Cost of crumbling diamonds?

[gustavo iglesias]

Let's say you have a 5000gp diamond, and you need diamond dust. If you destroy the diamond, how much worth of diamond dust sjpuld you get?

[dragonhunterq]

5000gp.
It really isn't worth worrying about it beyond that.

[DrDeth]

As explained- it's not the value, it's the cost.

Let us say you are in a area near large diamond mines.

You need a 1000 gps diamond. You find a large, near flawless blue white stone for your $.

In another area, few gems, lots of spellcasters. You need another 1000gps diamond. Now, after scouring the marketplace you pay 1000 gps for a small, flawed brownish stone.

the spell works the same.

[Rysky]

DrDeth wrote:

As explained- it's not the value, it's the cost.

Let us say you are in a area near large diamond mines.

You need a 1000 gps diamond. You find a large, near flawless blue white stone for your $.

In another area, few gems, lots of spellcasters. You need another 1000gps diamond. Now, after scouring the marketplace you pay 1000 gps for a small, flawed brownish stone.

the spell works the same.

Yeaaaaah, no. It's the value, not how much you pay for it or how much people ask for. You spend 1,000g on a small flawed brownish stone it doesn't make it a diamond.

By that reasoning diamonds you find as loot can't be used as material components at all because you didn't pay for them. You also couldn't steal them either.

Conversely you could have anything be the material component by having one party member "charge" another over a piece of glass, pay, and then promptly receive the money back.

[gustavo iglesias]

DrDeth wrote:

As explained- it's not the value, it's the cost.

Let us say you are in a area near large diamond mines.

You need a 1000 gps diamond. You find a large, near flawless blue white stone for your $.

In another area, few gems, lots of spellcasters. You need another 1000gps diamond. Now, after scouring the marketplace you pay 1000 gps for a small, flawed brownish stone.

the spell works the same.

That's great, because I have a permanent energy drain, and 100gp in diamond dust, but I'm willing to sell it to a party member for 100gp, then buy it for 1000, and restore myself.

Later, I'd sell an arrow for 900gp to my party member, and be fine.
Now, going back to the question...

[Quentin Coldwater]

Diamond powder, assuming nothing got lost, will be equally as valuable as the original diamond. More people know about the cost of Raise Dead, so it'll be equally valuable in powdered form.
Say I go to a real-life bank and buy a gold brick worth a thousand dollars. I pulverise it completely, but make sure I lose no dust. I can go back to the same bank and re-sell it for the same value, because if you melt it down, it can be re-forged into that same gold brick again (there might be some loss, I dunno, but my point still stands). You're still holding 5000 gp worth of diamond, it's just in a different state. This one's more valuable to some people, even, as this has a practical application (Raise Deads, Restorations, and so on).

[gustavo iglesias]

There's a difference between gold dust and diamond dust. You can't melt diamond dust back into a diamond, and also, diamonds are worth A TON more if they are well cut by the jeweler.

A rough diamond isn't worth as much as a well cut and polished diamond.

[Quentin Coldwater]

Shoudl've mentioned that the analogy's not 100% the same, but still. If you're not going to use 5000 gp of diamond dust, you're probably going to find some Cleric who's going to pay you 5000 gp to get that dust. It might not be worth the same to a diamond connoisseur, but it still has practical value to other people.

[gustavo iglesias]

The problem with the "value for people" is that it makes the price relative. While that has a lot of sense in terms of free market value, it is a dangerous can of worm to open. Because for a guy who is dead, every small bit of diamond dust is worth a LOT. Maybe 5000gp.

And then you only have to pay 5000gp to your party member for a tiny pinch of diamond dust and be raised from the dead.

Probably the spell should call for "one ounce of diamond dust", with diamond dust being worth 5000g per ounce.

[Quentin Coldwater]

Yes, if you're in dire need of diamond dust, there will always be people who'll rip you off. But the spell probably reflects regular market prices and don't account for scammers. I'm fairly confident that if you ground 5000 gp of diamond into dust, you can safely sell it for 5000 gp again, if not more (with the note that if you're using it to scam people or try to gain a ridiculous profit, your alignment might change). The game doesn't account for blackmail practices, so I wouldn't worry about it. 5000 gp of diamond dust will always be worth 5000 gp, because otherwise, you're making it needlessly complicated.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Grinding a diamond suitable for use in jewelry to dust should destroy almost all of its value.

This link suggests that doubling the size quadruples the value. The inverse would mean that splitting a diamond in half would produce two quarter value diamonds and result in a 50% loss in overall value. That's just one division (a 5,000gp diamond into a pair of 1,250gp diamonds). How many more equally value destroying divisions before the chunks are "dust"?

This site offers synthetic diamond dust for fifty cents a carat.

This site suggests a 1 carat synthetic diamond might cost $6,000.

Those two figures ($6,000 for a whole 1 carat diamond, less than a dollar for an equal weight of powder) support the reasoning in the division above. Grind a diamond to dust and you destroy almost all of its value. In real life, a $5,000 diamond is a lovely but ultimately unremarkable ring with a stone weighing .2 grams. $5,000 of diamond dust at the above listed price would be 10,000 carats, aka 2kg, aka ~4.4 *pounds*. That is probably a decent sized *sack*. No sane person grinds diamonds to dust, they would destroy ~99.99% of the value. To cast Stoneskin (250gp) you'd need to destroy a 2,500,000gp diamond!

[Jeraa]

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

Grinding a diamond suitable for use in jewelry to dust should destroy almost all of its value.

This link suggests that doubling the size quadruples the value. The inverse would mean that splitting a diamond in half would produce two quarter value diamonds and result in a 50% loss in overall value. That's just one division (a 5,000gp diamond into a pair of 1,250gp diamonds). How many more equally value destroying divisions before the chunks are "dust"?

This site offers synthetic diamond dust for fifty cents a carat.

This site suggests a 1 carat synthetic diamond might cost $6,000.

Those two figures ($6,000 for a whole 1 carat diamond, less than a dollar for an equal weight of powder) support the reasoning in the division above. Grind a diamond to dust and you destroy almost all of its value. In real life, a $5,000 diamond is a lovely but ultimately unremarkable ring with a stone weighing .2 grams. $5,000 of diamond dust at the above listed price would be 10,000 carats, aka 2kg, aka ~4.4 *pounds*. That is probably a decent sized *sack*. No sane person grinds diamonds to dust, they would destroy ~99.99% of the value. To cast Stoneskin (250gp) you'd need to destroy a 2,500,000gp diamond!

What use does diamond dust have in the real world? Aside from use in grinding/cutting, I can't think of anything. In the game world, not only is diamond dust used for grinding purposes, but it has several magical uses as well. Fantasy world diamond dust is more useful than real world diamond dust, and therefor more valuable. You can't compare the two.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

The ratio of size to value is presumably a function of rarity as the stones come out of the ground. If size X stones are four times as common as size 2X stones the corresponding ratio of values might be surprisingly resilient.

Magic will increase the demand for dust, but how significant is that demand? What percentage of the population are high level spellcasters (or rich enough to buy their services)? If it is low enough then it won't much disturb the market presented by large low level industries. If it is high enough it will.

Whatever answer to give to the way magic distorts the economy will be pure invention. It is useful to know how these things work in the absence of magic to give a starting point though. If you rule that grinding the diamond only destroys 90% of the value your making the dust a thousand times more valuable with magic than without.

It is also worth noting that while magic makes diamond dust more valuable, it also might whole diamonds more valuable (Raise Dead for instance requires a whole diamond). What is in question isn't the value of either, but the ratio of the value of the two. To get a different ratio you'd have to argue that magic increases the value of diamond dust at a different rate than it increases the value of diamonds.

What all uses diamond dust? Stoneskin doesn't seem like it would be a big economic force (too few people in the market). Restoration seems like a better candidate. A seventh level caster isn't so high level as to be unavailable, and a cure for "ability drain" and "insanity" might have a market among the very wealthy depending on how broadly you defined those things. Still, if thousands of craftsmen are buying diamond files the very occasional rich noble with 1,000gp to spend on his insane cousin isn't going to disrupt that market much. What other diamond dust spells are there? Are any of them good candidates for rivaling industrial scale demand?

[Avoron]

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

What other diamond dust spells are there? Are any of them good candidates for rivaling industrial scale demand?

I think nondetection and permanency are your two most likely candidates.

[Wheldrake]

It's called abstraction.

The game doesn't deal with minutiae like gem size, clarity, cut and so on. It doesn't deal with the variable value of coins, minted in different nations to different standards with different sizes and gold (or silver or whatever) content.

It's just easier to assign a standard value to a given item, and not worry about what that means in terms of size, weight, clarity, cut and so on.

So even though in the real world a diamond of a given size that is reduced to diamond dust is far, far less valuable, our game uses the conceit that gems, jewelry and many other valuable items and goods in the game have fixed values that are maintained regardless of piddling details. It doesn't matter that those "piddling details" are really significant details in the real world, especially when it comes to assigning value to luxury goods like gems and jewelry. Our game doesn't deal with the vagaries of market value, or resale value, at least not beyond assigning abstract conversion rates for selling goods of certain categories (magical swords vs gems, for example).

This abstraction simply makes playing the game a little more streamlined.

And on the subject of spells that require diamond dust as components, it's just easier to allow players to carry a given value of "diamonds", regardless of their actual size, and mark it off when such spells are cast. Keeping track of equipment inventories is already abstruse enough that we don't need to complicate it further. I mean, we aren't *all* chartered accountants. <g>

(My apologies to any actual chartered accountants reading this post.)

[Matthew Downie]

The rules don't say.

That leaves us with some options.

Option 1 is to say that diamond dust is not inherently valuable - so you will never make enough dust to cast Restoration from grinding up full-sized cut diamonds, and if you want to cast that spell you'll need to need to carry sacks of the stuff around with you.

Option 2 is to invent a ratio of diamond dust value to diamond value. How big is a diamond that can bring the dead back to life? We don't know. How much is diamond dust worth in a world where it has magical powers? We don't know. But we could say a 5000gp diamond becomes 500gp of diamond dust, or 1500gp, or something like that.

Option 3 is that a 5000gp diamond can be turned into 5000gp of diamond dust.

Option 3 seems like the only clearly defined and playable rule.

[UnArcaneElection]

^Variation on Option 3: Part of the material component cost of the magic is that you have to destroy most of the value of a 5000 gp diamond by grinding it to dust, and if you end up not casting the spell that you needed it for, you are left with dust that is worthless except for casting a similar spell.

[Matthew Downie]

Not sure I understand that?

Diamond dust is likely to be useless for anything except spells that require diamond dust.

Diamond dust can't be stuck together to make a 5000gp diamond (except maybe if you still have all the bits of the original diamond and some kind of magical repair spell).

But diamond dust can presumably be resold, because other casters might want it for their own spells.

[UnArcaneElection]

^Well, now that you mention it, I wonder if Make Whole (or at least Greater Make Whole) can stick diamond dust back together into a diamond.

But reselling diamond dust might be tricky, because a buyer wouldn't have any easy way to verify that you were selling them the dust frmo a 5000 gp diamond as opposed to an equal weight of dust from 10 50 gp diamonds. Also, if you have spells that need a certain amount of diamond dust, better not get your diamond dust bags mixed up . . . .

[Matthew Downie]

Appraise skill check. Boom. Done.

Or maybe a 5000gp diamond is 100 times as big as a 50gp diamond in this world?

[The Raven Black]

WBL says 5000 gp

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Wheldrake wrote:

It's called abstraction.

Nah, it's called trade-offs.

We could make combat quick and simple by giving everyone a "fighting score" of 1 to 100 and whoever has the higher value wins. We don't, we have literally thousands of pages of rules, feats, classes, archetypes, spells, weapons, terrain modifiers, weather modifiers, and so on to minutely model all sorts of violence stuff. Why? Because we're super interested in murder.

Simplicity is a virtue, but it isn't the only one. Realism, immersion, nuance, etc... are too. Design is about managing those trade-offs. If the economics of grinding up diamonds isn't interesting to you (aka isn't worth sacrificing simplicity for accuracy) you are in the vast majority of humanity. However, a thread about the cost of crumbling up diamonds is a peculiar place to spend your time if the cost of crumbling up diamonds isn't interesting to you.

Quote:

Keeping track of equipment inventories is already abstruse enough that we don't need to complicate it further. I mean, we aren't *all* chartered accountants.

My WIFE is an accountant sir! It shall be pistols at dawn!

(She is actually, and truth be told wasn't very interested in this topic either, she was watching a TV show about murder...)

[Ring_of_Gyges]

As an aside, if anyone is interested in what actually happens when trained economists get mixed up with RPGs, I heartily recommend the dungeonomics series from the critical hits blog.

Try "The Murder Hobo Investment Bubble".

[UnArcaneElection]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Appraise skill check. Boom. Done.

Or maybe a 5000gp diamond is 100 times as big as a 50gp diamond in this world?

The first is true only if the second is true. Otherwise it doesn't work. The dust of 10 50 gp diamonds would effectively have a DC unbeatable by even a high level of ordinary skill to distinguish it from the dust of 1 5000 gp diamond. You would need some kind of object reading magic that gives you the history of an object, which actually has to work on a huge collection of extremely small objects.

[Wheldrake]

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

Appraise skill check. Boom. Done.

Or maybe a 5000gp diamond is 100 times as big as a 50gp diamond in this world?

The first is true only if the second is true. Otherwise it doesn't work. The dust of 10 50 gp diamonds would effectively have a DC unbeatable by even a high level of ordinary skill to distinguish it from the dust of 1 5000 gp diamond. You would need some kind of object reading magic that gives you the history of an object, which actually has to work on a huge collection of extremely small objects.

Which is why quibbling over the value of diamond dust and the relationship between undusted diamonds and the dust made from them is madness. Surely, the only way out is to change the spell descriptions to read "5 grams of diamond dust" and then have a table showing the value of X grams of diamonds of varying size, cut, color and clarity.

Or, if we're going down that route, we could remove the word "dust" from the spell component description, and say "a 5000gp diamond".

Or, if we want to quibble about dust, perhaps we should specify the size of the dust particles.

Or, we can just ignore the problem and say that gemstones like diamonds and the dust made from them has an equivalent value. Meaning that a 5000gp diamond would give 5000gp of diamond dust for a given spell, and call it a day.

Although I am still waiting for someone to link to an old Judge's Guild table that took a stab at assigning gold piece value based on size, cut, color and clarity of various gems (IIRC).

[UnArcaneElection]

^I actually like the idea of the value of the original gem that was destroyed being what matters. Fits with the idea that you have to destroy something precious to create or restore something.

[The Sideromancer]

UnArcaneElection wrote:

^I actually like the idea of the value of the original gem that was destroyed being what matters. Fits with the idea that you have to destroy something precious to create or restore something.

Diamonds are precious?