Quote Originally Posted by Darrin View Post
Finding an existing stone circle that does what you want should be like finding any other magic item: set a DC, make the appropriate Knowledge check. I'd probably start with Knowledge (Arcana), but Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Local), or Knowledge (History) could work just as well. I might even be persuaded that Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) could apply. You could also treat it as a magical location, so I think that's an Arcana check. These stone circles have likely been around for thousands of years.
As I note elsewhere though, I'm not sure how that gets priced. Like, you go out and find this standing stone. Do you now count as owning a standing stone? How much does that eat into WBL? If we're just trying to find some magic item, and that's the context we're considering it in, then it's going to act a lot like actually buying/making the thing. Money in D&D is weird.
Dispel magic renders it nonmagical for 1d4 rounds, long enough to shrink it. After the dispel magic wears off, the shrink item lasts 1 day/CL or you can add permanency.
Fair enough.


Well, the first thing that sprung to my mind was creeping cold, since extending that is just stone cold pure nasty. Enlarge doubles the range to 50' + 5'/CL, and Empower adds +1.75 damage per d6.

Any "damage over time" spell would at least hit Extend/Empower. I should think the druid list has a few of those outside of creeping cold, but I'm not sure I want to look them up right now.
Yeah, that's not bad utility. Hadn't considered creeping cold, and it definitely uses every part of the standing stone buffalo. It feels like that's probably the top end of utility. Which, I dunno, maybe? It's a lot of money and effort to get some more juice out of creeping cold. It doesn't help that low level spells have a bad price point in the rod comparison. You can get four lesser metamagic rods of extend spell for the price of one standing stone associated with creeping cold, and swapping to call lightning makes it worse. So, you're really in it for empower and enlarge, and that whole setup doesn't strike me as all that good. Especially after you consider the costs of making the stone usable on the go. The comparison gets somewhat better if you're crafting, but that's more of a universal truth for items. You're more likely to have craft wondrous than craft rod, but my tendency has been not considering that facet of item comparisons.

I'm not sure I agree. If I've got a spell that I always want to Extend every time I cast it (presumably more than 3/day or 6/day or whatnot), then I don't really care if Empowering or Enlarging is thrown in there to no discernible effect.
But most of the spells I'm really interested in extending are long enough in duration that getting six uses isn't great. Creeping cold is an exception, and might be the top of the curve here, but am I really going to cast bite of the wereX enough times in a day that picking up this item to make that last awhile is worth it?
In most cases, you'll have to cast that spell more than 9 times to make it worth carrying 3x metamagic rods. Ok, so, shrink item/permanency is probably not the way to go here, unless you've got money to burn.
A lot of it is intrinsic to the standing stone cost too, as I note above. If we stop assuming the stone is crafted, the actual cost of the stone becomes more important than the cost of shrink item/permanency. The creeping cold idea is interesting, but it seems like the value add from standing stones compared to other options is insufficient. Also, rods are all versatile and such. That you can use them on creeping cold is good, but that you can use them on creeping cold and also use them on a ton of other things is what makes them great.