Price check on a couple of custom magic items

[Arparrabiosa]

What price can have (roughly speaking) these magic items?

Cloak of Darkness
+2 move silently and hide
1/day darkness in 10' radius as a swift action during 3 rounds
Wielder enjoys 50% chance of miss chance in a shadowy area instead of the normal 20%. This does not provide total cover, just improves the chance.

Mask of the Night Lord
The wielder can see in the darkness up to 60 feet (even in magical darkness)

May the items be exploitable by a 4th level character party? (They have no sneak attackers)

Thanks in advance.

[Silly Name]

Mask of the Night Lord is basically a better Googles of Night, and those cost 12,000 gp. So the Mask should definitely cost more, maybe 14,500? Just spitballing here.

The cloak can be mostly calculated by the tables found in the DMG. I decided to treat the improved miss chance as equivalent to a +2 AC bonus, keeping in mind it's not always active, putting its value at 13,900 gp. Considering the restrictions on the Darkness spell, you could shave it down to 13k.

In any case, those items are, by the rules, way above the suggested WBL of a 4th level party. Which is not gospel and you're free to hand your players more powerful items than normal, but you should keep in mind that, for example, darkvision through even magical darkness is an excellent stealth tool. I don't see any potential exploits here, the items are fairly straightforward and simply let you fight better in darkness when combined (would be a nice set-up for an assassin so they can try to use Death Attack in combat, maybe?). There's not a lot of available open-endendess for unpredictable exploits.

[Doctor Awkward]

What price can have (roughly speaking) these magic items?

Cloak of Darkness
+2 move silently and hide
1/day darkness in 10' radius as a swift action during 3 rounds
Wielder enjoys 50% chance of miss chance in a shadowy area instead of the normal 20%. This does not provide total cover, just improves the chance.

Mask of the Night Lord
The wielder can see in the darkness up to 60 feet (even in magical darkness)

May the items be exploitable by a 4th level character party? (They have no sneak attackers)

Thanks in advance.


The Mask of the Night Lord is essentially replicating the effects of the darkvision spell (darkvision out to 60 feet), and the ebon eyes spell (see normally in magical darkness). Per the Magic Item Creation Rules, a magic item that duplicates the effects of a spell continuously can be calculated by multiplying the level of the spell times the minimum caster level necessary to cast it times 2,000 gp. Ebon eyes is a level 1 sorcerer/wizard spell and darkvision is a 2nd-level spell. If the spell has a ten minute per level duration you multiply the total cost by 1.5. Separately these two effects would be 12,0000 gp for darkvision and 3,000 gp for ebon eyes. Combining them into a single item adds 50% to the cheaper of the two effects for a final total of 16,500 gp.

The Cloak of Darkness provides a use-activation of darkness, a 2nd-level spell. This would normally be 12,000 gp, but limiting it to one charge per day divides this total by 5, for 2,400 gp. It's probably fair to round this down to about 1,500 for a significantly diminished effect (3 round duration and half the normal radius). It also adds two separate +2 competence bonuses to skills at 400 gp each. The improvement of a miss chance in darkness is a difficult effect to calculate. For practical purposes it is essentially a continuous version of the displacement spell just with limitations on when it is active. Such an effect would normally be 120,000 gp-- 3rd-level spell times caster level 5 times 2,000 gp times 4 for an effect with a duration normally measured in rounds. There are a lot of other factors to consider, such as while this effect cannot be negated with effects that pierce illusions, like true seeing, it presumably would be negated by an opponent that ignores miss chances related to darkness (such as a creature with darkvision that sees normally in shadowy illumination). Personally, I can't see a reasonable argument for pricing this effect for less than 15,000 or 20,000 gp.
So using 15,000 gp as the base price, each additional effect has its cost increased by 50%-- that's 2,250 for the spell effect, and another 1,200 for the two skill bumps for a total cost of 18,450 gp.


These two items are far in excess of the combined total expected wealth of an entire four-person party of level 4 adventurers. They would be exploitable by any melee character allowing him to render a one or more opponents nearly helpless for several rounds of combat while they could attack with impunity. It is not necessarily game-breaking, but would require you to tailor an encounter specifically to this equipment in order to provide a proper challenge. Encounters with excessive natural or artificial light sources to limit the effectiveness of darkness, or an enemy capable of withstanding such a characters onslaught, opponents also capable of seeing through magical darkness, or with alternate senses such as tremorsense, blindsight, or scent, which presumably would negate most of the advantage, if not all of it.

[King of Nowhere]

I disagree, i believe the cloak is far more powerful than the mask. Its activation is a swift action, so most melees should be able to do it for free. And it synergizes with the extra miss chance. So, with a swift action you gain 50% miss chance, seems good.
I'd take a 1/day quickened blink as a baseline. That would be 90000, though, which looks quite steep.
Accounting that one way to adjudicate gives 15k, and looks cheap, and another gives 90k, but looks too much, i'd just eyeball it at 30 to 50k, by gut feeling

[Doctor Awkward]

I disagree, i believe the cloak is far more powerful than the mask. Its activation is a swift action, so most melees should be able to do it for free. And it synergizes with the extra miss chance. So, with a swift action you gain 50% miss chance, seems good.
I'd take a 1/day quickened blink as a baseline. That would be 90000, though, which looks quite steep.
Accounting that one way to adjudicate gives 15k, and looks cheap, and another gives 90k, but looks too much, i'd just eyeball it at 30 to 50k, by gut feeling

Could an argument be made for pricing the effect as a quickened darkness? A 6th-level spell with caster level 11 would put it at a base price at 26,400 for the normal spell effect. Round down to 25k for the diminished effect? And then keeping the price of the other effect roughly as I estimated?

[AmberVael]

I'm of the opinion that Goggles of Night are exceptionally overpriced, and that the spells Darkvision and Ebon Eyes are similarly overleveled. Darkvision just really isn't worth that much when perfectly usable light sources 1) are incredibly cheap, costing either cantrip slots or pocket change for torches/sunrods, and 2) provide vision for entire groups rather than one person.
Drow of the Underdark contains the Utter Dark magical location, which confers the ability to see through all darkness and magical darkness at unlimited range, for the price of 5000. I think that is much more reasonably priced.

As such, at a glance I'd value Mask of the Night Lord somewhere in the few thousand GP range. 4000 at most, maybe more like 3000.


Cloak of Darkness is a bit more interesting. Going through it piece by piece...

The bonus to move silently and hide is nice, but not very significant. In theory you can replicate these bonuses with masterwork items, which are 50 gp each. Ultimately I'd call this a ribbon ability, and would just gloss over it when considering pricing: it's not that it's nothing, just that magic item pricing isn't terribly precise and calculating these bonuses into it won't lead to a significant difference (assuming the overall price is high enough.)

1/day darkness, swift, 3 rounds. This is pretty neat, but it's a once per day ability with a very limited duration. There's a number of similar items in existence, but the best comparison I can find is the Shadowy Diadem (from Dragon Magic), which effectively creates darkness 3/day, as a swift, for 10 rounds, and also grants immunity to energy drain. For 4400. I'd call the Shadowy Diadem underpriced, but even looking at other similar effects (Torc of Displacement from the MIC is a pretty comparison), I think this is an ability only worth a few thousand. 2000 would be where I'd estimate it.

The increased miss chance in darkness is the most difficult bit to price, and the most powerful effect. The difficult bit is that you largely don't have control over when it applies, so its efficacy will vary from game to game and character to character. However, piercing darkness isn't usually that hard, and it only increases miss chance rather than providing true total concealment, which would be a lot more valuable. Still, its pretty cool. I might rate it somewhere around 7000, but with some big error bars on that number.

Overall I do think around 9000 feels okay for the Cloak of Darkness.

[Doctor Awkward]

I'm of the opinion that Goggles of Night are exceptionally overpriced, and that the spells Darkvision and Ebon Eyes are similarly overleveled. Darkvision just really isn't worth that much when perfectly usable light sources 1) are incredibly cheap, costing either cantrip slots or pocket change for torches/sunrods, and 2) provide vision for entire groups rather than one person.
Drow of the Underdark contains the Utter Dark magical location, which confers the ability to see through all darkness and magical darkness at unlimited range, for the price of 5000. I think that is much more reasonably priced.

As such, at a glance I'd value Mask of the Night Lord somewhere in the few thousand GP range. 4000 at most, maybe more like 3000.


Cloak of Darkness is a bit more interesting. Going through it piece by piece...

The bonus to move silently and hide is nice, but not very significant. In theory you can replicate these bonuses with masterwork items, which are 50 gp each. Ultimately I'd call this a ribbon ability, and would just gloss over it when considering pricing: it's not that it's nothing, just that magic item pricing isn't terribly precise and calculating these bonuses into it won't lead to a significant difference (assuming the overall price is high enough.)

1/day darkness, swift, 3 rounds. This is pretty neat, but it's a once per day ability with a very limited duration. There's a number of similar items in existence, but the best comparison I can find is the Shadowy Diadem (from Dragon Magic), which effectively creates darkness 3/day, as a swift, for 10 rounds, and also grants immunity to energy drain. For 4400. I'd call the Shadowy Diadem underpriced, but even looking at other similar effects (Torc of Displacement from the MIC is a pretty comparison), I think this is an ability only worth a few thousand. 2000 would be where I'd estimate it.

The increased miss chance in darkness is the most difficult bit to price, and the most powerful effect. The difficult bit is that you largely don't have control over when it applies, so its efficacy will vary from game to game and character to character. However, piercing darkness isn't usually that hard, and it only increases miss chance rather than providing true total concealment, which would be a lot more valuable. Still, its pretty cool. I might rate it somewhere around 7000, but with some big error bars on that number.

Overall I do think around 9000 feels okay for the Cloak of Darkness.


The Goggles of Night, like virtually everything else in the DMG, was priced using the magic item creation rules from that same book. You can be of the opinion that it's overpriced for what it does, and that's fine, but your analysis leaves out a lot of tactical considerations. Chiefly the advantage of being able to see in darkness without revealing yourself instantly to other things that cannot. Two humans in a dark cave with torches will spot each other instantly. A human with a torch doesn't even get to roll against someone with darkvision 60 feet away. This is invaluable in a system where going first can often mean that your opponent doesn't get the chance to go second.

[AmberVael]

The Goggles of Night, like virtually everything else in the DMG, was priced using the magic item creation rules from that same book. You can be of the opinion that it's overpriced for what it does, and that's fine, but your analysis leaves out a lot of tactical considerations. Chiefly the advantage of being able to see in darkness without revealing yourself instantly to other things that cannot. Two humans in a dark cave with torches will spot each other instantly. A human with a torch doesn't even get to roll against someone with darkvision 60 feet away. This is invaluable in a system where going first can often mean that your opponent doesn't get the chance to go second.

The magic item creation rules are guidelines rather than hard rules, and they absolutely have their flaws. I'm of the opinion that the Goggles of Night are one of the most egregious pricing cases.

You're right that I didn't do a full detail analysis of when darkvision would be better, and I do agree that darkvision has advantages over light sources. But I don't think those advantages are absolute (darkvision is a personal effect that everyone needs to get if you don't want to ruin it, and darkvision tends to have a starkly limited range), and I definitely don't think darkvision is worth twelve thousand gold more than its cheaper alternatives. Twelve thousand per person, in fact. Buy one thousand sunrods and spend your extra 10,000 on something more generally effective.

[Arparrabiosa]

Thank you for all your input and suggestions! You have been very helpful.

[Thurbane]

The issue is that pricing on swift or immediate activation really isn't touched on anywhere.

As mentioned, using a Quickened spell as the base for pricing is one way, but MIC doesn't follow this formula at all. Unlike earlier books, it throws out swift and immediate activation item's willy-nilly.

Rule of thumb I sometimes use in my own game is to multiply a swift or immediate activation as 1.5x or 2x that component of the items pricing. Not official, of course, just something I've spitballed in my games.