Question about making minor items

[eris404]

Hello all,

After reading through the SRD I got a little confused about some of the item creation rules, specifically about the item cost. Allow me to give you an example. Let's say a wizard has a niece who hates brussel sprouts. He decides to make a special item for her, say a napkin that once per day for one hour made whatever food she ate taste like chocolate (this, of course, uses the spell, Prestidigitation). Upon looking at the table that estimates the price of magic items, the cost seems a little high to me - I'm guessing this would be either a command word or use activated item with one charge per day, which puts this little item in the 360-400 gp base price range. Does that sound right? What would you estimate the base price of such an item to be?

 

[Rel]

Sounds to me like a Command Word activated item of Prestidigitation 1/day so:

1800x0.5x1=900/5=180 GP The Wizard pays half so that's 90 GP and 8XP if I'm not mistaken.

 

[eris404]

Sounds to me like a Command Word activated item of Prestidigitation 1/day so:

1800x0.5x1=900/5=180 GP The Wizard pays half so that's 90 GP and 8XP if I'm not mistaken.

Ah, so 0 level spells count as 0.5 - it's funny, I couldn't find that. But sometimes I have a hard time finding things in the SRD anyway. That sounds much more reasonable. Thanks!

 

[Delemental]

In situations like this, you can also try asking your DM for a "lower utility discount", where the costs are cut for items with very limited application. This helps keep the cost of these 'flavor' magic items somewhat reasonable.

My wizard make an item along with our party's cleric for the halfling rogue. It's a little stone pig that will create a pound of bacon once a day. Why? Because the halfling loves bacon. Even though the item required the use of create food and water as a prereq, I made it for a fraction of the formula cost, as the item wasn't meant to provide the amount of food that would sustain a living being (yeah, a pound of bacon's a lot to most people, but not to this halfling...)

 

[Rel]

My wizard make an item along with our party's cleric for the halfling rogue. It's a little stone pig that will create a pound of bacon once a day. Why? Because the halfling loves bacon. Even though the item required the use of create food and water as a prereq, I made it for a fraction of the formula cost, as the item wasn't meant to provide the amount of food that would sustain a living being (yeah, a pound of bacon's a lot to most people, but not to this halfling...)

Boy would I love to have one of those! My doctor is probably happier that I don't though...

 

[eris404]

I love items like that, simply because if magic existed in the real world, that's the sort of thing people would make.

In situations like this, you can also try asking your DM for a "lower utility discount", where the costs are cut for items with very limited application. This helps keep the cost of these 'flavor' magic items somewhat reasonable.

Well, actually, I needed to understand how it worked by the rules because I'm writing some NPCs that I might post on my web site and I wanted them to be accurate. This was just a hypothetical exercise, but I'm still not sure that someone would feel a napkin that made food taste like chocolate was really worth 180 gp. Then again, wealthy people in the real world sometimes buy ridiculous things for ridiculous amounts of money, too.

Thanks guys!

 

[frankthedm]

a ring of sustanence...2k
a ring of enure elements...1k

A warm retirement without hunger for a lizard man... priceless