How to price this magic item?

[Barbarian MD]

Alright, so I want to craft a lich phylactery, but not just any phylactery--this will be an intelligent item.

I want it to be able to:
Cast greater teleport and plane shift at will.
Cast mindblank on itself 1/day
Cast anticipate teleport 1/day

I also plan on covering it with an Elminster's Evasion contingency, but that will be done by the PC.

So, how would I go about pricing those?

Also: any other suggestions?

[Eurus]

Alright, so I want to craft a lich phylactery, but not just any phylactery--this will be an intelligent item.

I want it to be able to:
Cast greater teleport and plane shift at will.
Cast mindblank on itself 1/day
Cast anticipate teleport 1/day

I also plan on covering it with an Elminster's Evasion contingency, but that will be done by the PC.

So, how would I go about pricing those?

Also: any other suggestions?

Well, there are general rules for pricing magic items, and guidelines for adding spell effects to other items, but personally I would add an upcharge to whatever the guidelines suggest to compensate for the item being able to do these things without effort on the part of its owner.

So something like...
163,800 gp for the teleport at will
81,000 gp for the plane shift
43,200 for Mind Blank 1/day

I forget the spell level for Anticipate Teleport, but then you'd multiply all but the most expensive one by 1.5 per the "multiple abilities" clause, and add in the cost of a lich's phylactery and the base intelligent item abilities. Then if you wanted to upcharge it, I'd do so by anywhere from 20% to 50%.

If you're asking for suggestions for how to make it even more unstoppable, you could always give it the ability to Disjunction its way out of any dimensional locks it ends up in.

(Actually, Ray Deflection would be much cheaper and would deal with Dimensional Anchor if not Dimensional Lock. Since you can't teleport into a dimensional lock either, that would mean that the only real way to touch it would be with either a celerity-time stop-dimensional lock combo or somehow anticipate where it's going and ready an action to lock it there.)

[Barbarian MD]

Ooohh, Ray Deflection Sounds excellent. Alright, new thing to price: enough of those to cover 24 hours.

And when I say "continuous," what I mean is "enough per day uses to cover a 24 hour period," since having the item cast the spell is probably cheaper than having a continuous effect (maybe).


Edit: wait, does an intelligent item just follow the normal item creation rules? I just did the math for a few of the intelligent item's powers and it seems to be coming out the same. I didn't realize they were the same formula. Can anyone verify this as being the case?

[SilverClawShift]

Are you the DM?

If I were the DM, and a player wanted this? I wouldn't let you have it. Not for gold.
But maybe a QUEST...

The tear of an angel who loved you when it was shed.
The heart of a wyrmling dragon and the eyes of its mother.
The horns of a devil who knows of your plan.

Ect...

[Barbarian MD]

Why not? A lich crafts his own phylactery, and the pc would have to sped the time and effort to do so. It basically amounts to a phylactery that can hide and run away--it's not like it's something that helps the pc personally, and it's just another way of spending a ton of gold to safeguard the thing.

[SilverClawShift]

"Because some things are worth more than money"

The item is fine, but I wouldn't feel right giving a player an immortality-boost just for erasing some zeroes off their characters gold count and finding a quiet place to hide.

A phylactery that knows when it's in trouble and has the ability to hide itself across the multiverse? That's a big one. Yeah, all the 'parts' are listed in books, but so are all the parts to become Pun-Pun (Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying this is so uber it's stupid, I'm just saying it's a little more of a big deal than making a really awesome sword and shield).

I wouldn't let a player buy a philosopher's stone or build a deck of many things either. I might let them drum one up if they wanted to go adventuring for it though. Same with this.

It's a very cool idea, and I'd concede to it. But like I said. Some things can't just be BOUGHT, they have to be earned.

[Eurus]

The idea of a mage so paranoid that he pulled a Scrooge and pawned off his massive adventuring fortune to build a super-phylactery to ensure his immortality while he holes up in a sewer somewhere is an interesting one, though... maybe as an NPC.

[tigerusthegreat]

I'm the DM for this, and I'm letting him do it so I can have fun with him...

crap I said that out loud.

J/p

[JaronK]

Phylacteries can't be magic items IIRC, so this should probably just be an intelligent phylactery container. Perhaps make it be an intelligent smuggler's hold with legs and with a Haunt Shift spell on it for extra fun?

JaronK

[JeminiZero]

Note that intelligent magic items may have no loyalty to their creator (since they are DM controlled NPCs by the rules). Even if they "happen" to serve as a repository for their creator's soul. Your phylactery might decide it wants to spend the rest of its existence tormenting you endlessly. It might e.g. kill you and then hire a bunch of thugs to smash your body everytime you start reforming next to it.

[Toliudar]

Indeed, this is simply an arm's race that the PC can't win. By the time a player has access to this kind of magic, a reasonable opponent has access to epic spellcasting and similar shenanigans, and with the power of plot there's always a way to muck about with the phylactery.

So, I'd have no problem with a player spending even more on their phylactery with these kinds of augmentations. It makes it all the more important and motivating when some NPC manages to snare it.

[Barbarian MD]

I'm the DM for this, and I'm letting him do it so I can have fun with him...

crap I said that out loud.

J/p

Now why would you go and do a thing like that?

Note that intelligent magic items may have no loyalty to their creator (since they are DM controlled NPCs by the rules). Even if they "happen" to serve as a repository for their creator's soul. Your phylactery might decide it wants to spend the rest of its existence tormenting you endlessly. It might e.g. kill you and then hire a bunch of thugs to smash your body everytime you start reforming next to it.

Technically, one could go to the trouble of making the phylactery an Item Familiar.

"If a character with an item familiar is at least 7th level, the item gains rudimentary sapience. It gains Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. Two of these scores (player’s or GM’s choice) are 10 and one is 12. The item familiar also gains an Ego score. This last score should not come into play very often—an item familiar is completely loyal to its master, unless its master radically changes alignment or one or the other is affected by some strange compulsion."