Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Vaalingrade Ashland 08-13-05, 07:39 PM	I'm working on transportation in my world and this would be very useful to know: How much would it cost to animate an object so that it continually rotated, worked up and down, or other simmple, repetitive tasks? How about to make them controlable (activate, deactive, speed up, slow down, turn)? I see two ways of doing this: - Craft Wondrous for a use activate power - Gold cost in XP from Permenancy.
MikeTheAmazingMuskrat 08-13-05, 07:59 PM	I believe the standard price for spells with an XP component is 5gp per xp spent, plus caster level X spell level X 10. Player's Handbook 305, page 132, under Spell:. -mike the amazing muskrat
Vaalingrade Ashland 08-13-05, 08:05 PM	But do I need to price it as per permenancy casting or as per craft wondrous?
MikeTheAmazingMuskrat 08-13-05, 08:32 PM	Ah. Gotcha. I think that depends on how the crafters make them. Either way would work. If it's a mass process, then I'd go with whatever is cheapest (which, I imagine, probably won't be the rules for creating permanent spell effects in magic item). -mike the amazing muskrat
egoslayer1 08-15-05, 03:23 PM	another approach might be to create a golem. Granted this isn't what most would consider 'cheap' but it could be very cool. Take an Iron golem, at 150,000gp sell price, if you removed it's offensive capabilities (2 slams & a breath weapon), surely you could knock of some of it's price tag. I suppose effectively, you'de be removing all of it's BAB as well, that has to cost something when building a golem. In the end maybe you could get the cost down to a more affordable range, and be left with something that is VERY tough, and safe, and easy to repair (just park it in a fire), and not to mention COOL. All you'de need to ADD is some speed and you'de pretty much be good to go. Going the animated item route, you could do spell level x caster level x 2000 x 2(for not taking up a slot). And it could be a command activated item. If you used some high quality materials for the animated it it could be pretty durable. ES
Vaalingrade Ashland 08-15-05, 07:04 PM	Eh, the prices for this by the rules are clearly incompatable with an economic world, so I', tagging it with flavor text saying the company that makes them just employs mages to cast animate, then use a magic item that stores XP to cast permenancy. Final Price to the consumer: 17k.
tarkin 08-15-05, 07:40 PM	I personally would rule that for various reasons, mutliple small objects being animated can not work as one creature. If you want them to work together, I would rule you would need to use a Craft item feat, not the spell Permanancy. Permancy is also known as the Munchkins' cheap Craft, and smart DM's should guard against it. It is also subject to Dispelling. Animate Object is a 6th level spell that can be made permanent, for less than building a full construct, in part because the resulting entity is weak, relatively. But lets ignore that for now. Lets assume minimum level, 14 (as required by the spell Permancy) Cost to Animate: 6 * 14 * 10 Cost to cast Permancy: 5*14 * 10 3,000 xp paid for in gold: 3000 * 5 ====================== Total cost to pay a wizard to do this: 16,590 gp Now if your DM is smart he says for that you just get a single Huge animated object or smaller. Yes, he COULD rule to let you get 14 small objects, or some combination there of, but that would be an abuse of the spells in my mind. Permancy is easy to abuse, and basically innapropriate to what you want. -------------------- Now lets talk about what you really want to do. #1 way to screw up a magic item: think about how it does what you want instead of how powerfull it is. Forget about "how" it does what you want. That is unimportant. To price a magic item you care about what it does, not how. A sword does +1d6 of fire damage should cost the same whether it uses evocation to create the fire or conjuration to summon oil and a spark of electricity to light it. Transportation is already fairly priced several times in the DMG. Just take the price for what you want and change the description.
Vaalingrade Ashland 08-16-05, 12:33 PM	Forget about "how" it does what you want. That is unimportant. To price a magic item you care about what it does, not how. A sword does +1d6 of fire damage should cost the same whether it uses evocation to create the fire or conjuration to summon oil and a spark of electricity to light it. Transportation is already fairly priced several times in the DMG. Just take the price for what you want and change the description. Um, tarkin, I'm a DM building his world, not a player trying to craft something in someone else's game. Flying transportation is not fairly priced in 3.5. Bloody hell, wings of flying cost 54kgp! That's bleeding insane. For my world, I want cheap, effective flying transport. Basically, this thing, called the Dragonfly engine is like a pair of furiously buzzing wings that lift ships via the (IRL proven false) bumblebee effect. And by the same token, I want magical moving parts for other things, such as constantly turning gears and other motive drives.