New Magic Items
Armor Special Properties
The Armor Special Properties table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide has a couple of gaps in it; specifically, at +2 and +4 market price modifier. Here are a few new armor abilities to fill those gaps.
Brilliance: Whenever this armor or shield enters the area of a spell or effect with the Darkness descriptor, it automatically dispels the effect. In addition, once per day the wearer can cause the armor or shield to shed light (as the daylight spell).
Caster Level: 5th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, daylight; Market Price: +2 bonus.
Featherweight: When worn, this armor is essentially weightless. It inflicts no penalty to Swim checks. Reduce armor check penalty by 2 and increase maximum Dexterity bonus by 2. It is treated as one category lighter (heavy as medium, medium or light armors as light) for purposes of movement and other limitations (for example, whether a barbarian can use his fast movement ability while wearing the armor or not). It has no effect on arcane spell failure chance. The bonuses granted by featherweight armor do not stack with those of mithral armor. [Concept originally created by Dennis "Jarvis Osburn" Worrell]
Caster Level: 5th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, levitate; Market Price: +2 bonus.
Fiery: When this armor is activated (requiring a command word from the wearer), the armor burns with a blue-white flame for 10 rounds. This fire does not harm the wearer or any of his possessions, but anyone touching or striking the wearer suffers 1d6 points of fire damage. The armor may be activated five times per day.
Caster Level: 10th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, fire shield; Market Price: +4 bonus.
Healing: The wearer of this armor can spend a standard action to cast cure light wounds on himself five times per day. In addition, once per day when the wearer of this armor is reduced to less than half his total hit points, the armor casts cure critical wounds on the wearer. This is an automatic action that requires no action on the part of the wearer.
Caster Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, cure critical wounds, cure light wounds; Market Price: +4 bonus.
Mighty Bulwark: At a command, the mighty bulwark shield grows to the size of a tower shield though it retains its normal weight and armor check penalty (you suffer the tower shield’s arcane spell failure chance when in that form). When the shield is in this form, any creature attempting to approach within 10 feet of you from the direction the shield faces must make a Will save (DC 19) or be unable to approach. This save must be repeated each round, regardless of success or failure. A creature within the area of effect that fails its save cannot approach any closer to you. The effect doesn’t push back a repelled creature if you approach it.
The mighty bulwark shield doesn’t prevent creatures from making ranged attacks against you, nor does it repel melee attacks made from outside the area of effect (such as by a creature with reach).
Caster Level: 11th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, enlarge, repulsion; Market Price: +4 bonus.
Wondrous Items
Ring Bracelet
This item
of jewelry (sometimes called a handflower or a ring bracer) clasps around the
wearer’s wrist, with thin chains extending up to wrap around one or more
fingers as well.
When used as a magic item, the ring bracelet occupies one ring space, one glove space, and one bracer space. Thus, it can’t be worn with a full set of bracers or with a full set of gloves. However, two ring bracelets can be worn (each on a separate hand) and each will function normally.
Because it takes up multiple item locations on a character, a magic ring bracelet costs only half as much as a normal wondrous item with the same power or powers. If created as a matching pair, the item costs only one-third the normal price.
Crafting a magic ring bracelet requires both the Craft Wondrous Item and Forge Ring feats.
Handflower of Grace
This delicate web of gold chains set with tiny sapphires grants the wearer an equal enhancement bonus to both Charisma and Dexterity (+2, +4, or +6).
Caster Level: 8th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Forge Ring, cat’s grace, charm monster; Market Price: 6,000 gp (+2), 24,000 gp (+4), or 54,000 gp (+6).
Ring Bracers of Shielding
This pair of silver ring bracers grant their wearer a deflection bonus to Armor Class (+1 to +5) and provide immunity to magic missiles. Both must be worn to have any effect.
Caster Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Forge Ring, shield of faith, spell immunity, caster must be of a level three times that of the bonus of the ring bracers; Market Price: 6,000 gp (+1), 10,000 gp (+2), 15,000 gp (+3), 21,000 gp (+4), 28,000 gp (+5).
Figment Weavers
This shimmering pair of ring bracelets appears to be composed of iridescent webs strung across the backs of the wearer’s hands. They allow the wielder to "weave" illusions as often as desired. Creating a silent image is a free action (Will DC 11 disbelief). Weaving a minor image requires a standard action (Will 13 disbelief). Creating a major image requires a full-round action (Will DC 14 disbelief). You can’t create more than one illusion per round using the figment weavers.
Using figment weavers incurs attacks of opportunity as if the wearer were casting a spell (though the wearer may make a Concentration check to cast defensively if desired).
Caster Level: 5th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Forge Ring, major image, minor image, silent image; Market Price: 18,000 gp.
Shoes of Agility
These soft-soled shoes grant a +5 competence bonus to the wearer’s Balance, Climb, and Tumble skill checks.
Caster Level: 5th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, cat’s grace; Market Price: 2,500 gp.
How I Determined the Prices
Handflower of Grace: This one is relatively simple. A +2 enhancement bonus to an ability score costs 2 squared, times 1000 gp, for a total of 4,000 gp. A second equal bonus would costs 200% of this, or 8,000 gp. Together, they would cost 12,000 gp in a single item. Since the handflower takes up multiple item "slots," it only costs one-half this price, or 6,000 gp.
Ring Bracers of Shielding: The deflection bonus is easy—it’s one-third the cost of an equivalent ring of protection: 667 gp, 2,667 gp, 6,000 gp, 10,667 gp, and 16,667 gp for +1 through +5, respectively.
For immunity to magic missile, I first looked at the brooch of shielding. Since it has a limited number of charges, I decided that its price was too low to use for this effect (which is unlimited for the ring bracers). Instead, I priced it as if it used spell immunity (magic missile). I multiplied the spell level (4) by the caster level (7) and then by the base price for a permanent item (2000), for a total of 56,000. Since this item doesn’t let you select what spell to immunize yourself against, it’s not as valuable as an item that simply casts spell immunity, and thus I halved the value to 28,000 gp. Since it’s part of a ring bracer, I then multiplied this by one-third to reach a total of 9,333 gp.
Adding this value to the deflection costs listed above, I see that the ring bracers of deflection will cost 10,000 gp (+1), 12,000 gp (+2), 15,333 gp (+3), 20,000 gp (+4), and 26,000 gp (+5). At the low end, this is significantly more than the price of an equivalent ring (since the immunity to magic missiles represents a greater fraction of the market value). However, the price of the ring bracers goes up very slowly, suggesting that many characters may simply skip over the +1 or +2 versions. That’s not really what I’m looking for, so I decide to tweak the prices slightly. I knock the prices for the +1 and +2 ring bracers down a bit and raise the prices of the +4 and +5 to widen the gap and create a smooth progression in value.
Figment Weavers: The figment weavers have three different powers: Major image, minor image, and silent image. If I priced this as a standard magic item, I would start by multiplying each effect’s spell level (1, 2, or 3) by the item’s caster level (5) and then by 2,000 gp. This gives me prices of 30,000 gp (major image), 20,000 gp (minor image), and 10,000 gp (silent image). Normally, an item with three different powers would cost extra (an additional 100% of each of the secondary powers’ prices), but these powers are so similar that I decide to increase the value by only 50% of each power. (That’s purely an ad hoc decision, and we’ll see how it comes out. If it doesn’t look right, we’ll try again.) That means that the three powers cost 30,000 gp (you don’t increase the most expensive power), 30,000 gp, and 15,000 gp. That gives me a total of 75,000 gp for the item. Since this is a full pair of ring bracelets, I multiply this price by one-third to get a total of 25,000 gp. I’ll reduce it by another 10% or so since it incurs attacks of opportunity (something that’s rare among wondrous items), bringing us down to 22,500 gp.
That still seems a bit high—remember, this should be comparing favorably to items costing up to three times its value—so I go back to the point at which I priced out the multiple powers and decide to eliminate the increase in cost (the powers are so similar that it’s not like you’re getting a big bonus for being able to use all three). Thus, I’m back to an item that costs 30,000 gp plus 20,000 gp plus 10,000 gp, or 60,000 gp. One-third of this is 20,000, minus 10% for incurring attacks of opportunity is 18,000 gp. I don’t want to go any lower as yet, so I’ll introduce it at this price and see if that seems reasonable in the game.
Shoes of Agility: The Dungeon Master's Guide tells us that a +5 bonus to a skill check is worth 5 times 5 times 20 gp, or 500 gp. Additional equal bonuses are worth the same amount but are doubled because they represent multiple powers, thus 500 + 1000 (500 doubled) + 1000 (500 doubled) gives us 2,500 gp.
Other items of a similar value include the cloak and boots of elvenkind, slippers of spider climbing, and boots of the winterlands. That seems to be the right neighborhood for the shoes of agility.
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