than Empower, costs 14,000 gp. Same number of uses, same level limitations.

Meanwhile, lesser rods of Enlarge, Extend and Silent spell cost 3,000 each.

So obviously all Feats are not created, or priced equally. Hence the problem.

But the Arms and Equipment Guide is at least an official guideline, something I can point to if challenged on the price.

<Edit>Thinking about the Metamagic rods, it becomes obvious that the price is based on the number of level bumps the Feat normally costs to use, so they aren't a good comparison to feats like Leadership</Edit>

 

[James the Newbie]

Metamagic feats are priced differently as it says in the guidelines.

 

[anest1s]

Magic Items Granting Feats

an nice list i found some time ago (probably here)

Ok here is how I would price it:
-What other feat a PC who would buy this item would be willing to remove from his build in order to take the leadership feat, if this item wasn't thrown at him?
-How much that feat that would otherwise be sacrificed costs?
-That should be around the Leadership feat cost too

 

[Greenfield]

I noticed that "Mighty Cleaving", which is essentially the Great Cleave feat, is considered a +1 enhancement, though it gives only the one feat (If you don't have Cleave, it doesn't give you Great Cleave).

On the other hand, a Battle Bridle gives a +10 Ride bonus, and either Spirited Charge or Ride By. 9,000 gp.

By the SRD, the skill bonus alone should cost 10,000 (Bonus squared x 100), so that makes the feat cost -1000?

This is the problem with official sources: They disagree.

 

[Greenfield]

Offering closure

I spoke to one of the other DMs and we agreed on what the item is, and what it costs:

Mantle of the Erlking
This mantle of mithral chain and sapphire grants the wearer of at least 6th level the Leadership feat, as well as granting a +2 Enhancement bonus to their Wisdom and Charisma. Uses Cloak slot.

Restrictions: This item works only for Fey (including Elves and Elf-blooded), and may only attract Fey/Elf cohort and followers.

Item price: 11,550 gp.
Cost to create: 5,775 gp, 462 Exp.

***
We came up with this price using the following formula:

Leadership Feat cost 10,000
+2 Wisdom 4,000 +50% for wrong slot, x 75% for second related power.
+2 Charisma 4,000, x 50% for tertiary related power

That totals 16,500 gp.

The racial restriction, per the SRD, cuts the price/cost by 30%. We had some discussion on whether these were "related powers" or not, but concluded that they were because they are mental stat boosts tied to being a good leader.

Tying Charisma to Leadership was easy.
Tying Wisdom to Charisma isn't hard either.

Tying them all together was the part we questioned, but since there are few if any guidelines in the books on that point, and we were reasonably able to "theme" them, we went for it.

Anyway, I just wanted to share what we concluded in the end. (I'm sure someone will disagree with this.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I totally disagree. The -30% is utterly unjustified.

 

[Greenfield]

That was a thought. The SRD allows for a 30% reduction based on class or alignment restrictions.

A straight racial restriction seemed a bit light in comparison, but by applying that same restriction on followers and cohort, we felt that it came up to a similar level of restriction.

We've had a lot of debate over the years, when it came to creating restricted items. If a PC is crafting such an item, the restrictions might affect resale value, but since such items are almost always created with a particular PC in mind, rather than resale, they don't actually restrict the item's use in any real way.

I could meet the letter of the law by restricting the item to the alignment of the character it's being made for, but like I said, it wouldn't really amount to any kind of real restriction.

Restricting the followers, on the other hand, actually did limit the character's use of the item, and seemed far more appropriate.