Specifically, in the book it lists the “special component” of a sword +1 as the skulls of 25 ogres or heroes. An ogre is worth 140 XP. 25 of those is 3,500 XP. That’s about 1,500 points shy of the base cost to create a sword +1 (5,000). It should be more like 35 ogre skulls.
Am I missing something?
There will be one champion for every 3.5 ogres, worth 260 XP. So ogre skulls, on average, are worth 214 XP, which works out to 5,350 XP for 25 skulls.
I don’t know that that is the calculation that was made (certainly, as a Judge, I don’t want to have to perform that exercise just to assign monster parts to a magic item), but it seems to work out okay.
Thanks!
Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain the Wand of Fireballs with 20 charges (30,000) needing the fangs of 20 hellhounds (15,800).
Perhaps I don’t understand what “research” means in the phrase “monsters with a total XP value equal to the GP cost of the research”.
Yeah, I didn’t check your math the first time or I would have spotted the issue:
It’s only 30,000 GP if you don’t have a formula. Half of that cost is producing the formula (which is why you learn what monster parts are needed halfway through the research when not working from a formula).
The magic research throw - assuming a formula is in hand - only costs 15,000 for a 20-charge wand of fireballs.
If anything, I think the ogre skulls is a bit expensive.
Of course, actually looking at the numbers … most of them are off in one direction or another :-).
For example, potion of healing is 500/250 GP, troll is 680 XP.
Yeah, they’re all wacky. I did consider the 1/2 price formula thing, but that’s an “if you have it, the price is halved”, not “if you don’t have it, the price is doubled”. I’m assuming that the prices (and price formulas) listed on the chart are the standard “no formula” rate.