Question about Magic item Creation

ToddSchumacher · Mar 25, 2004

Ok So my party's cleric is crafting magic items for the group. I have this other player who is, for a lack of a better word, and uber-rules-lawyer-munchkin, (Not in a bad way ;p). He has a chain-weilding, improve tripping, locked gauntlet, one-level-of-barbarian-for-extra-movement-and-rage type player. He wants the cleric to make him a cloak that acts like a cloak of resistance (+1) and give a +3 skill bonus to 5 skills (balance, hide,move silent, tumble, and climb) He's done all the math according to the books and it's all legal and all. (or so they both say)

Right now they're 6th level and going quckly to 7.

Now as DM, I know I can just say no if I want to. The Cleric player thinks its too powerfull, or just 'too much'.

SO I;ve decided to ask here. What, as DM, would you do?

Korak · Mar 25, 2004

ToddSchumacher said:
SO I;ve decided to ask here. What, as DM, would you do?

The Magic Item creation "rules" in the DMG are nothing more than guidelines. While I generally have no problem with the rules for stacking multiple related benefits on an item. I personally hate most skill bonus items not explicitly in the DMG, because I think they tread on the high skill point classes too much. I think they should be heavily regulated, and perhaps removed altogether in a high point buy campaign. In your game though, it comes down to what you think is balanced.

What prerequisites are you going to attach to craft this item? All the skill bonus rings for example, require that the creator have at least as many ranks in the skill as the bonus they are crafting. Does the cleric in question have 3 ranks in each of those skills?

Lastly, this is without the aid of books, but I want to bang out a cost on that just for sake of comparison.

Because they are the most expensive properties, one of the +3 bonuses to non-affinity slot skill has to be the base property. The others suffer a 50% premium for being non-related secondary properties. This stacks on top of the 50% premium for the other non-affinity slot premiums. Only the resistance bonus to saves and the hide bonus are in the proper affinity slot. One could also read the section to stack the premiums sequentially(i.e. [base price *1.5 *1.5] instead of [base price + .5base + .5base] as I have below.)

+3 skill bonus to move silently (non-affinity slot 50% premium): 1350
Cloak of Resistance (unrelated secondary property 50% premium): 1500
+3 skill bonus to hide (unrelated secondary property 50% premium): 1350
+3 skill bonus to balance (non-affinity slot/unrelated secondary property.. 100% premium): 1800
+3 skill bonus to climb (non-affinity slot/unrelated secondary property.. 100% premium): 1800
+3 skill bonus to tumble (non-affinity slot/unrelated secondary property.. 100% premium): 1800

So, market price = 9600gp. Cost to create 4800gp + 384xp.

Thanee · Mar 25, 2004

I see no problem with the item in question.

The worst ones are those that try to get a major benefit out of continuous first level spells (or any continuous spells for that matter). If you encounter some of those proposed by your players, I would get on the defensive automatically.

Bye
Thanee