Belt or Boots of Enlarge Person?

[Dracons]

How much would a belt or boots of Enlarge person 3/day cost in 3.5 DnD?

[herrhauptmann]

spell level 1 * 1 (if belt/boots is an appropriate item slot, or *2 if unaccustomed) *1 caster level (gives 1 minute per use) * 1800gp command activated * .6 (3/day)
So 1080gp if appropriate slot, or 2160gp if odd body slot.
(http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#magicItemGoldPieceValues)

[Curmudgeon]

That's wrong, herrhauptmann. You skipped past the primary rule on magic item pricing, and went right to the "otherwise" clause in those rules.

The primary rule is to look for existing items that grant the same or similar abilities and price accordingly. In this case there's a Belt of Growth in Magic Item Compendium that gives the effect of Enlarge Person once a day, for 3,000 gp. So 3x daily would cost 9,000 gp.

[FelixG]

That's wrong, herrhauptmann. You skipped past the primary rule on magic item pricing, and went right to the "otherwise" clause in those rules.

The primary rule is to look for existing items that grant the same or similar abilities and price accordingly. In this case there's a Belt of Growth in Magic Item Compendium that gives the effect of Enlarge Person once a day, for 3,000 gp. So 3x daily would cost 9,000 gp.

that the MIC, not everyone has that book available to them while it is safe to assume they have the DMG handy.

[icefractal]

Is the MIC version a swift action to activate? Because that would be a significant advantage.

If it's a standard action, 9K seems overpriced. You could buy three wands for about a quarter of that, and by the time you run through 150 uses, you'll be several levels higher and probably rich enough to buy as many as you want. Heck, even if you can't use a wand (and have no party member or cohort willing to), you could buy 90 potions for half that - against, probably enough to last you far beyond the level where you even care about the price.

[ffone]

(Although it may or may not be RAW) when D<ing I generally let players make custom X/day spell items using the usual formula - 360 x spell level x caster level x uses per day (DMG formula is phrased as 1800 times uses /5), before any expensive material component jazz.

My reasoning is along the last poster's lines - since the wands and scrolls are all the same price, well...

RAW, activation time is standard action or spell's casting time, whichever is longer - Rules Compendium updates that to just spellcasting time, which I generally allow, although there are probbly some Swift spells that are Too Good on a swift item (although half of MiC is items like this).

'unlimited' items, on the other hand, have to be a case by case basis. Enlarge would be 4K under those rules, which is surely Too Good. (Some manual had Reduce Person for 20,000 gp, with the prereqs being caster level 9thand Permanency). One annoying thing about those guidelines is that command-but-unlimited (i.e. standard action to activate) vs continuous is only a 10% difference (1800 vs 2000), but the latter is vastly more useful. The SRD items have some examples of both; like the ring of freedom of movement vs ring of blink.

[Curmudgeon]

Is the MIC version a swift action to activate? Because that would be a significant advantage.

If it's a standard action, 9K seems overpriced. You could buy three wands for about a quarter of that, and by the time you run through 150 uses, you'll be several levels higher and probably rich enough to buy as many as you want. Heck, even if you can't use a wand (and have no party member or cohort willing to), you could buy 90 potions for half that - against, probably enough to last you far beyond the level where you even care about the price.
It's a standard action, but it lasts for 10 minutes each use so it's likely good for multiple encounters in a dungeon or similar "encounter rich" setting. Most martial types can't use your average wand of Enlarge Person, so that's really not a good comparison. A potion is going to take a full round to quaff so you can't do more than move 5'; the Belt is better. But if you don't want to pay the reusable item price, by all means buy potions instead; you've got that option.

[herrhauptmann]

That's wrong, herrhauptmann. You skipped past the primary rule on magic item pricing, and went right to the "otherwise" clause in those rules.

The primary rule is to look for existing items that grant the same or similar abilities and price accordingly. In this case there's a Belt of Growth in Magic Item Compendium that gives the effect of Enlarge Person once a day, for 3,000 gp. So 3x daily would cost 9,000 gp.

Not going digging through the MiC and a half dozen other books at 2am for one question, especially when the OP could use an example of the custom pricing rules.

[Zaydos]

Belt of Growth is CL 10; so it would be 900 x CL for a 3/day version.