How does Magic Item pricing work?

[Sun Elemental]

As a DM I'm starting to get tired of pre-existing loot tables for Core Pathfinder, and I started making custom items. Table 15-29 in the Core Handbook is very helpful, but doesn't give enough guidance for some items, and doesn't correspond to actual items in the book.
If anyone can provide the math / logic behind these, I'd be very grateful.

1) Ring of Telekinesis is 75k. It's a use-activated item with unlimited uses, so I thought it'd be 5 x 9 x 2k, or 90k. Is there a discount because of it using the ring slot?

2) Chime of Opening, and consumables that don't have 1 or 50 charges in general. How do you price them? What equation makes a price of just 3k, since it has a really high caster level associated with it.

3) I rolled a Dust of Disappearance for loot, and I turned it into dust that functions as a Potion of Greater Invisibility. Ignoring that potions don't work for lvl4 spells, is that appropriate? It cuts the cost from 3.5k to 1.4k.

3) A custom item that lets you cast a spell 1/day, but the caster level is the user's character level, not the creator's level. For example, a charm that lets you use Magic Vestment 1/day at your level. I had the intention of letting players use their old armor longer, sort of an E6, low magic concept. But how would it be priced?

[Troacctid]

As a DM I'm starting to get tired of pre-existing loot tables for Core Pathfinder, and I started making custom items. Table 15-29 in the Core Handbook is very helpful, but doesn't give enough guidance for some items, and doesn't correspond to actual items in the book.
If anyone can provide the math / logic behind these, I'd be very grateful.
The correct way to determine the value of a custom item is to compare it to existing items in the game. The table (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Estimating-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece-Values) should only be used as a rough guideline if you can't find a similar item.


1) Ring of Telekinesis is 75k. It's a use-activated item with unlimited uses, so I thought it'd be 5 x 9 x 2k, or 90k. Is there a discount because of it using the ring slot?
No, that's just what it costs.


2) Chime of Opening, and consumables that don't have 1 or 50 charges in general. How do you price them? What equation makes a price of just 3k, since it has a really high caster level associated with it.
Compare them to similar items. A good comparison for a Chime of Opening would be a partially charged wand of Knock.


3) I rolled a Dust of Disappearance for loot, and I turned it into dust that functions as a Potion of Greater Invisibility. Ignoring that potions don't work for lvl4 spells, is that appropriate? It cuts the cost from 3.5k to 1.4k.
Dust of Disappearance is somewhat more powerful than a potion of Greater Invisibility because it can't be seen through by magical means. Reducing the cost as you describe is probably fine.


3) A custom item that lets you cast a spell 1/day, but the caster level is the user's character level, not the creator's level. For example, a charm that lets you use Magic Vestment 1/day at your level. I had the intention of letting players use their old armor longer, sort of an E6, low magic concept. But how would it be priced?
It's basically a static bonus to AC, so the most comparable items would probably be a Ring of Protection or an Amulet of Natural Armor.

[Sun Elemental]

Compare them to similar items. A good comparison for a Chime of Opening would be a partially charged wand of Knock.

That's a good point, a wand of Knock at CL 11 with 10 charges is 3,300.



It's basically a static bonus to AC, so the most comparable items would probably be a Ring of Protection or an Amulet of Natural Armor.
That's not helpful though. :smallannoyed:
If I want to hand out a 2k Ring +1 at level 1, I can.
If I want to hand out an 18k Ring +3 at level 12, I can.
If it scales to level, what should it cost?

[Sliver]

Do you want to know the price in case they sell the item, or to determine the wealth the character has?

In Ronin Arts' Athenaeum Arcana they created Mallyate, a material that can transform into various weapons and armors with a magical enchantment that scales with level. They didn't give it a market price, but for the purpose of determining how much wealth the character has, priced the Mallyate according to the current bonus that it had, meaning that it scaled as the characters leveled up.

If you don't intend for your item to be something that goes on the market, you could take a similar approach.

[AslanCross]

This is not in Pathfinder, and I am not sure if PF has equivalent rules, but this is how magic items can be costed. Refer to the second table.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm


EDIT: Found it on the Pathfinder SRD.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece-Values

[Sun Elemental]

Do you want to know the price in case they sell the item, or to determine the wealth the character has?

Both.

If I only cared about WBL, then I'd be ok with an item that grows in value as characters do. And I do care about WBL.
But it's distinctly possible that players will craft, buy or barter for scaling items, and I want to try to approximate their value. A magic item merchant has no idea if he's selling to a lvl1 apprentice or a lvl15 master. He has to sell at the same, constant price. But depending on who buys it, the item will perform dramatically differently.
I realize that I'm asking something that isn't in the rules, and you'll have to go beyond RAW. It's not a totally alien idea, Staves already have the same concept. I'm just trying to make items that work like Staves that start at caster level 1.

So far, the options seem like:

1) Normal magic items with numerical bonuses. Higher level characters can sacrifice treasure to improve them, exactly the same as an enchanter normally improving an item. Only benefit is that you don't need to have the feats or CL to improve items. Also, items can't un-improve to represent high level characters giving appropriately powerful items to low level characters.

2) A magic item that scales with level, and is priced as if the default CL is somewhere between 1 and 20. Basically, everything works like a Staff. The benefit is that it'll eventually be useful to high level characters, at a sacrifice to their lower level selves who paid extra. And the item has a constant price.

3) Something else?

[Sliver]

Then I think simply averaging the cost between the lowest price and highest price points (or decide on what the high point should be for price, if you don't want to set an upper cap on it) would be the best. If you want to make it more accessible then you could lower the price (Wouldn't cut it by more than 25%), or if you want to say that it's of greater value due to scaling, raise it (Same here, a 25% or less raise).

[Zakier]

For the ring take the cost of it at every even level add it all together then divide by 5. Yes it will be higher priced than whT you might be expecting but this is basically an item that should be considered near lesser artifact. It is useful at any level N really never loses its usefulness.it can also be enchanted with more effects manually. It's usefulness is taken into consideration in this event.

If you still feel the price is too low or too high begin raising or lowering the price by 25% at a time. At each new cost ask yourself, would I buy it? If a definate yes, it's too low. If he'll no, it's too high. Adjust again until you can say "maybe but I would have to give it some thought" then you know the price is perfect.

[Seerow]

For the ring take the cost of it at every even level add it all together then divide by 5. Yes it will be higher priced than whT you might be expecting but this is basically an item that should be considered near lesser artifact. It is useful at any level N really never loses its usefulness.it can also be enchanted with more effects manually. It's usefulness is taken into consideration in this event.

If you still feel the price is too low or too high begin raising or lowering the price by 25% at a time. At each new cost ask yourself, would I buy it? If a definate yes, it's too low. If he'll no, it's too high. Adjust again until you can say "maybe but I would have to give it some thought" then you know the price is perfect.

So given this line of reasoning, the scaling Ring of Protection would range between 16.5k and 27.5k, with the actual average being at 22k. I'd probably peg it as around 20k, but understand that in a game where crafting and buying magic items is available, this is actually going to be unbalanced simply because players will avoid picking it up until it is more efficient than other options.

On the other hand, more efficient AC boosters at high level isn't exactly a bad thing (given how irrelevant AC becomes past level 6 or so), so it should be fine... just be careful what you apply these sorts of scaling bonuses to.

[Endarire]

How does Magic Item pricing work?

Arbitrarily. If you're the GM, determine how much wealth ('effort') you want an item to represent for buying, selling, or/and using. Consider how much wealth you give per session (apprxomiately or absolutely) and go from there.