How many levels /how much gold would these abilities be worth?

[Elvensilver]

My 9th-lvl cleric/1th-lvl cleric got special powers fulfilling a difficult quest to stop the Tarrasque from waking up. She became the chosen of her god, and has a shiny silver hand (the homebrew god's symbol) to show for it.

Now, I'd like to some estimates from others how strong these are, so that I can ask the GM to maybe give the rest of the party similar powers to balance it out, because the cleric is very strong, and others... are not.

Without further ado, these are the powers:
- the cleric's hand is silver and counts as a holy symbol
- +2 strenght
- hand glows when undead are near
- automatically strikes undead, dealing 2d6+strenght mod. damage
- constant discern lies as spell-like ability (hand glows when lies are uttered)
- 1/day Divine power and holy smite as spell-like-abilities
- get twice your caster level on dispel checks
- 1/week: summon any one archon (I honestly don't know about duration, not more than 10 minutes)

So, it is obviously very strong, but how strong exactly? I'd guess at least two levels worth, I don't know about monetary value.

[Teth]

Without further ado, these are the powers:
- the cleric's hand is silver and counts as a holy symbol
- +2 strenght
- hand glows when undead are near
- automatically strikes undead, dealing 2d6+strenght mod. damage
- constant discern lies as spell-like ability (hand glows when lies are uttered)
- 1/day Divine power and holy smite as spell-like-abilities
- get twice your caster level on dispel checks
- 1/week: summon any one archon (I honestly don't know about duration, not more than 10 minutes)


Magic hands are weird, but not that weird.

Animated object will do it, plus intelligent item since it can act on its own in some cases. Alternately, it could be more of a Hand of Vecna situation, but that gets complicated and doesn't happen without DM involvement.

Holy symbol is more or less just a designation, not an item budget issue. It might involve some ceremony or something to consecrate, but you can carve a new one out of wood in a pinch. It's more about needing to treat it with due respect afterwards.

Ability bonus is a standard enhancement bonus. Detect undead is a spell effect.

Automatically striking implies an intelligent item, striking is kind of ambiguous, if you mean physically hitting things without you meaning to then it's just an intelligent item that you haven't controlled well, if you mean smite or something then add the spell to the item budget.

Discern lies, divine power, holy smite, add the spells to the item budget. Don't forget that multiple spell effects mean you now have a cost modifier of 1.5 for everything after the most costly ability.

Twice your caster level is not a thing anything has short of a major artifact. Lots of things will explain giving you a bonus, but it'll be 1-2 levels tops.

Summoning an archon, you need to decide what spell is being used and look up how that works. Probably planar ally or gate.

Nothing really that standard magic item creation rules don't cover. It's just expensive to put that many different random abilities on something. Enough gold to throw your WBL over a cliff, anyway.

Oh, and either the magic hand now counts as your glove slot, or else you need to pay 2x for the whole thing to have it not take up an item slot. So now your WBL is really wrecked.

[Jack_Simth]

- the cleric's hand is silver and counts as a holy symbol
- +2 strenght
- hand glows when undead are near
- automatically strikes undead, dealing 2d6+strenght mod. damage
- constant discern lies as spell-like ability (hand glows when lies are uttered)
- 1/day Divine power and holy smite as spell-like-abilities
- get twice your caster level on dispel checks
- 1/week: summon any one archon (I honestly don't know about duration, not more than 10 minutes)
Most of these are at least partially doable with spells or existing items, so estimation is possible (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Estimating-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece-Values").

Silver holy symbol: I'd be inclined to treat this much like a tattoo holy symbol (https://www.aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Holy%20symbol%2 0(tattoo)), as it's really hard to disarm. 100 gp.
+2 Strength: Basically the same as a +2 belt. 4,000 gp, slotted.
Glows when undead are near: You'll need to step outside Pathfinder for this, but a single +1 Fiercebane (Undead) sling bullet kept on a string would have the same effect (as long as you never shot it), and would cost a mere 360 gp in enchantments (the masterwork sling bullet would cost 6 gp and 1 cp), and wouldn't even take up an item slot.
Automatically strikes undead for 2d6+Str. This is basically a melee-range CL 5 Magic Missile, limited to undead only, as an at-will use-activated item. Pretty hefty limitations, so calling it half-off. 1*5*2000*(1/2) = 5,000 gp, slotted.
Constant Discern Lies: This one's expensive if you actually run it that way. However, there's an existing slotted item that does the same: Third eye aware, slotted at 10,000 gp. You've got a downside in that it alerts everyone else, too.
1/day Divine Power: command word base * spell level * caster level * per-day discount = 1800 * 4 * 7 * (1/5) = 10,080, slotted
1/day Holy Smite: command word base * spell level * caster level * per-day discount = 1800 * 4 * 7 * (1/5) = 10,080, slotted
Double CL on dispel checks: I know of no equivalent; setting this aside for now.
1/week Summon any one archon: Strongest Pathfinder Archon I can find is the Bastion Archon at 20 hit dice, CR 20. If I price this as a 1/week Gate(Calling) effect, it's a 9th level spell with a 10,000 gp component. It's a bit limited from the basic Gate effect (Archons only), but it also lets them hang around longer than the basic payment would grant. Calling that a wash. (command word base * spell level * caster level + 50 * component cost )* per-week discount = (1800 * 4 * 7 + 50 * 10000 ) * (1/10) = 55040, slotted.

Double in that it's effectively slotless... but you've got a significant discount coming due to it requiring various things (it took a quest, only works for clerics, only works for followers of a particular deity... so I'm calling the discounts a wash with the slotless effect.

That last one's the big one, so if the hand takes up the hand slot, all the other bits are +50%.
55,040+1.5*(1080+1080+10000+5000+366+4000+100)=87, 479


... not counting the dispel bonus. So I'd be inclined to value it at 95k and call it a day.

[Teth]

... not counting the dispel bonus. So I'd be inclined to value it at 95k and call it a day.

I'm too dang tired right now to go over all of that for problems, but a particularly conspicuous one would be that Third Eye Aware gives a competence bonus to perception. The one that does what you said is Third Eye Expose, which is based on bend reality of all things, and costs 112,000 gp.

Discern Lies is a Cleric spell of the 4th circle. Putting that on a constant item is still going to cost you 56000 base, not 10k, but you really don't need an item based on the psionic equivalent of limited wish.

Which of course goes up to 84000 if it's not the biggest effect on the item, for a total of 168000 if the item isn't occupying a slot. Really would've gone daily with that, constants go up fast, particularly if you're loading the thing up like an epic tier staff and not bothering with charges.

[Elvensilver]

Thanks for your replies!
To clarify- it is the cleric's own hand, still affixed to her arm, so she can wear magic gloves.

[AvatarVecna]

If it's the cleric's hand, rather than taking up a slot, all the magic stuff costs double for being slotless.


the cleric's hand is silver and counts as a holy symbol

A quick google indicates the volume of the average male human hand is 375.65 cm3. The density of silver is 10.49 g/cm3, putting the weight of our silver hand at 3940.5685 g, or 3.94 kg, or ~8.6875 lbs. A silver holy symbol costs 25 gp and weighs 1 lb, and while this one is oddly shaped, it should be fine to price it similarly? Call it...let's round up the weight and call it 225 gp for the weird holy symbol. There's probably cheaper ways to get a silver holy symbol (like the one a previous user provided), but frankly 9 pounds of blessed silver is pretty cheap compared to some of the stuff we've got on our list.


- get twice your caster level on dispel checks

This is another place where we can turn to 3.5 for some...limited guidance, but ultimately even there we have to get pretty dang custom and any price I give here will basically be a shot in the dark, a guess, a gesture in the vague direction of what an appropriate price might be. So:

In "Magic Item Compendium", there is a slotted item called the Dispelling Cord (worn around the torso, 1000 gp) that gives a +2 competence bonus to dispel checks 5 times per day. General consensus is that because it gives a bonus to the check rather than to caster level directly, this bypasses the given "dispel" spells limit on bonuses from caster level. Now we get into controversial points:

First controversy: "5/day" and "at-will" technically cost the same when you make charged items normally, so we could make an argument that an at-will version would cost the same, but you're unlikely to find a DM that's willing to give you an enormous upgrade to a casting item for free.

Second controversy: most magic items that give a flat bonus have a cost formula that's something like "bonus * bonus * [flat gp amount]". If we apply that to this item, we could make the argument that the dispelling cord is giving "2*2*250", therefore a flat bonus of (for example) +20 would cost 100000 gp, which is enough to match any nonepic CL in the absence of other CL boosters.

Third controversy: if you wanna be super persnickety about it only giving double your normal CL, rather than just +20 for anybody who uses it, you could have every +1 of that thing "restricted" based on total cleric caster level. So the first +1 is restricted to anybody with at least CL 1 in cleric, the second +1 is restricted to anybody with at least CL 2 in cleric, and so on. "Restricted by class caster level" isn't an example restriction, but it's closest to skill rank restriction, which reduces the cost by 10%. So we could maybe call an item like this a 90k cost, as long as it couldn't give more than +20?

Given what the other post calculated, you could probably call this item straight-up 200,000 gp and probably be in the appropriate ballpark. Other than the whole "slotless magic item" thing going on. But I guess Pathfinder isn't limited to 200k as the upper limit on item costs, so I guess 400k silver hand is...fine?

[Rynjin]

Most of these are at least partially doable with spells or existing items, so estimation is possible (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#Table-Estimating-Magic-Item-Gold-Piece-Values").

Silver holy symbol: I'd be inclined to treat this much like a tattoo holy symbol (https://www.aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Holy%20symbol%2 0(tattoo)), as it's really hard to disarm. 100 gp.
+2 Strength: Basically the same as a +2 belt. 4,000 gp, slotted.
Glows when undead are near: You'll need to step outside Pathfinder for this, but a single +1 Fiercebane (Undead) sling bullet kept on a string would have the same effect (as long as you never shot it), and would cost a mere 360 gp in enchantments (the masterwork sling bullet would cost 6 gp and 1 cp), and wouldn't even take up an item slot.
Automatically strikes undead for 2d6+Str. This is basically a melee-range CL 5 Magic Missile, limited to undead only, as an at-will use-activated item. Pretty hefty limitations, so calling it half-off. 1*5*2000*(1/2) = 5,000 gp, slotted.
Constant Discern Lies: This one's expensive if you actually run it that way. However, there's an existing slotted item that does the same: Third eye aware, slotted at 10,000 gp. You've got a downside in that it alerts everyone else, too.
1/day Divine Power: command word base * spell level * caster level * per-day discount = 1800 * 4 * 7 * (1/5) = 10,080, slotted
1/day Holy Smite: command word base * spell level * caster level * per-day discount = 1800 * 4 * 7 * (1/5) = 10,080, slotted
Double CL on dispel checks: I know of no equivalent; setting this aside for now.
1/week Summon any one archon: Strongest Pathfinder Archon I can find is the Bastion Archon at 20 hit dice, CR 20. If I price this as a 1/week Gate(Calling) effect, it's a 9th level spell with a 10,000 gp component. It's a bit limited from the basic Gate effect (Archons only), but it also lets them hang around longer than the basic payment would grant. Calling that a wash. (command word base * spell level * caster level + 50 * component cost )* per-week discount = (1800 * 4 * 7 + 50 * 10000 ) * (1/10) = 55040, slotted.

Double in that it's effectively slotless... but you've got a significant discount coming due to it requiring various things (it took a quest, only works for clerics, only works for followers of a particular deity... so I'm calling the discounts a wash with the slotless effect.

That last one's the big one, so if the hand takes up the hand slot, all the other bits are +50%.
55,040+1.5*(1080+1080+10000+5000+366+4000+100)=87, 479


... not counting the dispel bonus. So I'd be inclined to value it at 95k and call it a day.

The bonus to stat isn't listed as typed. 4000 gp is for a +2 Enhancement bonus. For an untyped bonus, we'd go off an existing item price: the Manual of Gainful Exercise, which is 55k for a +2 Inherent bonus to Str. It wouldn't be doubled though. Still, that brings the cost to 138, 479 gp. Minimum.

Really, the answer is "priceless", though. The power of this hand is well into Artifact territory for a few of the more absurd bonuses. It's one of those Minor Artifacts that's borderline to being a Major one, like the Staff of the Magi. Similar to the Staff, it's actually more impressive in power for a standard adventuring character than many Major artifacts, actually, but doesn't have some weird plot bending power like creating infinite amounts of gold and valuables but only within a certain city.

[Teth]

The bonus to stat isn't listed as typed. 4000 gp is for a +2 Enhancement bonus. For an untyped bonus, we'd go off an existing item price: the Manual of Gainful Exercise, which is 55k for a +2 Inherent bonus to Str.

I would assume Enhancement or maybe Sacred.

Almost all magic items that increase ability scores are Enhancement. Most spells too, for that matter, but you do have a few like Righteous Fury that gives Sacred. You could make an argument for Sacred here given the context, but it'd increase the argument for alignment and deity-related constraints being really strict after obtaining it, and I'd note that even Divine Power is still Enhancement.

Inherent involves permanently upgrading the inherent quality of the player's body / spirit, and happens via Wish or a consumable item that stores the effect of Wish (i.e. the ability books). It's never a buff-type effect.

As to untyped? Major artifacts are still typed. Even if we're pushing artifact territory as it is just by throwing a kitchen sink on this thing, it'd still be typed.