With base price being defined as how much the item is priced in the store, and not the discounted cost for crafting the item.
Correct.
Items you can buy from the store usually have a CL listed.
For example, the Ring of Invisibility has a CL 3rd, so a player would need to take a DC 8 spellcaster check to successfully craft the item.
No, oddly enough. The crafter of the item sets its caster level, from a minimum of whatever it takes to cast the requisite spells (or other requirement listed for the item), to a maximum of the crafter’s own caster level. Since caster level typically costs money, increases DCs, and so on, most crafters use the lowest caster level possible for the item.
The caster level listed with items is the “typical” caster level for that item, where “typical” is more-or-less just something the authors made up. For most items, it is the minimum (e.g. that ring of invisibility, requiring as it does the 2nd-level invisibility spell, which has a minimum caster level of 3rd), but there are exceptions (e.g. sovereign glue, which has an absurd listed CL of 20th, despite only really requiring 3rd for make whole).
From what I can gather, the cost to craft a magical item with multiple abilities costs the full price for the most expensive bonus, then 1.5 times the price of each additional bonus.
Correct.
It is worth noting that D&D 3.5, upon which Pathfinder is based, added a rule in Magic Item Compendium that certain, basic sorts of bonuses do not incur this premium. For instance, making your ring of invisibility also include a deflection bonus to AC (à la ring of protection) would not cost extra (just the cost of ring of invisibility plus the cost of ring of protection), because deflection bonuses to AC were one of the “generic” bonuses you could have on rings. Other examples included enhancement bonuses to ability scores, resistance bonuses to saving throws, etc.
This change allowed for characters to get their critical math fixes, while still allowing them to get “fun” and interesting items. It led to a much smoother game that penalized characters less for being responsible and buying the critical, but boring, +number items.
I will admit that Paizo not only has not ported this rule, but adamantly opposes it with its recommendations. Paizo considers it important that characters pay extra for combining such items. I will state flat-out that they are quite simply wrong. This attitude massively, and unnecessarily, shafts the classes that were already weakest. I cannot more strongly recommend that you ignore them on this issue.
Lets say I want to craft a Ring of Invisibility and also enchant it with Magic Aura so that it registers as a non-magical ring.
Your example is done correctly.
- Does adding the Magic Aura effect to the Ring of Invisibility increase the final Caster Level of the ring, and thus the DC spellcaster check? If so, by how much? Just 1 since I used Caster Level 1 to add the effect, making the ring a CL 4th with a DC 9 spellcaster check?
Caster level requirements are minimums, so use the highest minimum as the overall minimum of the item. In this case, magic aura requires CL 1st and invisibility requires CL 3rd, so the ring requires CL 3rd. You could craft with a higher CL (requiring a higher DC), which would make the ring more resistant to dispel magic et al.
When you upgrade a magical item or add additional abilities to an existing magical item, do you take a DC spellcaster check at the end of the crafting time? The rules do not state this outright and I've not been able to find an answer.
- If you do, do you use the CL of the new ability for the check? With the example for adding Invisibility to a ring of protection, would the DC of the spellcaster check be that of the CL of the ring of Invisibility (3rd), or something else?
The DC would be based on the item’s CL, whatever it is. At a minimum for this ring, 3rd.
Does the CL of the item increase when upgrading an item? Bracers of Armor has a CL 7th regardless of the strength of the enchantment bonus. Would upgrading the bonus from +1 to +3, or +1 to +5, still use a DC 12 spellcaster check?
If you were correct about bracers of armor requiring CL 7th regardless of enhancement bonus, you would be correct. I believe there may be some examples where this would be the case.
However, the bracers of armor do not require CL 7th. Rather, they require that
creator’s caster level must be at least two times that of the bonus placed in the bracers, plus any requirements of the armor special abilities
Likely, the writers meant "standing on soil or stone"
The RAW is, as you mentioned, unclear. I will be addressing this mostly from a flavour perspective - what would an Earth elemental have affinity with?
Note that by rules as intended, ground is likely not just any surface - the writers are always happy to assume that everyone is humanoids walking around, so there would be no reason to exclude the +1 from the elemental's stat block if it applied in practically all cases. They could just say "-5 when the enemy is flying or swimming" and it would be much simpler. The text implies that there is a state that's not standing on the ground, flying, or swimming.
One source of information we have is abilities that were printed later, with similar flavour. Earth Spell and Earth Power are both feats that let their users draw strength from the ground, and have similar requirements:
As long as you are standing on stone or unworked earth (including normal soil)...
The Stone Dragon discipline from the Tome of Battle has this to say:
Unlike with other disciplines, adepts
of this school rely on an external force—
the power of the earth and stone—to
help power their maneuvers. As a
result, Stone Dragon maneuvers can
be initiated only if you are in contact
with the ground.
The Elemental Plane of Earth - from which these Elementals draw their power - is described in the Manual of the Planes like this:
The Elemental Plane of Earth is a solid place made of rock, soil, and stone...
Best Answer
1) No dev commentary nor errata seems to address the weird price. It is the same price as the similar-but-weaker Ring of Grit Mastery, and that is the only other item with that price, so that might have something to do with it. It's especially weird that the better ring is so much cheaper to create, but the grit one does give you access to a nonaction action, and those are usually pretty expensive.
2) It stores as much as you want, but you have to have the ki to fill it, and you have to have the ring to use it. That's the broken part, because normally your ki is capped at a certain number but now it's uncapped and you can build it up over time.
Fortunately, even having infinite ki wouldn't actually be a big problem in most cases; just like spells ordinarily require a very limited resource (spell slots) to use, but items can bypass that requirement, allowing you to use them at will, so too does infinite ki alter the class balance in question. It is a must-have for ki users, basically, but it's not actually going to make them super powerful or anything, especially since the ring's not actually infinite (If it was, at 7th level the monk would have effectively infinite instant hit point regeneration, which would be pretty cool/unique, but even that's not that big a deal by level 9 or so).
If we accept that the item is largely based off of the Ring of Grit Mastery, this overflow mechanic is probably intentional. The grit ring functions more or less identically to the ki ring, except the the two bonuses granted are different, the putting points in mechanism has been changed from a free action 2/day to unlimited swift actions, and the cap has been removed. As you note, the 'at least 2' text also independently reinforces the idea that the cap removal (or non-inclusion, if the Ki ring is not based off the Grit one) is intentional.
3) All of them, but to a minimum of 1.