Quintessence: How much is enough?!

[inuyasha]

I just picked up Dreamscarred Press's Ultimate Psionics, quite the amazing book indeed, but I do have one quick question.

When it comes to quintessence (that lovely silvery substance generated by the quintessence power), how much would be needed to cover an object? All we get is a "one ounce dollop" that can cover "an extremely small object", and that in theory if enough were gathered we could cover a living being.

Does anyone know how many one ounce dollops would be needed to cover thinks like humans, gnomes, cows, and even objects bigger than "extremely small", like fancy swords or something?

[Eldaran]

Nobody knows. But when the question came up in a game I assumed "extremely small" meant tiny in terms of D&D sizes. So 4 ounces to cover a small object, 16 to cover a medium, etc. This seems to roughly align with that warning about gathering one pound (16 ounces) which would be needed for a medium object.

[Psyren]

One of the weaknesses of the SRD is that it tends to leave out helpful example text that is present in the source material. XPH pg. 128 expands on the power description to say this:


You can smooth a dollop of quintessence around any extremely small object, such as a key, a ring, a seal, or an insignia.

This puts a single dollop of quintessence's protection at Fine size. To further support this, note also that "Tiny, Diminutive and Fine" are considered "very small sizes" in the PHB (pg. 149.) Therefore, the case for Fine being "extremely small" is strengthened, as "extremely" is superlative to "very."

[Gildedragon]

If 1 dollop covers something fine then 4 vials cover something diminutive
16 cover something tiny
64 something small
256 cover something medium sized
1024 cover a large object
4096 cover something huge
16384 do it for gargantuan
65536 do it for collossal
262144 will cover something twice as big in every direction as a collossal creature
Multiply by four for every doubling in size

This is far fewer than the number of dollops required to FILL a vessel of an equivalent size