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Cyanic
2009-10-25, 12:32 PM
How do you all determine cost for creating a weapon with a proc (I.E. spell or effect that activates only a certain % of the time on a hit) ?


Example: A spear that on the critical confirmation casts a level 7 spell.


I was thinking of charging the price to add as if on a wonderous item, treat as unslotted, then divide by the relevant crit chance naturally present in the weapon, such as 1/20 in the case of the above example.

Only problem is from a few numbers I have run, its very cheap to add, came up with somewhere around 5k to do the above. Is this a fair price? Or should it be lower/higher ?

DracoDei
2009-10-25, 12:53 PM
Law of diminishing returns(well, technically the reverse, but whichever), combined with balance and simplicity considerations means you should probably calculate it as if the wielder had the Improved Critical feat.

lesser_minion
2009-10-25, 01:58 PM
My estimate for the value of the item is around:

Spell Level x Caster Level x Number of 'pips' of threat range x 200gp

The costs might look fairly low, but there is a certain logic to them from an in-world perspective - after all, I doubt there are many people who (IC) deliberately enchant a spear so that it casts a spell every so often. It's more likely to be a random side-effect of applying some other enchantment.

This also gives you a justification for not allowing your 10th-level party to create an item with a 1 in 20 chance per attack of casting "Nailed to the Sky" at CL 30 and slaughtering their way through everything using some combo or other to make that 20 inordinately common.

DracoDei
2009-10-25, 10:15 PM
It is probably more like they did it "on the cheap" in the full knowledge that it would require a really good hit for the effect to work.

Chrono22
2009-10-26, 06:54 AM
This would add a bit of notekeeping, but here's an idea:

The weapon has a base % chance of creating the spell effect, which increases by the base amount after each successful attack (maximum 50%). After the spell effect is activated, the % chance resets back to the base amount. So, the chance a character will activate the effect will become more likely over the course of a combat.
This seems more powerful than what's been proposed, but I consider it easier to balance- since items/powers/abilities that happen all at once or not at all tend to unbalance combats.

Addendum: I'd probably stat the base % chance as an enchantment bonus to weapons. So, 1% would be +1, 2% would be +2, etc. I'd probably also limit the spell effects to level 3 or lower.

DracoDei
2009-10-26, 12:16 PM
Existing enchantments that work this way:
Vorpal
Flaming/Frost/Shocking Burst

Moriato
2009-10-26, 12:31 PM
I'd count it about the same as spell storing which is a +1.

Sure, you wouldn't have to cast the spell into the weapon every time like spell storing, but you also don't get to choose when it goes off like you would with spell storing.

Of course this depends on what kind of effect you want the weapon to have when it does go off, so really the price should depend on that. I'd say +1 just for the ability and an additional +whatever you think is appropriate for the spell effect.