Specific Magic Items Question

[Gwyllgi]

I was wondering because I've gm'ed a campaign and am playing a campaign as a PC currently that allows this, but I was wondering, if a player wanted the effect of a specific magic armor, shield, or weapon on his item of the same category, would you allow it? Like if a specific armor called out a +5 rippling leather armor and you knew the rippling effect was only +2 you could surmise that the non rippling effects were thus +3. Would you allow those effects to be put on any leather armor independently without the preliminary rippling modifier? Would you go even further like my game and allow it on any armor?

[tyckspoon]

Personally, yes; it's fairly easy to tell when an item has been designed in accordance with the +x price structure, and for most items there isn't anything really special about the base item used for a specific item. A bow can be a crossbow or a sling, a sword can be a mace can be an axe can be a spear, whatever.

I wouldn't allow it for items where you can't easily assign it an equivalent +x value, but that's mostly because the pricing gets weird pretty quickly when you start getting too many flat-cost properties instead of the easy scaling of the +x chart, and can much more easily result in mis-valuing weapon and armor properties.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well, the issue with most of those specific magic items is that there isn't a clear formula for how their value was calculated. Trying to add any other magical effects to such an item, or adding the specific magical effect to an existing item, is by necessity going to involve making some assumptions.

Creating or purchasing such a modified item as a player is at the least going to require DM cooperation. Of course, the DM can add the item as treasure without worrying about its market value (until the players try to sell it).

By the way,

Like if a specific armor called out a +5 rippling leather armor and you knew the rippling effect was only +2 you could surmise that the non rippling effects were thus +3.
you would not be able to surmise this at all. If an item was written this way as a +5 armor with a known +2 costing effect, it would be a +5 leather armor with the effect and have a cost as if it was a +7 armor.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The reverse engineering is rarely as simple as your example suggests but it's also not super difficult. I allow such special abilities to be extracted if a player does the work and it doesn't look like it'll cause any problems in the campaign.

[BowStreetRunner]

The trickiest part of reverse-engineering weapon, shield, and armor prices stems from the fact that some special ability costs are assigned a value equivalent to an enhancement bonus, while others are assigned a static value. Determining which makes sense isn't always going to be easy.

If you look at the Axe of the Sea Reavers (MIC 47) it is a +1 greataxe priced at 10,320 gp. A +1 greataxe is normally 2,320 gp, a +2 greataxe is normally 8,320 gp, and a +3 greataxe is normally 18,320 gp. So this axe falls somewhere in between. You could treat it as a +1 greataxe with an additional static-priced effect worth 8,000 gp. Or you could treat it as a +2 equivalent with an extra 2,000gp effect. If you later try to add more enhancements it's going to matter a great deal which you went with. Adding another +1 to the first version will cost an additional 6,000 gp, while the second would cost an additional 10,000 gp.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The trickiest part of reverse-engineering weapon, shield, and armor prices stems from the fact that some special ability costs are assigned a value equivalent to an enhancement bonus, while others are assigned a static value. Determining which makes sense isn't always going to be easy.

If you look at the Axe of the Sea Reavers (MIC 47) it is a +1 greataxe priced at 10,320 gp. A +1 greataxe is normally 2,320 gp, a +2 greataxe is normally 8,320 gp, and a +3 greataxe is normally 18,320 gp. So this axe falls somewhere in between. You could treat it as a +1 greataxe with an additional static-priced effect worth 8,000 gp. Or you could treat it as a +2 equivalent with an extra 2,000gp effect. If you later try to add more enhancements it's going to matter a great deal which you went with. Adding another +1 to the first version will cost an additional 6,000 gp, while the second would cost an additional 10,000 gp.

That's not very well thought through.

The axe of the sea reavers is a +1 greataxe with one static ability and two 1/day abilities.

Extracting 320 for the axe itself and 2k for the +1 are easy enough but that still leaves 8k.

One of those abilities is fear, as the spell. The standard formula would have that at (4*7*1800)/5 for 10,080 but the area is quartered so the price should be too for 2,520.

The other is heroism. (3*5*1800)/5 makes 5400. Since the duration is gutted at only 1 round while the range and target have been bumped to 15 ft and all your allies in range, I think we can call that a wash for ad-hoc adjustment.

So that's 2320 for the easy stuff, 5400+2520=7920 for those first two estimates, leaving us at 80 for the remaining "you always float" ability. That seems a bit too cheap so let's go back to heroism.

That duration really is -awfully- short compared to the original spell's 10 min/lvl. Let's cut that 5400 in half after all.

This puts us at 2780 for the floating. That seems slightly high in my opinion but not wholly unreasonable.

So there you have it: 2520 for the fear effect, 2700 for the modified heroism, and 2780 for the floating effect. At least that's how I'd go about it anyway.

[KillianHawkeye]

The problem with the post above is that many items are not priced according to the custom magic item pricing guidelines (not rules) in the first place, so trying to use them in such a haphazard manner is dubious at best. As I said before, you have to start making your own assumptions if you try to do this, and that will vary from table to table.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The problem with the post above is that many items are not priced according to the custom magic item pricing guidelines (not rules) in the first place, so trying to use them in such a haphazard manner is dubious at best. As I said before, you have to start making your own assumptions if you try to do this, and that will vary from table to table.

Many, perhaps, but most do follow the guidelines pretty closely.

The above wasn't at all arbitrary. The spells I mentioned are listed in the item's crafting requirements. That's why I used them. Some inference is required for the ad-hoc adjustments, certainly, but they're not at all major leaps of logic.