What items have the worst value?

[rrwoods]

Lots of us have done plenty of thinking about how to maximize the value we get out of our gold at the town's shops. But what about the reverse? Sometimes the DM gives you items you just have no use for ... But are there any items that might appear useful to a party member but are just worse than the gold they'd provide if you sold them?

[Honest Tiefling]

Unless you are a necromancer, orphans are probably up there. Selling them requires quite a few skill checks and you have to dodge angry paladins and they really aren't worth much. And then other player characters complain when you try to gift them one! There's just no pleasing people.

[A_S]

Glove of Storing is a pretty crap deal given that you could sell it for half value and buy three Gloves of the Master Strategist with the proceeds, each of which does the same thing and more.

Potions are pretty awful value.

For most characters, Belts of Magnificence aren't really worth it (though the more MAD the character, the better the value).

[big teej]

Unless you are a necromancer, orphans are probably up there. Selling them requires quite a few skill checks and you have to dodge angry paladins and they really aren't worth much. And then other player characters complain when you try to gift them one! There's just no pleasing people.

oh man I love this. :smallbiggrin:

in response to the OP.

it's all relative.

one could argue that technically *any item* regardless of how over-priced/underwhelming is more useful than the gold it could be sold for, as gold does not stop the dragon from eating you

using (almost) the exact same logic. technically *any item* is less useful than the gold it can be sold for, because that gold can be applied to *anything* that is more useful *to you*

for example. a +3 Shield is worth alot.

compare the Fighter and his +2 shield
vs. the wizard, who...... shocker, doesn't need a shield

but hey
spell components?
a new magic item?

[(Un)Inspired]

oh man I love this. :smallbiggrin:

in response to the OP.

it's all relative.

one could argue that technically *any item* regardless of how over-priced/underwhelming is more useful than the gold it could be sold for, as gold does not stop the dragon from eating you

using (almost) the exact same logic. technically *any item* is less useful than the gold it can be sold for, because that gold can be applied to *anything* that is more useful *to you*

for example. a +3 Shield is worth alot.

compare the Fighter and his +2 shield
vs. the wizard, who...... shocker, doesn't need a shield

but hey
spell components?
a new magic item?

I wish that fighter would sell the shield also and start swinging his weapon two handed.

[Ianuagonde]

A spyglass seems like a good purchase for scouting, sniping or general exploring. Magnifying to twice the size sure helps with Spot checks. And then you find out it costs 1000 gp...

[hicegetraenk]

If we mention the spyglass, don't forget about the waterclock. It also costs 1000, but is usually immobile due to its 200lbs weight. And even the PHB says that it is basically useless, as you might know the exact time, but since nobody else does... :I

[Ianuagonde]

If we mention the spyglass, don't forget about the waterclock. It also costs 1000, but is usually immobile due to its 200lbs weight. And even the PHB says that it is basically useless, as you might know the exact time, but since nobody else does... :I

True, but the OP asked for items that might appear useful to a party member. I've had multiple players over the years inquire after spyglasses. I've never had one that was even remotely interested in a water clock. Your mileage may vary.

[goto124]

Why do I need to know the time anyway?

Can I rig the clock to turn it into an alarm clock?

How do I carry that thing around without spilling it? Even worse when I'm in combat!

[Bullet06320]

Why do I need to know the time anyway?

Can I rig the clock to turn it into an alarm clock?

How do I carry that thing around without spilling it? Even worse when I'm in combat!

I had a rogue drop one out a window on an enemy wizard once, got sneak attack damage for it too

everything has value, sumtimes its circumstanciel, and we all know how creative players can be

[goto124]

Rogue: Perfect timing!
*Wizard groans*

[Gwachitallemall]

The type of clock you want is the one from the wizards of the coast eberron article that casts spells on you, on time.

[Necroticplague]

The type of clock you want is the one from the wizards of the coast eberron article that casts spells on you, on time.

Those thing are useful as heck, though they also cost awhole crap-ton of money. 130,000, to be more specific. (archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a)

[Gwachitallemall]

Which makes them really bad value for what they do, doesn't it? I think most of them don't have the ability to cast more than 4th level spells.. even if they're casting a 4th level spell every 2 hours for the rest of eternity.. That's only worth.. 4*9*2000, correct? or 72,000.

[ZamielVanWeber]

That example has spells above 4th level on it.

[Gwachitallemall]

Does it? Let me look again. So casting an antimagic field out of it would be cheap, 130,000 instead of 240,000. 1st level 2000, 2nd level 12,000, 3rd level 30,000, 4th level 56,000 (Miscalculated earlier), 5th level 90,000 6th level 132,000 (Bingo!) 7th level 182,000, 8th level 240,000, 9th level 306,000. That would be the prices of all those spells on a continuous basis. I don't know if there's spells of each level, I looked but can't determine all the spells offhand, went with 4th because I thought imbue with a spell like ability only gave up to 4th (It actually only gives up to 2nd) But the spells used usually don't determine what the item does, anyways.

[Chronos]

The Ring of Regeneration is pretty poor value. It's got a high price tag because the designers were remembering how it worked in 2nd edition, and 2nd edition rings of regeneration were awesome. In third edition, though, the healing is so slow that you'd probably never even realize you had it on, and it can only work on damage you took while wearing it, so you can't even share it with the party member who needs it at the moment.

[Necroticplague]

Of course, it also gives an example that casts more than one spell, so technically, there's nothing stopping you from getting a spellclock that refreshes a long list of buffs every round, if you don't mind the ticking noise.

[Gwachitallemall]

Of course, it also gives an example that casts more than one spell, so technically, there's nothing stopping you from getting a spellclock that refreshes a long list of buffs every round, if you don't mind the ticking noise.

That example is a plothook one, so I'd consider that in the realm of DM approval only, getting one with a long list of buffs. (It's not under the normal pricing of the spell clock.)

[Svata]

Most wands of fourth-level spells, but especially CCW. You get 4.5454 times the healing of a wand of CLW (1250 on average vs 275 on average) for... 28 times the cost.

[rrwoods]

I figured shields with enhancement bonuses would be the typical answer here.

I do wonder if potions are bad enough to sell. Obviously in-combat healing is famously bad, but if you got enough for each party member to have one, would you keep them for emergencies? If the owner(s) of the wand of lessor vigor are down, it could be nice to feed someone a potion if you're in a really bad spot.



Rogue: Perfect timing!
*Wizard groans*

Oh man, now I want to run an adventure specifically designed to set up this scenario.

[Hunter Noventa]

If you're unlucky enough to get Exotic Magical Weapons as loot, they're pretty much worthless, since no one uses 95% of exotic weapons in the first place.

[Gwachitallemall]

Most wands of fourth-level spells, but especially CCW. You get 4.5454 times the healing of a wand of CLW (1250 on average vs 275 on average) for... 28 times the cost.

Any of the cure spells in any way are far less valuable than wands of vigor/ belts of healing. Belt of healing is 750, can heal 6d8 a day, while wands of lessor vigor could heal 50 points (1 point a round) at minimum caster level for the same cost.

[ZamielVanWeber]

If you're unlucky enough to get Exotic Magical Weapons as loot, they're pretty much worthless, since no one uses 95% of exotic weapons in the first place.

The joy of weapon groups fixes that problem. Now you just need to figure out what the heck your PCs are wielding.

I would argue weapons in general. If I am a spiked chain user with feats designed to better use spiked chains those swords/axes/spears are gonna be worthless to me. Armor is a big crapshoot too. If the DM rolls a +5 fullplate and I have +1 soulfire mithril chainshirt that fullplate is going to market.

[prufock]

The Ring of Regeneration is pretty poor value. It's got a high price tag because the designers were remembering how it worked in 2nd edition, and 2nd edition rings of regeneration were awesome. In third edition, though, the healing is so slow that you'd probably never even realize you had it on, and it can only work on damage you took while wearing it, so you can't even share it with the party member who needs it at the moment.

Agreed. At that price, it should work like actual Regeneration 1. All damage converted to nonlethal (except some specific type, like fire or acid), heal 1 point of nonlethal damage per round.

[Rubik]

Cognizance crystals. You get WAY too many of them when treasure is randomly rolled, you're not allowed to use power points from more than one simultaneously (making most of them virtually useless after a few levels, since most powers don't auto-scale), and unlike pearls of power, which are the spellcasting equivalent, you have to manually charge them up from your own power point reserve. And they're extremely expensive for what little they do.

Also, most epic items. The vast majority of the time, I'd MUCH rather have ten times the amount of my choice of non-epic items for the same cost.

[Flickerdart]

Magnifying to twice the size sure helps with Spot checks.
Does it? Do you halve the distance penalties? Double the check? It would help somehow but AFAIK there are no guidelines on how exactly.

[DeltaEmil]

The Horn(s) of Valhalla are ridiculously overpriced.

For a once per week use, you summon a bunch of really weak barbarians with weird stats (they're human barbarians that are also constructs? Do they have a Con score or not? What are their frigging stats?) and pathetic equipment. They remain for 1 hour, but will probably be gone away sooner once they've been defeated.

The Magic Item Compendium suggests that the Horn of Valhalla is a suitable magic item reward for a level 18 party... It's probably because of the insanely high price of 50,000 gp.

This is the epitome of vendor trash.

[Chronos]

(they're human barbarians that are also constructs? Do they have a Con score or not? What are their frigging stats?)
Just use the default stats for "human" from the Monster Manual.:smalltongue:

[Troacctid]

The type of clock you want is the one from the wizards of the coast eberron article that casts spells on you, on time.

I'd just get an eternal wand of vigilant slumber and call it a night.

[Calimehter]

Unless you are a necromancer, orphans are probably up there. Selling them requires quite a few skill checks and you have to dodge angry paladins and they really aren't worth much. And then other player characters complain when you try to gift them one! There's just no pleasing people.

True, but at least there are virtually no costs associated with making them. Adventurers seem to produce them left and right without so much as a point in Craft(Orphan), so the opportunity cost is kept nice and low.

[Ianuagonde]

Does it? Do you halve the distance penalties? Double the check? It would help somehow but AFAIK there are no guidelines on how exactly.

You're right! I just halved the penalty (-1 per 20 feet instead of 10), but I can't find any rule to back that up. Which makes it even more useless: 1000 gp for an item that appears to be somewhat useful, but doesn't do anything.

The spyglass, it does nothing!

[Flickerdart]

You're right! I just halved the penalty (-1 per 20 feet instead of 10), but I can't find any rule to back that up. Which makes it even more useless: 1000 gp for an item that appears to be somewhat useful, but doesn't do anything.

The spyglass, it does nothing!
The silliest interpretation I've seen is since a Large creature is twice the size of a Medium one and that's a -4 penalty on Hide, a spyglass lets you treat everything as 1 size category larger for Spot penalties/bonuses.

[Telok]

+1 weapons fit the bill in my book. Spend 2000 gold for +1 damage. Someone will whine about DR and incorporeal but the potions to bypass that are 50 gold or you can snag an eternal wand for half of what the weapon costs and make any weapon or ammo magical.

The only reason people get +1 weapons is because it's a required tax to get weapon enchantments that actually do anything.

Club = 0 gold, masterwork = 300 gold, +1 = 2000 gold. You take 2000 gold to get a +1 to damage.

[Svata]

2300, it has to be masterwork to be magic. Also, +1 to-hit, as well as damage.

[Flickerdart]

2300, it has to be masterwork to be magic. Also, +1 to-hit, as well as damage.
You get the +1 to-hit from the 300gp masterwork component. The 2000gp for a fully magic weapon is just +1 damage cause it doesn't stack the to-hit.

[Rubik]

You get the +1 to-hit from the 300gp masterwork component. The 2000gp for a fully magic weapon is just +1 damage cause it doesn't stack the to-hit.And even worse, the gp cost skyrockets as you add on more pluses to the weapon. The original is +2,300 gp for +1 to hit and +1 damage. A +10 weapon is 200,300 gp for +10 to hit and +10 damage. That first +1 just ballooned to cost 20,030 gp, and it's not even worth bothering with, aside from letting you use more powerful weapon augment crystals, which is almost assuredly hardly worth it.

[Krobar]

The joy of weapon groups fixes that problem. Now you just need to figure out what the heck your PCs are wielding.

I would argue weapons in general. If I am a spiked chain user with feats designed to better use spiked chains those swords/axes/spears are gonna be worthless to me. Armor is a big crapshoot too. If the DM rolls a +5 fullplate and I have +1 soulfire mithril chainshirt that fullplate is going to market.

In our game those "useless" things go into my bard's armory and he pays the party for them. Over several years of gaming he has built up one heck of a collection of enchanted arms and armors.

[Jack_Simth]

Those thing are useful as heck, though they also cost awhole crap-ton of money. 130,000, to be more specific. (archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a)
Actually, if you look into the article, they're ridiculously cheap for what they do. Not because of the specific price... but because the price of the clock is fixed regardless of spell or how often. Theoretically, a Spell Clock that uses the item creation clause of Wish to produce a Luckblade containing Three Wishes once per minute is the exact same price as a spell clock set to cast Mage Armor once per day on whoever happens to be touching the clock at the time.

[goto124]

True, but at least there are virtually no costs associated with making them. Adventurers seem to produce them left and right without so much as a point in Craft(Orphan), so the opportunity cost is kept nice and low.

Adventurers can reproduce?

[Gwachitallemall]

Actually, if you look into the article, they're ridiculously cheap for what they do. Not because of the specific price... but because the price of the clock is fixed regardless of spell or how often. Theoretically, a Spell Clock that uses the item creation clause of Wish to produce a Luckblade containing Three Wishes once per minute is the exact same price as a spell clock set to cast Mage Armor once per day on whoever happens to be touching the clock at the time.

Good luck getting a DM to let you make one with Wish..

Theoretically, they can be made with any spell, however, I wouldn't do any more spells than what the typical ones cast. 1, It's made for Eberron, where level 17 casters are slim to rare, 2, Wish is just.. ugh. Giving 1 luckblade a minute is... just all sorts of wrong.

[Rubik]

Adventurers can reproduce?Yes, though generally they come to regret it. But that's not what generally happens. They use happy children as the raw materials to craft the orphans. They're generally only worth three times as much, since producing masterwork orphans is somewhat difficult, but when you do get them, they take levels in PC classes and become adventurers hells-bent on revenge.

[Necroticplague]

Actually, if you look into the article, they're ridiculously cheap for what they do. Not because of the specific price... but because the price of the clock is fixed regardless of spell or how often. Theoretically, a Spell Clock that uses the item creation clause of Wish to produce a Luckblade containing Three Wishes once per minute is the exact same price as a spell clock set to cast Mage Armor once per day on whoever happens to be touching the clock at the time.

I'm more than aware of that. I was going to type something to that effect earlier, but my keyboard wasn't working. And I did a little with my mention how technically you could just make one with a list of buffs as long as your arm that it refreshes every round.

[nedz]

Helm of Underwater Action 24,000 gp
A solid item in AD&D, pretty useless in 3.5

[Rubik]

Helm of Underwater Action 24,000 gp
A solid item in AD&D, pretty useless in 3.5But essential for the Craft: Underwater Basket Weaving skill, especially by air-breathers.

[Almarck]

The Horn(s) of Valhalla are ridiculously overpriced.

For a once per week use, you summon a bunch of really weak barbarians with weird stats (they're human barbarians that are also constructs? Do they have a Con score or not? What are their frigging stats?) and pathetic equipment. They remain for 1 hour, but will probably be gone away sooner once they've been defeated.

The Magic Item Compendium suggests that the Horn of Valhalla is a suitable magic item reward for a level 18 party... It's probably because of the insanely high price of 50,000 gp.

This is the epitome of vendor trash.

The reason this is poor value might have to do because it's a "classic" item from earlier editions. I will agree it's probably overbudgetted for what it can do relative to "modern" magic items of the same effect.

Granted, since it's a once per week infinite useitem, it's not totally useless in the right hands. It's probably more in line with a 10th level party reward (instead of for a single person)

[Jack_Simth]

Good luck getting a DM to let you make one with Wish..

Theoretically, they can be made with any spell, however, I wouldn't do any more spells than what the typical ones cast. 1, It's made for Eberron, where level 17 casters are slim to rare, 2, Wish is just.. ugh. Giving 1 luckblade a minute is... just all sorts of wrong.
I know. I was really pointing out just how badly the item was written (hence also including the 1 Mage Armor/day). Sorry if I wasn't clearer.

It's especially bad that it's done that way as:
In the magic device trap rules (which are Core - DMG), we've already got a simple scaling-cost mechanism for setting things off at arbitrary intervals. A Timed (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#timed) Automatic Reset (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#automatic) Magic Device Trap (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost) of the base Wish (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm) (5,000 xp, 9th level spell, caster level 17) would be:
GP: 500*17*9 + 500*5000=2,576,500 gp
XP: 40*17*9=6,120 xp
Time: GP Cost / 500 = 5,153 days = A little over 14 years.

Including enough of an XP component to do the full Luck Blade (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#luckBlade):
When used to make a magic item, the XP cost of the Wish goes up by twice the amount needed to craft the item. In the case of a Luck Blade with three Wishes, that would be twice 5,718 XP, so 11,436 XP in addition to the standard 5,000 XP cost for Wish. Adding that into the above yields:
GP: 500*17*9 + 500*5000 + 500*11436=8,294,500 gp
XP: 40*17*9=6,120 xp
Time: GP Cost / 500 = 16,589 days = Almost 45.5 years.

... which, given what it does, is much more reasonable (as long as you're not, you know, using the simple shortcut of Gating in a Wish-granting creature to make the thing for 1,000 xp, one 9th level spell slot, and one standard action...).


Edit: Oh, hey: That's interesting. The Luck Blade discounts the XP cost of Wish, migrating much of it to a GP cost. The Ring of Three Wishes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#threeWishes) on the other hand, keeps the full XP cost. Strange. By Luckblade pricing, crafting a Wish costs just 1,612 XP and 20,150 gp. Really odd.

[Pex]

Sunrods and torches - when you need them the most you don't want to use them, but you have to use them and get screwed by enemies who don't need them.

[Telok]

Sunrods and torches - when you need them the most you don't want to use them, but you have to use them and get screwed by enemies who don't need them.

Well that's because there are too many monsters with darkvision. 9 out of 15 monster types have darkvision and everything but humanoids has low-light. Then add in individual monster races with darkvision and cross reference that with the range of monsters used in a campaign. Essentially only humans have no vision boost and anything without darkvision has low-light.

Since most people play humans for the extra feat and almost everything but humans has enhanced vision or uses other senses you have the "I'm a target in the dark" issue most of the time. But it's mostly the fact that there's too much darkvision around in the monster manuals.

[atemu1234]

The reason this is poor value might have to do because it's a "classic" item from earlier editions. I will agree it's probably overbudgetted for what it can do relative to "modern" magic items of the same effect.

Granted, since it's a once per week infinite useitem, it's not totally useless in the right hands. It's probably more in line with a 10th level party reward (instead of for a single person)

So basically you could slice the market price in half, then?

[Almarck]

So basically you could slice the market price in half, then?

Hm, you could. It's not that expensive, but it's not completely useless either.

[Qwertystop]

The silliest interpretation I've seen is since a Large creature is twice the size of a Medium one and that's a -4 penalty on Hide, a spyglass lets you treat everything as 1 size category larger for Spot penalties/bonuses.

That leads to something sillier: a magic spyglass. When looking at a creature through it, you can treat that creature as one size category larger for all purposes. For example, now they give you cover against ranged attacks and can't hide behind that bush effectively! :smallbiggrin:

Look through it the wrong way to have them treated as smaller.

[Sam K]

Unless you are a necromancer, orphans are probably up there. Selling them requires quite a few skill checks and you have to dodge angry paladins and they really aren't worth much. And then other player characters complain when you try to gift them one! There's just no pleasing people.

Orphans are the de facto interface for manipulating alignment. If you're not finding a way to make good use of them, you're not trying!

You could charge paladins money for being allowed to play with them. Being nice to orphans is the prefered way to brush up on your good alignment, after all. You can then blackmail the paladin, because "paying to play with orphans" sound so creepy! Double profit from that one!

People with VoP are required to give all of their wealth to orphans (not strictly RAW, but you know that was how they intended the feat to work). Use suggestion to make someone THINK they have VoP, and they will be forced to give all of their worldly belongings to the nearest orphan. This is what you call a loot piniata.

They are a vital component in the little-known summon murderhobo spell. If you want to summon a group of dull-witted, over-geared murderdins, just introduce the orphan to a hungry monster, and 4-6 level-appropriate thugs will show up to save it.

You can use them to barter with evil outsiders summoned through planar binding. Make those stereotypes work for you!

Finally, if you have the money, you can resurrect their parents and kill them for xp. Seriously, life can't be ALL about level-appropriate encounters. Sometimes you just gotta have some fun!

[P.F.]

Spyglass is 1000 gp worth of telling your friends you own the most expensive item in the Player's Handbook.