Magic Item Price, Help

[Dark Knight Renee]

I need help figuring out the price breakdown of a magic item.


About a year ago, I wrote up a custom magic item based on the Ring of Spell Knowledge (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-spell-knowledge) (and possibly Page of Spell Knowledge (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/page-of-spell-knowledge)). It functions similarly to a standard Ring of Spell Knowledge, but contains more and higher-level spells.

According to my notes the ring contained spells of the following levels:
1st: One spell
3rd: One spell
4th: Two spells
5th: Three spells
6th: One spell
7th: One spell

And the price I'd worked out was as follows: 155,000 gp (slotted item), or 310,000 gp (slotless item).


The game it was meant for never took off, but now I want to use the item for a new game (perhaps with different spell slots) - and for the life of me I can't figure out how I came by those price figures. :smallconfused: Help?

[P.F.]

I need help figuring out the price breakdown of a magic item.
According to my notes the ring contained spells of the following levels:
1st: One spell
3rd: One spell
4th: Two spells
5th: Three spells
6th: One spell
7th: One spell

And the price I'd worked out was as follows: 155,000 gp (slotted item), or 310,000 gp (slotless item).

The game it was meant for never took off, but now I want to use the item for a new game (perhaps with different spell slots) - and for the life of me I can't figure out how I came by those price figures. :smallconfused: Help?

k. The formula for the Page of Spell Knowledge is (spell level squared * 1000), and for Ring of Spell Knowledge it's (spell level squared * 750). So we'll use that as the base for our calculations. Now where it gets interesting is


Multiple Similar Abilities: For items with multiple similar abilities that don't take up space on a character's body, use the following formula: Calculate the price of the single most costly ability, then add 75% of the value of the next most costly ability, plus 1/2 the value of any other abilities.

Multiple Different Abilities: Abilities such as an attack roll bonus or saving throw bonus and a spell-like function are not similar, and their values are simply added together to determine the cost. For items that take up a space on a character's body, each additional power not only has no discount but instead has a 50% increase in price.

I think it's safe to say that a variety of Spell Knowledges count as multiple similar abilities, and so for simplicity's sake we'll look at a page/other-appropriate-slotless-item which doesn't also grant saving throw bonuses or whatever. That puts us in the jurisdiction of (highest ability) + 75%(next highest ability) + 50%(all others combined). So,

Main ability (72)*1000 = 49,000
Next ability (62)*1000*0.75 = 27,000

Other abilities (3(52)+2(42)+(32)+(22)+1) * 1000 * 0.5
= (75+32+9+4+1) * 500 = 60,500

= 136,500 gp for a Lucky Penny of Spells Knowledges (custom slotless wondrous item). Of course different applications of the rules may yield different results, ymmv, &c. Good luck with your magic item!

[Dark Knight Renee]

Good to know I the reason my figures weren't adding up is that whatever I did a year ago was completely wrong :smallsigh: Thanks. :smallsmile:

[Fizban]

I think it's safe to say that a variety of Spell Knowledges count as multiple similar abilities,
Nope! Multiple similar abilities (assuming it's meant the same way as in 3.5) is for abilities that can't be used together. The idea originates from staves: being able to spend a staff charge on either Fireball or Wall of Fire, but still only getting one spell per charge. You could use the idea for other items like say a sword that can turn into a shield, but something that adds multiples spells to your list should not be getting a price break. Yes I'm aware that I'm contradicting the Runestaff formula: they're overpowered to start with from blindly using the staff's multiple similar ability formula when they're drawing from tiered spell slots rather than a single charge pool, and they also at least have some amount of /day limit and restrict you to one staff bond period. For a ring from Pathfinder where Runestaves are not around, it should be 150% for every extra ability tacked on.

Unless of course the game is balanced around round per round combat output only, in which case the extra spells would indeed conflict with each other (though that's still only when they require the same slot to cast, having more options for your higher/lower slots is still worth full price because running out of level X doesn't impact level Y). But most people make spell knowledge items for utility and buffs, not a pile of combat spells. You could split the difference and make instantaneous spells use the multiple similar abilities if there's more than one at a given level, and 150% for the rest, which on your example gives a slight discount at 4-5 but none on the rest.

Main ability: 7th level spell, 36,750
6th: 27,000*1.5= 40,500
5th: variable, from 18,750*(1+0.75+0.5)*1.5 to 18,750*3*1.5 at extremes
4th: variable, either 12,000*(1+0.75)*1.5 to 12,000*2*1.5
3rd: 6,750*1.5= 10,125
1st: 750*1.5=1,125
84375
If blast spells the total is 183,281
If utility spells then 208,875

And that's still taking up (one) ring slot. It's high enough that classically you'd just fiat the price to 200,000 and throw on some passive ability to fill it up if you were using the lower bound.

[P.F.]

Nope! Multiple similar abilities (assuming it's meant the same way as in 3.5) is for abilities that can't be used together. The idea originates from staves: being able to spend a staff charge on either Fireball or Wall of Fire, but still only getting one spell per charge.

Well, the Staff of Power is the cited example of "multiple similar abilities," which includes things like fireball and lightning bolt, instantaneous blasting effects, but also includes levitate and continual flame which are clearly on the overlapping use/utility side of things, and spells like globe of invulnerability which are clearly defensive in nature but may prevent simultaneous use of the other abilities.

Also, multiple pages of spell knowledge don't produce the effects simultaneously; the character using them must still expend his or her own spells per day to cast the spells, similar to the charge cost of using a staff. This also is a point in favor of "multiple similar abilities."

However, the maximum cost for a "Book of Pages of Spells Knowledges," regardless of the similarity or difference of knowledges of different spells, should be equal to the cost of each page individually. As for the ring,



Main ability: 7th level spell, 36,750
6th: 27,000*1.5= 40,500
5th: variable, from 18,750*(1+0.75+0.5)*1.5 to 18,750*3*1.5 at extremes
4th: variable, either 12,000*(1+0.75)*1.5 to 12,000*2*1.5
3rd: 6,750*1.5= 10,125
1st: 750*1.5=1,125
84375
If blast spells the total is 183,281
If utility spells then 208,875

And that's still taking up (one) ring slot. It's high enough that classically you'd just fiat the price to 200,000 and throw on some passive ability to fill it up if you were using the lower bound.

Still looks reasonable to me. You might present these various calculations to your DM, along with the talmudic explanations of how these numbers were derived, and ask him or her to ad-hoc something in the middle.

[Dark Knight Renee]

Unfortunately I am the DM, so deciding how to rule on it is all on me :smallsigh:

... Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Rings of Spell Knowledge reprogrammable? I've been operating under the assumption that assigning spells to them isn't permanent, that you can easily replace the contained spell knowledge with knowledge of a different spell. (Obviously not the Pages, though - but honestly I only mentioned those because I thought they might be involved somehow in the weird price screwup.)

[Fizban]

The rings seem to start out blank at the least, doesn't say weather or not you can replace the spell once the ring has been "taught" but usually there would be no reason to have any sort of mechanic if it wasn't reprogrammable. Presumably they're paying for something extra since if it was just an item-slotted version of the page then it would be half price instead of 3/4. The increase could be due to spontaneous use (see Dragon Magic and the price increase on Memento Magica, pfeh), or being able to change the spell, or maybe being able to get spells not on your class list (just throw all the balancing mechanisms out the window), but there's no way to tell without asking whoever signed off on the item.

The Staff of Power isn't exactly 200,000gp, but I always assumed it was fiat priced with all those exotic and otherwise impossible abilities. Don't know for sure if it's a legacy item from before 3.x though. Where'd you find it referenced for multiple similar abilities? For that matter, where am I getting it from? 3.5 DMG doesn't actually have a specific line for that: it has Multiple Different Abilities (multiply higher item cost by 2, ex: Helm of Brilliance) which I don't think anyone uses. Now that I think about it, I don't remember where the "extra ability at +50%" rule came from either, even though I've used it on some published items that followed the formula exactly. This happens every time magic item pricing comes up :smallsigh:

[P.F.]

Unfortunately I am the DM, so deciding how to rule on it is all on me :smallsigh:

... Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Rings of Spell Knowledge reprogrammable? I've been operating under the assumption that assigning spells to them isn't permanent, that you can easily replace the contained spell knowledge with knowledge of a different spell. (Obviously not the Pages, though - but honestly I only mentioned those because I thought they might be involved somehow in the weird price screwup.)

What Fizban said. Also, the rings seem to be limited to spells of 4th level and lower. The way it's written, it can be used to capture any spell of nth level that you can identify with a spellcraft check. Obviously the ability to know and cast spells not on your class list is a very powerful ability that I might not allow in my campaign.



The Staff of Power isn't exactly 200,000gp, but I always assumed it was fiat priced with all those exotic and otherwise impossible abilities. Don't know for sure if it's a legacy item from before 3.x though. Where'd you find it referenced for multiple similar abilities? For that matter, where am I getting it from? 3.5 DMG doesn't actually have a specific line for that: it has Multiple Different Abilities (multiply higher item cost by 2, ex: Helm of Brilliance) which I don't think anyone uses. Now that I think about it, I don't remember where the "extra ability at +50%" rule came from either, even though I've used it on some published items that followed the formula exactly. This happens every time magic item pricing comes up :smallsigh:

It's in the DMG 3.5 p.282 in the "Behind the Curtain: Magic Item Gold Piece Values" sidebar under the subheading "Multiple Similar Abiities," which ends with the example, "The many spell-like powers of a staff of power are a good example of multiple similar abilities." I actually wrote a note on the table to cf. pp. 282, 288 for clarification on that entry. I don't know if the print copy of PF Core Rulebook has similar language or not however, PRD does not.

[Fizban]

In a sidebar, of course. As incredibly bad of a plan as that always was, at least the DMG has a list of sidebars, unlike some later books. Thanks for the reminder, I should also write that down somewhere.