There is no craft (gems) skill. Profession (miner) exists but will basically never find a gem like that given the rate it earns money. Craft (jewelery) is about making things out of gems and precious metals I think.
If it did exist note that a few dozen gp per week will take decades to make a 25 000 gp item.
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I'm inclined to agree with AVR crafting is to take raw materials and turn them into an item e.g. 1,000 gold + 1,000 gp diamond can make a gemmed tiara worth 3,500 because of your fine work if you have a craft jewelry skill. However you still have 1,000 gp worth of gold and diamond chips with the extra 1,500 being because of the beautiful engrave floral pattern with a diamond chip at the heart of each flower. Melt it down and your left with just the raw materials again (albeit a pile of diamond chips rather than one diamond) Crafting skills and feats may give you a discount on finished products because they remove that bonus price above and beyond the raw materials not the raw material price.
In your pcs case the merchant will sell a 25,000 gp diamond for 25,000 gp and buy it for less so they make a profit.
If they dont want to pay full price they need some gm ruling on mining beyond the normally profession earnings. For me those values represent someone working for someone else and if you set up your own business you can earn more but you have greater risk and requirements. For example finding dianond rich land, clearing it of monsters, starting a mine and providing security against outside threats and internal thieves. You get better income and rare high value gems but it requires you sink time, money and a risk first plus thats house rules.
We are at an impasse, as we are both of the opinion that we are right (and this has major implications on the game as a whole), so neither of us are willing to back down.
This doesn't sound like a specific problem but a general one. Even if you disprove this money-making scheme another will come up sooner or later. Try to explain to your player that while there are ways to quickly generate wealth, this skews the game balance since wealth is just as important to a character's power as XP is.
Like technically you could buy ten Donkeys at first level for 80 gp and kill them for 2000 XP, instantly leveling up. But that's not playing the game. That's cheating the game.
If you're looking for in-game reasons the diamond thing wouldn't work then it's because no "raw materials" for diamonds are available. Why would the mining company not just hire their own mages to triple the worth of their diamonds themselves?
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Crafting rules allow you to craft an item starting from its raw materials.
What are the raw materials for a diamond?
Diamonds. Unless he can craft it starting from carbon atoms of course, in which case I really look forward for an update.
If this is not enough to convince him, this will. Let's consider a diamond necklace whose market value is 3000gp. By crafting rules, he can craft it starting a diamond (plus some inexpensive metals) costing 1/3 of the price, that is 1000gp. But then, according to his reasoning, he can craft the diamond using some alleged raw materials for 1/3 of its price, that is 333gp. But again, why not crafting those raw materials as well, using ever rawer materials costing only 111gp? Keep going on as necessary.
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Treasure rules in Ult Equipment appendix discuss finding uncut gemstones. These have half value and can be improved to full value with a craft check at listed DCs. No time requirement is given however.
Gray Warden, among others, words it well. Crafting is using materials to transform them into something else.
In the current case, crafting a diamond means transforming materials into a diamond. This is done industrially in our world, putting minerals under physical constraints, notably pressure and temperature, to re-organise the lattice at the atomic level.
I do not know how a character in Pathfinder would be able to do so nor would know how to do so. Is stuff made of atoms in Pathfinder? Not a given, far from it.
Eh... enabling the creation of value off gemstones, when the whole system is basically just built off them being fancy pieces of gold, is dangerous territory.
If you have a 1000gp uncut diamond, and then allow them to be crafted into cut diamonds worth 2000gp... then you can turn them into diamond dust worth 2000gp as well? The act of cutting the diamond itself should be generating diamond dust as well...?
I don't know, I don't like it. The rest of the game seems to assume that gemstone value is immutable. Crafting should just be to make stuff with them, using other ingredients as well, without creating a diamond of greater value using nothing but a diamond of lesser value.
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Gray Warden, among others, words it well. Crafting is using materials to transform them into something else.
In the current case, crafting a diamond means transforming materials into a diamond. This is done industrially in our world, putting minerals under physical constraints, notably pressure and temperature, to re-organise the lattice at the atomic level.
I do not know how a character in Pathfinder would be able to do so nor would know how to do so. Is stuff made of atoms in Pathfinder? Not a given, far from it.
Gravity spell + heat spell + protective spells on the building and yourself. The catch is the second part lf your point in that pathfinder charcaters think elements are earth, air, fire, water and possibly aether, metal and wood not the kind of understanding necessary for creating industrial diamonds.
Eh... enabling the creation of value off gemstones, when the whole system is basically just built off them being fancy pieces of gold, is dangerous territory.
If you have a 1000gp uncut diamond, and then allow them to be crafted into cut diamonds worth 2000gp... then you can turn them into diamond dust worth 2000gp as well? The act of cutting the diamond itself should be generating diamond dust as well...?
I don't know, I don't like it. The rest of the game seems to assume that gemstone value is immutable. Crafting should just be to make stuff with them, using other ingredients as well, without creating a diamond of greater value using nothing but a diamond of lesser value.
I do allow it on the first and second cuts where you generate a cut gem plus d6 -1 percent of the finished gem in dust/chips or cut gem -5% original gem value and 1 percent finished gem value in dust/chips assuming you dont fail your craft check which can range up to dc50 depending on the complexity of the cut. Each one after that yields a gem worth +10% less (-15% of original value, -25% of original value, -35% and so on) plus 1% of finished cut value in useable chips. Of course they need to find the gems and after the first cut your actually losing money on the cutting not gaining it.
I guess I'd add that I really don't see any interest in managing the minute details of such mundane activities. That's a lot of dice being rolled for the creation of probably little wealth by presumably a single player.
Sounds to me as fun as playing Train Simulator. Though I guess Train Simulator is pretty popular, so some folks probably would enjoy that?
I mean, maybe if one of the PCs made a huge backstory about cutting gems for some weird reason, and then one of the quests involved getting high quality gems for whatever reason... maybe for such an one-off. But repeatedly? :/
One part of the crib I use when deciding what to do with what a player wants his character to do is whether what the player would do is changing the paradigm of the setting. If creating diamond - or something else - could be done this way, it would already be done by others, N.P.C.s with more knowledge on the matter and access to more resources and it would drastically change the flow of wealth in the setting.
The rules are here as a tool to support the setting, if the rules and the setting in contradiction, the setting prevails, always.
This doesn't mean I oppose innovation from the players, ideas that give them an edge are welcome, encouraged and I'll change the rules to accommodate them if they make sense with the setting.
Getting access to nigh-unlimited wealth isn't an edge, it is a hypercube of astronomical dimensions.
Better than having a friend buying a 10 gp diamond and selling it to you for 25 k.
Your player is not entirely wrong.
Gemcutting is a craft, and a significant part of a stone's value. Raw uncut diamonds aren't as good looking. They're unfulfilled potential.
Not 1/3 of final value, but still. I forgot UE had actual gemcutting rules, but with Java Man pointing them out I'd look at them, if going that route.
Items having an absolute value makes no sense to begin with, and that's fine. It's an abstraction, a sacrifice to playability. Same reason everyone everywhere uses the same currency : ease of use. And those approximations for the sake of ease of use come with bugs that are normally harmless but that one could exploit. And like any bug exploit it's technically possible, but in extremely poor taste
So what is it they want with that diamond ?
- If they're after an infinite money exploit, hard no. Feel free to be annoyed and tell them as much. Maybe lay down some ground rules.
- If it's for a spell, and he'd rather pay with time (and potential complications) rather than gold... Maybe ? 25k means a long time investment short of fabricate - but of course fabricate breaks anything craft related anyway.
Finding a raw uncut stone that precious is not an easy feat, btw. Could also serve as a sidequest.
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Items having an absolute value makes no sense to begin with, and that's fine. It's an abstraction, a sacrifice to playability
Gold has an absolute value, both in PF and in the real world (albeit IRL its value changes over time, but at any given time it is still absolute). In PF, the absolute value of 1 gold piece is...1 gold piece, the absolute value of 1 silver piece is 0.1 gold pieces, that of a platinum piece is 10 gold pieces, and so on: this is how currency works, choose one item as conventional unit of wealth, and calibrate everything else to it.
Similarly, gems are used also as currency. In games where the weight of gold is enforced, gems are the solution to store wealth in a weightless form: according to the rules
The standard coin weighs about a third of an ounce (50 to the pound).
5000gp of gold would weigh 100 pounds, or almost 23kg for us who actually use the International System of Units, while a diamond worth 5kgp is practically weightless and of negligible volume. Diamonds used as material components have the same currency value and function: Raise Dead costs 5kgp to be cast.
The same way you cannot craft currency in the form of gold, silver or platinum, similarly you cannot craft it in the form of gems.
Historically, merchants were known to chip off a bit of gold from the coins, to essentially create wealth out of nothing, as the original coins were then still used at nominal value, despite them not being made of as much gold as they were supposed to contain.
Try telling your GM you want to do that.
I did, in jest. His face was amusing.
I mean, I could actually allow it myself, if one of my players asked. But overall I'd treat it as I would any other business, and as I replied in the regenerating gold monster thread. "Doing it yourself yields very little wealth, so no balance issues ensue. Doing it on a large scale requires a lot of resources and costs, and thus it is easy to balance". Just need to put it up against other means of gaining wealth in downtime. If something requires no capital investment, then his profits should just equate his profession/craft skill check results. Profession(fraudster) or something. If it requires special feat or capital investments, then comparing it to magical item crafting would be appropriate: is this guy making more money with these shenanigans than he would selling potions?
The downtime you grant him and the ways the world interacts with him will determine the usefulness of his activity.
While still being cautious about this whole uncut gem business because I don't like the idea of tinkering with value of spell material components, it just opens pandora's box.