Magic Items - Adding Enchantments

[Valtu]

Last night, we all used our recently acquired spoils to purchase some magic items in town.

I got a Cloak of Charisma +6 for 36,000 gp. I had around 54,000 and was intending to possibly add some Resistance +2 (or however much I could afford) to it as well, but the DM said that the item would end up being far too much for me to afford at the current time, as it would have to be calculated at a +8 cost.

The Magic Item Compendium makes it look a lot more simple than that. I understand if we just want there to be some limitations, because obviously this kind of stuff can be abused. So if it's a matter of house rules, that's fine, but I wanted to know what the actual rules are in case there might be some confusion (or maybe that applies to armor but not clothing< something of that nature)

Anyway, this is what I'm interested in:

Charisma +6 = 36,000 (already purchased)
Resistance +2 = 4,000 or +4 = 16,000

If I already have the Cha bonus, shouldn't it just be an additional 4 or 16,000 depending on the size of the Resistance bonus I want?

[zephyrkinetic]

What you have to do for weapons and armor (not sure about clothing, but I would assume the same rules apply) is take the difference between +8 and +6 and pay that. With +8 Armor at 64K and +6 Armor at 36K, that leaves you with a bill of 28K, plus whatever labor or material costs are associated. It's more expensive than you thought, but less than your DM thought.

[Valtu]

Thanks! So by RAW, without a margin for labor/materials, how much should it cost? If anyone has a formula for this it'd be greatly appreciated

[zephyrkinetic]

Thanks! So by RAW, without a margin for labor/materials, how much should it cost? If anyone has a formula for this it'd be greatly appreciated

Not quite sure which you're asking for. The formula for cost is pretty much simple subtraction according to the tables in the DMG.

Don't know that there's anything official for labor/mats. As a DM, I usually just add some amount of gold to make the player feel a little more pain. After all, no one's going to upgrade their equipment for free. A lot of time, it's based on how much gold I know they have, and how little I want them to have afterwards. xD

[Valtu]

Not quite sure which you're asking for. The formula for cost is pretty much simple subtraction according to the tables in the DMG.

Don't know that there's anything official for labor/mats. As a DM, I usually just add some amount of gold to make the player feel a little more pain. After all, no one's going to upgrade their equipment for free. A lot of time, it's based on how much gold I know they have, and how little I want them to have afterwards. xD

Thanks again. Not that it's super important in this particular instance, but going forward, for the sake of planning things out, I'd like to have a better understanding of what I can and can't do.

I guess I'm just confused on how these bonuses are treated. I found a table for armor enhancements, but I'm not giving +1 to AC or -1 to an armor check penalty, so I don't know if that table would really apply here.

On another table I saw for magic items in general, it had a cost for ability enhancements of bonus squared x 1000 gp. What that seems like, to me, at least, is that if I were asking for a cloak that did +6 to CHA and +2 to DEX, that I'd really need to make it 64000 gp base price, since the effective ability bonus being granted is +8.

In this case, though, what I was thinking about doing was a bonus to an ability (CHA) but then a Resistance enhancement, which has its own entry on the table, so I don't think they'd stack and make the cost go up exponentially.

Even if it is just houseruled that we can't combine effects so cheaply, I totally understand, but I'm not crazy for thinking it would normally work differently, right?

[broodax]

You are getting a little confused, thanks to your DM. Armor enhancements have nothing to do with wondrous items, they are calculated entirely differently.

You are talking about enhancing an existing Wondrous Item with an additional bonus. The way you do this is to take the price of the combined item, which is calculated as 100% of the cost of the most expensive bonus + 150% of the cost of the next most expensive bonus, then subtract the cost of the original item. The result is what you must pay in order to upgrade it.

Alternatively, you can find the table in the MIC for adding normal bonuses (resistance, stats, etc) to existing items and it just flat out tells you the cost to add those bonuses.

In your example, you would pay 36,000 (+6 cha) + 6,000 (+2 Resistance x 150%) = 42,000, or if you already have the +6 Charisma, just 6,000 to upgrade it.

Here are the rules in question: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#multipleDifferentAbilities

[Valtu]

You are getting a little confused, thanks to your DM. Armor enhancements have nothing to do with wondrous items, they are calculated entirely differently.

You are talking about enhancing an existing Wondrous Item with an additional bonus. The way you do this is to take the price of the combined item, which is calculated as 100% of the cost of the most expensive bonus + 150% of the cost of the next most expensive bonus, then subtract the cost of the original item. The result is what you must pay in order to upgrade it.

Alternatively, you can find the table in the MIC for adding normal bonuses (resistance, stats, etc) to existing items and it just flat out tells you the cost to add those bonuses.

In your example, you would pay 36,000 (+6 cha) + 6,000 (+2 Resistance x 150%) = 42,000, or if you already have the +6 Charisma, just 6,000 to upgrade it.

Here are the rules in question: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#multipleDifferentAbilities

Ok, awesome, thanks! I thought it was something like that. I read that section of MIC but thought I was just missing something crucial.

That'll be very helpful to plan future items that way. Last night I just stuck with the +6 CHA and saved the rest of our gold. I hadn't read the part about caster level needing to be at least 3 times the bonus anyway, so if I'd have gotten the plus 4, I'd have technically not qualified for it :P

But going forward I'll plan out some cool things. We have use of 3.0 books as well as 3.5 (3.5 typically trumps 3.0 whenever there's overlap) so I'm going to make plans to get a Necklace of Natural Attacks from Savage Species next :smallbiggrin:

[zephyrkinetic]

Ah! I see where I went wrong.

I'll tell you what, though, I'm still going off of the way armor is treated if any of players want to do the same thing. Re-enchanting an item that is already magical is hard, no matter what it is. It needs to cost more.

[Morcleon]

A note on the 1.5x price multiplier. If you're using MIC, then this multiplier does not apply to:
-Armor, deflection, or natural armor bonus to AC
-Resistance bonus to saves
-Enhancement bonus to ability scores

This is so that the essential numerical options do not overly hamper things that would be more unique than just more +'s.

[broodax]

Ah! I see where I went wrong.

I'll tell you what, though, I'm still going off of the way armor is treated if any of players want to do the same thing. Re-enchanting an item that is already magical is hard, no matter what it is. It needs to cost more.

That's why the rules say it costs 150%.

[Diarmuid]

Except that doesnt apply for the standard bonuses as descrbed in the MIC (enhancement to stat, resistance, natural armor, deflection).

[Deophaun]

Ah! I see where I went wrong.

I'll tell you what, though, I'm still going off of the way armor is treated if any of players want to do the same thing. Re-enchanting an item that is already magical is hard, no matter what it is. It needs to cost more.
So in your campaigns, there's little point to it and people should just pay the 200% cost for slotless items.