tygah
2015-07-31, 02:10 PM
This was something I came up with while trying to find ways to make Psionics come in new flavours.
For those not familiar (or who don't want to go look it up) Soul Crystal is a 7th level Psionic power on page 107-8 of Magic of Incarnum. You manifest it, taking a bit of a psion as yet unborn, one of your powers and some of your power points and make a crystal that anyone can then use to manifest that power. Apparently, without even the need for a Use Psionic Device check.
There's also no easy way to figure out just what these things should cost, because, well, Wizards never assumed you'd be getting them that way. But theoretically speaking, there could well be a market. So I sat down to figure out a price. That's where I'm after the input - does this seem right to you, too high/low? I aimed to have it more expensive than a Dorje since you appear to need no UPD check and can augment it as long as there are PP left in the Soul Crystal.
For the example here, I've assumed a 14th level Kineticist, making a Soul Crystal of Energy Missile.
First, we need to assume that you're paying someone to manifest the Soul Crystal power, just as if you'd paid someone pre-game when you bought that Dorje.
The Player's Handbook has a table of what it costs to hire a spellcaster, so if we assume that Spell = Power and Caster = Manifester, and the PHB gives us this line:
Spell, 7th-level ... Caster level × 70 gp
7*14*70=980gp so far.
I based the next part off the cost to make a Dorje of Energy Missile. The XPH says:
The base price of a dorje is its manifester level × the power level × 750 gp
Again, filling in the numbers for our Kineticist manifesting Energy Missile gives us 14*2*750=21000
This assumes of course that you wish to be able to manifest at the highest available level, in this case 14. Change the figures accordingly for lower.
Total cost so far: 21,980gp
Third, the manifester has to decide how many PP to put into the Soul Crystal for the recipient to use. Higher amounts may require Cognizance Crystals or some other form of getting more PP. Perhaps multiple can contribute to the making, but that'd increase the cost in the first step, as you'd need a second manifester. We won't touch on this here.
A Dorje has 50 uses of an item, and this power costs 3PP unaugmented, giving us 50*3=150PP (which will need to be calculated accordingly for any other power, of course). In order to remain with the theme of 'better than a dorje', we'll assume that 50*(Power's base PP cost) is the minimum amount of PP that need to be put in.
Since there exist no easy means of guessing the gold cost of a power point, I've arbitrarily assigned PP as having a cost of 100gp per PP.
For this example, 150PP = 15000gp.
Total cost so far: 36,980gp
Granted that, with this example Soul Crystal, anyone who picks it up can do some pretty insane things. With a manifester level of 14, and a base PP cost of 3, this means this can be augmented (+1 PP to gain +1d6 and +1 to save DC), according to RAW limitlessly barring manifester level, which means we can end up with +11d6 and +11 to DC on top of the original 3d6 of the power, which is quite impressive and quite probably a bit broken, so some kind of upper limit ought to be imposed.
But that upper limit aside (as it ought to be on the power, not the Soul Crystal IMO) what do you think of my (attempt at) pricing a Soul Crystal?
Edit: Okay, it's been pointed out I made an oversight - namely that Soul Crystal has a duration on it. Short of finding a way to avoid, bypass, extend or in any other way mitigate this, I can't think of a way this is actually viable.
For those not familiar (or who don't want to go look it up) Soul Crystal is a 7th level Psionic power on page 107-8 of Magic of Incarnum. You manifest it, taking a bit of a psion as yet unborn, one of your powers and some of your power points and make a crystal that anyone can then use to manifest that power. Apparently, without even the need for a Use Psionic Device check.
There's also no easy way to figure out just what these things should cost, because, well, Wizards never assumed you'd be getting them that way. But theoretically speaking, there could well be a market. So I sat down to figure out a price. That's where I'm after the input - does this seem right to you, too high/low? I aimed to have it more expensive than a Dorje since you appear to need no UPD check and can augment it as long as there are PP left in the Soul Crystal.
For the example here, I've assumed a 14th level Kineticist, making a Soul Crystal of Energy Missile.
First, we need to assume that you're paying someone to manifest the Soul Crystal power, just as if you'd paid someone pre-game when you bought that Dorje.
The Player's Handbook has a table of what it costs to hire a spellcaster, so if we assume that Spell = Power and Caster = Manifester, and the PHB gives us this line:
Spell, 7th-level ... Caster level × 70 gp
7*14*70=980gp so far.
I based the next part off the cost to make a Dorje of Energy Missile. The XPH says:
The base price of a dorje is its manifester level × the power level × 750 gp
Again, filling in the numbers for our Kineticist manifesting Energy Missile gives us 14*2*750=21000
This assumes of course that you wish to be able to manifest at the highest available level, in this case 14. Change the figures accordingly for lower.
Total cost so far: 21,980gp
Third, the manifester has to decide how many PP to put into the Soul Crystal for the recipient to use. Higher amounts may require Cognizance Crystals or some other form of getting more PP. Perhaps multiple can contribute to the making, but that'd increase the cost in the first step, as you'd need a second manifester. We won't touch on this here.
A Dorje has 50 uses of an item, and this power costs 3PP unaugmented, giving us 50*3=150PP (which will need to be calculated accordingly for any other power, of course). In order to remain with the theme of 'better than a dorje', we'll assume that 50*(Power's base PP cost) is the minimum amount of PP that need to be put in.
Since there exist no easy means of guessing the gold cost of a power point, I've arbitrarily assigned PP as having a cost of 100gp per PP.
For this example, 150PP = 15000gp.
Total cost so far: 36,980gp
Granted that, with this example Soul Crystal, anyone who picks it up can do some pretty insane things. With a manifester level of 14, and a base PP cost of 3, this means this can be augmented (+1 PP to gain +1d6 and +1 to save DC), according to RAW limitlessly barring manifester level, which means we can end up with +11d6 and +11 to DC on top of the original 3d6 of the power, which is quite impressive and quite probably a bit broken, so some kind of upper limit ought to be imposed.
But that upper limit aside (as it ought to be on the power, not the Soul Crystal IMO) what do you think of my (attempt at) pricing a Soul Crystal?
Edit: Okay, it's been pointed out I made an oversight - namely that Soul Crystal has a duration on it. Short of finding a way to avoid, bypass, extend or in any other way mitigate this, I can't think of a way this is actually viable.