Magic item pricing Ravenstone Custom Campaign

[Zakier]

In the campaign I'm running the players are going to come across weapons ive designed based on some cross talk they've had about what they would find cool.

Its been a while since ive priced a. Custom item and was hoping g you wonderful people could do so so I can compare my own notes on it.

Here are the items.

Staff of The Thunder God

Type: Quarterstaff
Damage medium: 1d6/1d6
Weight: 4 lb.
Critical: 19-20 /2x

"This staff appears to have been carved from the blackened wood of a tree struck by lightning. Upon close inspection the grain of the wood is in fact tiny carvings of lightning bolts down the entire length of the staff. A faint tingling of electrical energy can be felt while holding the staff."

Once per encounter the staff can be activated upon hitting an enemy to inflict the shocking hands spell CL 6.

Each max die roll of the shocking hands spells damage rolls adds a 10% Chance to activate the special Abilities below.

Hidden Abilities:

Lance of the Thunder God
Bolts of pure white lightning strikes from the sky Hitting the enemy for 1d6 Dam per bolt. Each bolt attempts to paralyze the enemy (DC 10+CL vs Fort) for 1 round. Multiple bolts do not extend the paralysis duration.

The number of bolts that hit the target depend on the number of maximum damage die rolled during the shocking hands damage.

This has no effect in doors unless the lightning has a clear path to the enemy. If however storm clouds of any kind at in fact inside a building. The lightning comes from those clouds instead.

Critical hits do not effect the damage from special Abilities.
Aura:
Moderate Evocation,

Lightning Bolt, Paralysis, Shocking Grasps
CL 6
Base cost


Cudgel of The Hedgewitch Giantess

Weapon type: 3 Great club
Damage: 2d8 Crit 18-20 2x
Weight: 10lbs.

"This Larger two handed club appears gnarled and twisted but is well balanced. Black thorns appear to grow from it giving the club a dangerous appearance."

Hidden ability


Each roll of an 8 on the damage die adds 30%to the chance for a special effect to activate.
Only one ability can activate per encounter.
10 minute Cool down.
If prone enemy

Thorn Binding:
The thorns ok the club lash out followed by vines, these pin the enemy to the ground forcing them to remain prone for 3 rounds or until they break free (DC 20 vs Str) whichever comes first.

If standing direct contact

Whiplash:
When an enemy is struck the thorns whip around the enemy hitting them from behind. Each Thorn that activates (roll a d6 to determine number active) hits for 1d6 of damage using attack roll of the PC.


Aura: Moderate Evocation

Entangling Staff, Whip of Thorns,
CL6

[Fizban]

1/encounter can be priced as a daily ability, 3-4/day is fair (net price is 3/5 or 4/5 of base).

Your wacky thunderbolt this is wacky though. It requires a ton of rolling on every use and the probability of the special effect is low but mostly beyond my ability to calculate. The DC formula you've used (10+cl instead of the standard 10+3/2*spell level) is going to result in a much higher DC when the item's caster level goes up from being improved with other abilities that have nothing to do with the lightning stuff, and being able to force multiple saves means that when it goes off it will be quite lethal. Note that the way durations work, a 1 round duration will end at the start of the wielder's next turn, so they can't personally coup de grace the target, but it's a small comfort. By allowing the possibility of indoor storms without mentioning anything specific you imply that anything the players find will work, and I've got two already.

Your great club base stats appear to be wrong. This second mention of "adds % chance to activate" seems to imply you want the last ability to be cumulative over multiple uses such that eventually it will activate without fail, and that this one will build up and trigger automatically as you swing.

Bluntly, these are unpriceable. There are no 1st party items in 3.5 that are even close to these, and any price given will be arbitrary. They also involve an insane amount of rolling to keep track of. The kind of stuff people like to program into video games when a computer is doing all the rolling, but is just a bad idea with people at a table. I suppose it's at least nice that you didn't just run the DMG formulas as RAW like so many people do.

Or if this is some other d20 game that just happens to share some names (no idea what Ravenstone is), you should probably provide that information.

[Zakier]

Ravenstone is the name of the campaign.

For the great club, I may have worded it badly but essentially if max damage is achieved on either of the d8 rolls there is a 30% chance for the effect to activate.

For the Thunder staff do you have a suggestion on fixing both the potential damage as well as the cloud indoors part? I want it to be possible because most dungeons are in fact inside.

Neither of the items have been placed in game yet, I'm getting pricing to help with the wealth by level bit.

Adjusters to the items to be more viable would be appreciated.

[Fizban]

First, I'd drop all references to the base weapon dice. Bascially nothing uses that trigger and the moment someone changes size it throws everything off again.

The paralyzing bolt could be an extra effect you add to the shocking grasp when you activate it 1/day, or a burst effect that triggers on crits. There's a Paralytic Burst property in Magic Item Compendium for comparison. Since it's a specific weapon with a bad crit range, you could throw in the damage for free and reduce the cost for only working outside. There's nothing wrong with letting magic circumvent outdoor restrictions as long as you expect it, if you don't want it to work inside just say it doesn't work inside period. The shocking grasp would be cheap if it wasn't part of an attack, otherwise getting 5d6 is gonna be very expensive.

Neither of the club abilities make sense, prone isn't the right condition for being bound and the trigger condition on the second one is incomplete (and it's got a bunch more rolling again). There are a couple printed weapons already that have an entangling on hit effect, such as the Whip of Webs in MiC. There's a few different things you could do for the second depending on what the focus is supposed to be, but a "thorny burst" effect would be appropriate- while Maiming and Thundering are terrible, Psychokinetic Burst is at least on par with the standard Burst abilities.

Socking Grasp 3/day (becomes 1/encounter) cl 5= 6,000, 1d6 damage and paralyze 1 round DC 17 on crit locked to quarterstaff=+1, increase enhancement bonus to +2 so paralytic doesn't show up early, total +3 weapon= 18,000gp, add +1 the off hand= 2,000gp. Final result: +2 outdoor para-zapping/+1 quarterstaff with 5d6 shocking grasp 1/encounter, 26,600gp, and throw in a line where if it crits on the shocking grasp the paralyze bolt still happens even though it wasn't a weapon attack. That's a standard action shocking grasp, not bonus damage on hit.

Whip of Webs 3/day net entangling on hit= 4,000gp, +1 with 1d4 thorn damage and +1d8 thorn damage on crit= +3 weapon (18,000gp), total 22,301gp.

[Zakier]

That will work nicely. I'll need to write it out as weapon details and the fluff doesn't matter SD look as the effects make sense. This also gives me an idea for a ghost touch bow that triggers disruption or something on a Crit.