Custom Devlin's ring combined with the quiver of Anariel

Question

I'm having a small disagreement with a good friend and, like a good patient, I'd like a second opinion.

The Complete Book of Eldritch Might, (3.5 revised) has a fantastic ring that creates infinite arrows, at a reasonable price. (Taking the place of a ring finger...)

Devlin's Ring

If you wear this ring and pull back on an empty bow of any kind, an arrow appears, nocked and ready to fire. Should you fire the arrow, it inflicts damage and acts in all ways as a normal arrow. If you don't fire the arrow, it fades after 1 round. You can use this ring to produce more than one arrow in a round if you have multiple attacks.

Faint conjuration; caster level 1st, Forge Ring, Devlin's barb; Price 2,000 gp. (4000 gp market price)

This disagreement also involves the quiver of Anariel from Dragon magazine:

Quiver of Anariel

This quiver automatically refilled itself with regular or magical arrows, ensuring that it was always full. An arrow quickly disappeared if it was not used, however (1 round)

A quiver of Anariel could be fashioned that produced basic arrows, masterwork arrows, or a range of magical arrows, at increasing costs:

Regular arrows: 28,000 gp

Masterwork arrows: 29,000 gp

+1 arrows: 32,000 gp

+2 arrows: 44,000 gp

+3 arrows: 64,000 gp

+4 arrows: 92,000 gp

+5 arrows: 128,000 gp

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Page 233 of Magic Item Compendium says "you can add new magical abilities to a magic item with virtually no restrictions."

With that in mind,

1. Is it possible to enchant Devlin's ring so that it produces magic arrows? (much like the quiver)
2. If so, what limitations would there be, if any?
3. How would pricing work?
4. If it's not possible, why?

If possible, please state references with your answer.

Answer 1

Creating custom items is always a matter of negotiation and judgment; there are no hard and fast rules. The books provide some guidelines, but are always quick to point out that they cannot be relied upon, and that the DM is always going to have to judge suggested custom items on a case-by-case basis.

The first guideline is to compare your desired item against the closest available comparable items, and adjust from there. Thus, to allow a ring, such as Devlin’s, to do what the quiver of Anariel does, you would start with the quiver of Anariel as your basis for the cost of doing so.

Furthermore, the passage on page 233 of Magic Item Compendium is really talking about adding new magical abilities onto an item that could otherwise have that ability. But ultimately, you can add anything anywhere as long as the DM allows it. The aforementioned guidelines suggest a 50% surcharge to add something to an unusual slot. So to put the quiver of Anariel effect on a ring should, by these guidelines, cost 50% more. On the other hand, the guidelines also suggest that something that does not use one of the usual magic item slots should cost double, so a magic quiver (which doesn’t prevent the use of other items) presumably costs double. So the guidelines would say that the ring should cost approximately 75% of what the corresponding quiver costs.

However, the problem here is that the quiver of Anariel is ludicrously overpriced, particularly at the regular arrows level. My games routinely ignore tracking mundane arrows in general, so they are literally charging 28,000 gp for a magic quiver that does what any quiver in my games does, by default.

On the other hand, magic arrows are a much bigger deal than mundane ones. Magic arrows partially stack with the magic properties on the bow shooting them, which is a big deal. While I’d say even Devlin’s ring is on the expensive side for mundane arrows, for magic arrows the cost definitely should be much higher.

So instead, I’m going to make a different suggestion: consider magic ammunition as if it were a 50-charge item, like wand. After all, enhancing 50 arrows costs the same as a sword. So if a 50-charge spell-effect item costs spell level × caster level × 750 gp, and a use-activated at-will item costs spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp, you’re looking at the use-activated version costing 2⅔× what the 50-charge version does. So if you apply a 2⅔× multiplier to the cost of 50 magic arrows (which is the same as the cost of a single magic sword), you have at least one reasonable idea for what this effect should cost.

The results are 5334 gp for +1, 21,334 gp for +2, 48,000 gp for +3, 85,334 gp for +4, and 133,334 gp for +5. Most likely you would ideally use equivalent levels of special weapon properties rather than straight enhancement bonuses, though.

Answer 2

Combining magic items

Devlin's ring and the quiver of Anariel can be combined into a lone magic ring using the Magic Item Compendium rules on Improving Magic Items:

In most cases, if the item is one that occupies a body slot, the cost of adding any additional ability to that item is 1-1/2 times the value of the added power (or the value of the added power plus 1/2 the value of the existing item, if the added power normally costs more than the existing item). (233)

Since the added power of the quiver of Anariel is more expensive than Devlin's ring, the Magic Item Compendium wants you to buy the equivalent of a quiver of Anariel and add +6,000 gp to the quiver's price to have the quiver's effect shoved into Devlin's ring, making it a a Devlin's ring quiver of Anariel or something.

The only reason to do that is if you think wearing a quiver is uncool.

Breaking down the quiver

The basic quiver of Anariel's costs 28,000 gp and added to that is twice the cost of the a standard magic weapon, like this:

Enhancement   Market 
   Bonus       Price
     +1        4,000 gp
     +2       16,000 gp
     +3       36,000 gp
     +4       64,000 gp
     +5      100,000 gp
 ----------------------
     +6      144,000 gp
     +7      196,000 gp

 Not including the 28,000 gp for the basic quiver. Officially,
 the item only goes up to a +5 enhancement bonus, but the item
 scales consistently, so additional +s are included for
 comparison. At +8 or more the item is an epic magic item.

And, while 28,000 gp for unlimited typical arrows is exorbitant, doubling the price of a standard magic weapon's cost to have all the magic arrows you'll ever need isn't. Really, an archer specializing in firing volleys can, in a handful of full attacks, easily go through 50 arrows. (Using the core rules alone, an archer with a +16 base attack bonus, the feat Rapid Shot, and a haste effect makes 6 attacks during a full attack, for example, before being polymorphed into a xill.) Such an archer that's buying magic arrows individually instead of relying on such a quiver will, after all, need to buy more than two batches of fifty during his career.

In other words, I know you're angling for magic arrows on the cheap, but this is on the cheap: buying a batch of 100 magic arrows and getting instead nigh-infinite magic arrows is a good deal, especially in a long-running campaign and if using an awesome bow. This DM really does see this as a fair price and would let Devlin's ring produce magic arrows for the costs listed in the chart plus the 4,000 gp cost of Devlin's ring. Ignoring the third-party Devlin's ring, this DM would allow a pair of magic gloves or a magic belt or similar magic item that occupies a body slot to produce nigh-infinite typical arrows like the quiver for but 14,000 gp—half the quiver's base price—and allow enhancement bonuses to be added (and not halved) to that item's arrows using the above chart.

Alternatives

There are a few other ways have a lot of mundane and magic arrows without worrying excessively about running low.

• A wand of greater magic weapon [trans] (PH 251-2) (3rd-level spell at caster level 20) (900 gp/charge; 0 lbs.), at about 1/3 the price of the most expensive quiver of Anariel, transforms 50 arrows into 50 +5 arrows for 20 hours by expending one charge. While 50 or 100 arrows isn't enough, 2,500 arrows just might be. Then spend some of that saved cash on an extradimensional space filled with mundane arrows. (Note: The spell greater magic weapon is on a lot of class's spell lists but not the ranger's, an incredibly frustrating and sad omission.)

• The quiver of lies (Book of Vile Darkness 116) (12,000 gp; 0 lbs.) isn't a quiver at all but a (maybe slotless?) bracelet that creates a typical arrow or bolt with a duration of 10 rounds when the wearer needs one, just like drawing ammunition.

  This may be the most official equivalent to Devlin's ring, which was originally from the Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus (2003), published a year after the Book of Vile Darkness. We'll likely never know, but a reader might infer that Monte Cook—author of both Book and Nexus—either changed his mind about the price of infinite arrows, reducing the cost of the later item to 1/3 of the earlier's price, or he believed that the arrows' continued existence past the time of their creation (and all of the shenanigans one can pull with that) multiplied the cost of the earlier item by 3 or he forgot he already concocted an item of infinite arrows and priced the new one differently or something else entirely. Pick a reason or make up your own, but 12,000 gp seems to be the official going rate for nigh-infinite arrows.

• The raptor arrow (Magic Item Compendium 56) (6,006 gp; 0 lbs.), while a relic and therefore difficult for some to use, returns—harmlessly, fortunately—to its firer on the round after it's fired so that, while expensive, an archer only needs enough raptor arrows to make one full attack.

• The quiver of plenty (Dragon Compendium Volume 1 (2005) 139) (18,000 gp; 1 lb.) produces nigh-infinite cold iron, masterwork, and silver arrows and up to 5 adamantine arrows per day, all lasting only long enough to be launched and deal damage. If the DM allows this and the quiver of lies in the campaign, pay the extra gp for this.

This DM would then allow the player to apply to the quiver of lies or plenty the same kinds of enhancement bonuses available to the quiver of Anariel, but note that, so far as I'm aware, the quiver of Anariel is deeply obscure, present not in a Dragon magazine but only on that now-only-archived Web page with similar pages containing such gems as Raistlin's frog. (Tip: Buy. Them. All.) In other words, perhaps the quiver of Anariel isn't the most reliable source for pricing nigh-infinite magic arrows, but I'm unaware of a more official alternative.