Price for new magic item granting a class feature.

[Clistenes]

The Exorcist prestige class from the Undead book of the Alderac Entertaiment Group gives you at first level the Unearthly Protection class feature, that essentially allows you to bless an area, and from that point onwards and forever, any undead that enters the area is turned as if the Exorcist himself had done it.

It doesn't cost xp or gold, only 10 min per holy sign you create. You surround and area with a line of holy signs each of which isn't more than 10 ft removed from the next of the line, and from that point onwards, as long as the signs aren't destroyed, any undead who enters the area is turned as if you had done it.

That feature, while not game breaking for an adventuring party (it just allows to create free anti-undead traps and to protect the party while they rest) is invaluable from a point of view of world building, if we take into account how easy is to raise a powerful army of undead.

I'm thinking on creating a chisel that grants that feature to any cleric or divine caster class with turning undead. It would require that you feed the chisel with divine spell levels (one 1st level spell per each holy sign that you create) in order to limit its power an make it less munchkinny.

So, what do you think would be the appropiate price for this item?

[Flickerdart]

Pro tip: Requiring the expenditure of 1st level slots is not a meaningful restriction on anything.

[JoshuaZ]

This might make more sense in the homebrew section. But my gut is a lot- this item would be extremely useful in an undead heavy setting. What level can you enter this PrC at?

[Clistenes]

This might make more sense in the homebrew section. But my gut is a lot- this item would be extremely useful in an undead heavy setting. What level can you enter this PrC at?

You need the Extra Turning feat, 6 ranks in Knowledge (Arcane), and 8 ranks in Knowledge (religion), plus non-evil alignment. A Cleric could take it at level 5.


Pro tip: Requiring the expenditure of 1st level slots is not a meaningful restriction on anything.

How many spell levels do you think would be appropiate? three, five?

[Barsoom]

You need the Extra Turning feat, 6 ranks in Knowledge (Arcane), and 8 ranks in Knowledge (religion), plus non-evil alignment. A Cleric could take it at level 5.



How many spell levels do you think would be appropiate? three, five?

Given the requirements you stated for the PrC entry, I'd say a slot of 3rd level or higher, AND a DC 15 Knowledge (Religion) check. If the check fails, the slot is still wasted.

[Clistenes]

Given the requirements you stated for the PrC entry, I'd say a slot of 3rd level or higher, AND a DC 15 Knowledge (Religion) check. If the check fails, the slot is still wasted.

Thanks. And what about price? I have been trying to take the Monk's Belt, the Ring of Evasion, the Mask of Fury and the Shroudcrown as inspiration, but I can't decide how much should the thing cost.

[nyjastul69]

You need the Extra Turning feat, 6 ranks in Knowledge (Arcane), and 8 ranks in Knowledge (religion), plus non-evil alignment. A Cleric could take it at level 5.



How many spell levels do you think would be appropiate? three, five?

Needing 8 ranks in Knowledge (religion) means the earliest a cleric could take this is 6th level.

[Clistenes]

Needing 8 ranks in Knowledge (religion) means the earliest a cleric could take this is 6th level.

Yes, a 5th level Cleric could take a level of Exorcist as his/her 6th level.

[Nymrod]

I'd suggest making that thing a Symbol spell that can be made permanent instead. Or making it a spell that can be placed on a hallowed area. What you have to do then is set a spell level for turn undead.

Control Undead is a 7th-level spell but controlling is certainly stronger than turning. Maybe 6th?

[Phelix-Mu]

Thanks. And what about price? I have been trying to take the Monk's Belt, the Ring of Evasion, the Mask of Fury and the Shroudcrown as inspiration, but I can't decide how much should the thing cost.

I don't know about the shroudcrown, but none of the others create permanent effects. Combat effects are more valuable, but this kind of warding is a very useful tactic.

I agree that charging a character spell slots is a meaningless restriction. At higher levels, so is any gold price on material components for the crafting, but it might be sensible anyway. Otherwise the acolytes just pass the chisel around and craft away until the whole countryside is warded. Kind of like the problem with holy water supply (any significant good church worth it's salt would have gallons and gallons available).

I'd personally make it into a relic of some anti-undead or Protection Domain god. Thus, you'd have to have the True Believer feat or a cleric spell slot of a certain level and worship. A 3rd or 4th level slot should work fine, since it's an out-of-combat benefit. Give it one or two other nifty powers, to balance it with existing relics.

[ericgrau]

Precisely as you said, it is not crazy in the hands of adventurers, but could get crazy in the hands of NPCs. Thus it should be so expensive that it should be difficult for a kingdom to make its borders undead-proof without centuries of effort, yet cheap enough that PCs can make use of it.

A per use gp cost could prevent spamming abuse. Perhaps to cover special inscribing materials like paint made from powdered gem or silver dust.

Otherwise you need to price it with the assumption that it will be used in the most effective way - spamming 24 hours a day in shifts to ward entire kingdoms - and then the price will be way higher. Too high for PCs except those who are also trying to spam abuse it.

[nyjastul69]

Yes, a 5th level Cleric could take a level of Exorcist as his/her 6th level.
Yeah. My bad. I had a brain fart.

[Gildedragon]

Having it drain turn undead attempts per X runes makes sense.
Price it as a 7th level item (someone with the PrC gets the ability eariler) make it a relic. Have it grant the extra turning feat (allowing any true believer to use it) and call it a day

Edit: actually in races of stone there are these rune circles. Price it as one of those.

[OzymandiasX]

Two ideas that prevent the cheesery that can come from something like that:

Make the duration of the area from this item not permanent. If it is to help players ward area to rest in, make the duration of the area 24 hours. It still serves the same purpose without being as exploitable in the long term.

Or if the goal is to protect areas long term instead of just making a place to rest, make the protection last for a year. This probably wouldn't hurt your players or the campaign experience, while at the same time preventing kingdoms from becoming 100% auto-turn-undead-as-a-level-20 cleric... A group of NPC clerics could conceivably keep a large portion of a town protected if they kept refreshing the area.

And the required one turn-undead use is a very good cost idea.

[Gildedragon]

Actually that is a great idea. Also sets up some interesting notions. The order that keeps this object does year long processions, visiting towns and warding them. A sort of inverse pilgrimage calendar thing gets happening where towns have festivals welcoming the Glyphite priests.
One could have the number of glyphs carved extend the duration: so 1 glyph is 8 hrs, 3 last 1 day... And so on, so the protecting of a village for a year or two would take all of one day. Heck, it produces adventure hooks.

[ericgrau]

And the required one turn-undead use is a very good cost idea.
Turn attempts used for turning? Heresy!

Any kind of spam limiting cost would keep this from getting out of hand. Turn attempts certainly are thematic.

[Clistenes]

I'd suggest making that thing a Symbol spell that can be made permanent instead. Or making it a spell that can be placed on a hallowed area. What you have to do then is set a spell level for turn undead.

Control Undead is a 7th-level spell but controlling is certainly stronger than turning. Maybe 6th?

I could consider turning undead the equivalent to a 6th level spell and consider the chisel an unlimited magical item that casts 6th level spells again and again, for pricing purposes.


Having it drain turn undead attempts per X runes makes sense.
Price it as a 7th level item (someone with the PrC gets the ability eariler) make it a relic. Have it grant the extra turning feat (allowing any true believer to use it) and call it a day

That seems about right.


Actually that is a great idea. Also sets up some interesting notions. The order that keeps this object does year long processions, visiting towns and warding them. A sort of inverse pilgrimage calendar thing gets happening where towns have festivals welcoming the Glyphite priests.

That's pretty much the idea behind the item. The Church of Pelor would use them to go around protecting villages and towns, maybe even carving them along the main roads.
I see it as sort of Cold War between the Church of Nerull and the Church of Pelor. The Church of Nerull spawms infectious undead and release them close of inhabited locations, but the Church of Pelor use these Holy Signs to protect the people and sends parties against the clerics of Nerull.


Make the duration of the area from this item not permanent. If it is to help players ward area to rest in, make the duration of the area 24 hours. It still serves the same purpose without being as exploitable in the long term.

Or if the goal is to protect areas long term instead of just making a place to rest, make the protection last for a year. This probably wouldn't hurt your players or the campaign experience, while at the same time preventing kingdoms from becoming 100% auto-turn-undead-as-a-level-20 cleric... A group of NPC clerics could conceivably keep a large portion of a town protected if they kept refreshing the area.

One could have the number of glyphs carved extend the duration: so 1 glyph is 8 hrs, 3 last 1 day... And so on, so the protecting of a village for a year or two would take all of one day. Heck, it produces adventure hooks.

That would be interesting. Great cities surrounded by concentric circles of Holy Signs would be effectively permanently protected, but a single adventurer couldn't protect every throp forever...

About having the whole country protected against undead, that wouldn't be so easy, since the Holy Symbols would turn undead like the cleric that created them, so the ones chiseled by low-level acolytes wouldn't be so good.


A per use gp cost could prevent spamming abuse. Perhaps to cover special inscribing materials like paint made from powdered gem or silver dust.

I guess I could give it each Holy Symbol a price similar to that of a 6-level rune circle if made permanent, remove the cost if the Holy Symbol is temporary.


So, I could price it as a magic item that cast unlimited times a 6th or 7th level spell.
The price would be reduced about a 30% because you need to be able to turn undead yourself to use it.
Making it a Relic seems appropiate.

The fact that you need to burn daily turn attempts to use it, and that the Holy Symbols would be only as powerful as the cleric who created them, and the fact that they aren't permanent would avoid cheesery. You would want your most powerful cleric inscribing the Symbols, and he/she would be restricted in the number of Holy Symbols he/she can create per day. The cleric would have to inscribe symbol after symbol everyday in order to protect a city, each new symbol adding 8 hours to the duration of the whole set, but he/she can't leave for too long or the symbols already created would run out of time and cease to work.

And of course, the item has another weakness: A Symbol can be destroyed by a mortal enemy, breaking the chain and lifting the protection. I guess clerics would make several rows of Symbols to avoid that.

If you want to make each Symbol permanent, you price it as a 6th-level Runic Circle (spend either gold or gold and XP on it).

[Skysaber]

Ok, I see people freaking out, but I don't see a reason. This is not unlimited, nor is it perfect. I have the book and have just reread the class feature he is trying to emulate here, and it's just a turn attempt. You know, those things clerics were claiming weren't worth their time to do? What got described as a "useless class feature" before Divine feats got rolled out.

I've been in all-undead, all-of-the-time campaigns where we had a cleric with Extra Turning, and every combat he'd make his check, and in that campaign from first to eighth level he managed to successfully turn a grand total of only once, and it was a meaningless couple of skeletons we killed the round after.

Undead Hit Dice skyrocket in comparison to cleric levels of equal challenge rating. And this is still subject to turning damage, and everything. And if the undead aren't turned by the first attempt, it doesn't make another against them for an hour.

This is not the end of undead in a campaign world. Heck, it should barely slow them down. Any necromancer worth his salt would boost turn resist a fraction and just send an extra skeleton or two. Do recall that the weakest undead get turned first, and it turns them just like a cleric would standing there, so if they come in large groups, no matter how wimpy, most of them go through for free.

So this is not a "the sky is falling" magic item that we have to carefully balance against the amazing, awesome effectiveness it has. It barely merits mention as a speed bump.

It's utility lies solely in its effective cleric level. As a class feature, this gave a perfect replica of the exorcist's turning ability. But that's a class feature. As a magic item, call turning a first level spell (because they get it at first level - even paladins get it at the same time as they get first level spells), then multiply by caster level - and the one creating this item has to be an exorcist with the class feature.

It's not hard for a necromancer to throw on a dozen extra points of turn resistance if he's got the right spells and feats. So even a level 20 chisel isn't going to stop much. Even should 21 plain vanilla 1HD skeletons wander in, it'll destroy 20 of them and the next can ravage the humble townsfolk for an hour.

Enchanting the town wall as a Magic Circle vs Undead would be a third level spell, permanent, and actually have most of the effects you are reacting to.

But even in that case, you'd find yourself in a situation where, if this really inconveniences the bad guys, they send teams of living rogues on ahead to go destroy the item(s) that are keeping their hordes of undead out.

It's not that big a deal.

[ericgrau]

Mmm he needs improved turning not extra turning, and a phylactery of turning to keep up as the HD scales. Plus you never turn lone undead, only groups. An auto-win against a solo undead fight would be OP after all, and it's not meant to work. Thus no cleric should be turning only, even in an all undead campaign. But it does work very well even with a 12 charisma and a focus elsewhere.

If all the undead are solo or if the DM is giving everything turn resistance, then that's more of a campaign problem than anything. Especially if the cleric's effective level for turning isn't similarly optimized. Generally the numbers favor turning for groups of undead. There was even a thread where someone complained "how could you possible turn such and such high level foe" and someone posted a way within about 3 posts. Mainly a phylactery of undead turning. It isn't hard.

I forgot that non-undead could destroy the wards. That makes it much less spammable and not actually so permanent. In that case I wouldn't make any gp cost that high. In fact a per day ability cost like turning uses could be sufficient by itself. Because foes may erase the wards as fast as clerics make them. At most a kingdom might get a month or a few months of preparation before they started getting wiped. And even then some might be wiped mid-battle.

[Clistenes]

It's utility lies solely in its effective cleric level. As a class feature, this gave a perfect replica of the exorcist's turning ability. But that's a class feature. As a magic item, call turning a first level spell (because they get it at first level - even paladins get it at the same time as they get first level spells), then multiply by caster level - and the one creating this item has to be an exorcist with the class feature.

Do you think that the item should turn undead as its creator instead as the guy using it to make the signs? So, if a Cleric 19/Exorcist 1 with Charisma 18 creates the chisel, the Symbols turn undead as a Cleric 20 with Charisma 18?

Or maybe they should use the Class Level of the creator and the Charisma of the guy using the chisel?

[Skysaber]

Do you think that the item should turn undead as its creator instead as the guy using it to make the signs? So, if a Cleric 19/Exorcist 1 with Charisma 18 creates the chisel, the Symbols turn undead as a Cleric 20 with Charisma 18?

Or maybe they should use the Class Level of the creator and the Charisma of the guy using the chisel?

Nothing stops you from making chisels that function either way you describe.

Now, the 'traditional magic item' approach would be:

If a wizard casts a spell, that spell incorporates his full caster level, ability bonus, feats, and some items into the effectiveness of that spell. If, however, he should make a wand of that spell, he pays for caster level, and none of those others count towards the spell's oomph.

As a class ability, let your exorcist carve runes that turn just as he would, with all ability bonuses, items or feats you like. But as an item that carves them for him, you pay for all the levels you get.

On the other hand, it takes him ten minutes to carve one rune. You'd have to do the same if you got a use-activated version, I'm sure. If, however, you got a continuous version at spell lvl(1) times caster lvl(20) times 2,000gp, it costs you 40 grand, but you could literally slaver it with Sovereign Glue onto the bottom of your shoe and strike a rune with every step you take. Much harder for a thief to break the network that way, since so many are within ten feet of each other, which is the required maximum distance for the field to be set up.

Also, anybody could use it. So stick it on the underside of the boot of your faster runner and watch him protect your city in a single sprint. Then, when he gets tired, have another put on the boot to protect another city, and so on. Crisscross every road in the country with it.

It's a trade off. In some ways magic items can be stronger, in others weaker.

Or, as Method Two, an alternate traditional path, you could outfit your exorcist with dozens of Nightsticks to fuel the turning attempts he needs to make runes, and a Ring of Sustenance so he doesn't have to sleep much, then send him around making runes.

Since nothing says those runes have to be visible, have him put them on the foundation blocks of every important building you are setting up. It greatly complicates a rogue's attempts to disarm them if he has to dig up flagstones in the middle of a market square, or busy hall, or your throne room, to do it. And if you've used Stone Shape to wrap up stone around so that rune lies at a tiny hollow in the very center of a very large block, so much the better.

Method three or four uses your two methods above.

The thing is? The exorcist class ability you are emulating here works better the more different exorcists you have do it. Nothing ever said they can't all put runes protecting the same area, just like nothing prevents many different clerics all standing to make turn attempts vs the same mob of undead.

And the same should rationally apply to using different magic items with different mechanical effects to carve your runes.

So, if you have a version that is a stamp on the bottom of a boot, that's one. Self-carved runes is two. Three is to have a chisel you can hand to any high level cleric, regardless of exorcist levels, so he can carve his own using his own feats and levels. And four is to have chisels made by long-dead exorcists that use their turning checks, despite being handled by complete neophyte clerics who can barely turn undead at all.

And THEN, of course, you enchant all of your city walls as Magic Circles Against Undead, so that any necromancers out there get convinced those are the problem holding them back from glory. So when they scheme and plot and finally bring one down to unleash a tide of undead on your city's inhabitants, they walk in only to get squished by turn attempts coming from every house, every street, every building they come across. As many as four different attempts from each place.

Then post battle cast Legend Lore on the bones to figure out who made/send these undead, and go squish the root cause of the problem.

[Clistenes]

I asked about which Cha would use (the creator or the user) because most magic items use the lowest ability value that allows you to cast the spell (for example, a Magic Missile Wand has a DC as if the spell were cast by someone with Int/Cha 11), but Turn Undead hasn't an ability requirement (you can have a Cha penalty and still be able to use Turn Undead).

So I think the easiest way would be to just use the Cha of the user instead of the creator's. I guess that, if the creator had the Enhanced Item Creation feat, the item could use his/her Cha score instead of the user's.