[RPG] Custom Devlin’s ring combined with the quiver of Anariel

dnd-3.5emagic-items

I'm having a small disagreement with a good friend and, like a good patient, I'd like a second opinion.

The Complete Book of Eldritch Might, (3.5 revised) has a fantastic ring that creates infinite arrows, at a reasonable price. (Taking the place of a ring finger…)

Devlin's Ring

If you wear this ring and pull back on an empty bow of any kind, an arrow appears, nocked and ready to fire. Should you fire the arrow, it inflicts damage and acts in all ways as a normal arrow. If you don't fire the arrow, it fades after 1 round. You can use this ring to produce more than one arrow in a round if you have multiple attacks.

Faint conjuration; caster level 1st, Forge Ring, Devlin's barb; Price 2,000 gp. (4000 gp market price)

This disagreement also involves the quiver of Anariel from Dragon magazine:

Quiver of Anariel

This quiver automatically refilled itself with regular or magical arrows, ensuring that it was always full. An arrow quickly disappeared if it was not used, however (1 round)

A quiver of Anariel could be fashioned that produced basic arrows, masterwork arrows, or a range of magical arrows, at increasing costs:

Regular arrows: 28,000 gp

Masterwork arrows: 29,000 gp

+1 arrows: 32,000 gp

+2 arrows: 44,000 gp

+3 arrows: 64,000 gp

+4 arrows: 92,000 gp

+5 arrows: 128,000 gp


Page 233 of Magic Item Compendium says "you can add new magical abilities to a magic item with virtually no restrictions."

With that in mind,

  1. Is it possible to enchant Devlin's ring so that it produces magic arrows? (much like the quiver)
  2. If so, what limitations would there be, if any?
  3. How would pricing work?
  4. If it's not possible, why?

If possible, please state references with your answer.

Best Answer

Creating custom items is always a matter of negotiation and judgment; there are no hard and fast rules. The books provide some guidelines, but are always quick to point out that they cannot be relied upon, and that the DM is always going to have to judge suggested custom items on a case-by-case basis.

The first guideline is to compare your desired item against the closest available comparable items, and adjust from there. Thus, to allow a ring, such as Devlin’s, to do what the quiver of Anariel does, you would start with the quiver of Anariel as your basis for the cost of doing so.

Furthermore, the passage on page 233 of Magic Item Compendium is really talking about adding new magical abilities onto an item that could otherwise have that ability. But ultimately, you can add anything anywhere as long as the DM allows it. The aforementioned guidelines suggest a 50% surcharge to add something to an unusual slot. So to put the quiver of Anariel effect on a ring should, by these guidelines, cost 50% more. On the other hand, the guidelines also suggest that something that does not use one of the usual magic item slots should cost double, so a magic quiver (which doesn’t prevent the use of other items) presumably costs double. So the guidelines would say that the ring should cost approximately 75% of what the corresponding quiver costs.

However, the problem here is that the quiver of Anariel is ludicrously overpriced, particularly at the regular arrows level. My games routinely ignore tracking mundane arrows in general, so they are literally charging 28,000 gp for a magic quiver that does what any quiver in my games does, by default.

On the other hand, magic arrows are a much bigger deal than mundane ones. Magic arrows partially stack with the magic properties on the bow shooting them, which is a big deal. While I’d say even Devlin’s ring is on the expensive side for mundane arrows, for magic arrows the cost definitely should be much higher.

So instead, I’m going to make a different suggestion: consider magic ammunition as if it were a 50-charge item, like wand. After all, enhancing 50 arrows costs the same as a sword. So if a 50-charge spell-effect item costs spell level × caster level × 750 gp, and a use-activated at-will item costs spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp, you’re looking at the use-activated version costing 2⅔× what the 50-charge version does. So if you apply a 2⅔× multiplier to the cost of 50 magic arrows (which is the same as the cost of a single magic sword), you have at least one reasonable idea for what this effect should cost.

The results are 5334 gp for +1, 21,334 gp for +2, 48,000 gp for +3, 85,334 gp for +4, and 133,334 gp for +5. Most likely you would ideally use equivalent levels of special weapon properties rather than straight enhancement bonuses, though.