Custom Psychoactive Skin

[LoyalPaladin]

This is a fairly simple question (I hope)... does anyone know the base cost of a Psychoactive Skin? The Psychoactive Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor is only 3,000 gp, which is pretty cheap! I'm basically looking to get a Psychoactive Skin that gives me a disguise bonus and I'm not picky how big the bonus is (even a +2 is helpful). I just need to arm my sneaky character with a venom suit.

Edit:
I'd also be cool with a skin that can shape into any type of clothing to better my disguise. I'm also in the market for something that will stop True Sight from totally botching my job.

[Troacctid]

There is no formula for this. Sorry.

Psychoactive skins are pretty much just slotless magic items with interesting visual effects. As with all custom magic items, to determine the price, you must compare it to existing items with similar effects. For example, a psychoactive skin that casts disguise self at will would be most similar to a hat of disguise, and should have a similar price, with a slight increase for being slotless.

FYI the psychoactive skin of ectoplasmic armor was updated in the Magic Item Compendium to cost 6000 gp.

[LordOfCain]

This is a fairly simple question (I hope)... does anyone know the base cost of a Psychoactive Skin? The Psychoactive Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor is only 3,000 gp, which is pretty cheap! I'm basically looking to get a Psychoactive Skin that gives me a disguise bonus and I'm not picky how big the bonus is (even a +2 is helpful). I just need to arm my sneaky character with a venom suit.

Edit:
I'd also be cool with a skin that can shape into any type of clothing to better my disguise. I'm also in the market for something that will stop True Sight from totally botching my job.

Shiftweave can help with the changing clothing part.

[Deadline]

There is no formula for this. Sorry.

Psychoactive skins are pretty much just slotless magic items with interesting visual effects. As with all custom magic items, to determine the price, you must compare it to existing items with similar effects. For example, a psychoactive skin that casts disguise self at will would be most similar to a hat of disguise, and should have a similar price, with a slight increase for being slotless.

FYI the psychoactive skin of ectoplasmic armor was updated in the Magic Item Compendium to cost 6000 gp.

Well, there may be a formula in the sense that (assuming the Psychoactive skin is truly a slotless item) you could just make one that grants a competence bonus to disguise. The formula for that is easy:

Bonus squared x 100gp

[One Step Two]

This is a fairly simple question (I hope)... does anyone know the base cost of a Psychoactive Skin? The Psychoactive Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor is only 3,000 gp, which is pretty cheap! I'm basically looking to get a Psychoactive Skin that gives me a disguise bonus and I'm not picky how big the bonus is (even a +2 is helpful). I just need to arm my sneaky character with a venom suit.

Edit:
I'd also be cool with a skin that can shape into any type of clothing to better my disguise. I'm also in the market for something that will stop True Sight from totally botching my job.

There's guidelines to making your own psychoactive skin, found here, it goes on to explain you use the standard formula for creating custom magic items.

Using the Skin of the Defender as a baseline, it follows the guide pretty straightforwardly, 32000gp is the cost for an item granting +4 Natural Armor.

For a singular purpose skin that's entire job is to defeat true seeing is harder though, it's something your DM will need to approve. Here's my best stab:

Skin of Changing Faces

This skin allows the wearer to alter his Cosmetic appearance at will, this includes his clothing, gender and size, but no-more than within one size category of his natural size, giving the wearer a benefit of +10 to disguise checks.
While this will fool all senses including touch, and disguise the sound of gear worn, it will not confer any special abilities your disguise manifests. For example, if you make yourself appear to have wings, you will not be able to fly.

Faint Telepathy; ML 5th; Craft Universal Item, false sensory input; Price 30,000 gp; Weight 2 lb.

A true seeing spell will likely get through it, but remember, the Skin covers everything, even your clothes, so all they will see is the blob of Psychoactive skin covering you and your approximate body shape.

[Fizban]

The Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor is updated to 6,000gp in MiC, and is still a steal. Skins of standard effects are simply double normal price, as has already been said, although I always find this amusing since they aren't actually slotless items: a lot of items get "slotless" pricing when what they actually do is invent a whole new slot, when there are already a good dozen to begin with.

One Step Two's point about True Seeing is excellent (and cheesy as heck), as long as the skin is truly covering your entire body. Many skins roll out of the way when needed, and I would expect a disguise bonus skin to leave a significant number of gaps, if not being completely transparent. An opaque skin that uses Disguise Self would be the most effective at blocking True Seeing, but would almost always allow a will save (at DC 11), depending on where they touch you.

One important feature/problem is that the skins are described as being used after you've got your gear on, but most people would rather them not. There's nothing stopping you from skinning up before suiting up, so your gear is perfectly fine. Combine this with a a skin of disguise bonus that is naturally transparent and you should be fine, since the competence bonus has nothing to do with the visual effect of the skin so the most they should notice is your hair being slicked flat (except it's not, because the skin lets your hair out because it's made for disguise).

Shiftweave is a rather innocuous choice of garment that shouldn't arouse suspicion under True Seeing (it is in fact described as being popular among nobility), but it will still be revealed as not what it appears. The best way to quick change actual real clothing/gear to dodge True Seeing is a Ring of Arming, which for 5,000gp lets you swap any or all of your equipped armor and weapons with the set stored in the ring as a standard action. Clothing explicitly counts as armor so you can use the ring for that, but your other items won't swap, including the ring itself. You'll need to eschew other items that could give you away and do some quick sleight of hand to hide the ring, but if you've actually got any amount of head start you should be fine. If your DM wants to be harsh about item slots and say that only Body slot items (Body being the Armor/Robe slot) will work with the ring, then you'll need to be disguising yourself in a robe or dress. Or Full Plate, which will hide just about everything with physical barriers.

[khadgar567]

@loyalPaladin if you don't mind can I ask simple question to gestalt conclusion of giant forums about same topic as whats the cost of psychoactive skin giving armor bonus to wearer

[weckar]

Bonus squared x 100gp

Really? That seems cheap... With some cost reductors that would allow a +50 item at around 35000GP? Seems crazy to me.

[khadgar567]

Really? That seems cheap... With some cost reductors that would allow a +50 item at around 35000GP? Seems crazy to me.

yeah that's little bit cheap on cost side

[One Step Two]

I honestly think the shiftweave or the ring of arming is the better bet for defeating true seeing. For the most part, Trueseeing trumps illusions, but it does absolutely nothing vs mundane disguise checks. The Ring of Arming means that the clothes are wholly mundane, with a Masterwork Disguise kit for +2, and a custom item of +10 to Disguise checks for 10k gold, it means unless they have a high wisdom, and have maxed ranks of Spot, it's hard to actually discern who you are, and no magic can aid them beyond realizing it's a disguise, not who you are beneath.

[Fizban]

Really? That seems cheap... With some cost reductors that would allow a +50 item at around 35000GP? Seems crazy to me.

That's why the formulas are not formulas, so you can't just make an arbitrarily powerful item and then tank the price with so-called "restrictions." Compare to any printed item and you're almost never see a constant bonus higher than +10, maybe a +15 here or there or a limited use +20, but that's it. It's quite clear that +10 is supposed to be the standard maximum, with granular pricing there for when you're making a weird item with multiple functions. Consult the Epic rules and you'll see that it names the wrong type of bonus, but it's still obvious that any item capable of throwing a skill bonus higher than +30 is automatically Epic and thus triggers epic crafting requirements and the x10 epic price.

[weckar]

That's why the formulas are not formulas

Lost me in 8 words. Gotta say, that's impressive

[Deadline]

Really? That seems cheap... With some cost reductors that would allow a +50 item at around 35000GP? Seems crazy to me.

Yep, DMG pg. 285. But as Fizban points out, when you get into trying to stack cost reducers and the like, you're entering DM adjustment territory (because the Magic Item creation guidelines are meant to be used in conjunction with DM adjudication). But a +50 competence item would be ... an epic item (250,000gp)? I forget, what's the cutoff for epic items again?

As a DM, I'd probably limit the bonus to +10 (maybe as high as +30 when hitting that 17-20 range).

[LoyalPaladin]

I go a day without internet and I come back to this many surprise. I love the smell of GitP in the morning. *sips axiomatic coffee*

There is no formula for this. Sorry.

Why must your words cut me so.

Psychoactive skins are pretty much just slotless magic items with interesting visual effects. As with all custom magic items, to determine the price, you must compare it to existing items with similar effects. For example, a psychoactive skin that casts disguise self at will would be most similar to a hat of disguise, and should have a similar price, with a slight increase for being slotless.

I'm going to throw this out there (I should have before), I'm playing a changeling. So I'm mostly looking to keep that disguise up and increase my disguise check. Possibly increasing all my espionage skills even.

FYI the psychoactive skin of ectoplasmic armor was updated in the Magic Item Compendium to cost 6000 gp.

I swear! Every time I find something I want, WotC has made it more expensive or completely nerfed it with errata!

Shiftweave can help with the changing clothing part.

Oh that's true. I wonder if I can incorporate the Shiftweave effect into the skin?

Well, there may be a formula in the sense that (assuming the Psychoactive skin is truly a slotless item) you could just make one that grants a competence bonus to disguise. The formula for that is easy:

Bonus squared x 100gp

Can I get a source for this? Since I know I'll be grilled thoroughly.

There's guidelines to making your own psychoactive skin, found here, it goes on to explain you use the standard formula for creating custom magic items.

Using the Skin of the Defender as a baseline, it follows the guide pretty straightforwardly, 32000gp is the cost for an item granting +4 Natural Armor.

For a singular purpose skin that's entire job is to defeat true seeing is harder though, it's something your DM will need to approve. Here's my best stab:

Skin of Changing Faces

This skin allows the wearer to alter his Cosmetic appearance at will, this includes his clothing, gender and size, but no-more than within one size category of his natural size, giving the wearer a benefit of +10 to disguise checks.
While this will fool all senses including touch, and disguise the sound of gear worn, it will not confer any special abilities your disguise manifests. For example, if you make yourself appear to have wings, you will not be able to fly.

Faint Telepathy; ML 5th; Craft Universal Item, false sensory input; Price 30,000 gp; Weight 2 lb.

A true seeing spell will likely get through it, but remember, the Skin covers everything, even your clothes, so all they will see is the blob of Psychoactive skin covering you and your approximate body shape.

Oooooooo. Thanks, One Step Two! That's really helpful... Sorta shows me what I'm dealing with now.

The best way to quick change actual real clothing/gear to dodge True Seeing is a Ring of Arming, which for 5,000gp lets you swap any or all of your equipped armor and weapons with the set stored in the ring as a standard action. Clothing explicitly counts as armor so you can use the ring for that, but your other items won't swap, including the ring itself. You'll need to eschew other items that could give you away and do some quick sleight of hand to hide the ring, but if you've actually got any amount of head start you should be fine. If your DM wants to be harsh about item slots and say that only Body slot items (Body being the Armor/Robe slot) will work with the ring, then you'll need to be disguising yourself in a robe or dress. Or Full Plate, which will hide just about everything with physical barriers.

Oh, that's excellent! Thank you, Fizban the fabulous.

I'd forgotten all about the Ring of Arming.

@loyalPaladin if you don't mind can I ask simple question to gestalt conclusion of giant forums about same topic as whats the cost of psychoactive skin giving armor bonus to wearer

Wouldn't the Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor cover that base?

Really? That seems cheap... With some cost reductors that would allow a +50 item at around 35000GP? Seems crazy to me.

... I have so many ideas.

I honestly think the shiftweave or the ring of arming is the better bet for defeating true seeing. For the most part, Trueseeing trumps illusions, but it does absolutely nothing vs mundane disguise checks. The Ring of Arming means that the clothes are wholly mundane, with a Masterwork Disguise kit for +2, and a custom item of +10 to Disguise checks for 10k gold, it means unless they have a high wisdom, and have maxed ranks of Spot, it's hard to actually discern who you are, and no magic can aid them beyond realizing it's a disguise, not who you are beneath.

I need to avoid Trueseeing to improve my changeling disguise. There are all types of reasons I can use to explain why the princess or prince of a kingdom is wearing strange magical items, but not many reasons I can use to explain why the princess or prince is changeling...

That's why the formulas are not formulas, so you can't just make an arbitrarily powerful item and then tank the price with so-called "restrictions." Compare to any printed item and you're almost never see a constant bonus higher than +10, maybe a +15 here or there or a limited use +20, but that's it. It's quite clear that +10 is supposed to be the standard maximum, with granular pricing there for when you're making a weird item with multiple functions. Consult the Epic rules and you'll see that it names the wrong type of bonus, but it's still obvious that any item capable of throwing a skill bonus higher than +30 is automatically Epic and thus triggers epic crafting requirements and the x10 epic price.

I always figured +20 was the max, since you generally don't see items higher than that.

Yep, DMG pg. 285. But as Fizban points out, when you get into trying to stack cost reducers and the like, you're entering DM adjustment territory (because the Magic Item creation guidelines are meant to be used in conjunction with DM adjudication). But a +50 competence item would be ... an epic item (250,000gp)? I forget, what's the cutoff for epic items again?

As a DM, I'd probably limit the bonus to +10 (maybe as high as +30 when hitting that 17-20 range).

Hmmmm.

[khadgar567]

Wouldn't the Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor cover that base?

well what I need is more of regular armor then natural armor with lets say +10 or +20 like your chameleon skin just for ac so I can wear only psychoactive skin on character

[LoyalPaladin]

well what I need is more of regular armor then natural armor with lets say +10 or +20 like your chameleon skin just for ac so I can wear only psychoactive skin on character

I think anything better than Bracers of Armor +8 is considered an [Epic] item.

[One Step Two]

I think anything better than Bracers of Armor +8 is considered an [Epic] item.

Just to give you any additional tools, there's a spell in the City of Stormreach Suppliment for Eberron, called Cloak of Khyber, that specifically defeats true seeing, as long as you have maintained an identity for 6 hours beforehand.

[Fizban]

I need to avoid Trueseeing to improve my changeling disguise. There are all types of reasons I can use to explain why the princess or prince of a kingdom is wearing strange magical items, but not many reasons I can use to explain why the princess or prince is changeling...

That's what non-magical disguise is for. Set your non-magical disguise while under as many buffs as you can get, sneak in under an illusory disguise past the chump guards, switch to the non-magical princess for the main event, then blast it off your face+Ring of Arming for the escape. I could swear I read something that let you use the skill faster somewhere, but I've no idea and it's clearly not under epic. You could try asking for a skill trick, or at least pulling in the common 1 minute-> 1 round with -10 penalty from other skills.

I always figured +20 was the max, since you generally don't see items higher than that.

I'm sure there's probably a constant +20 non-epic somewhere in 3.5 I'm forgetting and there's definitely some whack stuff in 3.0, but most DMG items stop at +10 with +15 on the armor versions. Though someone will probably link whatever I'm missing.

[Deadline]

I'm sure there's probably a constant +20 non-epic somewhere in 3.5 I'm forgetting and there's definitely some whack stuff in 3.0, but most DMG items stop at +10 with +15 on the armor versions. Though someone will probably link whatever I'm missing.

The only exceptions you missed (that I'm aware of) are for items that replicate a spell effect that grants a higher bonus (like Jump or Glibness). I think those are priced as spell trigger items though, rather than just straight skill bonus items.

[LordOfCain]

That's what non-magical disguise is for. Set your non-magical disguise while under as many buffs as you can get, sneak in under an illusory disguise past the chump guards, switch to the non-magical princess for the main event, then blast it off your face+Ring of Arming for the escape. I could swear I read something that let you use the skill faster somewhere, but I've no idea and it's clearly not under epic. You could try asking for a skill trick, or at least pulling in the common 1 minute-> 1 round with -10 penalty from other skills.

I'm sure there's probably a constant +20 non-epic somewhere in 3.5 I'm forgetting and there's definitely some whack stuff in 3.0, but most DMG items stop at +10 with +15 on the armor versions. Though someone will probably link whatever I'm missing.

I believe it is in the Epic Level Handbook but can't check right now.