On Loot and the Law

Killing things and taking their stuff has been a staple of the RPG genre since it first coalesced. Depending on party, players, game system, and genre, this is more or less of a problem. Some players will delight in hauling a cartful of tattered chain coats, rusted axes, unwashed bedding, assorted crockery, tables, doors, and whatnot back to town and insist that the local costermongers purchase all of it. Others find stripping fallen foes of their arms and armour detracts from their sense of heroism.

One Neolithic Evening

Before the door even opens, awareness born of experience warns him that his home isn't empty. A figure sits quietly beside the fire, wearing black. He doesn't show any surprise. Feigning it would be an insult to both of them. Instead, he sighs deeply and takes a seat. Might as well get it over with.

The fire casts long, deceptive shadows, like flickering memories. Neither of them looks directly at it, carefully preserving their night vision. It's an old habit, and like any old predator, those die hard and mean.

"Come back, Rick. The team needs you. I need you." His visitor sounds almost wistful for a moment. There's a glint in his hand, a polished piece of amber that catches the firelight as he rolls it in a neat circle. It draws the eye and traps the mind, winding thoughts into slow loops. He knows the trick, and knows that won't keep him from falling to its lure.

He leans forward and stirs the fire. Charcoal rattles; sparks drift into the air, burning bright for a moment, and wink out, like a human life. "Stop calling me that. Rick is dead and gone. I let him die a long time ago."

"Fine, Freddie. Real life isn't that simple. You can't stick your head in the sand forever and wait to fossilise. This new situation, it's more than we can handle-"

"Bison coprolites. You just can't let go, can you? Well, I don't do that any more. I walked away into the sunlight."

Little circle, little circle. "I watched you do it. Against my better judgement, I might add. You expect me to believe you've forgotten it all? Haven't thumbed the edge of a flint in all these years? Step into a cave without checking every exit? Never stare into the moonlit night and think about the past?"

It stings to hear the truth so bluntly. But it doesn't matter. "I have a family. A job that means something. A real life." He glances at the wall, at the crude figures drawn in charcoal by tiny hands - bison, bears, brontosaurs. He can almost feel the touch of those soft fingers in his calloused hand, holding him fast.

The amber stops rolling. The figure in black finally turns to make eye contact. "And what do you think will happen to that sweet life of yours when they find out about your past? How will they look at you then?"

The man in black furs feels his shoulders hit the wall, driving the air from his lungs, before Rick's movement even registers. Ancestors, the brute was still so fast. Eyes as emotionless as any Megalodon's bore into his own, so close that their eyebrows threaten to tangle. Powerful muscles, not quite gone to fat, pin him against the stone.

"We're through, Ug. Pick up your club and walk away. There's nothing here for you any more."

Moments creak by, breathlessly, before Ug recovers enough to nod. He's made a mistake, but he's far from a fool. He knows a lost cause when it stares him in the face. The hands slowly lower him, unwind themselves from his tunic, and smooth the rumpled fur back into respectability. Neither of them speaks as they walk to the front door, every stride another step away from the past.

At the threshold, Ug pauses, half-turning to speak over his shoulder. "Listen, Rick-" The look in his old comrade's eye silences him. Rick - no, Freddie, there's no question now - gives a barely-perceptible shake of his head, and swings the door closed.

"Yabadaba don't."

A haunting problem

For today's game, I thought I'd mix up the usual run of half-weasel-half-chainsaw monsters and ex-soldiers who've made regrettable life choices, and let the PCs encounter a haunt.

I was moderately excited about this, because I love the concept of a haunt. Here's a problem you can't simply hack or spellcast your way around!

Necropolitans, episode 59: Launch our hair through the window

Violence and more violence! Innocent ice demons and hags, probably only looking for a comfortable night's sleep, are brutally assaulted by these mean undead, in Episode 059: Launch our hair through the window.

Necropolitans, episode 58: This is why you don't trust the dog.

The Necropolitans accept an offer to join their new acquaintance in an inn, which will surely end well, in Episode 058: This is why you don't trust the dog.

Using Talent to tidy up GURPS statblocks

One of the downsides of GURPS is that while the system is largely "roll 3d6 under", statblocks are often fiddly. This is particularly true because GURPS likes to present lots of detail in its statblocks. You don't have First Aid 12, you have First Aid (E) IQ+1 [1]-12.

For the non-GURPSist, this is telling you First Aid, an Easy skill, with a relative level of IQ+1, on which you have spent 1 point, for a final current level of 12.

There are sometimes good reasons for this. When presenting a character template, the aim is to make it easy for you to adjust by moving or adding points, so you need to know how many points have been spent on things already. I'm less sure about the necessity for including skill difficulty and both final levels and relative levels. It comes up if your attributes change, though.

It occurred to me that, for many trope-based character concepts (which covers a great deal, for my characters at least), the Talents generally cover all the skills you need, particularly if you smash two together. Medic? Healer covers the treatment skills, with Empath if you're the friendly intuitive sort, and Academic if you're a research-minded doctor. Couldn't we present simplified statblocks that simply list Talents instead of skills?

A slight complication is that unless you've put points into a skill, you rely entirely on defaults (if any). The first point in a skill (making it "known") allows us to use the skill level derived from its difficulty class (Easy, Average, Hard, Very Hard).

But if we want every skill covered by a Talent, spending 1 point in each of them is more-or-less the same price as the first level of Talent (required specialties aside). So why not simplify character sheets by allowing the first level of Talent to count as the first point in the skill, and by removing the 4-level restriction on Talent?

This has the effect of making groups of related skills much cheaper to raise to a high level. Taking five Very Hard skills to IQ+4 costs 35 points via Talent, rather than 120 when bought individually. Isn't this a problem?

If all the skills are highly desirable, that may be a concern. A slight counterpoint is that Talent rarely covers a set of highly desirable skills without "dead weight" - if paying for skills normally, would the player choose to buy up Connoisseur to the same level as Two-Handed Axe/Mace?

Of course, a player who wants to raise twenty or more skills can simply buy up IQ or DX, with the same effective cost as above - and raise every other IQ- or DX-based skill into the bargain, #emph[and] every default based on the attribute, #emph[and] attribute rolls. For 100 points, the character has every IQ-based, Per-based, or Will-based skill - that is, the vast majority of non-combat skills - at 12 or better, resists Will-based attacks with 15, and excels at Fright Checks. Talent would raise twenty skills to the same level for the same price, without creating an all-round genius.

In general, consider that a player could legitimately spend a single point in every skill they want, then buy up an attribute and appropriate Talent. Unless it would be considerably cheaper to achieve the same effect by buying high levels of Talent and allowing Talent-as-improvement, there's little risk.

This is, in fact, exactly how spellcasters usually operate. Because spells are IQ-based and Magery raises all spells, the standard expectation is to put 1 point in each spell, buy as much Magery as permitted (because it's cheaper than IQ), and raise IQ. The cost of a single spell is negligible; as soon as you spend that first point, you have it at IQ+Magery-2. The side effect is indeed that spellcasters tend to be very good at every IQ-based skill, both due to high defaults, and because it's extremely cheap to spend 1 point per skill to get them at 12 or better, so you might as well. Building such a character is simply more efficient than other options.

Of course, standard spellcasters do need to spend points on individual spells, because prerequisite chains mean we need to know which spells they have learned. The same doesn't apply to skills. There seems to be no major downside to permitting Talent 1 to count as 1 point in each skill, triggering the difficulty-based level instead of defaults.

If a Talent applies to all specialties of a skill, and a character is likely to want several specialties rather than relying on defaults, this can result in significant discounts. Of course, there are often other routes to savings. For example, a mechanic aiming for IQ+2 in every specialty of power plants would need to buy up ten or more skills, at a cost of 160 points. Far cheaper to spent 32 points raising one specialty to IQ+6 and then rely on the skill-4 defaults, even though this isn't what the player really wants.

Still, the GM and player might agree to have one specialty as the lynchpin of the Talent, and rely on defaults for others. This doesn't always work, though; for example, Theology specialties don't default to one another. An alternative is to raise the price of a Talent that covers many specialties if they are relevant. In a game set entirely within a remote Buddhist monastery where foreigners never set foot, a monk's (frankly inexplicable) expertise in Malagasy animism and Norse Neo-Paganism are unlikely to crop up.

Isn't this just Wildcard Skills?

Not quite. Wildcard skills have a #emph[single] level, while this option for Talent still gives disparate skill levels based on difficulty and controlling attribute. Moreover, it doesn't have the cinematic aspect that wildcard skills often do, and doesn't require any GM attention to ensure it remains balanced compared with those using "standard" skill purchases. It just makes bookkeeping easier by removing the need to track how many points have been allocated to individual skills.

Isn't this just wildcard skills with the numbers filed off?

Not quite. Wildcard skills have a single level, while this option for Talent still gives disparate skill levels based on difficulty and controlling attribute. Moreover, it doesn't have the cinematic aspect that wildcard skills often do, and doesn't require any GM attention to ensure it remains balanced compared with those using "standard" skill purchases. It just makes bookkeeping easier by removing the need to track how many points have been allocated to individual skills. It still requires the player (or GM, for NPCs) to calculate the actual skill level as and when necessary - or to turn the compact Talent-based statblock into a more comprehensive one for play.

For truly simplified and compact statblocks, wildcard skills are superior.

An Example

Judy creates Professor Smedgewick, a slightly sinister occult detective. Rather than purchase any skills, she buys Close to Hell 6 and Natural Copper 3, for a total of 55 points. To create a keen-eyed detective, she raises Per to 12.

With Smedgewick's default IQ of 10, this gives Body Language-13, Criminology-11, Detect Lies-12, Exorcism-13, Hidden Lore (Demons)-14, Intelligence Analysis-10, Interrogation-11, Observation-13, Occultism-14, Psychology (Demons)-13, Religious Ritual-13, Savoir-Faire (Police)-12, Search-13, Shadowing-11, Streetwise-11, and Theology-13. He also has a useful default of Ritual Magic-7.

Smedgewick's background is Scottish Presbyterian, so Judy opts for his Religious Ritual and Theology to have the Christian specialisation. His Ritual Magic default has the corresponding specialisation ("Ritual Magic (The sort of occult shenanigans loosely inspired by Christian-derived folk belief that the Medieval clergy got up to)").

He is not otherwise particularly intellectual, and has no general academic expertise. If Judy wants him to remember facts easily, she buys Eidetic Memory.

What she actually writes down is: Per 12; Damage 1d-2/1d; BL 20; Basic Speed 5; Move 5; Close to Hell (Christian) 6; Natural Copper 3; Eidetic Memory; Higher Purpose (Solve occult crimes); Reputation -2 (Sceptics; 10 or less); Sense of Duty (Victims of occult crimes).

She doesn't particularly need to write down other stats, which are staying at 10. An experienced player could dispense with the default derived values (damage, lift, speed and move) as well. If we were adding the Professor to a scenario or NPC collection, we could similarly exclude them on the basis that the GM can trivially work them out.

Recent Reading, August 2025

For those of you not in the British and Celtic Isles, it is hot. Relentlessly so. For a cluster of geography accustomed to overcast skies and drizzle, weeks of cloudless sun and 25C+ temperatures, accompanied by the abominable humidity that so often infests our summers, has been thoroughly unpleasant.

A particularly striking thing for me is that despite our constant companionable griping, us locals have been dealing with it much better than my students, most of whom are used to 40C summers or worse. In some cases the humidity is brutal: if you normally live in a desert, it's like being smothered. I experienced some of this when I visited Hong Kong on the way back from the utter dryness of central China and was basically sandbagged by the tropical damp. But largely it's because they rarely actually experience the 40C: their homes have air conditioning, their schools are air-conditioned, the shops they visit are air-conditioned, and since most of this cohort are well-off, they normally get driven around in air-conditioned cars. So they're actually much less familiar with the hot weather than we are.

This is not terribly relevant to what I've been reading lately, except that I've been staying up reading late into the night waiting for my oven of a house to assume a more survivable temperature. Reading is one of the few relatively bearable activities, although I still find myself sitting motionless and shirtless, yet with rivulets of sweat pouring down my skin. Stay hydrated, everyone.

The Web

I discovered the Taskerland blog relatively recently; I don't remember how. It covers a variety of RPGs and horror literature, and I've found it interesting and thoughtful reading. Recently there are several commentaries on Thomas Ligotti's work (which Arthur also enjoys) as well as examinations of 2025 Ennies shortlists. Plenty of archives for me to mine there too. The author Moreau Vazh is interested in OSR gameplay, but doesn't confine themself to it.

Roger continues to review alarming numbers of books alongside his other writing. While many of them aren't to my taste, it's still interesting to hear about them - and every so often I pluck out something that catches my interest too.

Dead Trees

The British Library has been gradually rereleasing old strange material, under the Tales of the Weird series. I'm currently reading The Undying Monster, which is some kind of occult-psychic-supernatural mystery I have yet to unfold. Having a Manx author doesn't hurt. The writing style is distinctly period, in delivery and vocabulary - none of your naturalistic dialogue here, but plenty of evocative description. As yet I have, frankly, not the faintest idea what is going on, in the good way.

(It's also brought to mind that occult detectives love to come and investigate the misfortunes of wealthy households, but I don't remember ever encountering one who bothers to poke around the supernatural environment of the common folks. You'd think, statistically, there should be a lot more for them to find in more ordinary families.)

Before that, I finished Brainstorm, a book about epilepsy and neurology by Suzanne O'Sullivan. It was more aimed at a lay audience than I'd vaguely expected, and personally I'd have enjoyed a more in-depth look at the medical and scientific underpinnings. However, what it is is an accessible and exploratory look at the lives of several people manifesting very different forms of epilepsy, the challenges and decisions they face, and how their lives are shaped by - and maintained in the face of - disorders that the rest of society doesn't understand or cope with well. Well worth a look.

Digital Media

I've been making slow and exhausting progress through Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers, trying to better understand the interplay of Chinese and English in students' work (and my own understanding of Chinese-language writing). Motivation suffers from a current dearth of Chinese students - recently they've all been Middle Eastern or South Asian - and the very dense nature of this book, at least for someone whose linguistics background is more in sociolinguistics and phonetics.

Otherwise, diverting myself with some forgettable light novels for those "occupy brain without requiring much thought" periods. Nothing really worth commenting on.

Necropolitans, episode 57: Yup, it's Hair Time.

The Necropolitans enjoy an extended coastal walk, in Episode 057: Yup, it's Hair Time.

On nude teleportation

There's an occasional debate in GURPS-related circles (I can already see some of you pulling hats down and turning abruptly away; I promise this will have some broader relevance) about teleporting people out of their clothes.

Necropolitans, episode 56: I'd rather be in control of the rope

Apologies for the background fan noise etc. from some bits of the recording, and also me cutting out randomly at some points. Internet was baaaad.

We're in Cheliax now! The wizard is a dog now, and continues to read books, to my secret delight, in Episode 056: I'd rather be in control of the rope.

The armoury review, week 614

Picture a wildly stereotypical Cyberpunk BBS as your read this

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Halondove reporting in, still alive. Today's telltale is "vexed cinnibar precludes wastrel solipsism". You know the drill, gang. Gear and guns, honest impressions, no mercy.

Life-threatening failures and stress mechanics

Recently I was listening to Sorry Honey, I Have to Take This (an actual play podcast focused on Delta Green) and picked up a nifty idea I don't remember coming across before.

Necropolitans, episode 55: Stereotypical alchemist slash

If you'd been wondering what happened to Makoa, here he comes again! in Episode 055: Stereotypical Alchemist Slash. Bit sniffly this session, soz.

Necropolitans, episode 54: There's nothing wrong with multiple boats

You know, tentatively sounding people out as potential allies for your secretive organisation and tentatively sounding people out for a date sound pretty similar a lot of the time. We confront Favoured Enemy (Chinese Internet) and Iris gets a lovely visit from her family, in Episode 054: There's nothing wrong with multiple boats.

Necropolitans, episode 53: I know there's magic on her hair

Being in China makes internet hard. There's also some fan noises and possibly a hairdryer, I don't even know. Horrible things live in sewers, it turns out, in Episode 053: I know there's magic on her hair.

Necropolitans, episode 52: As someone who has magical hair

Hellknights versus Librarians! Evacuation is underway and new friends are finding out interesting and suspicious things about each other, in Episode 052: As someone who has magical hair.

Necropolitans, episode 51: Pretend to Set Myself On Fire

It's like a heist film, except you're infiltrating both sides and the plan is "fight our way in, don't need to fight our way out" in Episode 051: Pretend to Set Myself On Fire.

Necropolitans, episode 50: We are not getting Iris into a onesie

"Me? I'm a Hellknight. A knight of Hell. Hellknight equals me, geddit?", imply the party, in Episode 050: We are not getting Iris into a onesie.

Wizards, Towers, and Public Safety Legislation

I don't know where the trope of wizards dwelling in lonely towers originated (some readers probably do). Saruman undoubtedly has something to do with it, and David Eddings' Belgariad was heavily pro-tower. I've read early pulp stories featuring Conan et al raiding towers wherein dwell sinister sorcerers and the priests of evil gods* and that probably contributed to the mix.

One explanation that often comes up is peace and quiet. The wizard, so runs this theory, needs solitude. Separation from the common run of humanity and their petty concerns. He (usually he) does, indeed, he should hold himself apart and not meddle in mundane affairs, occupying himself with the pursuit of pure knowledge. The tower provides him with a sanctuary within which he may seek wisdom and arcane power.

* a concept about which I should write something another time

Necropolitans, episode 49: Mint Ice Cream

Jaal wakes up in a bag, in Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream.

In which I literally read out a list of characters from Thunderbirds

Occasionally people (who are not, generally, British) say things like "I could listen to you reading the phone book", which is always bemusing to someone with a mildly deprecated regional accent that I was encouraged to lose at school. Admittedly I don't have as much of it as I did in those days. I've moved around a lot.

Anyway, here's me reading out the list of characters from Thunderbirds from the Fandom.com category. It's public domain, and hey, if this is for some reason the sort of thing that gets you going, nobody's ever going to know.

You might reasonably say "why", to which the answer is, broadly: over Christmas there was a question about Tin-Tin's name, which left me on the page, which I began reading out to my family. At the point where they begged me to stop (around F, I think) I decided this should be immortalised in digital form, for no very clear reason. Even more surprisingly, I actually got round to doing it.

Talismans are weird though

Hey, let's have a look at talismans, a specific subtype of magic item in Pathfinder.

"These amulets are imbued with magic that allows them to protect their wearer against a very specific danger. A talisman triggers automatically as soon as the listed condition is fulfilled. Although talismans occupy the neck slot, up to three talismans can be worn on one cord or chain. Wearing multiple talismans in this way offers a greater variety of protection, but a wearer can benefit from only one talisman’s effect at a time. If another talisman would be triggered while its wearer is under the effect of another talisman, that talisman is not triggered and can still be used later." -- Source

Talismans come in greater and lesser varieties. A greater talisman is usable once per day. A lesser talisman is a single-use item that turns to dust after use - Pathfinder loves these kinds of items, though in my experience players hate them. Then again, my players tend to think of treasures in terms of things they invest money in, rather than the older approach of stuff you find randomly lying around. I should do more of that.

Pricing of talismans is odd. A talisman is "use-activated" (it triggers when you do the thing or the thing happens to you - no magic words required), and most of them replicate a spell effect. According to the magic item creation rules (which are guidelines, sure, but this is a relatively simple case): Single use, use-activated item costs (spell level x caster level x 50 gp). This covers potions and so on.

A lesser talisman of beneficial winds, for example, replicates the 1st-level spell feather fall. This requires a caster level of 1, so our calculation is 1 x 1 x 50gp. That is indeed the price of the item! Good.

A lesser talisman of danger sense, on the other hand, replicates the 1st-level spell anticipate peril at caster level 5 (which gives a +5 bonus on a single initiative roll). This calculation is thereafore 1 x 5 x 50gp, or 250gp. However, the actual cost is 750gp.

A lesser talisman of freedom gives 3 rounds of freedom of movement (a 4th-level spell) when grappled, paralyzed, or entangled. It has caster level 7, so our calculation is 1,400gp. However, its duration is drastically curtailed, to 3 rounds rather than the 70 minutes the caster level suggests. Nevertheless, it costs 900gp, which is a very modest discount. Alternatively, the party wizard could purchase a wand with a single charge for 420gp, and cast it before entering the danger zone - this is a bit of a gamble, but it's significantly cheaper, doesn't occupy an item slot, and will last for several encounters. After all, one encounter normally lasts less than a minute!

A lesser talisman of life's breath brings a wearer back to life (maybe) the first time they die. This is a 5th-level spell effect, with CL 9th, giving 2,250gp as our basic cost. The talisman costs significantly more, a mighty 3,500gp.

For single-use items, these are extremely expensive and it's not surprising players disdain them at the levels they're normally available. What's going on? The greater versions costs ten times the price, but are usable once per day.

Part of the puzzle seems to be that quirk in the slot usage. "Although talismans occupy the neck slot, up to three talismans can be worn on one cord or chain." That might explain why a talisman of danger sense is triple the expected price, along with similar items like the sealed summons talisman; the others are harder to calculate.

If that's the case, it creates a weird situation. A talisman is worth more because it has the potential to share a neck slot with up to two other items which are also talismans. That isn't worthless, but it's quite a specific requirement. In effect, talismans push you towards getting other talismans in order to justify the inflated price tag - even though this means you end up paying well over the odds for all three items. Moreover, the range of talismans is quite limited. If you wanted to use a neck slot for anything that isn't a single-use or once-per-day effect, or any effect that isn't covered by the existing range of talimans, you're out of luck.

At the lower end of the scale, there's a perverse effect where somebody who could never afford several talismans probably can't afford one, because the pricing is inflated on the assumption of taking all three. Why the talisman of beneficial winds gets a free ride here I don't know. A 3rd-level NPC sailor could afford a 500gp greater ToBW to survive falling from the crow's nest, assuming they don't need anything else (though the sensible thing would be to have a couple for the ship, which are issued to whoever's climbing the rigging). Our 3rd-level NPC guard can only afford a lesser akoben talisman to resist sleep spells, since the greater version is 4,500gp and she'd need to be 7th level for that, at which point there are many other things she should be investing in, like decent armour.

But wait! Pathfinder has actual rules for incorporating multiple magic item properties in a single slot.

"Multiple Different Abilities: Abilities such as an attack roll bonus or saving throw bonus and a spell-like function are not similar, and their values are simply added together to determine the cost. For items that take up a space on a character’s body, each additional power not only has no discount but instead has a 50% increase in price." -- Source

If we follow that principle, a lesser talisman should cost at most (spell level x caster level x 75gp), and 10x that for the greater versions. Not all of them are straight-up spell effects; however, where they vary from spells, they tend to offer worse benefits, impose penalties, or only trigger after some unpleasant experience (such as being shot at least twice in a single round). On the whole, this is equivalent. There's also the factor that many of them reflexively trigger, whereas in most cases (unlike the talisman of beneficial winds) the comparable spell isn't reflexive. That's certainly worth more! Regrettably, Pathfinder doesn't suggest how much more. As a starting-point, I'll say it's double the cost. If the trigger doesn't help with the effect that triggered it - say, fire resistance only after you've taken fire damage - it doesn't increase.

This would suggest pricing as follows:

75 gp (Beneficial Winds), 150 gp (Akoben), 150 gp (Sealed Summons), 150 gp (Warrior's Courage), 450 gp (Arrow Protection), 150 gp (Pentacle), 450 gp (Scarab), 450 gp (Triskelion), 300 gp (Danger Sense), 900 gp (Freedom), 1,250 gp (Ankh), 750 gp (Protection from Flames), 150 gp (Good Fortune), 2,100 gp (Healing Power), 3,000 gp (Hamsa), 3,500 gp (Life's Breath)

The scarab talisman is tricky. Immunity to a very limited subset of poisons and to distraction, for the duration of one combat, only if the rerolled saving throw is successful? The 3,000gp swarmbane clasp gives immunity to distraction and allows the wearer to deal full damage to swarms, permanently, but doesn't help with poison. Assuming the poison immunity and damage benefits are roughly equivalent, that suggests the talisman should be closer to 300 go, boosted to 450gp because it's a shareable slot.

As for the talisman of danger sense? Games really really want initiative to be valuable, but in reality, it's only valuable in the first round of combat and only if it allows you to go before the enemy. After that, everyone's going cyclically. Still, that's not my call. On the other hand, heightened awareness is also a 1st-level spell, which hangs around much longer than anticipate peril, and gives you a flat +4 bonus to initiative without the need for any heightened caster levels. That suggests the real value of the talisman is much lower, around 300 gp since it's reflexive, and it gives a +4 bonus.

The talisman of good fortune allows rerolling a die, and only a natural 1. This is a strictly worse, reflexive version of hermean potential and worth far less than suggested here.

The talisman of healing power is almost twice the price of an equivalent potion (by pricing rules, 1,400 gp). It's functionally similar to greater false life, which would cost 2,100 gp and gives temporary hit points, with the same net result. Given the long duration of a 7th-level greater false life, paying for the reflexivity seems excessive. The aegis of recovery gives slightly fewer hit points, but triggers under much nastier circumstances (imminent death, not moderate injury) and gives an ongoing bonus to a variety of saves, for only 1,500gp.

The talisman of freedom is too hard to judge. Translating down freedom of movement into a reflexive ability that lasts for three rounds instead of 70 minutes is simply guessing. Given how nasty being grappled, paralyzed, or entangled can be, I've left it untouched. Same goes for the hamsa and ankh, whose effects are weird enough that determining what's being charged for is beyond me. The talisman of life's breath is actually a reasonable price.

Of course, these prices are still only appropriate if you're going to wear three of them in the neck slot. If not, they should be even cheaper!

Fundamentally, the issue comes down to hard-coding a conditional benefit into the price of the items. While I do like the idea of talismans and enjoy using them when I can (at the normal prices, too), by putting this weird exception into the rules, they've ended up with prices that don't really reflect the utility of the items.