3.5 Magic Item Creation

[Augernon]

I've been looking high and low, but I can't seem to find any rules, charts or hearsay on what it costs to make a magic item with any feat.
Metamagic rods are the only items I've found (so far) that list needing a certain feat (other than craft rod, etc) to craft the item. I've been trying to reverse engineer what the multipliers for adding a feat to an item are and have come up blank. Any ideas or insight would be great.

[Saintheart]

There's rules of thumb in the Arms & Equipment Guide. Page 128. Basically, if the feat's purely mechanical, default to the DMG rules with an adjustment due to the bonus being untyped. General guideline for other kinds of feats is that they cost 10,000gp in an item, plus another 5-10k per prerequisite.

[Nezkrul]

There are lots of items in the MIC that give feats, and break that 10k+ cost suggestion by being 4-8k instead

[Saintheart]

There are lots of items in the MIC that give feats, and break that 10k+ cost suggestion by being 4-8k instead

Do they give a simple mechanical bonus like a +2 to a save? If so, then the A&EG rules take that into account by saying you treat it as a normal magic item with an adjustment for the fact it's an untyped bonus.

[Biggus]

There's a list of items which grant feats here: https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=4099.0


Do they give a simple mechanical bonus like a +2 to a save? If so, then the A&EG rules take that into account by saying you treat it as a normal magic item with an adjustment for the fact it's an untyped bonus.

The cheapest ones give Run and Track, all the others are 8,000GP+ as far as I can see.

[Augernon]

Thanks for the replies!

Even though its 3.0 material (I believe) the I didn't know the A&EG covered this, that will be a good place to start from.

That list of items will be super handy moving forward!

I've found that the MIC doesn't really play by the item crafting rules so I take it with a grain of salt.

A couple examples of feats that I'm thinking about when it comes to putting them on items:
-Shock Trooper (CWar p.112)
-- 25,000gp -> 40,000gp?
-Persistant Spell (CArc p.81) as a metamagic rod
--Probably the same as a quicken rod, but I'd love to find out if/how they did the math on that.
-Healing Devotion (CChamp p.59)
--10,000gp?

[Bohandas]

Are we talking an item that grants a feat?

The dark blue rhomboid ioun stone from the SRD grants the alertness feat and costs 10000gp. Based on that an item granting a feat would cost 5000gp baseline (since the ioun stone doesn't take up an item slot)

An alternate interpretation for what the price should be would be that a feat is equivalent to a skill bonus of between +3 and +5 (based on feats such as skill focus, alertness, and open minded), which would give a range between 900gp and 2500gp, possibly times two for giving a bonus other than a competance bonus (the upper limit of which gives us the same 5000 gp figure)

[Biggus]

-Persistant Spell (CArc p.81) as a metamagic rod
--Probably the same as a quicken rod, but I'd love to find out if/how they did the math on that.


Our own Kelb_Panthera reverse-engineered the formula, see here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?603448-metamagic-rod-and-spell-level

All the MM rods in 3.5 adhere to it pretty closely apart from the Lesser Quicken Rod for some reason.

Note that in 3.5 Persistent Spell is +6 spell levels, not +4 as in 3.0, so would cost more than the Quicken Rods. Many DMs are (rightly, IMO) wary of allowing Persist Rods, but if you can get them the prices would be 29,500GP, 119,000GP and 267,500GP if they use the standard formula.

[Darg]

Even though its 3.0 material (I believe) the I didn't know the A&EG covered this, that will be a good place to start from.

Technically, 3.0 material is considered part of the same edition that 3.5 is. 3.5 was simply an update, not a new edition that makes previous content obsolete. If you don't use the monsters, the 3.0 content usually only requires a very small amount of adjustment if at all to be compatible with the updated rules. The only reason people leave out 3.0 material is because they just want stuff that works without any work, which is ironic.

[Thurbane]

There are lots of items in the MIC that give feats, and break that 10k+ cost suggestion by being 4-8k instead

There's LOTS of stuff in MIC that breaks pricing guidelines, to be fair...

[Bohandas]

Gloves of Arrow Snatching allow use of the Snatch Arrows feat twice per day and cost 4000 gp. An item with 2 charges per day costs 2/5 as much as an unlimited use item, so based on this an item that grants unrestricted use of a feat would cost 10000gp. That being said however, Snatch Arrows has prerequisites, and getting to ignore those may have raised the price

EDIT:

Serpent Armor costs 12160 and grants combat reflexes as well as being +1 armor and granting +1 reflex saves; +1 armor and +1 to reflex saves cost 1000 each, leather armor costs 10 and masterwork costs 100, so under this a feat would cost 10050 gp2

EDIT:
Mask of the Tiger on the other hand only costs 4000 gp and grants the track feat as well as low light vision, as well as a bonus to track if you already have the track feat

averaging these values together, as well as the estimate from the rhomboid ioun stone, gives an average value of 7262.5gp. Adding in the estimate based on skill equivalence brings it down further to 6810

[Vaern]

There's LOTS of stuff in MIC that breaks pricing guidelines, to be fair...

Guidelines are just guidelines, after all. The opening of MIC points out that many items simply don't see play because the pricing guidelines can result in items seeming overpriced for an underwhelming effect. The pricing guidelines make for a good starting point, but the resulting cost of the item may not reflect its actual value.


Serpent Armor costs 12160 and grants combat reflexes as well as being +1 armor and granting +1 reflex saves; +1 armor and +1 to reflex saves cost 1000 each, leather armor costs 10 and masterwork costs 100, so under this a feat would cost 10050 gp2

Masterwork is 150, so it would end up being a flat 10k for the feat.

[Bohandas]

Masterwork is 150, so it would end up being a flat 10k for the feat.

Thanks. I had thought I had added something wrong there but I wasn't sure where.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Thanks. I had thought I had added something wrong there but I wasn't sure where.

We have two items pricing a feat at exactly 10k and guidelines consistent with this (if we ignore the prerequisites part). I guess it's fair to ignore Mask of the Tiger as an outlier. Especially since it's from MIC. Most things in MIC are outrageously underpriced compared to guidelines, and a lot of it is underpriced compared to previous items (looking at you, all those "3 charges per day, pay one, two or three to gain scaling effects" items").

[Mordante]

Does all this mean that Gloves of the Balanced Hand [MIC] is overpriced at 18k?

[Biggus]

Does all this mean that Gloves of the Balanced Hand [MIC] is overpriced at 18k?

They're 8k in my copy...

[Telonius]

Magic item creation is a case where the guidelines really do have to be guidelines. "A feat" could mean anything from Monkey Grip or Diligent, to Leadership or Item Familiar. There isn't a standard power level for feats, so there really can't be a standard price for them (as much as the rules want to pretend there can be). The best you can do is look at the particular feat in question, see if there's any existing prices that do equivalent things, and eyeball it for the rest.

[KillianHawkeye]

The best you can do is look at the particular feat in question, see if there's any existing prices that do equivalent things, and eyeball it for the rest.

That's exactly why this is the first step in custom magic item pricing, and the pricing guidelines are second.

[Vaern]

They're 8k in my copy...
They are 8k. The original printing in [insert book here] was 18k, probably 10k or TWF + another 10k minus a feat requirement discount for the contingent ITWF effect. The 8k MIC reprinting is an example of the aforementioned "MIC lowered the price on a bunch of stuff that wasn't worth what the formula said it should be."