item of Wraithstrike?

[Gandariel]

A Barbarian/Disciple of Thryim player of mine would like to get access to wraithstrike.
since it's a swift action spell and it's so powerful, i'm wary of allowing it.

a use-activated item would be ridiculously powerful, so i was looking for an alterfnative.
What should i do?

i was currently considering:
a) adding the spell to Disciple of Thryim list (albeit at a higher level, maybe 4?)
b) Weapon enchantment: +1 gives wraithstrike 1/day, +3 gives it 3/day,

does these sound reasonable? what would you do?

[Keld Denar]

There is already a neck slot item that grants it 3/day as a swift action. Heartseeking Amulet in the MIC. Given its price and contrasting that with the Blurstriking enhancement, say that a +1 equiv with swift action activation 3/day would be balanced. It gets more and more expensive as you add other perks.

Just don't hand out "always on" Wraithstrike. That gets really hard to DM for. Trust me. There should be an activation cost (swift action, or as part of a standard action ala Emerald Razor).

[Bronk]

There is also a weapon enchantment called "Impaling" at +1, from the MIC, which makes a melee attack a touch attack 3 times per day.

[Andezzar]

Just don't hand out "always on" Wraithstrike.There is something similar in the DMG already: Brilliant Energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#brilliantEnergy). Too bad it only works against living foes.

[TuggyNE]

There is something similar in the DMG already: Brilliant Energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#brilliantEnergy). Too bad it only works against living foes.

Since it also does not ignore natural armor, it's nowhere near as good as actual wraithstrike: natural armor is usually the single largest component of your average monster's AC. (Even against humanoid foes it's often at least a couple of points worth by the time you can afford it.)

[Draz74]

There is already a neck slot item that grants it 3/day as a swift action. Heartseeking Amulet in the MIC. Given its price and contrasting that with the Blurstriking enhancement, say that a +1 equiv with swift action activation 3/day would be balanced. It gets more and more expensive as you add other perks.

Just don't hand out "always on" Wraithstrike. That gets really hard to DM for. Trust me. There should be an activation cost (swift action, or as part of a standard action ala Emerald Razor).


There is also a weapon enchantment called "Impaling" at +1, from the MIC, which makes a melee attack a touch attack 3 times per day.

Note that all of these relatively-balanced examples work on only a single attack per use, in contrast to Wraithstrike, which affects all attacks within one turn.

[INoKnowNames]

Just out of curiosity, how much would an Item of Wraithstrike be worth? Say you could use it as much as you want, but it costs a Swift Action to activate.

[Diarmuid]

A wand would costs 4500, and you could put that into a wand chamber on a given weapon allowing you to activate it 50 times.

While I think having an item that did it all the time should indeed costs a lot of gold...if the player had access to that much gold I dont know why they wouldnt just buy a bunch of wands and make sure every weapon they carry has a wand chamber.

[PinkysBrain]

what would you do?
Say the spell doesn't exist.

That said, I'm generally of the opinion that command word operated items should activate with the same action as the spell (so in this case swift) and be costed at spell level * caster level * uses per day/5 (so not suddenly infinite uses per day at any given cost unlike the default guidelines). Also they should be slotted appropriately (or if not be in a ring) with no slot sharing except for with one of the big six.

If a spell is too powerful to allow with such a magic item creation rule it just means the spell is OP.

PS. use activation cost guidelines need a whole lot more tweaks to make it usable, for starters I think they are only useful for spells with true multi-round duration in the first place (like say boots of speed, although the free action activation probably should never be copied ... it should really be swift).

[Gandariel]

Yes, but by the rules of charges/day items an item of Wraithstrike N times/day costs 1.2k times N. a complete steal.
a wand costs even less (4500 per 50 uses), and assuming they can UMD it's kinda broken as well.
i'm pretty sure i'm not allowing the custom item thing.

the items in MIC are actually balanced and ok for me, i'll go with that.

Still considering the weapon enhancement thing though, would it be balanced?

[TypoNinja]

A wand would costs 4500, and you could put that into a wand chamber on a given weapon allowing you to activate it 50 times.

While I think having an item that did it all the time should indeed costs a lot of gold...if the player had access to that much gold I dont know why they wouldnt just buy a bunch of wands and make sure every weapon they carry has a wand chamber.

A ring of "always on" wraith strike is disgustingly cheap for its effects. 48k.

If you overlook the sidebar that says items need to be priced up or down from their book value based on how awesome they actually are. (That's why some printed items don't actually match the creation formulas.) At that point the DM goes "This is pretty much the best thing ever for melee" and doubles the price tag :P

[Bronk]

True... doubles or even more. I think the example they use in the books is an item of always on True Strike... a simple item to make by the rules that would have epic level effects.