Re: helm values

Thatotherguy meandered fecklessly...


> > Although I haven't had a chance to take a good, hard look at
> > the responses yet, due to the holidays, this was the purpose
> > behind my two recent polls (plus refiguring prices for ships).
>
> Polls aside, I thought 3e had a built in method for calculating such
> things.  Even if you have to take a helm creation feat that has a
> prerequisite of two other feats (some spell enhancing feat and a more
> usual magical item creation feat) and requires the helming spells from
> the books (you know, create minor helm, create major helm) it seems
> like a cost should be derivable (I don't know 3e, however...).

Well, yes and no.

3e has complete rules for standard magic item creation. But,
not for artifacts, either minor or major, and the official 2e SJ has
helms as minor artifacts. So, if someone wants to keep them as
such, a price will have to be derived.

If someone wishes to make helms a creatable item, they will
either need to create a new feat or assign it to one of the
pre-existing feats, such as Craft Wonderous Item. There are
guidelines for pricing new magic items, but I am not so certain
that they are the best route to pricing helms. They work best
when a magic item replicates some sort of spell function, and
while there are spells for making a chair a helm, permanent
helms to go beyond this.

In my opinion, some price needs to be created for helms,
whether or not the DM is going to make them creatable or
minor artifacts, and I think the best way to do so is to find
the value of a helm relative to the value of other magic items,
and I don't think the built-in system is going to be all that helpful.


Also
> with 3e values of what levels of NPCs should possess, what level do you
> have to be to own a dragonfly with minor helm outright?  It seems to me
> that 3e is supposed to be able to handle this once the math is done.

Again, yes and no.

3e has some handy guidelines for the amount of treasure to hand
out at any given level for a given encounter difficulty. It has guidelines
for the value of treasure and equipment they should have at any
given level. You can look and see that on average a character
of level X should have approximately Y in gp value of treasure and
equipment. Thus, yes, you could say ship A and helm B cost
C in gp, and this on the average you need to be level D, since
the average total treasure they have at that level is the about the
same as the above cost.

But, should a ship be considered part of the total treasure a
character should have at any given level? If so, that is a huge
chunk out of their total treasure, and becomes feasible only at
much higher levels.

For example, let's take a wasp and a minor helm, which is a
total of 118,000 gp. Let's also say that it is owned by a party
of four adventurers, who have equal ownership. This means
each character has 29,500 gold towards the ship.

Now, according to the 3e DMG, a 9th level character should
have about 36,000 gp worth of stuff. So, in theory, a party of
four 9th level adventurers could own such a vessel. The problem
is that this will leave them with little money for other stuff.
6,500 gp for the rest of their equipment is not much. This
is especially bad since 3e assumes the given listed amount of
gp value of equipment per level in its system for determining
the challenge of encounters. If a party of 9th level characters
has the equipment of 4th level characters, they are not
equivalent to 9th level characters in overall power.

The question for me is "What percent of their treasure gained
should the average party be expected to put towards a ship
in a 'typical' SJ campaign?" Should the average party be
expected to put half? A quarter?

If a part put a quarter of their treasure into the group's ship they
would have to be around 14th level in order to afford the wasp
with it's minor helm.

How does one fix this and still follow as closely as possible the
3e guidelines for treasure? That is a question I have been asking
myself a lot lately, and why I had the polls. Should the DM hand
out more treasure? That seems reasonable, as long as the players
are reasonable. What if you hand out more treasure so players
can upgrade their ship like they do themselves, but then decide
a portion of that will go towards more magic items for themselves?

None of this has to do with any major shortcoming of 3e. Ships
are costs above and beyond the rest of the character's stuff, and
3e doesn't have guidelines for these kinds of situations. To be
honest, I had these kinds of problems when I ran SJ using
2e (or, my own modified version). They just weren't as prominent.



Leroy Van Camp III
malacoda@?????????.com
http://www.users.qwest.net/~malacoda/TarkasBrainLabIV.html
ICQ #20039817

"Where you come from is gone. Where you thought you were
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