pricing for magic item that grants class abilities?

[flamewolf393]

I love wondrous item crafting, and am trying to make items that grant the iconic class abilities like rage, sneak attack, channel energy, etc.

Theres nothing in the main crafting/pricing page and wanted to know if there were rules for this, and if not what might be something comparable to base it off of?

[TheFamilarRaven]

Understandably, there are no rules for making items that grant certain class features as that would almost invalidate the class that the ability comes from.

However, there are certain spells that emulate class features. The Rage spell for instance works like the rage class feature, albeit with no scaling by level. You could following the regular crafting rules to grant the rage ability via an item.

Sneak attack is just like adding 1d6 extra damage to a weapon, this is comparable to any flaming/shocking/frosty etc weapon. Also there is the Ring of Swarming Stabs you can look to for an example.

Positive energy is a little trickier. There are two Phylacteries that add 2d6 to your channel energy ability, and they cost about 10,000gp. But nothing that grants the ability to channel positive energy.

But in general, since there are no rules for this, you'll have to work with your DM for a reasonable system.

[ericgrau]

When pricing anything you have to decide what's the price that will make it a tough choice for a player building around it. Automatic choice for a build means it's too cheap; never used in a build that's focused on it means it's too expensive. Somewhere partway between those is good. Comparing to similar items is a good place to start. That's harder to do for class features, but you can break down the abilities they grant one by one and try. All these vague guidelines are especially true on something like a class feature where there aren't any specific guidelines nor many existing items to go on.

Also note that +1d6 is vastly different from 1d6. +1d6 always helps to some degree. 1d6 is often useless, or sometimes good depending on what it applies too or what level you are. So for channel energy for example you'll have to consider: At what levels will it remain useful and when will it become useless? What will a character of those levels reasonably pay for such an item for it to be a tough choice for him?

These are guidelines that apply to all items in general, which we need to fall back on since it's not as cut and dry as a +X bonus and so on. And it will be greatly different for each class feature.