Virga Vitae (Rod of Life)

[Maat Mons]

Okay, I suggested this item in someone else's homebrew thread, but he didn't go for it. So now I post it here.


Virga Vitae

Price (Item Level): 7,000 gp (11th level)
Body Slot: - (held)
Caster Level: 7th
Aura: Moderate: (DC 18) conjuration
Activation: Standard (manipulation)
Weight: -

At 5 inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter, this tiny, silver rod it frequently mistaken for a wand.

A virga vitae can hold up to 7 charges, and replenishes 1 charge each day, at dawn. Anyone who holds the virga vitae can expend one or more charges to produce one of the following effects:
1 charge: Cast cure light wounds, neutralize poison, remove blindness/deafness, remove disease, remove fear, or remove paralysis.
2 charges: Cast lesser restoration, panacea, or remove curse.
3 charges: Cast restoration.

Prerequisites: Craft Rod, panacea, remove curse, restoration.
Cost to Create: 3,500 gp, 280 xp, 7 days.


All formulas suggest a much higher price, but I figured "if belt of healing can be way cheaper than the formulas, why can't this too?" Of course, not having any guidelines left he groping blindly for a price. Is 7,000 gp fair? I really have no idea. I just like the number 7.

[Maat Mons]

I've been thinking that maybe it would be more elegant if everything cost just one charge. So I figured maybe the more powerful spells could be broken down into separate effects. I've also been thinking that I should work the number 7 in a little more. So how about if there are 7 possible effects, and each one costs 1 charge?

Remove all negative levels
Restore all points drained from a single ability score
Cure all ability damage
Neutralize all poisons
Remove all diseases
Remove blindness and deafness
Remove all curses

[nonsi]

.
I don't think it would go well with your expectation for a low price. Such an item should cost an arm and a leg.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

All formulas suggest a much higher price, but I figured "if belt of healing can be way cheaper than the formulas, why can't this too?" Of course, not having any guidelines left he groping blindly for a price. Is 7,000 gp fair? I really have no idea. I just like the number 7.

A healing belt is much cheaper than a "cure moderate wounds 1/day" item because it's competing with a wand of cure light wounds (which, not incidentally, also costs 750 gp) and was intended to both spread around the capability for healing to any party member and not force you to choose between efficient healing and burst healing. 2-4 CLWs/day catches up to the wand after about two adventuring weeks, but can't heal you up to full if you're badly hurt, so it's kind of a wash; compare it to an eternal wand of cure light wounds.

If you were to use the same logic for this item, however, a wand of restoration alone is 26,000 gp, so even if you discount things for the slow recharge rate, you're looking at a pretty high price for all of those effects. If you like the symbology of 7s, I'd suggest 77,000gp, which is still a discount if you add it all up but not a ridiculous one.

[Maat Mons]

All right, so it looks like I can't just toss out a number. Time to research the closest existing magic items.

I think, if I were buying published items to fulfill this function, I'd go with these:

Schema of Restoration: 11,200 gp (schema) + 5,000 gp (material component)
Schema of Panacea 11,200 gp
Schema of Neutralize Poison: 6,000 gp
Schema of Remove Curse: 6,000 gp



So that comes out to 39,400 gp.

Each of those would have 1 charge per day. But the proposed rod would share 1 charge per day between all effects. So I feel like there should be some sort of cost discount for that.

Schemas can only be used by casters. But I feel like any party is going to have someone who can activate these. And they're mostly out-of-combat effects, so you're not really gaining action economy by increasing the number of party members who could use it.

Going with my second version, the rod would only be able to duplicate part of Restoration for a single charge. You'd have to choose between negative levels, ability drain, or ability damage instead of doing all 3. I feel like that should warrant some kind of discount too.

My second version also completely leaves out arguably the most powerful effect of Restoration, recovering lost levels.

I suppose I could cut the cost in half by making it take up a body slot. It wouldn't really change the usefulness of the item though. It's intended for out of combat use. And when you're not actively fighting something, temporarily switching out a ring (or whatever) is no big deal.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

What if, instead of trying to break the spells up into 7 roughly equivalent uses, you instead went with 7 spells for simplicity? The 4 spells mentioned plus remove disease and cure moderate wounds cover all of the original spell effects, and you could throw in break enchantment to round out the magical effect removal.

That would increase the cost a bit more, to 59,000 gp. Only regaining 1 charge per day isn't worth that much of a discount, since you won't need all of those spells every day and the ability to spam the same spell a few times if you have multiple charges is pretty darn useful, but you can probably justify knocking off a thousand gp from the price...bringing it down to a nicely numerological 49,000 gp, or 72 * 1,000 gp.

[Maat Mons]

What if, instead of trying to break the spells up into 7 roughly equivalent uses, you instead went with 7 spells for simplicity?


a nicely numerological 49,000 gp

I don't know. If I'm going to go for a price or 49,000 gp, I think I'm actually more likely to divide it into 7 equal parts. Then I could do something in the vein of chronocharms or item sets. Have multiple small items that, in a sense, combine into one big item.

How about, 7 items, each costing 7,000 gp, and each being a 1/day item of some particular spell. But, when you have more than one, you can use the charge from one to activate the spell from another. So accumulating more of these things gives you increasing versatility.

Also, maybe some of the more powerful effects require spending more than one charge, and can only be activated when you have at least whatever number of these items collected together.

Neutralize poison, remove blindness/deafness, remove curse, and remove disease would each cost 6,000 gp as a schema. So would 7,000 gp each, with the added benefit that a collection of them is more useful than the sum of its parts, be a reasonable price?

I'd make everything caster level 7, for theme, but since those 5 spells don't benefit from higher caster level, I'd like to keep the price the same as for the caster level 5 version.

Resist energy and Shield other would also be possibilities for spells. Those are 2nd-level, but since they'd actually gain some benefit from being caster level 7, applying that cost increase would make sense, and would put the value pretty close to that of a 3rd-level spell at caster level 5.

I was also considering lesser restoration, body ward, and soul ward. But I feel like any items I'd design out of those would be notably worse than just buying an orb of mental renewal and a rod of bodily restoration. Spells that restore hit points similarly come out poorly relative to a belt of healing.

Resist energy and shield other don't really go with the healing theme though. They're both more about preventing damage. Also, if restoration is going to be one of the combined effects, a restoration-like effect should feature in at least one of the individual items. But since lesser restoration isn't going to cut it, maybe I'll have to make items that aren't strictly identical to a spell.

I could revisit my idea from earlier about dividing restoration up into weaker, more restricted sub-effects. Removing all negative levels, healing all ability damage, and restoring all points drained from a single ability still seem like reasonable divisions.

Having both an orb of mental renewal and a rod of bodily restoration would cost 6,200 gp. And together, they'd account for between 24 and 32 points of ability damage each day. So 7,000 gp to remove all ability damage once per day still seems like a bad deal. But maybe it would still be worth buying if you've already got some of the other items it can share charges with?

Since a schema of a 4th-level spell is around twice the cost of a schema of a 3rd-level spell, would 2 charges to cast panacea be okay? A schema of restoration costs more because of the material component. Would 3 charges work for that? How many of the individual items should need to be brought together to allow use of the items-set effects? The obvious numbers seem to be 4 and 7.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't know. If I'm going to go for a price or 49,000 gp, I think I'm actually more likely to divide it into 7 equal parts. Then I could do something in the vein of chronocharms or item sets. Have multiple small items that, in a sense, combine into one big item.

How about, 7 items, each costing 7,000 gp, and each being a 1/day item of some particular spell. But, when you have more than one, you can use the charge from one to activate the spell from another. So accumulating more of these things gives you increasing versatility.

Also, maybe some of the more powerful effects require spending more than one charge, and can only be activated when you have at least whatever number of these items collected together.

[...]

I could revisit my idea from earlier about dividing restoration up into weaker, more restricted sub-effects. Removing all negative levels, healing all ability damage, and restoring all points drained from a single ability still seem like reasonable divisions.

[...]

How many of the individual items should need to be brought together to allow use of the items-set effects? The obvious numbers seem to be 4 and 7.

I'm getting a very Rod of Seven Parts vibe from that. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. :smallamused:

My main concern with coming up with individual effects instead of using spells was that you couldn't cover every desired effect in just 7 abilities and keep them all the same power level. But if having multiple pieces would grant synergy powers, you could set it up to grant 2-charge powers requiring at least 2 pieces, 3-charge powers requiring at least 3, and so forth, which would actually give you 28 distinct powers to work with.

That setup is much less restrictive as far as what effects you could include, and it also lets you throw in some more powerful things along the lines of heal (just the HP healing, not the secondary effects) or revivify. And perhaps you can activate multiple powers in one action, allowing you to combine multiple 1- and 2-charge powers to mimic a do-it-all spell like panacea or greater restoration.