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View Full Version : [3.5] Craft Wonderous Item Costs



Afgncaap5
2010-06-02, 12:14 AM
Okay, so I decided to try my hand at Wizard, and at level 3 when faced with the choice of being able to brew potions and crafting wonderous items, I went with wonderous items because it seemed more useful. What I didn't realize at first, however, was that the actual price guidelines for making these items were in the DMG and that thanks to the versatile nature of these items there were a whole lot of factors that would go into them.

My DM and I can't, for the life of us, figure out how to make a single item that can be used a number of times per day. Case in point, a hat that will cast Eagle's Splendor on its wearer three times per day, or some such object.

The DMG (pg. 285) states that after the expected caster level being multiplied by spell level, we then multiply that by a surprising 1800 gold. Following this is the "base price adjustment" saying that we "Divide by (5 divided by charges per day)".

On the surface, that makes sense: 1800 is a steep price, so dividing it by something should help out those magic users just getting started in the world. But the internal logic stops making sense when you realize that "5 divided by charges per day" is a bit vague. My DM and I compared a few possible interpretations of that statement (my favorite was the one that made the price decrease the more charges that you gave it), but we could never quite pin down exactly what happened. I tried using the "Everfull Mug" from the Magic Item Compendium, but never quite managed to get the market price of 200/construction cost of 100. I think the closest I reasonably got was still over 500.

My DM, meanwhile, had less luck with his reverse engineering. His latest IM report says "I backward engineered almost a dozen items and almost none of them make a lick of sense. The closest i have gotten to right is CL times Spell level times 1800 times 1.666666666. Even then adjustments had to be made. It was never more than 5k off."

Are the two of us just reading something incorrectly here? Or is this a kind of "gray area" where people should just use their better judgement about the cost? Because based on the various items that we're looking at, it seems like the game designers at WotC were following Reasonable Approximations rather than following any true formula.

Binks
2010-06-02, 12:25 AM
The DMG (pg. 285) states that after the expected caster level being multiplied by spell level, we then multiply that by a surprising 1800 gold. Following this is the "base price adjustment" saying that we "Divide by (5 divided by charges per day)".

I don't know much about the subject itself (never crafted wondrous items) but that sentence looks to me like a formula along the lines of:

(caster&spell cost stuff)*1800/(5/charges), which simplifies to (caster&spell cost stuff)*1800*charges/5, which would make having more charges cost more, which seems reasonable to me. Going to look at a few things but that seems fairly reasonable, even if the books don't follow it.

EDIT: Well running it on the Boots of Teleportation (the example given for an item with charges in the SRD) I got the following formula: (spell level*caster level*1800)*charges/5 = (5*9*1800)*3/5 = 48600. The item is 49000gp, so it looks like that works, even if it's very oddly worded.

Drakevarg
2010-06-02, 12:28 AM
But the internal logic stops making sense when you realize that "5 divided by charges per day" is a bit vague. My DM and I compared a few possible interpretations of that statement (my favorite was the one that made the price decrease the more charges that you gave it), but we could never quite pin down exactly what happened.

Emphasis mine. Not the case. For example:

An item with 3 charges would be: 1800/(5/3)= 1800/1.666= 1080.

An item with 50 charges would be 1800/(5/50)= 1800/0.1= 18000.

Riffington
2010-06-02, 07:17 AM
It is certainly true that you should be using approximations rather than following the formula exactly. One of the obvious examples would be that use-activated sword of Truestrike, which is cheaper by RAW than a DM should permit. No clue why it isn't used more extensively by some of the RAW-over-RAI builds.

Aharon
2010-06-02, 07:18 AM
Because they rely on RAW, and the item creation guidelines are guidelines, not rules?

Gnaeus
2010-06-02, 08:03 AM
Are the two of us just reading something incorrectly here? Or is this a kind of "gray area" where people should just use their better judgement about the cost? Because based on the various items that we're looking at, it seems like the game designers at WotC were following Reasonable Approximations rather than following any true formula.

This.

We use the custom item creation rules in our game, but they require a good look at what you are trying to do, cooperation between DM and Player, and moderation.

As our local crafter, I mostly confine myself to 1/day charged items of stuff the party needs to function, skill boost items with bonuses below +10, and stuff printed in rulebooks.

As a side note, many of the items in the DMG are priced bizarrely themselves. The MIC item pricing is much beter IMO.