Having Trouble pricing a magic cloak

[NavyBlue]

I'm putting together a small dungeon that centers around a cult, led by the Bearer of the Cloak of Flames. Ideally, once the leader is taken care of the cloak itself will serve as nice bit of treasure for the party to either sell or keep. I would like it to provide resistance to fire damage of some sort, and give +1 caster level when casting spells of the fire subtype. The thing is, having looked in the back of my DMG, I see lots of different ways to calculate costs for different bonuses, but none for energy resistance or damage reduction, or for extra caster levels. I want to make sure I'm not exceeding the party's WBL (they will be levels 5-6), but I'm having trouble figuring out how much this should cost. Google has not revealed any answers, so now I come to the Playground. Where can I find how to calculate this cost?

(Sub-question, any better names for the cloak?)

[Nirhael]

The following may not follow specific RAW rules and may simply be reverse-engineering, use at your own discretion.

An orange Ioun Stone is 30k, so we can get a +1 CL in the "appropriate slot" for 15k, standard magical damage types are acid, cold, electricity, fire and sonic so you could take it down to 3k since it only applies to fire (Seems a little cheap to be honest).

Energy Resistance is simple, there's already Rings for that and the Cloak slot has affinity to "Protection", which shouldn't need an extra 50% so 12k here.

The item has two different abilities though, so you need to tack on an extra 50% to everything except the most expensive portion, meaning the CL boost gets upped to 4.5k.

That gives you a Cloak worth 16.5k, WBL won't like it much.

[Ravens_cry]

If they sell it, they get 8.25 grand to split among the group. That's pretty reasonable for an end of chapter item.

[Marcelinari]

Mostly when it comes to magic items, I would throw something at them and see what they do with it. It can be very entertaining. However, since you asked specifically, let's reverse engineer a price for these things.

+1 CL: The thing that immediately springs to mind is the Orange Prism Ioun Stone, priced at 30,000gp. Little pricey, but nothing to fret about. The Ioun Stone is a slotless item, and therefore is subject to a x2 price multiplier. Let's waive that, bringing the price down to 15,000gp.

The Ioun Stone also applies to all spells, and your Cloak only to [Fire] Spells. Here we go off the beaten tracks - [Fire] is a pretty common descriptor, but is nowhere close to even half of the spell lists. Now you eyeball the reduction... I'm going to say divide it by 5, for a round 3,000.

Fire Resistance: Relatively, this one is a doozy. There's a Ring of Energy Resistance right in the SRD, with a range of options. Resist Fire 10 would cost 12,000gp, Resist 20 28,000gp, and Resist 30 44,000gp.

Now to combine the two - they are distinct effects, so go by the rules for that. That means the final cost is 12,000 + (3,000*1.5) = 16,500gp. That's a little outside the 5-6 range, I think, but not by overly much.

Basically, don't sweat it. If they use it, sweet, they have a nice attachment to the item (I took this from the Bearer of the Cloak of Fire Pyrophant, because damn that is a good pun), if they sell it, well, you get to decide how much they can get for it anyway. Go nuts.

And yea, make the religious leader the Pyrophant, and this the Pyrophant's Cloak.

Edit: Apparently Nirhael came to the same conclusion, so that makes me feel a lot more confident with my eyeballing. Also, ninja'd, I guess.

[Qc Storm]

The Ioun Stone also applies to all spells, and your Cloak only to [Fire] Spells. Here we go off the beaten tracks - [Fire] is a pretty common descriptor, but is nowhere close to even half of the spell lists. Now you eyeball the reduction... I'm going to say divide it by 5, for a round 3,000.



There is the ring of Mystic Fire in the MiC. It costs about 8000 and gives +1 caster level on fire spells. Plus some other daily charge uses, dealing more damage with fire spells.