Need advice on custom items...

[aglondier]

We are playing Pathfinder 1st edition.

We are spending a little of our downtime working on some custom magic items, that we could use some advice on pricing it.

The Anyspell Wand Holster.
Worn on the offhand wrist, this ornate wand holster can create a temporary wand of any spell 1st to 3rd level in its repertoire, once per day as a standard action. The wand has limited charges (1st level has 6 charges, 2nd level has 3 charges, 3rd level has 2 charges), and crumbles into dust once they are expended. The wand only works for the wearer of the holster and crumbles into dust an hour after being handed off even if charges remain. The wearer of the holster is considered the appropriate class for the holster created wand with regards to activation. The holster is created with only a single spell of each level in its repertoire (1st to 3rd level), but it can "learn" new spells by "feeding" it a wand with at least one charge. Created wands have a caster level of 5th.

Going the most expensive part, a twice per day casting of a 3rd level spell. 1800(command word)x3(spell level)x5(caster level)÷5×2(two uses per day) = 10,800gp
Then the spell repertoire could be represented, initially and ongoing, by adding the price of 1 wand charge for each spell (or that total value in lower level charges). 75(1st)+150(2nd)+225(3rd)... initial total being 450gp.
Making it a wrist slot item, prevents it from doubling in price.

So base cost is 11,250gp. Cost to craft it is 5,625gp. It requires both Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Wand feats and a minimum caster level of 5th.

Thoughts? Am I underpricing it? Are there additional factors I should consider?

[Vaern]

The ability to expand the item's repertoire makes it basically impossible to price fairly. Granting an item the ability to cast additional spells on a daily charge limit is worth much more than the cost of the single wand charge necessary to grant that ability. Here's what you need to do to price it properly:

Take the cost of the most expensive ability (3rd level spell, CL5, 2/day, 10,800); add this to the item's total cost.
Take the cost of the next second expensive ability (2nd level spell, CL5, 3/day, 10,800); add 75% of that to (8,100) the item's total cost.
Take the cost of the next third expensive ability (1st level spell, CL5, 6/day, 10,800); add half of that (5,400) to the item's total cost.
For each ability beyond the third most expensive ability, add half its value to the item's total cost.

This gives you a total base price of 24,300 GP for a holster with one spell of each level. Here's the important part, though: For each additional spell added to the item, you must calculate that spell's cost as an "X uses per day" ability and add the ability's value to the total value of the item. Barring spells with material or XP components, each additional spell in the holster's repertoire should increase its market value an additional 5,400. As you've written it, the cost of adding a new spell to the holster's repertoire does not reflect the increase to its value. The best thing to do would probably be to set a hard limit on how many spells the holster can "know" and price it as though it knows the maximum number possible. For example, a holster might start out with 1 spell in its repertoire with a maximum capacity of 5. It's priced at 35,100 GP as though it already "knows" 5 spells. As it learns new spells up to its limit, its value remains unchanged because the cost of those spells has already been accounted for in its base price.

[RNightstalker]

Having the item be able to create other items, even only temporarily, and even only once per day should add to the price and require a coin slot to pay crafting costs lol. The fact that it can "learn" new spells to craft more wands with also needs to be taken into account. Including something about it having a max of 6 effective spell levels for the item created should be included in the price.

As a DM I wouldn't allow an item like that to be created, because as a player I would be going to every "Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe" I can find and purchase a wand with one charge left that isn't already "uploaded" for dirt cheap. It's a MacGuyver in a Bottle so to say that you can go "poof" and be able to overcome most any challenge at the level that it could be affordable at, with literally, a flick of the wrist.

[Darg]

Without feeding new spells into it, I think it's priced appropriately. It's like a flexible eternal wand. Personally I have an issue with the ability to learn spells, but that probably has more to do with the way I run games. It's not really an unbalanced feature in and of itself. With the limit of caster level of 5th I think you did a good job pricing it. Maybe someone else has more to add?

As a DM I wouldn't allow an item like that to be created, because as a player I would be going to every "Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe" I can find and purchase a wand with one charge left that isn't already "uploaded" for dirt cheap. It's a MacGuyver in a Bottle so to say that you can go "poof" and be able to overcome most any challenge at the level that it could be affordable at, with literally, a flick of the wrist.

That depends on if you allow players to find wands with one charge left. Why bother with level 1-3 scrolls when wands would be 3/5ths cheaper.

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Threads merged.

[aglondier]

The ability to expand the item's repertoire makes it basically impossible to price fairly. Granting an item the ability to cast additional spells on a daily charge limit is worth much more than the cost of the single wand charge necessary to grant that ability. Here's what you need to do to price it properly:

Take the cost of the most expensive ability (3rd level spell, CL5, 2/day, 10,800); add this to the item's total cost.
Take the cost of the next second expensive ability (2nd level spell, CL5, 3/day, 10,800); add 75% of that to (8,100) the item's total cost.
Take the cost of the next third expensive ability (1st level spell, CL5, 6/day, 10,800); add half of that (5,400) to the item's total cost.
For each ability beyond the third most expensive ability, add half its value to the item's total cost.

This gives you a total base price of 24,300 GP for a holster with one spell of each level. Here's the important part, though: For each additional spell added to the item, you must calculate that spell's cost as an "X uses per day" ability and add the ability's value to the total value of the item. Barring spells with material or XP components, each additional spell in the holster's repertoire should increase its market value an additional 5,400. As you've written it, the cost of adding a new spell to the holster's repertoire does not reflect the increase to its value. The best thing to do would probably be to set a hard limit on how many spells the holster can "know" and price it as though it knows the maximum number possible. For example, a holster might start out with 1 spell in its repertoire with a maximum capacity of 5. It's priced at 35,100 GP as though it already "knows" 5 spells. As it learns new spells up to its limit, its value remains unchanged because the cost of those spells has already been accounted for in its base price.

If I was creating an item that gave me additional daily castings that pricing scheme would fit, but that wasn't the idea at all. It has one activation per day allowing it to create one wand with 6 spell levels worth of energy (2x3rd level, 3x2nd level OR 6x1st level). Increasing the spell repertoire is like adding extra spells to a wizards spellbook, it is extra options to spend the 6 spell levels on, not extra spell slots.
Setting a maximum number of "pages" in its repertoire might not be a bad idea though.

Without feeding new spells into it, I think it's priced appropriately. It's like a flexible eternal wand. Personally I have an issue with the ability to learn spells, but that probably has more to do with the way I run games. It's not really an unbalanced feature in and of itself. With the limit of caster level of 5th I think you did a good job pricing it. Maybe someone else has more to add?

That depends on if you allow players to find wands with one charge left. Why bother with level 1-3 scrolls when wands would be 3/5ths cheaper.

Our DM does not sell limited charge wands from Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. It's full or not available. But wands wear down...

[Vaern]

If I was creating an item that gave me additional daily castings that pricing scheme would fit, but that wasn't the idea at all. It has one activation per day allowing it to create one wand with 6 spell levels worth of energy (2x3rd level, 3x2nd level OR 6x1st level). Increasing the spell repertoire is like adding extra spells to a wizards spellbook, it is extra options to spend the 6 spell levels on, not extra spell slots.

I haven't misunderstood what the item does. The way you've described how your item (a magic item that creates different, temporary magic items, which have their own effects independent from the main item) does not fit within the pricing guidelines, full stop. What I've done instead is looked at the pricing guidelines, come up with a magic item within the pricing guidelines' boundaries that most closely matches how much power your item adds to a player character, and then used the comparable item that I ended up with as a baseline for what the cost of the item you described should look like.

A staff has a set number of charges, but can cast a number of different spells using the same pool of charges. Adding additional spells to a staff's spell list does not allow it to cast more spells by giving it more charges or anything; it only increases the variety of spells that can be cast from the charges that it already has. One might say that adding spells to a staff is like adding extra pages to a wizard's spellbook, offering extra options to spend its charges on, not extra spell slots.
The increased versatility of the final product is what the cost of adding additional spells to the item represents. A staff can have the cost of spells on its list reduced by making that spell cost multiple charges to cast - you could, for example, make a spell cost a number of charges equal to its spell level to mitigate the spell level multiplier from the pricing equation, and in this case you have effectively created a staff can cast a number of spell levels equal to the number of charges it has.

Now let's say, theoretically, someone was to create an eternal staff - a more flexible and versatile alternative to the eternal wand, holding multiple spells but having the same spell level cap of 3rd. This eternal staff begins each day with 6 charges. The first time it is activated each day, its user selects a spell to cast from its list of available spells. Until the end of the day the staff may be used to cast only the chosen spell at a cost of 1 charge per spell level. This allows it to cast either a 1st-level spell 6/day; a 2nd-level 3/day; or a 3rd-level spell 2/day. This staff effectively has 6 spell levels worth of energy with which to cast its chosen spell of the day.
This staff is functionally the same thing as the wand holster, with selecting the staff's spell of the day from its spell list being akin to producing your temporary wand of the day from the holster's spell list. Per the guidelines for pricing staves (substituting charges/day functionality in place of the base 50-charge spell completion formula), the cost for an eternal staff would be the same as I described previously: The cost of the most expensive spell available to the staff, plus 75% of the next most expensive spell, plus 50% of any additional spells.
This staff is the closest match to your holster that can reasonably be created within the boundaries of the pricing guidelines in regards to how much stronger the item will make a player character, and thus I am fairly confident that pricing the holster in the same way that I would price an eternal staff is appropriate for what it does.

Finally, there is no way to price an item which can expand its list of available powers independently from item creation feats, so there isn't really a good way to price an item that can be modified on the fly except to set a cap and set a fixed market price based on its maximum potential value. Either that, or you could simply remove that portion of the item and just plan on adding additional spells to it with item creation feats during future downtime instead.