The Price of Magic Weapons

[SirWolf312]

This may be a stupid question, it even sounds like it to me, but I was looking at the price of magic weapons and got to thinking. The page on the SRD says that a +1 costs 2,000 gp and a +2 costs 8,000. My question is, does a +2 weapon cost 8,000 or does a +2 bonus cost 8,000. For example, say you buy a +1 keen weapon. Would that weapon cost 4,000 gp or 8,000 gp? I believe it would cost 8,000 gp but I could see it working the other way as well.

[Tar Palantir]

It would cost 8000. To figure out the weapon's effective enhancement bonus for cost purposes, you add together the weapon's enhancement bonus and the enhancement bonus of any properties on the weapon. Not a stupid question at all; a lot of people get it wrong, and the formatting doesn't make it terribly clear.

[Coidzor]

This may be a stupid question, it even sounds like it to me, but I was looking at the price of magic weapons and got to thinking. The page on the SRD says that a +1 costs 2,000 gp and a +2 costs 8,000. My question is, does a +2 weapon cost 8,000 or does a +2 bonus cost 8,000. For example, say you buy a +1 keen weapon. Would that weapon cost 4,000 gp or 8,000 gp? I believe it would cost 8,000 gp but I could see it working the other way as well.

You add up the +X bonus and the +Y equivalent properties to get the +Z value/cost/price. So a +1 weapon with a +1 property and 2 +2 properties would have the price of a +6 weapon. Not counting the masterwork component or the cost of the base weapon.

[SirWolf312]

That's what I was thinking because of some of the wording. Now another question that came up in my group, when you add an enchantment to an already enchanted weapon, like adding keen to a weapon that already has a +1, would you pay the price of the new total or the difference in the prices. In this case it would be either 8,000 or 6,000 gp (The difference between a +2 and +1 weapon). When it came up in my group I had them pay the difference, they tried to say that they should only pay 2,000 because they were only adding a +1 bonus.

[Yanisa]

That's what I was thinking because of some of the wording. Now another question that came up in my group, when you add an enchantment to an already enchanted weapon, like adding keen to a weapon that already has a +1, would you pay the price of the new total or the difference in the prices. In this case it would be either 8,000 or 6,000 gp (The difference between a +2 and +1 weapon). When it came up in my group I had them pay the difference, they tried to say that they should only pay 2,000 because they were only adding a +1 bonus.

You are 100% right (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Adding-New-Abilities). When upgrading items you pay the total market price minus the market price of the item you have. So from +1 to +1 Keen it is indeed 6000 to upgrade.

Also in case your group isn't all that convinced, all this upgrading and stacking works the same as a cloak of resistance or a ring of protection or any item that has a +1/+2 progression. You cannot get a cloak of resistance +2 for twice the price of a +1 cloak. The only difference is that instead a +1 straight bonus you can swap it for a special ability, but pricing remains all the same.