Creating a new item - Pricing question

[thecrimsondawn]

I am a focused mythic crafter in our game and one of our players is looking into using poison on his weapons. However poison is rather costly, and is used up rather quickly. Thinking on my ability to create really just about anything, I starting to wonder if I could make a weapon with endless poison uses.

Thinking on how to do this, first I considered the poison spell of course. This would work for what he is trying to do, but there are a lot of poison types and I would like a good idea on the cost to make one on the poison list.

The second idea is reviewing the craft construct rules. If you look under the creation of a homunculus, one of the options is using 50 potions to give it a spell like ability 1/day. I considered the cost of 50 doses of poison to be akin to 50 charges of a wand for the magic item chart. This would work save the fact that there is no spell level or caster level involved.

The next thought I had was the use of a spell able to create the poison non stop, sort of like a self filling dispenser. The spell Minor Creation caught my eye for this, but its kinda a grey area. If I was to use this spell as the base, then I feel as a player and in all sense of fairness due to how strong some poison is, also add in the cost of the poison as a material component. This would still come out rather cheap depending on the poison tho.

Lastly I saw this reading over the magic item rules. "4 If item is continuous or unlimited, not charged, determine cost as if it had 100 charges. If it has some daily limit, determine as if it had 50 charges. "
So you could say that 100 doses would be the total price, but magic is involved here so an additional cost would need to be added, but what I wonder...


I would like anyone's thoughts or suggestions on this.

[Florian]

Poison is a tough topic to handle. What class are we talking about here?

[Doc_Maynot]

Assuming you are a Wizard, the cost for the "Use-activated or continuous" item of minor creation would cost 112,000g. 56,000g to craft. That is assuming you are making a slotless item, like a container for them to house the infinite poison, like...

Vial of Pestilence
Aura moderate Conjuration; CL 7th; Weight -
Slot none; Price 112,000g

Description
This unassuming vial with a small dial at its base first appears to be nothing of note, that is, until one places poison inside. Afterwards anyone attempting to dispense its contents finds that it will supply an unending amount of the poison placed inside. However, one may twist the dial at the bottom, to allow one to dispense the vial of poison without its magic resupplying it, and place another poison inside.

Construction Requirements
Craft Wondrous Item, minor creation; Cost 56,000g

Cut the cost by 25% if it's a function of the weapon.

[Knight Magenta]

A disruption (http://archivesofnethys.com/MagicWeaponsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Disruption) weapon is a +2 bonus and has a powerful save-or-die rider that affects only a subset of enemies. I could see something like that for poison.

An example:

Venomous
Aura strong conjuration CL 14th
Slot weapon quality; Price +2 bonus; Weight —
Description
A venomous weapon begins to drip with poison on command. Any creature struck in combat must succeed at a DC 16 Fort save or be affected by the weapon's poison. A venomous weapon must be either a slashing or piercing weapon.
venomous weapon poison: Injury, DC 16, 1d3 con damage, cure 1 save, 1/round for 6 rounds.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, poison; Price —

[Kudaku]

Well, the Dagger of Venom charges (8,302 - 2k for +1 -302 for mw) 6k for the ability to use a poison effect 1/day.

The Poisoner's Jacket allows you to make 3 vials of bad poison a day for 12k, or (greater jacket) one vial of good poison a day for 58k. Note that these still require you to apply the poison and it's still used up after one attack.

Arachnid's Fang comes in at (18,302 - 2k for +1 - 302 for mw) 16k. It allows you to store eight doses of poison in a dagger, you can choose to release each dose as a free action once a target is struck. It doesn't actually create the poison, you have to procure that elsewhere.

The Toxic weapon quality is a +2 bonus, increases the save dc of a poison by 2, and adds a 25% chance that the poison dose will not be expended by an attack.

Serpent's Fang is priced at (10,302 -2k for +1 -302 for mw) at 8k. It lets you store up to five doses of poison in the dagger, and can apply a poison stored inside the dagger as a swift action.

Finally, there's the Injecting special ability. A +1 bonus, it allows you to store up to three doses of poison in a bladed weapon and apply the poison with a swift action.

Reading between the lines, there are some decent ways to effectively apply poison in combat - at low levels the character can simply keep multiple poisoned weapons on hand, at higher levels where he wants to use a single magic weapon he can go with Injecting or one of the special weapons. The tricky part is getting poisons with DCs that matter without paying an arm and a leg in the process.

How about a magic Snake idol that can be milked for X doses of poison a day? Have the DC scale with the wielder's level based on what kind of poison he wants to create. 10 + 1/2 level, maybe?

[thecrimsondawn]

Assuming you are a Wizard, the cost for the "Use-activated or continuous" item of minor creation would cost 112,000g. 56,000g to craft. That is assuming you are making a slotless item, like a container for them to house the infinite poison, like...

Vial of Pestilence
Aura moderate Conjuration; CL 7th; Weight -
Slot none; Price 112,000g

Description
This unassuming vial with a small dial at its base first appears to be nothing of note, that is, until one places poison inside. Afterwards anyone attempting to dispense its contents finds that it will supply an unending amount of the poison placed inside. However, one may twist the dial at the bottom, to allow one to dispense the vial of poison without its magic resupplying it, and place another poison inside.

Construction Requirements
Craft Wondrous Item, minor creation; Cost 56,000g

Cut the cost by 25% if it's a function of the weapon.

Did you create that name, or did you pull it from a book or another source? Trying to find that item but not getting anything.

about 100k range is the acceptable market value math I keep getting for its power level, but that changes quite a bit depending on the poison used I find. This item that you have made/linked acts as endless poison, but does not auto apply it to a weapon, so having it as a part of a weapon would for balance sake, cost more I feel not less. Poison is not really that strong in PF unless you are playing with various different rules. Most things die long before poison has a chance to do any real ability damage, so on the other hand, the lower cost may make sense now that I think more on it...

@Knight Magenta: I was thinking +2 range at first too, but doing to balance test that would not work. I could drop 18k (half crafted) to make a +1 eternal poison weapon (for lack of a better name), and choose what poison to have endless on it. What that means is that it would pay for itself after 15 or so swings, because everyone would use a really good poison for this if that was the case. Because of that fact alone, I feel this is not a balanced option.

@Florian: Stalker from path of war, however class does not really matter here. Anyone can make poison with craft alch, and anyone can apply it too with a very small fail chance. Some can do it a little better then others, and path of war just happens to have a whole style dedicated to poison and stat damage.

[Doc_Maynot]

Did you create that name, or did you pull it from a book or another source? Trying to find that item but not getting anything.

about 100k range is the acceptable market value math I keep getting for its power level, but that changes quite a bit depending on the poison used I find. This item that you have made/linked acts as endless poison, but does not auto apply it to a weapon, so having it as a part of a weapon would for balance sake, cost more I feel not less. Poison is not really that strong in PF unless you are playing with various different rules. Most things die long before poison has a chance to do any real ability damage, so on the other hand, the lower cost may make sense now that I think more on it...


No, I just built the item using the price estimates and then added the fluffy bits, tried to make it inline with most entries. The reason it would cost less if part of the weapon is that it is a slotless item which increases the cost of the item by 2 but a slotted item would be under the "Items with multiple abilities" rule which would be x1.5 cost.

[Florian]

@thecrimsondawn:

Use of poison and tactics are a pretty important element. Keep in mind that you can concentrate poison by doubling the dose and Alchemist/Rogues can pick a trick to double the dose once more (to quadruple it). Further, keep in mind the rules for concentrating poison, so the more you´re hit with it per round, the harder the DC to resist. Again, Alchemist/Rogue can learn a trick to use poisons twice before the effect wears of.

Your array of tools are already there. "Injecting" can keep three doses of poison, "virloent" will raise the DC and "toxic" will raise the DC as well as giving a flat 25% chance to not waste the poison.

What it comes down to is what poison, when.