Need help pricing a weapon

[Human Paragon 3]

What would be a good gold piece cost for a crossbow +1 that deals a negative level every time it hits?

[atemu1234]

That's probably a +2 enhancement at lowest, probably +3.

[Human Paragon 3]

That's probably a +2 enhancement at lowest, probably +3.

Is there any formula that accounts for unique abilities like that that you know of? What made you decide on a +3? Just your general feeling?

[atemu1234]

Is there any formula that accounts for unique abilities like that that you know of? What made you decide on a +3? Just your general feeling?

Nah, on second thought, +2 works. It's generally based off of of CR-equivalent beings.

[Human Paragon 3]

Nah, on second thought, +2 works. It's generally based off of of CR-equivalent beings.

Well Wounding is +2, and this seems much better than Wounding IMO, so +3 is probably more in line.

What about, instead, a crossbow that can shoot a bolt that replicates Enervation 3/day? Or 1/day? How would you price that? Should be a little more straitforward.

[atemu1234]

Still along the same lines.

[Snowbluff]

Here's a thread with some some info on debuffing weapons. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?218331-Level-drain-and-other-Weapon-Effects-in-Epic-3-5)

[SinsI]

I think you guys are seriously underpricing that weapon.

Energy Drain is a 9th level spell that deals 2d4 negative levels, is a ranged touch attack that has a Close range, and allows Spell Resistance.
Enervation is a 4th level spell that deals 1d4 temporary negative levels, is a ranged touch attack that has a Close range, and allows Spell Resistance.

By being on a crossbow, you are getting up to 4 attacks per round (if you have Rapid Reload feat). You also get much, much larger range - 80 ft increment for Light Crossbow.

With this, you are getting your Energy Drain from a much larger range, and on a much sturdier chassis (ranged fighter), mitigating most of the biggest disadvantages of Energy Drain.

If you base it off Enervation, it would be 4*7*2000=56k gp, a bit more that +5.
Energy Drain use activated item would be 9*17*2000 gp = 306k gp. That's 1.5 times more than than +10.

Considering increased range and no Spell Resistance, you can easily double those prices.

[Human Paragon 3]

I agree that the previous assessments seriously under-valued it, but look at the Life Drinker, which costs 40k and deals 2 negative levels. You can make 4 attacks/round with that, too at high levels. 306k is insane IMO.

Your calculation on the Enervation-based one seems pretty good.

[SinsI]

I agree that the previous assessments seriously under-valued it, but look at the Life Drinker, which costs 40k and deals 2 negative levels. You can make 4 attacks/round with that, too at high levels. 306k is insane IMO.

Your calculation on the Enervation-based one seems pretty good.

Life-Drinker is a melee weapon - not a ranged one - and it also deals 1 negative level with each hit to its wielder.

[Human Paragon 3]

Life-Drinker is a melee weapon - not a ranged one - and it also deals 1 negative level with each hit to its wielder.

This is true - but it deals 2x the negative levels on a hit. Also, to my knowledge, ranged weapons don't cost more to enhance than melee weapons, but some enhancements are ranged or melee only.

[SinsI]

This is true - but it deals 2x the negative levels on a hit. Also, to my knowledge, ranged weapons don't cost more to enhance than melee weapons, but some enhancements are ranged or melee only.

Unless you're undead or a construct (both options that weren't available to players when DMG was written), the downside is very significant.
You need either Soulfire armor enchancement (+4) or Ring of Negative Protection (36k) to negate it.
Note that a lot of undead already have Negative Energy Attacks.

And it still puts your very vulnerable self in immediate harm's way - while you can fire your light crossbow from 800 ft away.

[TypoNinja]

That's a goddamn amazing enchantment. I'd say +3 or +4, leaning +4.

Compare to Vorpal at +5.

Good rule of thumb when pricing custom stuff. Make it cheap enough that you'd consider taking it, but pricey enough that you'd have to think about it. If an item is good and cheap enough that your first thought is "ill have that" it might be too cheap.

You might want to consider also adding the qualifier to it that Fell Draining has, negative levels only last a short time, hours a caster level. Makes it so that the negative levels cannot be permanent.

[SinsI]

That's a goddamn amazing enchantment. I'd say +3 or +4, leaning +4.

Compare to Vorpal at +5.

Vorpal weapon. Out of 20 attacks that hit, 1 beheads the enemy.
Negative level weapon. Every single attack that hits bestows a negative level on your enemy.

If you are fighting enemies that are not immune and that are less than lvl 20, Vorpal weapon, on average, is going to be worse, since you need less than 20 negative levels to destroy them.

Vorpal is restricted to slashing weapons only.

Vorpal doesn't benefit from normal weapon damage at all. Negative levels reduce HD, so they are cumulative with normal damage.

All of that - from one aspect of negative levels only (reduction of HD). Negative levels also have other debuffing effects - loss of spells, BAB and thus attacks, reduced saves...

How did you come up with "+3 or +4"?

[Pinkie Pyro]

+1000 GP.

Fell drain sonic snap is a 0th level spell (that takes a 2nd level spell slot, irrelevant in magic item calc) that drains 1 negative level.

Apply this "use activated" to a crossbow for +1 damage and a negative level on each attack.

Custom magic item pricing be whack, yo.

[Yahzi]

1. Ask a player how much he is willing to pay for it.

2. Remind him that NPCs will be buying the item, too.

[Andezzar]

Unless you're undead or a construct (both options that weren't available to players when DMG was written), the downside is very significant.
You need either Soulfire armor enchancement (+4) or Ring of Negative Protection (36k) to negate it.
Death ward is much cheaper. Just cast it when you want to use the weapon's special ability.

[SinsI]

Death ward is much cheaper. Just cast it when you want to use the weapon's special ability.

Death Ward is a 4th level spell. Command Activated item of it is 4*7*1800 = 50,400 gp, more expensive than the ring.

[Khedrac]

Vorpal weapon. Out of 20 attacks that hit, 1 beheads the enemy.
Wrong - it also has to confirm the crit. We had a fight where the party bard was wielding a vorpal whip-dagger and between doing other very useful things he did make some attacks against the biggest enemy. Three natural 20s later he failed to confirm a single one of them... (but then he needed about an 18 to hit).

I agree with the rest of your post though - this is a more powerful enchantment that vorpal, which for me makes it an epic enchantment.

[Andezzar]

Vorpal is ridiculously overpriced. There are much better and cheaper abilities. When you can afford a vorpal weapon, and most of the time before, a well built melee character can oneshot CR appropriate enemies anyways, and beheading does not even incapacitate all creatures.

[TypoNinja]

Wrong - it also has to confirm the crit. We had a fight where the party bard was wielding a vorpal whip-dagger and between doing other very useful things he did make some attacks against the biggest enemy. Three natural 20s later he failed to confirm a single one of them... (but then he needed about an 18 to hit).

I agree with the rest of your post though - this is a more powerful enchantment that vorpal, which for me makes it an epic enchantment.

Its a more useful enchantment than Vorpal, not more powerful. But that's because vorpal is goodamn worthless. Vorpal is really strong, if it works. If it works it wins you the fight on the spot. But its activation is so entirely chance based, and infrequent as to be nearly useless, and at a massive +5 basically comes a the cost of literally any other enchantments. I would take a a plain +5 weapon over a +1 Vorpal every single time. The accuracy and damage boots are going to be far more consistently useful.

Vorpal needs a nat 20, not just a crit. It then needs to be confirmed, and anything that doesn't care about the head getting lopped off (undead, constructs) or doesn't have a head (ooze, aberration) is immune. Your DM may also rule that the requirement to "confirm the critical" means anything immune to crits is also immune.

Vorpal just has too many conditions and qualifiers. The effect is powerful. Die, no save, no sr. But it just almost never happens, and you have no control over it. You are more likely to see some random mook eat the vorpal as something important dieing to it.

Negative level output is a weaker effect, but far more consistent. It is going to be a determining factor in more fights than vorpal, but will never be as decisive.

The OP might want to add some serious qualifiers to how it functions. Its a 9th level spell to dish out 2d4 negative levels, an average of 5. Slap this on a light cross bow, grab the rapid reload feat to reload as a free action (or buy a repeating crossbow) and someone could do this every round. A wizard would run outta daily spells in a fight or two if he tried the same.

I recommend at the least taking the Fell Drain limits (as I already mentioned), but depending on the power level of your group you may want to introduce further limits. Once per round per target would instantly reduce its ability to just stack negative levels till death. Its still very cool, and helpful, but you'd lose the ability to trigger your belt of battle and drop 10 negative levels on somebody right off the bat. I'd got for +3 under those conditions.

[Andezzar]

Once per round per target would instantly reduce its ability to just stack negative levels till death. Even without any stacking restriction "negative levels till death" may be somewhere around 20 attacks that need to hit. To perform all those attacks on one opponent usually takes much longer than a typical encounter. Compare that with wounding. every second attack removes another HD hit points from the target. I think +2 as wounding is reasonably priced. Wounding removes more hit points (for creatures with more than 5 HD) but does not include a debuff (attack, skills etc.)

[Douglas]

The Enervating property from Magic Item Compendium does this but only on crits, and is priced at +2. Needing only a hit rather than a crit is a lot more powerful and should be priced higher. +4 sounds about right to me.

[AnonymousPepper]

The Enervating property from Magic Item Compendium does this but only on crits, and is priced at +2. Needing only a hit rather than a crit is a lot more powerful and should be priced higher. +4 sounds about right to me.

Enervating was originally a +3, doesn't it? That seems to imply that it was one of those on the borderline things. Meaning I wouldn't make this... Oh.

Oh, I know.

Make it a +3 synergy property requiring Enervating. Uh... Draining, call it.

It's not actually that powerful because at the levels where you have a +6 weapon, most enemies will be resistant in some way.

That said, combining it with Splitting or Exit Wound is a recipe for Fun.

[Der_DWSage]

I'd have to agree with the other posters pricing it at a +4 property. It's pricy, but that's one I would actually consider buying as an archer, because that's a lot more relevant than the damage that I'd normally be doing with a crossbow.

Alternatively, (And I'm assuming you're the GM here) don't make the property inherent to the crossbow-a lot of the worry here has been about the crossbow overpowering people with the sheer number of hits. Instead, make it inherent to a number of crossbow bolts. A selection of 20-50 of them would still be insanely useful, but without quite as many worries. It'd drop a few enemies from negative levels alone, and then it would be a fond memory. (It'd also solve the issues of dropping it on a party and them going 'Y'know what? I'll just sell this and grab an obscene number of Spell-Storing arrows instead, thanks.')

[AnonymousPepper]

I'd have to agree with the other posters pricing it at a +4 property. It's pricy, but that's one I would actually consider buying as an archer, because that's a lot more relevant than the damage that I'd normally be doing with a crossbow.

Alternatively, (And I'm assuming you're the GM here) don't make the property inherent to the crossbow-a lot of the worry here has been about the crossbow overpowering people with the sheer number of hits. Instead, make it inherent to a number of crossbow bolts. A selection of 20-50 of them would still be insanely useful, but without quite as many worries. It'd drop a few enemies from negative levels alone, and then it would be a fond memory. (It'd also solve the issues of dropping it on a party and them going 'Y'know what? I'll just sell this and grab an obscene number of Spell-Storing arrows instead, thanks.')

Making it an ammunition property is dangerous too, though, because Raptor (Raptoran?) Arrows exist. Grab a good bow (Hank's Energy Bow?), grab a few Raptoran Arrows, and throw the property on them. Get the arrows back and reuse indefinitely. Yeah, Raptoran Arrows are expensive, but...

[SinsI]

Wrong - it also has to confirm the crit.
Run the math first. If you hit X of the time, out of 20 rolls you will hit X*20 times. 1 of them will be natural 20, which you will have to confirm with the same probability X. Final rate of beheading is X / (X*20) = 1/20, or 1 in every 20 attacks that hit is going to behead.

[Andezzar]

Run the math first. If you hit X of the time, out of 20 rolls you will hit X*20 times. 1 of them will be natural 20, which you will have to confirm with the same probability X. Final rate of beheading is X / (X*20) = 1/20, or 1 in every 20 attacks that hit is going to behead.No, that is wrong. You have a 1/20 to get the chance of a beheading (natural 20 on the attack roll). That chance needs to be confirmed by a successful hit.
A successful hit has a chance between 19/20 (1 is auto miss) and 1/20 (20 is a hit regardless of the target's AC) depending on the AC of the target.
So the chance is between (19/20)*(1/20) = 19/400 = 4.75% and (1/20)*(1/20) = 1/400 = 0.25%.

Vorpal is not worth a +5 enhancement by a long shot.

The other "on a critical hit" properties at least can become more likely to happen with a higher crit range.

[SinsI]

Please, reread my post more attentively:

1 in every 20 attacks that hit is going to behead
it already takes into account both +to hit and AC via the X.

[Andezzar]

Unless you have a weird way of writing the 1/400 - 19/400 chance you are wrong:

Upon a roll of natural 201 (followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit)2, the weapon severs the opponent’s head (if it has one) from its body.
1: This is a 1/20 chance

2: This chance which is X/20 only comes into play once you have rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll.

So it is indeed (1/20)3*(X/20)4 for an attack to behead the target.

3: that is the natural 20 on the attack roll

4: That is the chance of the confirmation roll reaching or exceeding the target's AC.

For X between 1 and 19 you get the previously posted result of a 0.25%-4.75% chance of the attack beheading the target

[Khedrac]

Please, reread my post more attentively:

it already takes into account both +to hit and AC via the X.

It does indeed, my apologies.

[hamishspence]

If we compare it to other enchantments (the most overpriced, the most underpriced, and the ones in the middle) where does it fall, roughly?

Is it comparable to an "underpriced +3"? An "overpriced +7"?

The Unholy Power epic property:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/weapons.htm#unholyPower

includes "automatically does at least 1 negative level on a hit" (among other things) - but only to Good characters hit by it. And can be applied to ranged weapons.

[TypoNinja]

Run the math first. If you hit X of the time, out of 20 rolls you will hit X*20 times. 1 of them will be natural 20, which you will have to confirm with the same probability X. Final rate of beheading is X / (X*20) = 1/20, or 1 in every 20 attacks that hit is going to behead.

Your two variables are not equivalent, you cannot cancel them out that way.

One in every twenty attacks that hits is going to be a threat to behead. After that 1 in 20 natural 20, you must still confirm the crit.

This conformation is at least better odds than 1 in 20, but its still another probability multiplier you have to account for.

[Baroknik]

Your two variables are not equivalent, you cannot cancel them out that way.

One in every twenty attacks that hits is going to be a threat to behead. After that 1 in 20 natural 20, you must still confirm the crit.

This conformation is at least better odds than 1 in 20, but its still another probability multiplier you have to account for.

Actually, they are the same variable, but he did the equation wrong...
X = [0.05-0.95]
# of hits over 20 rolls (avg) = 20*X
# of beheadings over 400 rolls = (1/20)*X, or a range from 1 (0.0025) to 19 (0.0475), or approximately 2.5ppt to 47.5ppt, depending on X.

[Andezzar]

0.0025 is exactly 2.5‰. As 0.0475 is exactly 47.5‰

[Baroknik]

0.0025 is exactly 2.5‰. As 0.0475 is exactly 47.5‰

Yeah, I just am used to saying approx for any kind of measurement from working in a lab, but it should be exactly since there are no measurement errors there.

[atemu1234]

0.0025 is exactly 2.5‰. As 0.0475 is exactly 47.5‰

.0025 is exactly .25%.

[Andezzar]

And .25 per 100 is 2.5 per 1000. it is also 1/400 ;)

[SinsI]

Your two variables are not equivalent, you cannot cancel them out that way.

One in every twenty attacks that hits is going to be a threat to behead. After that 1 in 20 natural 20, you must still confirm the crit.
That's why that one natural 20 gives you only X beheadings.


This conformation is at least better odds than 1 in 20, but its still another probability multiplier you have to account for.
That confirmation is exactly the same X that is the probability of getting a hit in the the first place.
You get 20*X hits, and 1*X beheadings.