Because it breaks the casters worse then they already are.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Correct. Tell me what Craft Skill you roll and the DC to determine success, and you have an argument.
It's not a snap of the fingers and done. It's "I know what to do and accomplish it instantly." Not "I can make what no mundane person can make with this spell, AND do it instantly!"
Since no mundane crafter can make a diamond out of diamond dust, neither can you. There's no skill and no DC for it.
==Aelryinth
In that case would the spell ( Make Whole ) work?
A whole diamond can be a component for, say, raise dead. That much dust cannot.
There's also the problem that diamond dust is made from imperfect, poor quality, uncut diamonds.
Meaning, he'd end up with a bunch of diamonds good for nothing but being ground into diamond dust. Any jeweler would look at them, shake his head, and let him know they aren't worth putting in jewelry.
He's thinking he's going to turn 1000 gp of random diamonds into a perfectly cut and crafted gemstone. That's not what Fabricate can do, and Make Whole won't do the job, either.
==Aelryinth
(Edit: the post I was replying to was removed, dunno why)
I really wish people would understand the spell before they start quoting reasons why you are doing it.
1) Are you trying to create a single, massive diamond?
If so, are you trying to create a diamond that's precut and fashioned, or just a raw diamond?
If you get a raw diamond, it will be worthless except as diamond dust. There's no way to Fabricate a perfect diamond by geological processes, it either occurs randomly, or it does not.
If you are trying to make a precut or valuable diamond, that's a Craft check.
Kindly enumerate for me any skill that allows you to craft diamonds out of diamond dust.
Hint: There isn't.
Also note, that by your logic: I could create a living person out of corpses and grass (no skill check required, raw material + life energy, who needs pregnancy?); I could create timber out of wood chips (no skill check required); I could create stone out of sand (no skill check required); I could create wheat out of bread, sunlight, water, air and soil (no skill check required); I could create diamonds out of coal (no skill check); you can make silk out of caterpillers and mulberry leaves (no skill check required) and I could Fabricate water out of air (no skill check required).
You look at the spell and tell me somewhere in there that it allows you to duplicate natural processes.
Hint: There isn't.
You're restricted to things you can make with a Craft check, be it a 10 or less then 10 that you can auto-make (you don't need to roll if you can take 10 and make an item, that's why they mention rolling for HIGH CRAFT stuff, not a justification for NO CRAFT stuff).
You're using standard munchkin logic, expanding the spell definition to increase its power, since it doesn't say it doesn't.
But since it doesn't say it does, the point is moot. You can't duplicate natural processes because the spell does not say that you can.
==Aelryinth
It wouldn't be worth much, period.
the vast majority of diamonds are not gemstone quality. They're just fodder for high end drills and saws, the normal use for diamond dust.
He's trying to make a gemstone quality diamond out of dust from inferior quality diamonds. It's like trying to make oak out of birch chips. It's not going to work.
==Aelryinth
Because using the rules in a way this grossly broken -> rocks fall, you die. Or dm walks.
Take your pick.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Because using the rules in a way this grossly broken -> rocks fall, you die. Or dm walks.
I'm still now seeing how this is really broken. The money burned is still the same.
[edited] Ah.. but the rules say you put together material of the same value... i.e. it would require 25000gp worth of diamond dust. Simple. Even if you exclude diamond dust, you can't exclude making a 25000gp diamond out of 5x5000gp diamonds. I appreciate the resistance to using fabricate like this, but thus far the arguments against using Fabricate to turn diamond dust into an equivalently valued diamond just don't seem to hold water.
My supposition is that a craft roll is NOT required to "fabricate" a diamond because there's no "craftmanship" involved at all, via RAW or RAI, there's no craft skill involved. A profession might be involved, but definitely not a "craft" skill.
1. Fabricate: "You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."
2. From the gamemastering section, diamonds are gemstones, and as such are NOT crafted. Particularly they are "grand jewels". There's no material you can "make" a gem from (via crafting). Here's a quote from that section: ... Unlike gemstones, many of these objects have set values, but you can always increase an object's value by having it be bejeweled or of particularly fine craftsmanship.
3. In the real world we might consider gem cutting a craft, but at BEST pathfinder would consider it a profession. Craft: "You are skilled in the creation of a specific group of items, such as armor or weapons.... A Craft skill is specifically focused on creating something. If nothing is created by the endeavor, it probably falls under the heading of a Profession skill."
4. You don't CRAFT gems. That's why there's no craft (gem) skill. DnD / Pathfinder have never considered gems to be "crafted". From the RAW perspective, it makes no sense that a craft check would be needed to make a diamond. There is no craft (gem cutting) skill, nor has there ever been. Even in the real world, gem cutting involves removing the...
Cutting gems falls under the Craft (jeweler) skill. It's not a profession skill.
There's no wording in Fabricate allowing you to make an uncrafted item. You may not have to make a check (DC is low), but there's nothing that says you can make an item that doesn't require a craft check.
i.e. there's nothing in the spell that can duplicate natural processes.
Somehow fusing raw materials together to form another object WITHOUT a crafting basis is not in the spell description. If it is, stop using diamonds and diamond dust and just use coal. Use graphite. The source of diamonds is coal, not other diamonds.
Of course, your DM is free to rule that the 'raw materials' of making gemstones from lesser materials is "one million years, ten thousand atmospheres of pressure, and volcanic level heat, in addition to raw carbon, etc." none of which can be duplicated by a 5th level spell.
Also, you seem to think perfect diamonds spring out of the ground. No. Raw diamonds are just nodules of pressurized carbon. A 5000 gp diamond was once a 1,667 gp hunk of raw diamond. It had to be cut to become a jewel. Most diamonds are so riddled with flaws, impurities and other imperfections that the only thing they are good for is reduction to diamond dust.
As I postulated above, with your ruling, you can make BABIES with Fabricate, because there's no Craft check involved. Your adding to the spell description does not fly.
And as I stated, not forcing you to make a Crafting check for low DC is not the same as being able to duplicate natural processes. You are straight out adding that to the spell, which is Blatant munchkinism.
And do you really think they listed each and every single potential crafting skill in the skill list? Come on. Craft (painter) isn't in there.
==Aelryinth
I'm still now seeing how this is really broken. The money burned is still the same.Because using the rules in a way this grossly broken -> rocks fall, you die. Or dm walks.
Because it takes 1/3 of the cost of an item to make the final, crafted product.
Because if you allow this rule, you can make babies out of raw materials (a dead corpse). You can make a wheat harvest out of seeds, a field, sunlight and water, your 'raw materials'.
There is nothing in the spell whatever that says "you can use this spell to duplicate natural processes." And that's what he's proposing to do, fuse diamond dust back into a single diamond. He even cites the fact its a geological event.
I don't see anywhere in Fabricate that it allows to duplicate geological events.
Fabricate is already pretty busted since it allows you to instantly triple your wealth. You need a +10 to your Craft (Armorsmith) check and you can instantly turn 3400 gp into 10250 or so by "Beep. Adamantine full plate."
His example dumbs it down even further by applying it to commodity items so he doesn't even have to worry about finding buyers.
It doesn't work for multiple reasons. But he's sure he's latched onto a loophole and is working it for all he's worth.
==Aelryinth
Cutting gems falls under the Craft (jeweler) skill. It's not a profession skill.
There's no wording in Fabricate allowing you to make an uncrafted item. You may not have to make a check (DC is low), but there's nothing that says you can make an item that doesn't require a craft check.
i.e. there's nothing in the spell that can duplicate natural processes.
Somehow fusing raw materials together to form another object WITHOUT a crafting basis is not in the spell description. If it is, stop using diamonds and diamond dust and just use coal. Use graphite. The source of diamonds is coal, not other diamonds.
Of course, your DM is free to rule that the 'raw materials' of making gemstones from lesser materials is "one million years, ten thousand atmospheres of pressure, and volcanic level heat, in addition to raw carbon, etc." none of which can be duplicated by a 5th level spell.
Also, you seem to think perfect diamonds spring out of the ground. No. Raw diamonds are just nodules of pressurized carbon. A 5000 gp diamond was once a 1,667 gp hunk of raw diamond. It had to be cut to become a jewel. Most diamonds are so riddled with flaws, impurities and other imperfections that the only thing they are good for is reduction to diamond dust.
As I postulated above, with your ruling, you can make BABIES with Fabricate, because there's no Craft check involved. Your adding to the spell description does not fly.
And as I stated, not forcing you to make a Crafting check for low DC is not the same as being able to duplicate natural processes. You are straight out adding that to the spell, which is Blatant munchkinism.
And do you really think they listed each and every single potential crafting skill in the skill list? Come on. Craft (painter) isn't in there.
==Aelryinth
I think he was agreeing with you.
Fabricate basically allows you to emulate any craft skill that may exist. If you can't craft it, then fabricate won't won't.<----short version of RAI.
Example:
You can turn take mithral and make a mithral dinner plate. You can not take mithral plates and turn them into mithral ore. Ore is the raw form of a metal.
The product is the end result from what the material started as.
The spell specifically says you can convert material into a product. It never says you can turn a product back into the original material.
I am not saying it is broken to all the spell to do so at times, but it is not allowed by the rules.
|
MorganS, Aelryinth has replied to your questions several times.
To reply to them again:
"Why shouldn't a caster be able to turn a stacks of gold coins into gold bars?" He can, it is a simple skill check, Craft (metalworking) that you can do with a DC 5 check probably, DC if you want to separate the pure gold from the alloy in the coin. It don't increase the gold value in any way and can even decrease it if you are fabricating gold ingots from coins with a purchase value higher than the gold content.
"Why shouldn't a caster be able to turn a pile of diamonds into a few big diamonds?" What is the skill check? There isn't any.
Same thing for make whole. It can repair a diamond you were cutting if you botched the attempt (it happened in real life before the advent of the moder techniques).
Make whole say "This spell functions as mending" and mending say: "This spell repairs damaged objects,", not it fuse together existing objects.
I'm still now seeing how this is really broken. The money burned is still the same.Because using the rules in a way this grossly broken -> rocks fall, you die. Or dm walks.
Ditto. Can you explain what you mean icehawk333, because I feel I'm missing something here?
OP: If you're gaming with a GM who won't let you substitute 25,000 gp of diamond dust for a 25,000 diamond, I doubt Fabricate shenanigans are going to help you. Or is there some other application of this that's eluding me?
A better question is can you use fabricate to turn graphite into diamond or even better carbon nanotube? I mean it's all carbon.
|
|
A better question is can you use fabricate to turn graphite into diamond or even better carbon nanotube? I mean it's all carbon.
If you have the needed skills and know the existence what you want to produce you could.
Purifying graphite from a natural deposit shouldn't be too difficult, making it from natural sources of carbon is more difficult. Both should be craft alchemy skills, I think.
Making nanotubes is way more complicated as you need to know that they exist.
Making diamonds. Again we hit the skill problem as said several times. What is the needed skill?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm still now seeing how this is really broken. The money burned is still the same.Because using the rules in a way this grossly broken -> rocks fall, you die. Or dm walks.
Ditto. Can you explain what you mean icehawk333, because I feel I'm missing something here?
OP: If you're gaming with a GM who won't let you substitute 25,000 gp of diamond dust for a 25,000 diamond, I doubt Fabricate shenanigans are going to help you. Or is there some other application of this that's eluding me?
Since this is the rules forum what is allowed and what is broken are two separate questions.
The rules don't allow it, but I don't think it's broken.
PS: I mean it is not broken for this specific example. As a general idea it is broken to me because I it allows for two many examples as listed by Aelyrnith(sorry about butchering your name) to work that should not work.
A better question is can you use fabricate to turn graphite into diamond or even better carbon nanotube? I mean it's all carbon.
I dont think anyone can craft this well mean I dont think it is possible to be done with anything short of modern day equipment, and even then I might need proof..
Does it matter?
Regardless of whether you can pull the gem trick, it doesn't matter much when you can explicitly use fabricate to make suits of full plate armor, spyglasses, astrolabes, or blightburn paste for third price and sell them for half price. It's the GM's job to decide how to handle this sort of thing.
Does it matter?
Regardless of whether you can pull the gem trick, it doesn't matter much when you can explicitly use fabricate to make suits of full plate armor, spyglasses, astrolabes, or blightburn paste for third price and sell them for half price. It's the GM's job to decide how to handle this sort of thing.
It matters because he is asking a rules based question. The GM can always make exceptions, but maybe his GM is a "by the book" guy, or maybe this is a PFS character, where the GM has less room to make exceptions.
Since this is the rules forum what is allowed and what is broken are two separate questions.
I get that it's a rules forum, what I fail to get is why a ruling one way or the other would make a difference. What in-game reason would a person have for ever needing to convert 25,000 gp worth of diamond dust for a 25,000 gp diamond? It's not clear to me that there is any meaningful rules-based distinction between the two as far as material components; if there is a non-material component based reason for wanting to do this I can't think of it; and even if - IF - for some reason it makes a difference, why not just take it to the jeweler's or whatever and swap? The gp value is identical.
I mean if somebody posted in the rules forum "Can I buy a white horse and a black horse and then use Animal Handling to breed them together to make a grey horse?" I think a perfectly valid response would be "RAW, probably not, but on the other hand, why not just buy a grey horse to start with?"
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also note, that by your logic: I could create a living person out of corpses and grass (no skill check required, raw material + life energy, who needs pregnancy?);
You need Craft (children), i believe its constitution based.
Does it matter?
Regardless of whether you can pull the gem trick, it doesn't matter much when you can explicitly use fabricate to make suits of full plate armor, spyglasses, astrolabes, or blightburn paste for third price and sell them for half price. It's the GM's job to decide how to handle this sort of thing.
Actually, while the spell can be interpreted like that, its only one of the possible ways. It is also completely valid (and in some ways yhe only way the spell functions by RAW) such that you need twice that much material- both the material component (which is consumed when casting) and the target (which is transformed).
Tthat depends on if "material" in "original material" refers to type of material or a specific piece of material. Both interpretations work.
However, the component section in the magiv rules state that material components are consumed (i think the word is annihilated but i dont have the book here), so while a spell certainly can have the same target and component, it doesnt wok very well as the components is consumed. So then you turn the diamond dust into a consumed diamond. Not very useful.
Note the difference between fabricate and other changing spells like Shillelagh which tend to not have the transmuted item as a component. When few spwlls have that, the fact that fabricate does indicates (though of course not proves( tthat it works differently compared to them.
Ask your DM.
Personally, I'd say no. Unless you had diamond dust that was made from a 25k diamond.
Then I'd say no anyway if you were trying to come up with a way to manufacture them for easy use of Wish.
It's something that, even after you have access to, remains heavily restricted by the rarity of diamonds that qualify as a component for the spell, so your DM even has a valid argument so say 25k g.p. does not mean there are any 25k diamonds. Especially after you've already bought one or two.
Emphasis on Ask your DM.
Not to nitpick, but you can craft diamonds. It's a modern technique, mind you, however you could theoretically accomplish something similar with magic. Just saying.
Edit: the example is a home made version, but the industrial version exists also.
The fact remains that even under modern methods, you don't make diamonds out of a lump of diamond dust.
You make it out of a seed diamond and finely powdered carbon. You also need extremely advanced equipment, without which the Crafting check is absolutely impossible. You don't even know such equipment exists, the process works, etc. It's effectively an impossible check. You don't know it's even possible, how are you going to duplicate it?
Diamond dust is a shattered, complete diamond. You're basically asking Fabricate to unshatter a final product, which is mending, not Crafting.
As for converting 25k in d dust to 25k in diamonds, the only way to do it is sell the 25k in d dust for 12.5k, buy an 8.3k raw diamond of the right quality, and cut it into a 25k diamond with the appropriate crafting check. Fabricate is about the only way to actually do this in any decent time period, but 8.3k hunks of raw diamond aren't going to be any more common then the 25k results of them.
Especially with high level casters running around and consuming them for high level spells.
==Aelryinth
|
i don't see a problem, as long as you're converting 500gp of diamond dust, into a 500gp diamond.
the quality of the product in Fabricate is not guaranteed.
This. the spell doesn't somehow make 500gp of diamond dust into a 25,000gp diamond. If a GM ruled that it did then he screwed his own game. You want a 25,000gp diamond...you need 25,000gp of diamond dust or a 25,000gp rough diamond. I wouldn't allow make whole to work unless all the diamond dust came from the same diamond before it was crushed. Make whole won't take a bunch of wood and make a chair. It takes a broken chair and makes it whole again. Same with mending, it fixes one item, it doesn't make a whole item out of materials unless all the material came from the one finished and broken product. Can't take a bunch of metal shavings and make a dagger. You can take rusted and broken dagger and make it into it's original form of a dagger.
The problem is that a diamond can not be crafted. It does not just say x=y in gold. The final item has to be something that could actually be crafted.
|
|
As for converting 25k in d dust to 25k in diamonds, the only way to do it is sell the 25k in d dust for 12.5k, buy an 8.3k raw diamond of the right quality, and cut it into a 25k diamond with the appropriate crafting check. Fabricate is about the only way to actually do this in any decent time period, but 8.3k hunks of raw diamond aren't going to be any more common then the 25k results of them.
do you not treat diamond dust like a commodity in your game? I treat it like gold/diamonds/etc.
its a valuable commodity on its own, and can be used in trade, without selling it for half price.the nice thing about the Fabricate diamond is that if you did want it in some funky shape, you can just take a Craft check at it , and take dust from several colored diamonds, and make some cool multicolored diamond out of it. =D
|
|
As for converting 25k in d dust to 25k in diamonds, the only way to do it is sell the 25k in d dust for 12.5k, buy an 8.3k raw diamond of the right quality, and cut it into a 25k diamond with the appropriate crafting check. Fabricate is about the only way to actually do this in any decent time period, but 8.3k hunks of raw diamond aren't going to be any more common then the 25k results of them.do you not treat diamond dust like a commodity in your game? I treat it like gold/diamonds/etc.
its a valuable commodity on its own, and can be used in trade, without selling it for half price.the nice thing about the Fabricate diamond is that if you did want it in some funky shape, you can just take a Craft check at it , and take dust from several colored diamonds, and make some cool multicolored diamond out of it. =D
Masterwork Diamond Sword of Rainbows ready for enchanting anyone? I'd allow it.
|
|
This. the spell doesn't somehow make 500gp of diamond dust into a 25,000gp diamond. If a GM ruled that it did then he screwed his own game. You want a 25,000gp diamond...you need 25,000gp of diamond dust or a 25,000gp rough diamond. I wouldn't allow make whole to work unless all the diamond dust came from the same diamond before it was crushed. Make whole won't take a bunch of wood and make a chair. It takes a broken chair and makes it whole again. Same with mending, it fixes one item, it doesn't make a whole item out of materials unless all the material came from the one finished and broken product. Can't take a bunch of metal shavings and make a dagger. You can take rusted and broken dagger and make it into it's original form of a dagger.i don't see a problem, as long as you're converting 500gp of diamond dust, into a 500gp diamond.
the quality of the product in Fabricate is not guaranteed.
Crafting an item requires 1/3 of the item's value in raw materials. Fabricate does crafting. You can indeed take a bunch of metal shavings and make a dagger.
If you take a bunch of metal worth 500gp and made something that used all of it, then you'd have something worth 1500gp (which would sell for 750gp).
Note how I said Mending and Make Whole wouldn't let you take raw materials and make something out of them and not that Fabricate wouldn't....
BUT- cool so using 1/3 of 25,000gp in raw materials and Fabricate you can make a good 25,000gp diamond....if you have a ton of craft skill. I don't see any equivilant on the skills table for a dc so I don't know what I would set it at but maybe 15 +1 per 1,000gp in price is where I would go with setting the DC. There shouldn't be many people capable of making a diamond of that high quality unless they have been training all their lives in the craft.
I know I wouldn't allow it as a GM. First, a diamond isn't a 'product', it's a raw material. Second, the intent of the spell is clearly to create items from the material that is used to craft them.
In the same fashion, I wouldn't allow the spell to turn sawdust into a tree (even a dead one), or powdered rock into a boulder (bricks would be OK, but not solid rock).
In a modern-day or futuristic setting I might be more flexible, if a non-magical way existed in the setting to aggregate diamond dust into a single jewel.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In response to the folks who keep saying that crafting a diamond is not accomplished by using diamond dust IN THE REAL WORLD, I must simply respond "because magic".
It would seem to me that craft (jewelry) would allow for the creation of a finished diamond (that is cut and polished as opposed to a raw diamond). As fabricate does not state the raw materials must be in a particular form, one should be able to fabricate a finished diamond from diamond dust. Additionally, one should be able to create full plate from a significant amount of iron shavings or a glass window or wine glass from shattered glass.