[RPG] Is this Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield legit according to the rules

magic-itemspathfinder-1e

I often play as a Crafting Wizard and would like to know if there's a ruling against this. Whenever I'm working on creating survivability items, I've always made the same item.

Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield, 7000 gp
Continuous Mage Armor and Shield
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Craft Wondrous Item, mage armor, shield, 3500 gp

According to the magic item pricing guide, this follows the rules.

  • Continuous Mage Armor: Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp = 2,000 gp
  • Continuous Shield: Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp = 2,000 gp
    • Spell Measured in Minutes: Multiply effect cost by 2 = 2,000 gp
  • Multiple different abilities: Multiply lower item cost by 1.5 = 1,000 gp

Effectively, this item gives the wearer +4 Armor and +4 Shield to AC PLUS immunity Magic Missile. For 6,500 gp, that's a steal. Now, you can't enchant it, but you can buy a much less cumbersome armor piece and enchant that one instead to get your additional enhancement bonuses to AC, while suffering from no Max Dex or ACP woes.

This just seems too good to be true to me, now that I'm DMing pathfinder games. If such a crafting wizard outfitted a level 5 party rogue with this equipment, for roughly 10,000 gp, the Rogue could have +4 Armor, +4 Shield, +4 Dex Bonus, +2 Dodge Bonus, +3 Armor Enhancement Bonus, and +2 Shield Enhancement Bonus to AC.

That's a total of 27 AC at level 5. This is not counting the possibility of money pooling from other members. This is considering the Rogue spending a sum of gold that should be well within their reach by level 5 as per the Pathfinder Average Wealth table.

Equipment list used to come up with that number:

  • Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield, 7000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)
  • +3 Padded Armor (or any crappy armor), 9000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)
  • +2 Plank Shield (or any crappy shield), 4000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)

Though, this is purely hypothetical, such spending could be done by every party member and reduce the chances of ever taking physical attacks again to near 5% (Nat 20s will still always hit). CR 5 monsters will likely miss for entire encounters without even grazing a player. Encounters would be forced to be magical otherwise there would be no challenge for the players.

Is there anything wrong with the doing this by the rules? Or will a DM be forced to utilize sneaky tricks to keep physical encounters fun and challenging were something like this to be made?

Best Answer

You're misusing the guidelines.

First, let's take a look at what the Pathfinder Magic Item Gold Piece Values section has to say on this issue. Turns out, it is specifically addressed.

The correct way to price an item is by comparing its abilities to similar items (see Magic Item Gold Piece Values), and only if there are no similar items should you use the pricing formulas to determine an approximate price for the item. If you discover a loophole that allows an item to have an ability for a much lower price than is given for a comparable item, the GM should require using the price of the item, as that is the standard cost for such an effect. Most of these loopholes stem from trying to get unlimited uses per day of a spell effect from the "command word" or "use-activated or continuous" lines of Table: Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values.

Emphasis mine. It then goes on to take Mage Armor as an example of this:

Patrick's wizard wants to create bracers with a continuous mage armor ability, granting the wearer a +4 armor bonus to AC. The formula indicates this would cost 2,000 gp (spell level 1, caster level 1). Jessica reminds him that bracers of armor +4 are priced at 16,000 gp and Patrick's bracers should have that price as well. Patrick agrees, and because he only has 2,000 gp to spend, he decides to spend 1,000 gp of that to craft bracers of armor +1 using the standard bracer prices.

So yes, your Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield is a textbook example of the guidelines gone bad.

This is understandable. The guidelines are famously weak, often breaking with casual use, as you have encountered. This precise case, however, was anticipated and addressed.

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