How much for this magic item?

[King of Nowhere]

If you wear more than one item in the same slot (say, 5 magic rings on a single hand), the extra ones are disabled. Sometimes it's nice to swap rings (or belts, or anything) but it takes too much time in battle.
So I've got this idea for an homebrewed item that would let you wear more than one magic item in the same slot, and choose, as a free action every round, which one is active. For example you could wear a ring of fire resistance, a ring of cold resistance, and a ring of acid resistance, and decide every round from what you want to be protected. Or you could ready an action to swap one protection for the other depending on what is hitting you (possibly requiring a reflexes check to see if you swap fast enough), but then you're stuck with it for another full round.
Potentially with a more powerful (and more expensive) version that would swap as many times as wanted, automatically depending on what you need, thereby effectively letting you wear more magic items on the same slot.

Unfortunately I only have a faint idea what price those items (I call them control rings, because they control which item is active and which is disabled) could have. I think the most powerful versions (no limitations, effectively lets you use more items together) could cost well over 100k gp, while a weaker version (only one active item at the same time, limited to at most +2 items) could be as cheap as 1k gp.
Suggestions are welcome.

[flappeercraft]

I would try check on the cost of Epic feat granting items, there is an Epic feat that grants a very similar effect
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#additionalMagicItemSpace

[King of Nowhere]

I would try check on the cost of Epic feat granting items, there is an Epic feat that grants a very similar effect
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#additionalMagicItemSpace


I tried looking for it, but found nothing. Not even a table of costs of epic items. And no item creation table mentions duplicating a feat, much less an epic feat.

[Bronk]

I tried looking for it, but found nothing. Not even a table of costs of epic items. And no item creation table mentions duplicating a feat, much less an epic feat.

AEG has a sidebar setting adding a feat to a magic item as 10,000g (no word on whether an epic feat's more expensive).

So, for feats, there's the 'additional magic item space' epic feat, which would give you one extra slot, as already mentioned.

There's also the 'extra rings' feat from ECS, which lets you use 4 rings total, with one feat as a prereq, so that starts to add up.

There's also the ringsword, a +3 long sword from the AEG that allows you to put a ring on the hilt and have use of that ring. Extrapolating the cost of the ability from the price of a +3 long sword gives you a price of 4,000g for one extra ring.

You could easily have two extra ring slots by holding two ringswords, but you can get more by putting that 4,000g ability on other weapons, like armor spikes, a bashing shield, and so on.

To match your one ring per finger idea though, you could use the 'poison ring' from Dragon Compendium, which is actually a weapon that happens to be worn on a finger. It only deals 1 point of damage, but if you were to take 5 of these, enchant each one with the property from the ringsword, you could wear one on each finger and a regular ring on top of that... on each hand.

[Jay R]

I would not allow the item at all, because suddenly many items (such as your third ring) become much more valuable. The effect of this rule is to take away intriguing and challenging decisions.

Also, its value depends on how prevalent magic is in that DM's world. If rings are cheap and plentiful, this item is far more valuable.

But I'm not your DM. Ask your DM if the device can be used, and how much it would cost.

[King of Nowhere]

Ask your DM if the device can be used, and how much it would cost.

As I am my DM, that would bring me into a loop.

But yes, I already decided the device exists and can be used, as I'm running a high magic world where it makes plenty of sense that something of that got researched. The players can use those control rings as much as their enemies, so I don't think it will cause balance issues.
Plus, I developed a silly piece of lore that's a fond tribute/parody where a supervillain forged the one control ring that let him wear 30 rings at a time, and was invincible and stuff, but then someone cut his finger with the one control ring and the conflicting rings' auras exploded. And i told that story to the players, so I can't back down.

[Crake]

There are already things like the rings of arming which can be used to store and equip gear quickly, perhaps a slotless ring of arming per "set" of gear? It still requires an action to swap gear though, and the gear would either come in sets, or be done piece by piece if you didn't want a set. Perhaps you could make the 'slotless' item a tattoo that goes on each bodily chakra, and can store 1 piece of gear, and as a swift action, let you swap out that piece of gear with the current equipped piece of gear (or simply equip the gear if there is none equipped).

A single ring of arming covers 2 gear slots (weapon and armor), so you could probably half the cost to only cover 1 gear slot, but then double it to make it slotless, bringing the price full circle around to a single ring of arming, which is 5000gp, and a standard action to activate. If you wanted to drop it to a swift action (so still limited to once per round) we can add quicken spell to it's pricing calculation. We know that the item functions off shrink item, which is a 3rd level spell, but it's caster level is 10. So we divide the item's cost by 3 and multiply it by 7 to increase the "spell level", then divide it by 10 and multiply it by 13 to increase the caster level, giving you a cost of 10,833.33gp, probably round up to 11k to make it nice.

Note, this doesn't actually let you wear more than your alloted number of items and choose, but it does a similar effect of letting you swap between gear as you choose. Not sure what the price would be to drop it to a free action 1/round per slot though.

[Jay R]

OK.

I would have several versions. The cheapest control ring lets you wear two rings on one hand, and swap between them.

Since you rarely need both rings to be active at once, an item that lets you swap out which one is inactive each round basically means that you can use them both (almost) at will. This is the same as if one of the rings does not take up a slot. It's slightly less valuable than that, since you can't use them both the same round, but not by much. On the other hand, it allows you to switch out which two rings are available each day, or each encounter, by simply deciding which two to wear. So in that way it is more valuable than having one ring be slotless.

So a first approximation of its value would be the cost of making an "average" ring not take up a slot. Since that doubles the cost of the ring, this item should cost about as much as an "average" ring. And then slightly more, probably, because you can change which rings it applies to.

So I might have a low-level version for 2,500 gp that lets you wear any two rings, as long as one of them is worth 2500 or less. The mid-range one would require that one of the rings be worth 10,000 or less, etc.

A control ring that lets you wear, and use, three rings would cost somewhat more. The Epic Control Ring of your legend would cost tremendously more than that.