The "Price That Magic Item" Game!

[Hypersmurf]

No. But, I think that's pretty darn obvious. It functions once a day, not an infinite number of times a day.

I have a Wand of Magic Missile with 20 charges, and I use it to shoot the evil wizard... but the missiles bounce of his Shield spell. So I use the Amulet of Second Chances, and then shoot his henchman with the Wand of Magic Missile instead.

How many times has the Wand functioned today? How many charges does it have left?

-Hyp.

 

[hong]

Does the Amulet of Second Chances have wording to cater for the fact that the swift action to use the Amulet is an 'event of your current turn', and therefore after the charge is spent, the spending of the charge is undone and you're left with an Amulet that still has one charge left for the day?

-Hyp.

/beats Hypersmurf with a stick

 

[Rystil Arden]

1) 12500. This should pretty clearly be 1/4 the price of the Quicksilve Boots. 1/day half move is about 1/4 as useful as 2/day full move. Given the insane pricing in MIC, I expect to see 1000 instead.

2) 50000 Better than the 9th-level Psion power that makes you immune to everything because that Power is a standard action that can't be Quickened no matter what. However, it is still only 1/day. However, thanks to attunement requirements, I'll call it only 50000 (less than the 9th-level power 1/day would cost) assuming that it is reasonably discernable to enemies that you are immune to damage and to do something else. Multiply it by 1.5 if it completely blindsides them

3) 400 Cute, but not a big deal. A cure minor once a day is 200 x4 for contigencied effect with no action but /2 for not actually healing you.

4) 2000--the list price would be 4000 for a 1st-level spell once a day at 10th caster level, but I halved it.

5) 40000. This is effectively a Rod of Greater Twinning with several stricter requirements on what sort of spells will be twinned and who the second target will be. Also it uses a Swift action, so more like a Rod of Greater Quickening, I guess. I'm marking it down by a factor of 4 due to constraints, so 42,500, round down to 40000.

6) 350,000. I'm charging for the 9th-level Nomad-only Psionic power Time Regression. Note that it is a 9th-level discipline power, which tend to be extremely powerful because only members of that discipline can ever learn them, and even then it costs XP. That price is 311200 (most of it is the 250000 GP from paying the cost of the XP price in gold 50 times). I then round up to 350000 because this item is a pain in the ass to GMs and fellow players alike and makes the game a chore of bookkeeping exactly what happened during the last round at all times (since you never know when Mr. Reload Amulet is going to strike and slow your game to a halt). This is banned in my games for the annoyance reason more than anything else.

7) 3000 GP. Useful, particularly since unlike Cloak of Displacement Major, you can use this only when you know you need it thanks to the Immediate action. Priced comparatively based on that factor.

8) 17000. 2000 for always stabilising (5x the other amulet), 15000 for saving you the price of a True Res (discounted for having the foresight to buy this first, then discounted again because you're totally screwed if you add other abilities to this item and it crumbles).

9) I'd price this at around 120k. Wizards can pay 170k to do stupid-insane metamagic combos three times a day with the strongest greater rods, right? Well now so can warrior-sorts (or more dangerously, Bo9S classes with Strikes), but they get a 2/3 discount because they have to wear it instead of having a slotless item.

10) 6000 GP. Better healing than a CLW with CL1. Immediate action. Works at range (like the metamagic feat that gives touch stuff 30 foot range). Can save lives. I'll round the base price for the healing up to 600 gold (400 for 5.5, but this gives 7.5), then apply a x10 modifier.

 

[Mistwell]

I have a Wand of Magic Missile with 20 charges, and I use it to shoot the evil wizard... but the missiles bounce of his Shield spell. So I use the Amulet of Second Chances, and then shoot his henchman with the Wand of Magic Missile instead.

How many times has the Wand functioned today? How many charges does it have left?

-Hyp.

Hyp, this is a perfect example of what I sometimes complain about with your opinions on the rules, despite your obvious deep knowledge of the rules. You know it's incredibly illogical to read this rule that way. You know it doesn't work that way, is not intended to work that way, and there is no actual doubt on the subject. And yet, you will pursue that line of thinking anyway.

So okay Hyp, in your game you can reset an infinite number of turns using this item. In every other person on the planet's games, it will work one time a day. Have fun!

 

[Rystil Arden]

Hyp, this is a perfect example of what I sometimes complain about with your opinions on the rules, despite your obvious deep knowledge of the rules. You know it's incredibly illogical to read this rule that way. You know it doesn't work that way, is not intended to work that way, and there is no actual doubt on the subject. And yet, you will pursue that line of thinking anyway.

So okay Hyp, in your game you can reset an infinite number of turns using this item. In every other person on the planet's games, it will work one time a day. Have fun!

No, he's saying that the designers were being careless not to include a clause to that effect. They even had precedent--Look at Time Regression

 

[Mistwell]

No, he's saying that the designers were being careless not to include a clause to that effect. They even had precedent--Look at Time Regression

Things which are blatantly obvious SHOULD be left out. Creating additional redundant text is a bad thing, not a good thing. As long as everyone understands the meaning, it should end there. And in this case, the meaning is clear and obvious.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Things which are blatantly obvious SHOULD be left out. Creating additional redundant text is a bad thing, not a good thing. As long as everyone understands the meaning, it should end there. And in this case, the meaning is clear and obvious.

It isn't clear, though. It is fairly obvious that this should be the case in a balanced game, and I'd immediately houserule it, but by virtue of not spelling out why, it sets a precedent to question what doesn't get rolled back and why. Do Magic Missile wand charges, as Hyp asked? More importantly, since some things are preserved in the new timeline, and specifically people all remember what happened, does that mean that if I make a Diplomacy check as a full-round action (taking the penalty) to increase someone's attitude to Helpful that they remain Helpful? After all, they still remember everything I said and did to convince them of this.

 

[Mistwell]

It isn't clear, though.

It is to anyone who can see the forest for the trees.

It is fairly obvious that this should be the case in a balanced game, and I'd immediately houserule it, but by virtue of not spelling out why, it sets a precedent to question what doesn't get rolled back and why.

No it doesn't. The item itself does not roll itself back. It's right there in the text of this item, and it modifies the entire item. It comes as the last statement in the items description, in it's own paragraph, that it functions one time a day. It's clear.

Do Magic Missile wand charges, as Hyp asked?

Yes, which is also obvious.

More importantly, since some things are preserved in the new timeline, and specifically people all remember what happened, does that mean that if I make a Diplomacy check as a full-round action (taking the penalty) to increase someone's attitude to Helpful that they remain Helpful? After all, they still remember everything I said and did to convince them of this.

That is indeed a DM judgement call. How would you normally modify the check if the person knew your motives? I don't think it makes it any more or less a vague rule that this is up to the DM. That sort of question was always up to the DM to modify.

I'm sorry guys, but I really think this is the perfect microcosm of a great deal of the flaws in your rules analysis, across many threads. I can only hope that both of you see that your strict constructionist literalism is not beneficial when it gets to this kind of level, at least in this instance. If the rules were written to eliminate even this level of doubt, the rule books would be thousands of pages long, and read like the text of the US Federal Income Tax laws. Because it would always be "just one more sentence of explanatory text" followed by "just one more" to explain the explanatory text.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yes, which is also obvious.

Would your opinion change if the wand said "1 time per day" like the amulet did?

That is indeed a DM judgement call. How would you normally modify the check if the person knew your motives? I don't think it makes it any more or less a vague rule that this is up to the DM. That sort of question was always up to the DM to modify.

No, I'm not asking whether they would get a bonus if I tried to convince them again. I'm asking whether I even have to try--it seems plausible that they are already convinced from the phantom round before I used the amulet.

I'm sorry guys, but I really think this is the perfect microcosm of a great deal of the flaws in your rules analysis, across many threads. I can only hope that both of you see that your strict constructionist literalism is not beneficial when it gets to this kind of level, at least in this instance. If the rules were written to eliminate even this level of doubt, the rule books would be thousands of pages long, and read like the text of the US Federal Income Tax laws. Because it would always be "just one more sentence of explanatory text" followed by "just one more" to explain the explanatory text.

I disagree--preciseness is incredibly crucial in the writing of the rules. Anything else is careless. As it comes to my game, as I said, the unfairness of the exploit that they left into the rules is so obvious that I would immediately houserule it. My game is built upon minor houserules here and there to increase playability, so really, this strict constructionism is only useful as a common parlance when speaking across games, such as on an online forum. Using anything else in such a situation is meaningless.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Mistwell--here's another thought that might help you see why having clear rules here is a good idea: As you stated, if somebody uses another 1/day item and then I use my amulet, they get back their charge. What if somebody uses this amulet to go back a round and then (since MIC will probably price it as 1000 GP or something) earlier in the last round's initiative, somebody else uses theirs to go back a round so that we never actually even got to the replaced time where the first amulet would have been used but wasn't. Does anyone get their 1/day usage back? What if one person with an amulet readies an action to use their amulet as someone else was activating theirs?