
Easl |
PossibleCabbage wrote:I really see no reason you couldn't make the entire boulder out of uraninite/pitchblende.Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element, being 1410 lbs per cubic foot and is naturally volatile creating osmium tetroxide vapor that is extremely toxic.
I intentionally excluded metals and mostly metallic ores, both because vernacularly they are not 'stone' and because isn't there a different kineticist of metal?

Easl |
I think "Salt bomb" would be a fun higher level Water/Metal composite.
My mental image is a rotating shell of water, around a shell of rust rotating the other way, encasing a core of cesium (which is liquid at room temperature and explodes even more violently than sodium when exposed to water.)
Look if you're going to try and create a big boom out of some combinatinon of rare but natural ores and metals, there's only one way to go: U-235. You don't even need a whole 5' cube.

graystone |

graystone wrote:PossibleCabbage wrote:I really see no reason you couldn't make the entire boulder out of uraninite/pitchblende.Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element, being 1410 lbs per cubic foot and is naturally volatile creating osmium tetroxide vapor that is extremely toxic.I intentionally excluded metals and mostly metallic ores, both because vernacularly they are not 'stone' and because isn't there a different kineticist of metal?
As per the United States Geologic Survey:
A rock is an aggregate of one or more minerals, or a body of undifferentiated mineral matter. Common rocks include granite, basalt, limestone, and sandstone.
Ore is a naturally occurring mineral containing a valuable constituent (such as metal) for which it is mined and worked.
A mineral is a naturally occurring inorganic element or compound having an orderly internal structure and characteristic chemical composition, crystal form, and physical properties. Common minerals include quartz, feldspar, mica, amphibole, olivine, and calcite.
This means that metal is a mineral and rocks are made of minerals so... Yeah. To really blow your mind, glacial ice is actually a mono-mineralic rock (a rock made of only one mineral). The mineral ice is the crystalline form of water that forms through the metamorphism of tens of thousands of individual snowflakes into crystals of glacier ice driven by the weight of overlying snow. During metamorphism, hundreds—if not thousands—of individual snowflakes recrystallize into much larger and denser individual ice crystals.
This leaves it to individual DM to draw a line where earth/rock ends and metal begins: they could require pure elements [limestone is 100% CaCO3 and metals can't be most alloys] or can be a mix [and what percentage, meaning rocks can contain meals and alloys can be made].

Easl |
This means that metal is a mineral and rocks are made of minerals so... Yeah.
All of which is fine and real-life easy to understand. In the game world however, where "metal" comes from a different plane of existence than "earth," I wasn't sure where to draw the line. So I was conservative and assumed the metal kineticist would get things like the iron ore meteorite while the earth kineticist would get things like granite.
This leaves it to individual DM to draw a line where earth/rock ends and metal begins: they could require pure elements [limestone is 100% CaCO3 and metals can't be most alloys] or can be a mix [and what percentage, meaning rocks can contain meals and alloys can be made].
Completely agree on it being a GM/table choice.
In fact it probably, largely, doesn't matter, because most GMs aren't going to allow a spell or power effect to do more than what the rules say (or what the GM thinks the power should be able to do) simply because the player pulls out a chemistry text. The cylinder will do what the rules say it can do, regardless of whether the player describes it as 1 gm/cm3 dense, 100 gm/cm3 dense, pyrophoric or radioactive. And if the player complains, they're probably going to get a "Golarion doesn't work that way...and stop trying to powergame." Trying to make a nuke or a phosphorus bomb out of a 'summon some earth' effect is like the 'dominate a Jann' thread. If your goal is to break the game, there are many white room ways to do it. Try it at an actual table, it most likely won't be tolerated.

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I have no idea if this is the case lore wise but I can imagine that the plane of metal is probably an offshoot of the plane of earth after enough heat, movement, and general friction caused the ores within it to "migrate/shift" to one side of it as they were heavier after being refined and eventually just wholesale ejected off the "surface" of it. Similarly, I could see how the borders between the plane of water and earth gave way to plants and wood which eventually grew enough over "time" and caused the boundary between them to "split off" and become a totally separate domain all its own.