While looking on the Twitter stream this morning I stumbled on this. It was so impressively munchkin that I decided to make it the center of my attention for this mornings blog.

So to this question of awesome, so is this item really as absurd as the statement strikes you at fist when you see it? I am going to try and break it down and take a closer look at it. So here we go…

When you look at this question before I could answer it I had to start by breaking it down. At first it sounds mind-boggling. But the question he is asking is can he make this because pathfinder item creation rules allow for staged item creation. With Pathfinder you can use item creation and then use the add magical quality’s to existing items. So in this case he wants to make a

Amulet of Bulls Strength
Crafting an amulet of Bear’s Endurance that has three uses a day is where we are going to start. So well say this is a spell trigger item.

Spell level time caster level times base price is 2 x 3 x 750=4,500. Adding the charges per day cost. 5 Divided by 3 charges per day comes out to 1.6 rounded.. x 4,500= 7200GP

So unless I am off my mark (Possible) An amulet of Bulls Strength with three charges per day would cost 7,200 GP and take 7 days of crafting time in a town or 84 days of travel time while adventuring to make.  Crafting time is 1 day per 1,000 Gold in town. While traveling and adventuring 4 hours a day gets you 2 hours of crafting time.
So now we want to add ability’s to this amulet. the rules state.

If the item is one that occupies a specific place on a character’s body, the cost of adding any additional ability to that item increases by 50%. For example, if a character adds the power to confer invisibility to her ring of protection 2, the cost of adding this ability is the same as for creating a ring of invisibility multiplied by 1.5.

So we take our 7,200 GP amulet and sit it down to add Bull’s Strength to it. This will cost us 7,200 x 1.5= 10,800 GP. So to add Bulls Strength to the amulet the it is going to take an additional ten days crafting time and nearly 11 thousand gold. Or now a whopping 120 days of adventuring time to add this feature to his amulet.

Thankfully because these are all 2nd level spells save true seeing the math gets repeated for the remaining spells. So adding Eagles Splendor, Fox Cunning, Cats Grace, Owls Wisdom all will cost 10,800 GP. Bringing the total for just the second level of spells added to this amulet to a total

Amulet of all Buffs. (Munchkin Medal)
61,200 GP
(7,200+54,000)
Activating this item casts to following on the wearer

Bear’s Endurance
Bull’s Strength
Eagles Splendor
Fox Cunning
Cats Grace
Owls Wisdom

Now I would point out that these spells only last 1 min per level and this item is limited to 3 charges per day. Granted at roughly 3 min per activation you likely will be buffed for all key combats no mater how your DM cuts it.

On a side note the player is going to spend 60 days in town crafting this item. Or 480 days of their adventure time will be devoted to crafting this item. That is some considerable time spent crafting one item. But wait! we are not done. That’s right we want to put True seeing on this amulet as well. SO

True Seeing is a 6th level spell and requires a 11th level caster to cast. So using the item creation rules to add True Seeing to this Amulet we get. Note: 1.5 at the end is adding this spell to the amulet.

(Spell Level) 6 x 11 (Caster Level) x 750= 49,500 x 1.6 (3 Charges)= 79,200 x 1.5 (+50%)= 118,800 GP 

Lets not forget this also will take 118 days to craft in a TOWN! Or 1,416 additional days to add this magic feature to the amulet while adventuring.  Making the total cost of this amulet with True Seeing and all of the above features 180,000 GP to create. 180 days in town creating this amulet or 2160 days crafting time while adventuring. By the way that is nearly six years of crafting time.

So YES you can make this item in Pathfinder… but wait. There are a few snags here we need to look at. In the Item creation section of the Pathfinder SRD we find the following.

Some Abilities Are Assigned to Certain Slots: Some of the magic items in the standard rules are deliberately assigned to specific magic item slots for balance purposes, so that you have to make hard choices about what items to wear. In particular, the magic belts and circlets that give enhancement bonuses to ability scores are in this category—characters who want to enhance multiple physical or mental ability scores must pay extra for combination items like a belt of physical might or headband of mental prowess.

If there is a trend of all items of a particular type using a particular slot (such as items that grant physical ability score bonuses being belts or items that grant movement bonuses being boots), GM’s should be hesitant to allow you to move those abilities to other slots; otherwise, they ignore these deliberate restrictions by cheaply spreading out these items over unused slots.

So the rules themselves here outright state that creating an amulet that gives these enhancements should be frowned on. As well as have their costs further increased if allowed going so far as to not even give a number or percentage of how much more one should pay to further discourage this from happening.

Now with that out-of-the-way lets take a look a some of the reasons why this whole bit came about. Munchkins and the GM’s that support them. Yes this item could be created by a player for a game. But if your GM is going to follow the rules the time and gold that it will take to make such and item will be huge as noted above. The rules are in place to help the GM Discourages this type of play and behavior.

Yet far too often what happens is the player comes up with an item like this. The next time the party returns from their latest round of murder hobo. They make a quick stop by the magic shop, pull up a truck load of gold pieces and dump it on some magic item creator. The player’s head off to sell the rest of their loot and catch a nights sleep in an inn before picking up their new magic items on the way out-of-town.

On one hand you have to look at it this way. What is the issue with it if everyone is having fun? Well absolutely nothing is wrong with it in your own private circles if that is how your group likes to play. When it comes right down to it that is what makes RPG games so great.

On the other hand it promotes Roll-Play over Roleplay. Just please when you want to make things like this in your games remember that many things are balanced the way they are to keep a munchkin mentality at by. Hence why things like crafting times are so often overlooked. Yet are so very important to your game balance.