Very much what it says on the tin.
Recently, in a campaign I am running, the party came across the wondrous item of Marvelous Pigments. I read over what it can do and they started going wild with it. They ended up trying to make canisters full of alchemist fire, oil and bone burn as well as alchemical balloons to basically carpet bomb a town square occupied by an undeath cult.
It was very wild to say the least.
In short, I was wondering how other people have ruled how this item works in regard to the likes of, say, drawing an object that contains another object like liquid. Would the liquid also take up the cubic footage of emulsion they have to work with? Do they have to draw the liquid separately? All that stuff.
These pigments enable their possessor to create actual, permanent objects simply by depicting their form in two dimensions. The pigments are applied by a stick tipped with bristles, hair, or fur. The emulsion flows from the application to form the desired object as the artist concentrates on the image. One pot of marvelous pigments is sufficient to create a 1,000-cubic-foot object by depicting it two-dimensionally over a 100-square-foot surface.Only normal, inanimate objects can be created. Creatures can’t be created. The pigments must be applied to a surface. It takes 10 minutes and a DC 15 Craft (painting) check to depict an object with the pigments. Marvelous pigments cannot create magic items. Objects of value depicted by the pigments—precious metals, gems, jewelry, ivory, and so on—appear to be valuable but are really made of tin, lead, glass, brass, bone, and other such inexpensive materials. The user can create normal weapons, armor, and any other mundane item (including foodstuffs) whose value does not exceed 2,000 gp. The effect is instantaneous.
I personally would not qualify alchemist fire or bone burn (both alchemical weapons) as normal mundane items. But that is going to vary from GM to GM.
For me, though they are not strictly magical items in the pathfinder universe, they are bordering on a very high level of chemical knowledge (it not outright impossible) in the real world.
|
The user can create normal weapons, armor, and any other mundane item (including foodstuffs) whose value does not exceed 2,000 gp. The effect is instantaneous.
As I read it, normal weapons, armor, and any other mundane item. mean that you can't make masterwork weapons, armor, or the equivalent of masterwork mundane items, i.e. alchemical items with a DC of 20+, mechanical traps with a crafting DC of 20+, and so on. That would exclude most alchemical items. YMMV.
The other limit is that only 2.000 gp of mundane items can be produced. That would be a lot of alchemical items, but not enough for a hot air balloon.
While the rules don't allow it, your players' idea was fun, so probably I would have accepted it.
For me, though they are not strictly magical items in the pathfinder universe, they are bordering on a very high level of chemical knowledge (it not outright impossible) in the real world.But the Star Trek 24th century food-replicator technology effect is just fine?
Well the item needs to do *something* right? The real question is what are the limits? Which as noted is going to be very GM and possibly even campaign specific.
Food replicator of a bowl of gruel? No problem. Replicate a nuclear reactor that a dimension hopping wizard saw in his travels (ignoring for the moment that would exceed the cost value anyway)? Nope. At least when I'm GM.
Back in Star Trek, why do they even have shipyards? Seems like they should just have giant replicators floating in space that can create completed functioning starships out of their energy-to-matter technology. Also no welding, no seams, no bolts/rivets to hold things together. No structural flaws except at the limits of design.
|
|
/Rant on RAW brought to by UAW (United Alchemy Workers)
I fully agree with the rant. The DCs aren't well thought out.
The Pigments have always been a difficult item. They have been inspired by Wile E. Coyote cartoons, I think. If I recall correctly, in older editions they could open a tunnel by painting it.
That said, the painter making better than average items (i.e. masterwork or high DC items) with a relatively easy (DC 15) craft (painting) check seems counterintuitive.
What differentiates between a normal and a masterwork sword when it is a picture? Between colored water and antitoxin?
As a minimum, I would require a Craft (painting) check on par with the DC of making the item with the appropriate skill.
As Diego Rossi points out Marvelous Pigments have a maximum value limit that prevents this from being abused too much. If the players had purchased the items and carried them with them, would you be looking for ways to deny this?
The prerequisite for making the item is major creation, but that does not mean the item shares the limitation of the spell. Considering the duration of the items created with the Marvelous Pigments is instantaneous it is obvious the item works differently. Also, there is nothing in the description of Major creation that would prevent you from creating alchemical items, other than needing to make an appropriate craft alchemy check.
Using oil instead of alchemical fire might allow more bombs, but oil will probably not do as much damage as it does take time to ignite and will tend to spread out and might be absorbed by the ground leading to less damage. Even if you mix in some alchemical fire to ignite the oil it will still not be as effective as just alchemical fire.
Blood burn is basically enhanced acid. Mixing it in with the fire damage does not necessarily mean it will do the full damage. The fire is likely to corrupt or alter whatever is causing the extra damage to undead.
Alchemical Balloons cost 10 GP and can carry 20 pounds maximum. That means you need 1 balloon per 20 flasks. So, you could have about 9 balloons carrying 20 flasks of alchemical fire each. This seems like a lot but keep in mind that a lot of it is going to be wasted on empty hexes.
The players still need to figure out a way to maneuver the balloons and cause them to drop the alchemical fire on the targets.
|
|
It does mean I'll be painting some spellbooks with spells my PCs want to learn. Best of luck.
That is an interesting idea.
Next on these screens: "Do you need information? Paint your newspaper."
What is the value of the secrets of your enemy? They have no RAW price, so it is 0. You paint "The Rag. The gossip newspaper that gives you the whole truth." and voilà, you have the information you want.
A bit more costly than a Commune but way more efficient.
;-)
Checking back in on this to see replies and whatnot to gauge on how best to go forward with this item my party has, and boy howdy did I not expect all of these!
Thank you for all the responses, and I am still thinking of how to go about this since I am not trying to explicitly follow RAW strictly. I want it to be useful for creative ideas but also decently challenging to make use of for those ideas. Needing more than just a craft paint check might be good, making an associated knowledge or craft check to see if they can accurately know how to draw it is one thing I think might be good. But what about the conundrum of drawing an object meant to have liquid in it?
Is it fair to say the container and the liquid are two separate objects? I'm mostly trying to envision how the magic of the item can decipher if, say, a barrel of water contains the water they want it to have and vice versa.
That kind of stuff.
|
It's magic, so it just works somehow: If you paint a barrel full of mead, you'll get a barrel full of mead. The key here is to not overthink it too much.
That being said, a spell book or a document listing your foe's secrets shouldn't be options...
Generally speaking, Marvelous Pigments are 2,000g worth of mundane gear that you could otherwise purchase normally, so it's only a 'good' item if you can't just purchase items normally (e.g., you are in the wilderness or the middle of a dungeon) and you're willing to essentially pay double the normal price in advance (it is a 4,000g item). If a bunch of alchemical items were actually effective against the party's foes, it's probably a low-level party and the 2,000g resale value of an unused set of pigments would have been enough for a +1 Weapon enchant or two +1 Armor enchants.
|
Just on the Alchemy/Chemistry divide I find myself thinking about the books dealing with Gribbleflotz in the 1632 series. He's an alchemist and it is very much chemistry with him showing how gold is crated by Charlatans and determining the reason modern chemists failed to duplicate some effects is they weren't following the instructions. They read "Mix stone X in solution" and mixed stone X in the solution only for it to fail. He pointed out the X is specific to a region and used that stone rather than the one from elsewhere to succeed then realized it was the contaminants there which caused the specific effect.
Point is all his alchemy was very much chemistry and that's how I see alchemy in this game. To craft alchemic items you need equipment but not the "Brew potion" feat or similar. So to me alchemy is chemistry using items available in the natural world even if that particular one is only possible in Golarion e.g. fire beetle flame sacks or firestone but its only natural chemsitry. On the other hand magical items require magic (feats) to make e.g. brew potion, craft wondrous item.