Value of One Round of Life

[Afgncaap5]

I've got a weird magic item that I'm trying to price before getting it into my game, and it's making me wonder just what the monetary value of one round of not dying would be.

The basic concept of the item is a magical chain that tethers the soul to its corporeal form and keeps the body shambling on in some semblance of life. Every round that a body has -10 hit points or less, the body remains "alive" and "dying" (or just "alive" if someone stabilizes the body at or below -10 hp), but one of the links of the chain burns away into nothing. Is there a comparable item that I can use to figure out the price-per-link of an item like that?

(Another similar item would be a tiny piece of jewelry-style chain that can loop around a weapon and, every time it deals damage, add an extra hit die of damage to what the weapon deals, again burning away one link each time. I'm not as concerned about working that one into the game, though. They were given two chains made by a person who's mastered the magic of chains, and told that "one is for offense, and the other for defense" and at the time I wasn't sure what the payoff for that would be.)

[atemu1234]

Greater Celerity +/- Time Stop?

[Surpriser]

If you only want a small boost comparable to the chain for weapons, I would suggest simply treating them as unconscious (as if they were at -9 hp).
The chain is then simply a few extra rounds for the cleric to sweep in with the cure spells (or a well placed potion).

As for the price, cure minor wounds automatically stabilizes one creature (plus 1hp), which is a slightly weaker effect. I would price a single link just as a use-activated item of a 1st level spell, i.e. 50gp.
This brings it at the same level as a potion of cure light wounds which seems about right (it does not cure hp, but it activates automatically and has no limit on how far in the negatives the user can be)

If you want the chain to confer an ability similar to Deathless Frenzy of the Frenzied Berserker (you don't care about hp damage as long as you have links left), this would increase the price by a lot, to somewhere between 300gp (2nd level spell) and 1000gp per link.

[heavyfuel]

Closest thing I can think of would be the "Loyal Beyond Death" capstone feature from the Knight class.

Compare it to, say, Evasion, acquireable at lv 2 by all most classes that have it. And a Ring of Evasion, priced at 25k (though the Ring is better, as can be used in heavy armor)

Using squared progression (standard for most items), an item that requires ten times as many levels this item should cost 10^2 times as much, or, 2'500'000 GP. Since it's broken the threshhold for non-epic items, it costs 10 times as much, making the total cost around 25'000'000 GP.


You could also make a Contingecy Raise Dead item. It requires CL 15 and someone that can cast both Raise Dead and Contingency (probably a Mystic Theurge), so it should be pretty rare. This item price for the contingency alone should cost 6*15*1800*2, or 324'000 times 10 for being epic. That doesn't take into acount the Raise Dead spell.

Didn't see that OP wanted the characters just "dying" and not fully alive.

Anyway, custom item of Delay Death works perfectly. The value of a round of dying isn't much though, as in a world where mid level spells exist (4th~6th level), a Raise Dead spell shouldn't be too hard to acquire.

[Afgncaap5]

Greater Celerity +/- Time Stop?

Actually, if examined I was going to have the spell at work be most similar to False Life. It's not a direct application of the spell, but it's definitely in the right thematic ball park (and if the Elixirs can get away with it, so can I.)


If you only want a small boost comparable to the chain for weapons, I would suggest simply treating them as unconscious (as if they were at -9 hp).
The chain is then simply a few extra rounds for the cleric to sweep in with the cure spells (or a well placed potion).

As for the price, cure minor wounds automatically stabilizes one creature (plus 1hp), which is a slightly weaker effect. I would price a single link just as a use-activated item of a 1st level spell, i.e. 50gp.
This brings it at the same level as a potion of cure light wounds which seems about right (it does not cure hp, but it activates automatically and has no limit on how far in the negatives the user can be)

If you want the chain to confer an ability similar to Deathless Frenzy of the Frenzied Berserker (you don't care about hp damage as long as you have links left), this would increase the price by a lot, to somewhere between 300gp (2nd level spell) and 1000gp per link.

It's a bit like Deathless Frenzy or the Knight's Loyal Beyond Death ability in that a person can keep losing hit points and just "not be dead", but they won't have any actual actions to use (so "unconscious" is a good category for a chain wearer at that point). I'd been thinking around 300 gp per link, so that might be the right neighborhood.

[Janthkin]

"Delay Death" is a 4th level Cleric spell that prevents death from HP loss for min/CL, as an Immediate action. Sounds like you want a Wondrous Item (no slot), with a fixed number of charges - something like 4 (spell level) * 7 (min caster level for Delay Death) * 50 (single use, use-activated) * 2 (no slot) = 2800gp/link. That's probably erring on the high-side, but you have to fudge a bit to account for the difference between use-activated and the "contingency"-like effect.

You could also just price out "Craft Contingent Spell" for Delay Death (which coincidentally looks like 2800 gp), although you have the advantage here of having multiple such in your "chain," and being able to pass it around (but presumably at the cost of 1 round per link rather than 7 minutes/link).

If you want an ambulatory non-corpse, sounds like you're rolling in the Die Hard feat (which has Endurance as a pre-req). That would push the value up.

[Afgncaap5]

"Delay Death" is a 4th level Cleric spell that prevents death from HP loss for min/CL, as an Immediate action. Sounds like you want a Wondrous Item (no slot), with a fixed number of charges - something like 4 (spell level) * 7 (min caster level for Delay Death) * 50 (single use, use-activated) * 2 (no slot) = 2800gp/link. That's probably erring on the high-side, but you have to fudge a bit to account for the difference between use-activated and the "contingency"-like effect.

You could also just price out "Craft Contingent Spell" for Delay Death (which coincidentally looks like 2800 gp), although you have the advantage here of having multiple such in your "chain," and being able to pass it around (but presumably at the cost of 1 round per link rather than 7 minutes/link).

If you want an ambulatory non-corpse, sounds like you're rolling in the Die Hard feat (which has Endurance as a pre-req). That would push the value up.

Actually... Delay Death would be about right, especially if each chain is artificially reduced to having a caster level of 1 for the purposes of the effect. Admittedly a lower level than it takes to cast the spell (even the lower 3rd level version from Miniatures Handbook) but if treated as a CL 1 for a 3rd or 4th level spell a lot of it starts to "feel" right for the theme of the character who made it.