Cost of a double-your-movement-speed item?

[ScooterSkittles]

Hi all. 

I'm DM in an upcoming campaign using D&D 3.5e rules in an adventure that I'm creating (in Forgotten Realms).  One of my players is min/maxing the shoop out of a dervish/chozo warrior (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3121.0) with a custom race that seemed balanced enough.  He really wants to get as much speed out of the guy as possible.  He talked about Rapid Wrath (Ghostwalk, a "+1 mighty cleaving shortspear [that] doubles the speed of a creature that carries it" and a place on the previous board that reverse-engineered it to try to figure out what the item-enhancement cost of the double-movespeed feature would be. (Link in spoiler)

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http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=q6vn6uidhkqpicokdl9jpm1nf7&topic=13532.msg455368#msg455368

The other thread reverse-engineered it to be a +3,400gp enhancement for a weapon.

The basic question is really just "how much for a item/enhancement that doubles my movespeed?"

Honestly, I don't even like the doubling idea as a price-able feature, because it seems to me that doubling opens the door to all sorts of exploitation that I might not see now and would hate to "change the rules" later if and when it got ridiculous/over-powered.  My inclination is to either disallow it or work out how much bonus movespeed I could expect his character to be able to milk out of it, and then figure out the price for an item that grants that same amount of flat movespeed bonus (minus a little bit of cost because a character would need to really be built for speed to have gotten that much out of the doubling feature.)

But what do you think?  What would be a balanced cost?  Or would you even allow it in your game?

[Nachofan99]

Just say it doubles movement speed - up to a total of X additional speed.  Are you going to allow it to stack with everything?  Like you said, you don't feel like having to "be on the lookout" for excessive speed shenanigans and I don't blame you.

It sounds like you don't even want to deal with it.  To me, that would make me not want to deal with it either.  Giving them double movement speed is almost as good as giving them a second move action every round forever.  Not quite as good, but almost.

Boots of Striding and Sprining are 5,500gp and offer a paltry +10 to speed for nearly double the cost.  Sure they add +5 jump also.  But 3,400gp seems on the cheaper side.  Not that it's the end all be all enhancement of all time.

Boots of Speed which grant Haste are 12,000gp.  Haste gives you other bonuses, but also a doubling of speed essentially.  So a truer "value" would probably be somewhere in the middle of these two items.

That is, until another item is posted that offers you quad movement for 100gp.  Probably something out of the MiC.

[X-Codes]

Boots of Striding and Springing are overpriced, though.  They break down perfectly to +5 competence to Jump and continuous Longstrider effect, which are worth 2500 and 2000, respectively, with the latter multiplied by 1.5 as a second effect on a single item.  The problems with this are as follows: Jump is a crappy skill, Longstrider is a crappy spell, and the *1.5 multiplier for these kind of items was removed in MiC.

Honestly, 3400 is just about right for the double move speed (max +30) effect, if it's counted as an enhancement bonus.

EDIT: Actually, forget the double w/ max +30.  Just make it +30.  No reason to nerf halflings and dwarves needlessly.

[veekie]

Well...just base it off Expeditious Retreat? If its command activated you just need to spend a standard action every time it runs out to tapdance for the trigger.

[Prime32]

The Feathered Wings graft doubles your land speed for 10k gp. Into a fly speed.

[skydragonknight]

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Boots of Swiftness

These shoes grant their wearer a +6 enhancement bonus to Dexterity. The wearer’s speed doubles (this does not stack with any magical or supernatural enhancement to speed), he or she gains the evasion ability (as the rogue class feature), and the wearer’s jumping distance is not limited by his or her height. The wearer gains a +20 competence bonus on Balance, Climb, Jump, and Tumble checks. Three times per day, the wearer can utter a command word to activate the boots’ haste power (as the haste spell, lasts 20 rounds).

Caster Level: 20th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Epic Wondrous Item, cat’s grace, expeditious retreat, haste, jump; Market Price: 256,000 gp; Weight: 1 lb.

I'll call The unrestricted Jump part of the package deal and count the skills past the first as half-priced because of thematic similarity:
256K -36K (Dex) -100K (skills) - 20k (evasion) - 72K (Haste: Spell level 3* CL 20 * 2000 * 3/5 for 3/day) = 28K

Now, look at Boots of Springing and Striding. Take off the Jump and +10 ft comes to 3K. So if you extrapolated speed based on an exponent formula (like all magic item bonuses) you'd get a formula of (speed bonus/10)^2 * 3000. So if you consider an average character having a speed of 30 ft, doubling their speed would be (30/10)^2 * 3000 = 9 * 3000 = 27K, so the mark is about right.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

My intuition says around 5k to double your landspeed.  10k to double all your speeds.  There are several +1 templates that do stuff like that, and they offer a ton of other bonuses.