Back to SeanKReynolds.com home : Back to RPG Files : Back to Blades of Faerûn
The Arcane Blade: This +3 spell storing
longsword was made by the church of Azuth, the god of wizards, mages,
and spellcasters. It is made of fine steel with a steel hilt woven in thick
leather, possibly from the skin of a phaerimm, and bears a large emerald
set in the pommel. Thorass runes glow blue on the blade, spelling out its
name in Chondathan. Once per day it can be commanded to cast spell resistance
upon the wielder.
Caster Level: 9th; Prerequisites:
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, spell resistance, creator must be at
least 12th level; Market Price: 64,715 gp; Cost to Create:
32,515 gp + 2,576 XP.
Pricing:
The item has a base plus of
+3, spell storing is worth +1, for a total of +4, for 32000 gp.
Spell resistance once per
day is spell level 5 x caster level 9 (the minimum) x 1800 (command word)
divided by 5 (once per day), for 16200. Any additional properties on a
magic weapon that aren't plus-based have their cost doubled, so this becomes
32,400.
Total magic price is 32000
+ 32400, or 64400 gp.
Half of that is the cost to
create, or 32200 gp.v 1/25 the magic price is the XP cost, or 2576.
Add in the 315 gp for a masterwork
longsword and you get the final costs.
Update: A question has come up: How can it
have a prereq of "creator must be at least 12th level," but only have a
caster level of "9th"?
Well, the caster level listing is
_not_ part of the prerequisite. The caster level is just the caster level
(and is used to determine how hard it is to negate the item or its effects
with, for example, a dispel magic). You can always set the caster
level lower than your own level (with a minimum of the minimum caster level
for the spell in question, like 5th for a fireball).
For example, a 12th-level wizard
could make a staff of magic missile and shield with caster level
1. The caster level of the item would still be 1st (so the magic missile
would only shoot 1 missile, and the shield would only last 1 minute),
even though the creator was 12th and you have to be 12th-level to get the
Craft Staff feat. The prereq for such an item would include Craft Staff,
which (since the feat has a prereq of "caster level 12+") means that there's
sort of an invisible prereq of "Creator must be at least 12th level" whenever
you say that Craft Staff is a prereq. So the item would have caster level
1, but technically have a prereq of "creator must be 12th level" .. which
is OK, see?
So, the Arcane Blade's spell
storing power requires that the creator be at least 12th-level, but
the caster level could be less than that (and in this case, it is).
Note that all features in an item
have to have the _same_ caster level, so the highest-level feature dictates
the minimum caster level. In this case, it's the spell resistance
spell, which has a minimum caster level of 9, so the weapon's caster level
is 9.
(The other "feature" is the spell
storing ability, which has a default caster level of 8 according to
the DMG. Of course, the caster level for that feature only determines how
hard it is to suppress the sword's abilities with a dispel magic,
and that feature doesn't cost you anything different if you set it to caster
level 1 or caster level 12, so set it to anything up to your own caster
level. Since all caster levels in an item have to be the same, you wouldn't
want to set it above 9 because that means you'd have to pay for the spell
resistance feature (above) at a higher caster level).
See why creating multiple-feature
items is a pain in the butt? :)