Pricing for a spell penetration item?

[Piratecat]

Hi, gang! A player wants to make an item that provides spell penetration or greater spell penetration. I can't find any existing items that do this. Are there? And if not, how would you price a wondrous object that did this?

Thanks!

 

[Crothian]

I'd use MEG's Artificiers Handbook which actually has rules for pricing items with feats in it!! But by the standard rules, I'm not sure how one would do it.

 

[Pielorinho]

Could you handle it similarly to rods of metamagic?
Daniel

 

[UltimaGabe]

Robes of the Archmagi provide a bonus to caster level checks for overcoming spell resistance (just like Spell Penetration, but I don't think they call it that), along with other things. You could always try and figure it out using that as an example.

 

[jgsugden]

Hi, gang! A player wants to make an item that provides spell penetration or greater spell penetration. I can't find any existing items that do this. Are there? And if not, how would you price a wondrous object that did this?

Thanks!

Robe of the Archmage gives a +2 enhancement bonus to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance. Unfortunately, we can not reverse engineer the value of this ability as the robe does not follow typical item creation formulas. It does give us a ood idea on how to handle it, though: an enhancement bonus to the caster level check.

I would use a formula for this like other formulas for magic items that grant pluses. How useful is the ability? Is it like a resistance bonus to saving throws? Is it like an AC armor bonus? Is it like an ability score bonus? Is it like a natural armor bonus?

In my mind, I think it is about as useful as a resistance bonus to saves. Those have a value of 1,000 gp X (level of bonus) squared. So, a +1 item would be 1,000, a +2 item would be 4,000, a +4 item would be 16,000, etc ...

Then you need to figure out what slot the item could occupy. Rings are always a choice. Beyond that, I'd have the item occupy a head slot as it seems to be the most closely linked to spellcasting. Perhaps a cloak slot if you make it a mantle for priests or an amulet if you make it a holy symbol.

 

[Krafen]

I agree with using an enhancement bonus calculation. The price I suggest, however, is bonus squared * 2000 capped at +5 pre-epic.

 

[Orco42]

Robe of the Archmage gives a +2 enhancement bonus to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance. Unfortunately, we can not reverse engineer the value of this ability as the robe does not follow typical item creation formulas.

Sure you can, it just shows that adding spell penetration makes an item 31,000gp less expensive.

 

[Alomir]

So, Robe of the Archmagi does the following:
* +5 armor bonus to AC
* Spell resistance 18
* +4 resistance bonus to saving throws
* +2 enhancement bonus to caster level checks to overcome SR

Reverse enginerring isn't that hard, if we're willing to accept a small fudge factor. The price of the first three effects are pretty well defined: 25K, 60K, and 16K. If we assume that the +2 caster level is of the [n^2*1000] variety, this gives a total of 105K. Applying the 30% discount for alignment-restricted items, that brings us to 73.5K, which is pretty close to the listed price of 75K.

I agree that it seems about as useful as a resistance bonus to saves - another argument for the [n^2*1000] category.

As for slot - how about vestment? Vest's affinity is 'class ability improvement' - this certainly seems to an improvement to a major class ability.

 

[Scion]

Prayer beads and the orange ioun stone help as well, though not exactly what you are going for

Most feats are suggested to be something like 10k right? But the enhancement bonus is a good plan.

 

[James McMurray]

Arms and Equipment Guide has a sidebar which discusses adding feats to items. It says that if a feat is purely mechanical it should be priced according to similar items. Unfortunately, that's a bit hard to do with spell penetration. The second guideline it gives is that feats cost 10,000gp + 5,000gp per prereq. The second option makes feats way too cheap at higher leels IMO.

Over at Exodus we've got an item that gives an enhnacement bonus to spell penetration. The price is bonus squared times 2,500gp. This works out well. Of course, at those levels (starting ECL 25) nobody bothers with anything lower than +5.