Rings of Invisibility are great items all around. Any character can find countless ways to take advantage of it in any situation. While it’s ability to render you invisible knows no limit, the fact that it requires a standard action to activate greatly reduces it’s combat effectiveness beyond the first round. In addition to that, a standard ring will only allow you to stay invisible for up to 3 minutes before you’re forced to spend a round initiating the effect again.
Let’s try to make some changes and see if we can get some more combat uses out of the ring.
The Idea
Let’s face it, during combat, when you perform a standard action, it had better be the single-best thing you could have done that round. They’re priceless and shouldn’t be sacrificed on something that won’t give you a specific advantage or accomplish a goal.
Given that, I’d like to work in swift action activation without just making the item “as a ring of invisibility, but activated as a swift action”. Not only would this be somewhat boring, but it’d increase the item price significantly.
After all that, I always like to add something unique or adds some functionality that you won’t use all the time, but you’ll be so happy that you have it when you need it.
The Pieces
Being able to go invisible at will is cool – nobody will argue that. It’s also overkill for most characters. So the first thing that I want to do is drop the invis at will piece and limit it to just invis 3/day as a standard action. Most players will get the same amount of use out of a 3/day item as they can an at-will item.
Then, to add the combat usability, 1/day as a swift action.
No matter which activation you use you still become visible when you attack per the spell.
To add some flair and utility to the ring, I decided to add Invisibility Purge to the mix 1/day as a standard action.
The Pricing
Let’s run some numbers.
The formula for command word items is: Spell level × caster level × 1,800 gp. Here’s how this breaks down for our ring.
Invisibility (standard action, CL3): 2 x 3 x 1,800 x 3/5 = 6,480
Invisibility Purge (standard action, CL5): 3 x 5 x 1,800 x 1/5 = 5,400
These are pretty standard. For the 1/day swift action, let’s just use the same base formula and multiply the result by 2. I’m not sure of any pricing guidelines for items using swift actions (they’re not in the DMG at least), so a factor of 2 is a safe place to start.
Invisibility (swift action, CL3): 2 x 3 x 1,800 x 1/5 x 2 = 4,320
Now, for multiple similar abilities for slotted items, we give the cheaper abilities discounts. For multiple different abilities for slotted items, we simply add them together to get the final price. While an argument can be made that these abilities are “similar”, let’s just go with the “different” formula since we have both arcane and divine spells in there and the arcane spell is an illusion while the divine spell is evocation.
For this ring, the price would be (6,480 + 4,320 + 5,400) = 16,200gp.
Umm… seems really cheap, eh? It comes in under the actual Ring of Invisibility and is arguably more useful/powerful.
Take a look at the Rules of the Game article on magic item pricing. Specifically the “when the formulas fail” section. You can see that the ring of invisibility has an inflated price due to the fact that it’s simply a very powerful item. The increase is just shy of 10,000gp or an additional 100% – who knows which exact metho was used.
Since you have at most 5 uses of the ring per day instead of the unlimited uses of the standard ring of invisibility, I’m going to lean in the direction of +10,000 instead of +100%. Actually, I’m going to make it a tad less than a flat 10,000 because I like round-ish numbers. Let’s price the final item at 25,000gp.
Ring of Sly Invisibility
The ring of sly invisibility allows you to use the following abilities:
- 3/day as a standard action, you can become invisible per the spell – CL3
- 1/day as a swift action, you can become invisible per the spell – CL3
- 1/day as a standard action, you can cast invisibility purge per the spell. This spell has no effect on invisibility granted by the ring (i.e., if you are invisible and activate the invisibility purge, you will not become visible) – CL5
Moderate illusion; CL 5th; Forge Ring, invisibility, invisibility purge; Price 25,000 gp.