Item of Divine Grace

[ManicOppressive]

How much should an item of Divine Grace (as the Paladin class feature, CHA to saves) cost?

I have a player interested, and I've toyed with the idea in the past. It's a second level class feature, but on the other hand it's also a scary scaling ability that can (and does in one potential character's case) casually add 18 to saves for a mid teens character.

Any advice? Besides "Don't do that it's horribly overpowered" that is.

[weckar]

Let's see... by my rough equivalency math 32k GP seems about right.

[heavyfuel]

Both Divine Grace and Evasion are 2nd level class features (in general).

A Ring of Evasion grants the benefits of Evasion for 25k, so that's a start.

Of course, there's the argument that the Ring only grants the wearer the ability to avoid damage as if she had evasion, which is not REALLY the same thing as Evasion, but there are a billion topics about it already.

To avoid similar problems, decide beforehand if the item actually gives the player Divine Grace or just gives them a Cha bonus to Saves that doesn't stack with Divine Grace

[legomaster00156]

As much as the corresponding Cloak of Resistance would cost, or perhaps 1.5x since it is an untyped bonus and would stack with a CoR. When an item duplicates the effect of a similar item, you should use the base item's price as a guideline.

[BassoonHero]

I don't think that there is a fair price for such an item. It shouldn't be cheaper than, say, 1.5 times the price of a comparable Cloak of Resistance, but what that means depends on the wearer's charisma modifier.

For a sorcerer with Cha 22, this provides the same bonus as a +6 Cloak of Resistance (an epic magic item!), but it also stacks with an ordinary Cloak of Resistance. The item would have to be fantastically expensive.

[torrasque666]

I don't think that there is a fair price for such an item. It shouldn't be cheaper than, say, 1.5 times the price of a comparable Cloak of Resistance, but what that means depends on the wearer's charisma modifier.

For a sorcerer with Cha 22, this provides the same bonus as a +6 Cloak of Resistance (an epic magic item!), but it also stacks with an ordinary Cloak of Resistance. The item would have to be fantastically expensive.

Maybe if you added a cap so to speak. Like armors Max Dex bonus. It'll add your CHA bonus up to a point, with higher limits costing more.

[Bronk]

How much should an item of Divine Grace (as the Paladin class feature, CHA to saves) cost?

I have a player interested, and I've toyed with the idea in the past. It's a second level class feature, but on the other hand it's also a scary scaling ability that can (and does in one potential character's case) casually add 18 to saves for a mid teens character.

Any advice? Besides "Don't do that it's horribly overpowered" that is.

I think it should be a minor artifact, only usable by good, because I agree that pricing a scaling bonus like that wouldn't work very well. This way, it's priceless.

[Feantar]

To estimate the pricing, this thread might help: X to Y (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?125732-3-x-X-stat-to-Y-bonus). Search for equipment to find examples of an ability score traslating to a bonus for an item. Closest thing to saves I could find is the monk's belt (since saves are essentially another type of AC). That being said, bonuses to AC are at least twice as easy to come by and the monk's belt applies the same limitations to its bonus as the monk. Sooo 26k and the character has to adhere to the paladin code?

Edit: I had written the phrase, doubly easier which, while probably not incorrect, felt like a war crime.

[ericgrau]

Enough that in even the person who wants the item the most, the person would barely rather buy the item than take a 2 level paladin dip... beyond that not sure.

You have to figure that the people who want the item the most will be sorcerers and other cha classes. And that they will benefit way more than a paladin would. But they don't usually want to sacrifice the 2 caster levels to get it; so the item is vastly preferred to a dip for them.

We're looking in the neighborhood of a +9 to all saves that stacks with a cloak of resistance. So almost like a +14 cloak minus a +5 cloak. But still less than 2 levels of full casting. So that puts the price tag at... ouch.

All I can say is that it is much less than 171k* (A +14 cloak minus a +5). Whether that's 150k, 100k, 50k or 30k I'm not sure. But probably around 100k because you have to price it based on those who will abuse it most. Not price it for melee who will just take the paladin dip. Though requiring the paladin's code could drop that a bit. Say 75k assuming it would have been 100k otherwise. You also have to consider the MiC items are a lot cheaper than core items. And high OP allows easier X to Y tricks. So if we're allowed to optimize our builds a lot, it will need to be even cheaper to be appealing. 30-50k perhaps.


That being said, bonuses to AC are at least twice as easy to come by and the monk's belt applies the same limitations to its bonus as the monk. Sooo 26k and the character has to adhere to the paladin code?
Yeah but how many unarmored classes do you know with wis as their primary stat? Maybe wildshaped druid, except they have wild armor so actually no. The net AC bonus is actually a lot less than wis+1 because you have to take your armor off.

I'm gonna guess 80k low op and 40k high op. And you must follow the paladin's code. I think that's fair if not generous for "Your sorcerer now passes almost all his saves". If I was a scared DM I'd price it a little higher to be safe.

*I overlooked epic pricing because this is still kinda a non-epic effect.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Divine grace is approximately equivalent to three continuous items of ruin delver's fortune, with a slight discount, because the triple spell would also provide Evasion, and immunity to fear and poison. As a 4th-level spell with a duration measured in rounds, it would cost 4 * 7 * 2000 * 4 = 224 000 gp to craft a continuous item (for one spell), which seems a little excessive. However, an item of 1/day Persistent ruin delver's fortune (as 9th-level spell, using Practical Metamagic or similar), would cost only 9 * 17 * 2000 / 5 = 61 200 gp. An artificer cooperating with an Incantatrix could make one for only 4 * 5 * 2000 / 5 = 8000 gp.

... which really only shows this line of reasoning isn't getting me anywhere.

I'd put the price at 80 000 gp or so. Divine Grace is a lot stronger than a simple cloak of resistance. Though I can see the 40 000 lower price if, as ericgrau suggests, you also get the paladin code to deal with.

[BassoonHero]

> Maybe if you added a cap so to speak. Like armors Max Dex bonus. It'll add your CHA bonus up to a point, with higher limits costing more.

Sure, but no one is going to buy it who doesn't meet the cap, so it's basically a reflavored cloak of resistance with an exotic bonus type. These don't exist for saves (unlike AC), and allowing them is a nontrivial power boost. But it would probably be mostly fine at double the price of a cloak of resistance. Every high-level character with charisma will get several extra points on their saves.

A +9 version (to use the figure mentioned earlier) would cost 162,000 gp. Combined with a +5 cloak, this would be a +14 bonus for 187,000 gp. I think that this is far too cheap, myself, but that's an inevitable consequence of this item existing at all.

[Thurbane]

Likening it to Evasion (i.e. Ring of Evasion) seems like the best starting point. Both are class features attained at 2nd level by core classes.

A Monk's Belt would also be another point of comparison.

[Zaq]

Aside from the Monk's Belt, are there any other existing magic items that explicitly scale like this (not just like how a magic weapon obviously gets better as you get more iteratives)? It's hard to price based on the bonus when you don't know what the bonus is. Can we find enough data points to try to figure out how the existing rules price something that has the potential to directly scale?

Honestly, my gut reaction is to disallow it entirely. This doesn't feel like the kind of effect that should be in an item. If Divine Grace did something other than just provide a raw numerical bonus, I'd perhaps be more amenable to it, but we already have completely noncontroversial and easily accessible items that provide raw numerical bonuses to these specific die rolls, you know? This feels like reinventing the wheel just to gain an advantage on a character who likely doesn't need it that badly (as stated/implied by others here, this is a gimme for a CHA-based caster, but not so much for less inherently powerful folks). I'm fine with inventing new wheels that don't already exist to allow cool things to happen, but simply saying that a Cloak of Resistance isn't good enough and you want to turbocharge your saves even more rubs me the wrong way. If you want to spend gold to get better saves, buy a better Cloak. If you can't afford a better Cloak or you're already at +5, why should you get to go higher than that when the CoR is about as standard and noncontroversial as items get? Combine that with the fact that it's tricky or impossible to balance cost to benefit (the benefit is obviously very different on a CHA 14 dude than a CHA 26+ dude, but the cost pretty much has to be the same if we're pretending that items have any rules at all) and you end up with something that feels very wrong to me.

Of course, I'm not your GM and I'm not playing in your game. You're free to ignore my opinion entirely. But I think that this idea is not one that lends itself to good balance.

[Thurbane]

Well, there's also Slippers of Battledancing and Gauntlet of Heartfelt Blows, to a degree.

[ericgrau]

Aside from the Monk's Belt, are there any other existing magic items that explicitly scale like this (not just like how a magic weapon obviously gets better as you get more iteratives)? It's hard to price based on the bonus when you don't know what the bonus is. Can we find enough data points to try to figure out how the existing rules price something that has the potential to directly scale?

Honestly, my gut reaction is to disallow it entirely. This doesn't feel like the kind of effect that should be in an item. If Divine Grace did something other than just provide a raw numerical bonus, I'd perhaps be more amenable to it, but we already have completely noncontroversial and easily accessible items that provide raw numerical bonuses to these specific die rolls, you know? This feels like reinventing the wheel just to gain an advantage on a character who likely doesn't need it that badly (as stated/implied by others here, this is a gimme for a CHA-based caster, but not so much for less inherently powerful folks). I'm fine with inventing new wheels that don't already exist to allow cool things to happen, but simply saying that a Cloak of Resistance isn't good enough and you want to turbocharge your saves even more rubs me the wrong way. If you want to spend gold to get better saves, buy a better Cloak. If you can't afford a better Cloak or you're already at +5, why should you get to go higher than that when the CoR is about as standard and noncontroversial as items get? Combine that with the fact that it's tricky or impossible to balance cost to benefit (the benefit is obviously very different on a CHA 14 dude than a CHA 26+ dude, but the cost pretty much has to be the same if we're pretending that items have any rules at all) and you end up with something that feels very wrong to me.

Of course, I'm not your GM and I'm not playing in your game. You're free to ignore my opinion entirely. But I think that this idea is not one that lends itself to good balance.
The simple solution is to assume that only cha focused classes will buy it and price accordingly. I went with a +9 in estimates because it's hard to get over a 28 cha without spending huge amounts of gold. (16-18)+5 (levels) + 6 (item) = 27-29 without pricey tomes. In epic you might be able to go a bit higher, but by then a 2 level dip in paladin won't really hurt your casting anymore. If this was instead a +9 luck bonus to saves then it could be abused in epic, plus it's more than +5, so I'd price it way higher.

Though it's true that pre-epic it's hard to get more than a +5 to saves and you have to pay way more than the cloak rate. You might price the item at some exorbitant price for that reason. But the basic way to price this or any thing is to make it a tough choice for a high level sorcerer to decide whether or not to get it.