Uses for Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments

[Atypical_Necro]

Hello, all! I've been a member for a while, but life interrupted for a very long time and as such this is my first post. Woo!

Anyway, I figured I'd solicit some ideas from the wily members of this forum. Here's the deal:

At the moment I'm playing a CG aasimar crusader of Tymora who also happens to love painting. With the rewards we earned a while ago I went to the store and purchased an intriguing item for a skilled artist/adventurer: Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments.

I've already used them in several ways, but I was wondering if you could help me compile a list of all the useful things I can paint with this item. So far I've:
-painted a big crack on a door to weaken it and, with the aid of the half-orc barbarian and the dwarven scout, smashed open said door (that the DM didn't expect us to even try to go through, heh).
-painted a lead box designed to conceal a campaign-important magical stone from detect spells (before sending it off into the woods with the druid and conjurer, who summoned an earth elemental in a random place and sent it straight down into the earth).
-I constantly use them to replenish my tanglefoot bags and thunderstones.
-painted a plaque/key to exactly fit a relief/lock in a stone wall.
-painted rust on any metal hinges I needed to disable.

This character enjoys using mundane or magical items in ways that may not be entirely obvious or intended (he keeps a pouch of powdered cinnamon his belt for blinding enemies, revealing invisibles, flavoring all of his food, etc.) so nothing is really too off the wall in this respect. :smallbiggrin:

I look forward to reading your suggestions.

[Zeb]

Well most of my mileage has come from less than savory characters...

Paint the skeleton/bodies so no more trying to rob exotic graveyards for your necro.

Poison, contraband or something too big to smuggle by the town guards, just paint one once you are inside.

Food/drink including exotic or otherwise unobtainable fair; snow-cones in the desert.

You can use them to bypass any kind of physical encounter/obstacle as long as you have time, paint handholds, bridge, ladder, raft, smokescreen, passport/forged documents.

Cheap/exotic alchemical items: eggshell grenades daylight pellet, etc.

Also paint the battlefield to better your chances, add streams, springs rough terrain, marble fields, lava flows, trip trenches, ice sheets.

The right/mw tools for whatever job needs doing, or just some shape sand which continues the make whatever you want abuse.

[Downzorz]

Go look at some Escher.

[unseenmage]

Am I reading those right? Are the Pigments actually infinite use???

If so wow. Awesomest magic item ever. For me anyway. If not how does it work? Is one pot of paint completely used up by painting any single thing no matter the size or gp worth? Or do you subtract the volume of what you've painted from that potential 1,000 cu. ft. object listed?

You could use it to paint doses of Quintessence as it's as magical as any Special Weapon/Armor material.

Speaking of Materials, you could paint special materials. Thinuan Steel, Aurorum, Living Metal, and Livewood all come to mind. Paint weapons made of these materials for Fine creatures and later add the Sizing weapon enhancement.

Paint the unanimated bodies for your Effigies and Golems.

Paint buckets of Con poison balanced over doors. Old school prank and Con damage all in one.

What's the gp cost to subtract material with the Pigments? Pit Traps have gp costs listed. Windows are in the Stronghold Builder's Guide.
But what about chasms, cracks in doors, bottomless pits the equivalent of Chasms from the Underdark book?
At the very least the Pigments replace the Passwall spell some.

Take Leadership and paint a road to that out-of-the-way dungeon to allow for easier looting and assault.
Bonus: Now there's no mystery as to which way the party struck out on their dangerous adventure.

Admitted a lot of these ideas are a no-go if the Paint isn't limitless.

[Segev]

They're not limitless. It can cover up to 100 square feet per pot, and the price listed is per pot. So yes, you do need to keep track of the area of surface you "use up" from its potential 100 square feet. The two ways to read the 3rd dimension limitation are either that it's a flat 10 foot limitation, or that the third dimension can be no longer than the shortest of the 2 dimensions depicted. It never explicitly says. (1000 cubic feet depicted over 100 square feet is achieved by painting a 10x10 2D image and assuming another 10 feet of depth "in" or "out" of the canvas. Change the dimensions of the two depicted, and you wind up with a smaller "shortest dimension," and 10 feet in would still get you 1000 cubic feet, while "shortest dimension" would get you less.)


Though, if it's a flat 10 feet, your best bet is to depict your objects along the smallest 2D cross-section possible. So a sword while looking down it from the hilt rather than from the side.

[unseenmage]

They're not limitless. It can cover up to 100 square feet per pot, and the price listed is per pot. So yes, you do need to keep track of the area of surface you "use up" from its potential 100 square feet. The two ways to read the 3rd dimension limitation are either that it's a flat 10 foot limitation, or that the third dimension can be no longer than the shortest of the 2 dimensions depicted. It never explicitly says. (1000 cubic feet depicted over 100 square feet is achieved by painting a 10x10 2D image and assuming another 10 feet of depth "in" or "out" of the canvas. Change the dimensions of the two depicted, and you wind up with a smaller "shortest dimension," and 10 feet in would still get you 1000 cubic feet, while "shortest dimension" would get you less.)


Though, if it's a flat 10 feet, your best bet is to depict your objects along the smallest 2D cross-section possible. So a sword while looking down it from the hilt rather than from the side.

So, assuming the worst, that that 3rd dimension counts against the total, how many items of the various sizes can be made with one dose of Pigments? I ask because the math, it is not my strongest skill. That and I might be using these, heavily, for an upcoming game.

[Segev]

The easiest way to calculate it will be on a use-by-use basis. Keep track of how many square feet of pigment you've used. You determine this on a per-object basis by calculating its longest and second-longest dimensions and assuming you use a rectangle of pigment of a number of square feet equal to the multiple thereof.

So a 3 ft. sword with a half-foot-wide crossguard (and a depth along the third dimension of something like 2-3 inches) would need to be painted with the length and the crossguard facing the observer, and would take 3x0.5=1.5 square feet of pigment. (Technically less, since this generous crossguard is actually one of the most wasteful uses of the second dimension possible and far less than that 1.5 square feet of canvas would be actually covered by pigment. But that's the easiest way. A generous DM might allow you to get away with figuring out the median width in any particular dimension, so the sword's crossguard wouldn't count, and you'd just use its 4-inch wide blade for a 3x0.33333=1 square foot use of pigment.)

Really, just draw the dimensions of a 2D box to fit your object in, and use that unless you have a lot of empty space in said box. In which case, draw a smaller box that has the empty space left out and assume "negligible" is used on the bits that "poke out." Get the DM's approval for the design and calculate based on the agreed-upon "box."

[unseenmage]

The easiest way to calculate it will be on a use-by-use basis. Keep track of how many square feet of pigment you've used. You determine this on a per-object basis by calculating its longest and second-longest dimensions and assuming you use a rectangle of pigment of a number of square feet equal to the multiple thereof.

So a 3 ft. sword with a half-foot-wide crossguard (and a depth along the third dimension of something like 2-3 inches) would need to be painted with the length and the crossguard facing the observer, and would take 3x0.5=1.5 square feet of pigment. (Technically less, since this generous crossguard is actually one of the most wasteful uses of the second dimension possible and far less than that 1.5 square feet of canvas would be actually covered by pigment. But that's the easiest way. A generous DM might allow you to get away with figuring out the median width in any particular dimension, so the sword's crossguard wouldn't count, and you'd just use its 4-inch wide blade for a 3x0.33333=1 square foot use of pigment.)

Really, just draw the dimensions of a 2D box to fit your object in, and use that unless you have a lot of empty space in said box. In which case, draw a smaller box that has the empty space left out and assume "negligible" is used on the bits that "poke out." Get the DM's approval for the design and calculate based on the agreed-upon "box."

I suspect that by RAW using creature/object size categories might be the only way to go. Anything else would be subject to interpretation.

Besides that, the standardization would help keep my games from bogging down into me asking somebody else to do the math all the time.

[Qwertystop]

I suspect that by RAW using creature/object size categories might be the only way to go. Anything else would be subject to interpretation.

Besides that, the standardization would help keep my games from bogging down into me asking somebody else to do the math all the time.

Size categories aren't in square feet, though.

[unseenmage]

Size categories aren't in square feet, though.

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Table_of_Creature_Size_and_Scale

Yes they are. A creature is assumed to occupy a space as tall as it is wide.

[Qwertystop]

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Table_of_Creature_Size_and_Scale

Yes they are. A creature is assumed to occupy a space as tall as it is wide.

"Height" there is a very variable thing - there's a wide range that gets wider the bigger things are. Space occupied for combat purposes is the space required to move freely and fight - a person takes nothing like a 5-foot cube for purposes of actual size.

For example, would you honestly say a greatsword takes a 5-foot-square canvas to paint? It's a Medium object, after all.

[unseenmage]

"Height" there is a very variable thing - there's a wide range that gets wider the bigger things are. Space occupied for combat purposes is the space required to move freely and fight - a person takes nothing like a 5-foot cube for purposes of actual size.

For example, would you honestly say a greatsword takes a 5-foot-square canvas to paint? It's a Medium object, after all.

Actually yeah. When you're painting something into context anyway.

And remember RAW precedent is often silly, but we're also talking about creating with magic paint so there's already some admitted silly involved.

When dealing in volumes of items aren't the size categories how we determine what fits in a Handy Haversack or Portable Hole as well?

Edit: from the Q&A thread:


1000 cubic feet is a cube 10' on a size, which roughly corresponds to size Large (a Large gelatinous cube has exactly those dimensions). Each size category corresponds to a factor of 2 in linear dimension, so if the objects can be stacked three-dimensionally, this would correspond to 8 Medium objects, or 64 Small ones, etc.

[Qwertystop]

Actually yeah. When you're painting something into context anyway.

And remember RAW precedent is often silly, but we're also talking about creating with magic paint so there's already some admitted silly involved.

When dealing in volumes of items aren't the size categories how we determine what fits in a Handy Haversack or Portable Hole as well?

Which bit is the "actually yeah" about? The sword? So a greatsword is 5*5?

And you determine it by thinking "how big is this?" Sizes are not subjective things. If it's a thing with no real-world equivalent, figure it out, but many things are explicitly given measurements.

[Segev]

For creatures, it's not a bad kludge. For objects, many of them have specified sizes, if they're mechanically useful.

[unseenmage]

Which bit is the "actually yeah" about? The sword? So a greatsword is 5*5?

And you determine it by thinking "how big is this?" Sizes are not subjective things. If it's a thing with no real-world equivalent, figure it out, but many things are explicitly given measurements.

Yes, painting a greatsword into context could include painting details into the scenery to reinforce it's reality. Just like in actual painting. The sword's shadow, weight, displacement. All of these could be taken into consideration and would amount to the sword's painting having more volume than just the sword itself.

As to your second point, in that case text trumps table and the printed values would have to be calculated by necessity.

I was just hoping to use the size categories as a workaround to actually looking up or knowing the dimensions for every little thing. Especially as, for my purpose, the Pigments would just be used to printing press the same alchemical items over and over.

[Mystral]

-painted a big crack on a door to weaken it and, with the aid of the half-orc barbarian and the dwarven scout, smashed open said door (that the DM didn't expect us to even try to go through, heh).
-painted a lead box designed to conceal a campaign-important magical stone from detect spells (before sending it off into the woods with the druid and conjurer, who summoned an earth elemental in a random place and sent it straight down into the earth).
-I constantly use them to replenish my tanglefoot bags and thunderstones.
-painted a plaque/key to exactly fit a relief/lock in a stone wall.
-painted rust on any metal hinges I needed to disable.

While I think that this wondrous item is very cool and have liked to use it myself, I think that some of your uses are against the rules. I don't think you can change the properties of items with the pigments, like painting cracks on something to weaken it. As far as I read the item description, you can only create from scratch.

[unseenmage]

They're not limitless. It can cover up to 100 square feet per pot, and the price listed is per pot.

So how much would a limitless Pigments cost? Nolzur's Bottomless Pigments such as it were.

[Darrin]

So how much would a limitless Pigments cost? Nolzur's Bottomless Pigments such as it were.

There was something in Dragon Magazine #359 that continuously drips out Nolzur's Pigments... Nolzur's Orb I think? This link (http://www.realmshelps.net/magic/items/wondrousitems.shtml) might have something on it.

[unseenmage]

There was something in Dragon Magazine #359 that continuously drips out Nolzur's Pigments... Nolzur's Orb I think? This link (http://www.realmshelps.net/magic/items/wondrousitems.shtml) might have something on it.

Nolzur's Orb. Page 74 of ragon 359.
1x day makes a Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments or can use the dripped pigments to +10 Disguise for 30 mins (or until paint gets wet), or Prismatic Spray range 60'.

Nice find. Thanks for pointing it out. My high level Artificer is definitely getting one. :smallbiggrin:

[Chronos]

Thinking up uses in advance for Nolzur's Pigments kind of misses the point: If you can think of something to make in advance, you can just buy that thing, for a lot cheaper than the cost of the pigments needed to paint it. The whole point of them is when you suddenly realize that you didn't think of something in advance, and need it right now, before you have a chance to go back to town.

[unseenmage]

Thinking up uses in advance for Nolzur's Pigments kind of misses the point: If you can think of something to make in advance, you can just buy that thing, for a lot cheaper than the cost of the pigments needed to paint it. The whole point of them is when you suddenly realize that you didn't think of something in advance, and need it right now, before you have a chance to go back to town.

Except in the case of Alchemical items. Or ammo. Or mechanical traps. All of which I could see a party running out of while out and about and finding a need for on the spot.

[nickia]

While I think that this wondrous item is very cool and have liked to use it myself, I think that some of your uses are against the rules. I don't think you can change the properties of items with the pigments, like painting cracks on something to weaken it. As far as I read the item description, you can only create from scratch.

Actually, I think everything he's said is perfectly in line with the rules. In the text of the pigments it specifically says that paint a peephole for spying, a crack in a door for battering, lava as an obstacle, or alchemical items.

[ericgrau]

One time we blasted open a tunnel on the Plane of Earth to a pile of treasure... which we discovered belonged to a good aligned and epicly powerful being who could travel through solid rock effortlessly. We left a note of apology. Then I unrolled a sheet of canvas onto the tunnel entrance and painted in the missing rock. We never did meet the being.

I've used it for food too... and preserved the leftovers with my Unguent of Timelessness :smallbiggrin:. I've made disposable tents and other camping gear too whenever we needed to camp and nobody brought gear.

I had a thousand other problem solving magic items too. I was quite the elfy elf. But I like the pigments the best.


Actually, I think everything he's said is perfectly in line with the rules. In the text of the pigments it specifically says that paint a peephole for spying, a crack in a door for battering, lava as an obstacle, or alchemical items.

And there's an online article that gives examples involving the painting of doors, holes and windows. This is what we get for relying too much on the SRD. We miss out on the non-SRD examples. These pigments are like super-prestidigitation available cheaply to everyone caster and non-caster alike. That's why they're my favorite.

[Segev]

The Robe of Useful Items contains doors and windows which I'm fairly sure are intended to be inserted into solid walls, as well. Though I could be wrong, there; they might be nearly useless.

[Vizzerdrix]

Those damn paints have two uses. Starting an argument on forums, and making DMs quit playing D&D all together.

[Segev]

That's oddly vitriolic. Why?