Shirt of False Life - Reasonable?

[Archade]

Hi all,

One of my PCs wants to create a magic item - A shirt that can be activated on command 3 times per day to grant false life.

The cost seems to work out to (5th level caster x 2nd level spell x 1,800 x 3/5) = 10,800 gp.

Does this strike you all as a reasonable magic item?

 

[Thanee]

Sounds alright. 10k is not cheap for sure.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Darklone]

I had the very same shirt... lilac silk. For the fighter. The price sounds somehow familiar as well... It wasn't too bad, most of the time he rather bashed and flailed around but it saved his butt several times.

 

[ohGr]

Seems more than fair to me, considering that a simple +2 Con item costs only 4K and will grant more hp in the long run.

 

[Peter Gibbons]

Magic of Faerun had an item called an Amulet of Laeral's Tears that bestowed temporary hit points at the rate of 50 gp each. The thing about it was that the hit points weren't renewable, though. Renewable temporary hit points are more valuable than those obtained through, say, an Amulet of Health, because you never have to heal them back.

False life 3/day at 5th level gets you an average of 31.5 extra hit points a day. An Amulet of Health +4 (16,000 gp) doesn't accomplish that until you're 16th level, and the false life route is still better because you don't have to worry about healing the temporary hit points back.

So, I'd say no, 11k is not a reasonable price for such an item. I'd make it at least twice that much.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Sounds reasonable to me. It eats up a Standard action to activate unless he knows beforehand that there'll be a fight. And I'd say that's a pretty good price for it.

While they don't have to be healed, healing is relatively cheap after a few levels.

--fje

 

[shilsen]

False life 3/day at 5th level gets you an average of 31.5 extra hit points a day. An Amulet of Health +4 (16,000 gp) doesn't accomplish that until you're 16th level, and the false life route is still better because you don't have to worry about healing the temporary hit points back.

So, I'd say no, 11k is not a reasonable price for such an item. I'd make it at least twice that much.

That doesn't seem like a fair comparison. The False Life item will only give an average of 10.5 extra hit points at a time, and you can't benefit from all of the 31.5 average at once. It requires a standard action per activation. The Amulet also gives you a +2 bonus to Fort saves due to the increased Con. And being able to heal the extra hit pts from the Amulet is actually a benefit a lot of the time, such as when your friendly cleric heals you in combat after you took damage/

 

[Scion]

Personally I'd probably make the cost 25k and allow it to be activated as a swift action or make it 42k and make it an immediate action.

Or at least allow for the option Makes it an interesting choice to pick up.

Of course, I might also shift it over to vigor so that it is only good for a single combat and change the prices around a bit (such as like heartening in the 3.5 psionics handbook).

 

[Thanee]

5th-level False Life has a duration of 5 hours, it shouldn't be much of a problem to activate it ahead of time.

Bye
Thanee

 

[shilsen]

True, but at a level when you can afford such an item, you're taking hits in combat where you really can't afford to use a standard action for 1d10 + 5 pts of healing.