Making Diamonds

[Akto]

Hellig my Fellow playgrounders

In my current campaign the party is nearing a big city after completing a plot thing that made them discover (among other things) 8 dead bodies, which they decided to cast gentle repose on to preserve and get ressurected at a Temple later. (Among the Bodies are a nobel from the country they are in and a royal from a neighboring country).
The City they are approching have two big temples, but neither have more than 10.000 gold Worth of diamonds. so not enough to get All 8 bodies Up again.

The party is mostly martial focused so not that Much magic is available to Them, but! The city Also have a highly sought after artificer workshop with loads of apprentices, so they might be able to get help here.

So my question is. Is There a RAW legal Way to make Diamonds for this?
They have a Lot of Money atm. So if it costs Them a great amount, so be it :)

[Kelb_Panthera]

Hellig my Fellow playgrounders

In my current canpaign the party is nearing a big city after completing a plot thing taget made them discover (among other things) 8 dead bodies, which they decided to cast gentle ripost om to preserve and her ressurected at a Temple lager. (Among the Bodies are both a nobel from the country they are in and a royal from a neighboring country).
The City they are approching forskellige have two big templets, butikken neither have more than 10.000 gold Worth of diamonds. so not enough to get All 8 Up again.

The party is mostly martial focused so not that Michael magic is available to Them, but! The city Aldo have a highly sought after artificer workshop with loads of apprentices, so they light be' avle to get extra help here.

So ny question is. Is There a RAW legal Wayne to male Diamonds for this?
They have a Lot of Money atm. So if it costs Them a great amount, so be it :)

You wanna turn on/off autocorrect and try that again?

[Akto]

You wanna turn on/off autocorrect and try that again?

Ffs. The "Joy" of not being a native english speaker and writing such a post on a phone :p

Should be better now

[Venger]

Major creation can make diamonds. It doesn't cost anything. You can't use those specific diamonds as material components, so trade them for other diamonds or sell them for money and then buy different diamonds and use those.

[Uncle Pine]

Make the price of diamonds go up until the amount available at the market is priced at 10,000 gp.

[Kelb_Panthera]

There aren't many ways to make diamond beyond wish and maybe true creation (I'd need to check the latter).

Is there any reason you can't just buy them from elsewhere and donate them to the temple? If so, looks like you're in for a minor fetch quest.

[Akto]

There aren't many ways to make diamond beyond wish and maybe true creation (I'd need to check the latter).

Is there any reason you can't just buy them from elsewhere and donate them to the temple? If so, looks like you're in for a minor fetch quest.

Shame... Proberdly just gonna go with "well the artificer often gets Diamonds as payment, so you can just buy it from him", Them.

Was mostly so as the players not just expects a Temple to have the Diamonds ready to ressurect 8 people, but then again, pretty high magic campaign, would just be the sort of thing that they would actually do.

Thanks for the answers :)

[Vertharrad]

Have you considered the option that they will have to very carefully choose the one's to bring back and bury the other's?

[Crake]

If you're using the standard DND supply rules, assuming it's a city with a caster capable of casting raise dead, the minimum size of the town is a large town (+3 community modifier, highest level cleric is 1d6+ community modifier, so 1/6 large towns have a cleric capable of casting raise dead). The GP limit of a large town is 3,000gp. To determine the complete stock of a commodity in a town, you multiply half the GP limit (1,500) by 1/10th of the population, 2,000 at the least, so the minimum supply of diamonds in a town with a cleric capable of casting raise dead is 1,500*200=300,000gp worth of diamonds.

Sure, the church might only have 10,000gp worth of diamonds, but there are pleeennntttyyy more around town that the players can buy and then supply for the churches to use in their casting.

[King of Nowhere]

Major creation can make diamonds. It doesn't cost anything. You can't use those specific diamonds as material components, so trade them for other diamonds or sell them for money and then buy different diamonds and use those.

items created with major creation only last for a limited time, though. and gems last 10 minutes per level. you can try to sell them in that time, but that's a scam big time, and I doubt you will get away with it without consequences.



Was mostly so as the players not just expects a Temple to have the Diamonds ready to ressurect 8 people, but then again, pretty high magic campaign, would just be the sort of thing that they would actually do.




If it's a high magic campaign, then it is likely that the town also has a wizard offering teleport for sale. so the party can just teleport to another major town and buy more diamonds there. In a high magic campaign where resurrection happens regularly, diamonds are stockpiled.

[Uncle Pine]

I had forgotten to check the price of the material component for Resurrection, so my previous statement should read "Make the price of diamonds go up until the amount available at the church is priced at 80,000 gp."

[hamishspence]

To determine the complete stock of a commodity in a town, you multiply half the GP limit (1,500) by 1/10th of the population, 2,000 at the least, so the minimum supply of diamonds in a town with a cleric capable of casting raise dead is 1,500*200=300,000gp worth of diamonds.

That's a 3.0-ism (page 137, 3.0 DMG) - it's not in the 3.5 DMG as far as I am aware. It doesn't so much cover the amount of an item, as the amount of item that can be manufactured before exhausting the community's resources.

The example given in the DMG was longswords. In a community of 300, you can have manufactured 100 longswords - but that doesn't mean that there will actually be 100 longswords lying around there - some will have to be made from the community's iron reserves.

[Falontani]

From pathfinder we find a spell that could be a custom spell one of the artificers have researched: Blood Component. You take 1d6 points of damage to cast the spell which produces the spell component that you'd like as long as it has no price. Then you may pay 1 str damage for up to 500 gp per str damage you voluntarily take. So 10k/500=20 str damage. The components created in this way last 1 round, or until a spell that has begun to be cast within 1 round has finished being cast. In pathfinder is a level 2 spell. So theoretically 8 of these scrolls, 160 str (may need some restorations, and maybe a STR buff) and 8 casts should be good. Each scroll should cost 300 gp, and if no one has umd someone insane enough and strong enough to cast it

[zlefin]

Why is the party in such a rush to get them resurrected? it's not like it's missing party members or anything.
They could just inform the noble's family and the neighboring royal's family that the bodies were found; hand them over to the temple (who surely has enough casters to keep them under gentle repose indefinitely), and note that they have plenty of funds to cover the cost of the diamonds. Aristocrats always have merchant connections, so it's just a matter of waiting awhile until the diamonds can be purchased from somewhere, and due to gentle repose waiting awhile shoudln't be a problem.

also, several planar spells should be able to get access, directly or indirectly, to one of the bazaar cities of the outer planes/elsewhere, which will easily have the amount of diamonds required. and unless it's e6 or somesuch a royal family should at least know someone who can use such a spell.

[Jack_Simth]

also, several planar spells should be able to get access, directly or indirectly, to one of the bazaar cities of the outer planes/elsewhere, which will easily have the amount of diamonds required. and unless it's e6 or somesuch a royal family should at least know someone who can use such a spell.
For a Cleric, such as they're going to be buying the Raise Dead or Resurrection spells from, Raise Dead and Plane Shift are the same level. If you can hire the one, you can hire the other.

[Darrin]

Chaos Flask (100 GP, Planar Handbook) can make diamonds or diamond dust, but you run into casting time issues with ressurection.

[Crake]

That's a 3.0-ism (page 137, 3.0 DMG) - it's not in the 3.5 DMG as far as I am aware. It doesn't so much cover the amount of an item, as the amount of item that can be manufactured before exhausting the community's resources.

The example given in the DMG was longswords. In a community of 300, you can have manufactured 100 longswords - but that doesn't mean that there will actually be 100 longswords lying around there - some will have to be made from the community's iron reserves.

The example for for mine is in a community of 90, you can have 30 longswords. It also doesn't say that you can have them manufactured, it says that's how many are available for sale at any given point:


To determine the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any given time, multiply half the gp limit by 1/10 of the community’s population.

[hamishspence]

I missed it in the 3.5 DMG. Now that I've rechecked the 3.5 DMG, I've found, it, with your phrasing.

The 3.0 DMG said:


If those same adventurers hope to equip their one hundred newly recruited followers with new longswords (price 15 gp each) they can find a longsword in even the smallest community, but a community of at least 300 people is necessary in order to have the resources to construct that many weapons.
So - the implication is, even if you can have them, you can't necessarily have them all at once - you may need to wait a bit to have them made.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, diamonds are made from pure carbon, so you could try burninating some plant matter into coal, then using fabricate to turn it into diamond.

Or you could make it from peanut butter.


https://youtu.be/pC3Sx_YADuQ

[Deophaun]

Why are you limited to what the temple happens to have on hand and not a jeweler? Have you seen the quantity of gems that jewelers traffic in?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Buy some rough diamonds for 3,333.34 gp, then use fabricate to craft them into 10,000 gp in diamonds? Save 66%, today only!

[Crake]

Little known fun fact while the topic of 3.0 is around: Resurrection in 3.0 was actually significantly cheaper, raise dead and resurrection were only 500gp, and true resurrection was 5,000gp, however the materials had to be a single diamond of at least that value.

[Deophaun]

As a thought, this would make a pretty good hook for a Steal the Crown Jewels heist.

[Bohandas]

I don't think there's an official method, but you might be able do do something with coal and the implosion spell

[MaxiDuRaritry]

An egoist psion of the proper level with psionic revivify and the Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) feat can bring them back for a very nominal fee. Or a dweomerkeeper with access to resurrection magics.

[Yogibear41]

Planar ally or binding the angel that can cast raise dead and skip the diamonds, just have them pay it gold instead.

[King of Nowhere]

re: the amount oof resources that is found in a community: those are guidelines, and they do not take into account that a high magic economy may work differently, or just be richer. never take those numbers as hard limits


From pathfinder we find a spell that could be a custom spell one of the artificers have researched: Blood Component. You take 1d6 points of damage to cast the spell which produces the spell component that you'd like as long as it has no price. Then you may pay 1 str damage for up to 500 gp per str damage you voluntarily take. So 10k/500=20 str damage. The components created in this way last 1 round, or until a spell that has begun to be cast within 1 round has finished being cast. In pathfinder is a level 2 spell. So theoretically 8 of these scrolls, 160 str (may need some restorations, and maybe a STR buff) and 8 casts should be good. Each scroll should cost 300 gp, and if no one has umd someone insane enough and strong enough to cast it

Damage you can heal with a simple restoration. I don't like that, it's basically cheese letting you avoid a fixed cost that you would have otherwise.

[InvisibleBison]

Damage you can heal with a simple restoration. I don't like that, it's basically cheese letting you avoid a fixed cost that you would have otherwise.

It's not avoiding a cost, it's replacing one cost with another cost. I don't see how this qualifies as cheese. I mean, by this logic cure light wounds is cheese, because it lets you avoid having to wait for your injuries to heal naturally.

[hamishspence]

re: the amount oof resources that is found in a community: those are guidelines, and they do not take into account that a high magic economy may work differently, or just be richer. never take those numbers as hard limits

And conversely, some items might be much harder to find than the guidelines suggest, if they're region-limited.

You would not expect to find much cold-weather gear in a desert city, for example. Or vice versa.

[Bronk]

...8 dead bodies, which they decided to cast gentle repose on to preserve and get ressurected at a Temple later. (Among the Bodies are a nobel from the country they are in and a royal from a neighboring country).

If you bothered to cast 'gentle repose', I'd guess the bodies were fairly fresh. Have you considered getting them reincarnated instead of raised? It would be a lot cheaper, and then the nobles, who are presumably fairly rich in their home country, could figure out if they wanted to get back to their original bodies if they got a bad roll.

Otherwise, if you're having trouble getting your diamonds, you could get some diplomatic action going and send the bodies back to their homelands.

Or, you could ask your DM to go on a quest to find diamonds.

[Venger]

items created with major creation only last for a limited time, though. and gems last 10 minutes per level. you can try to sell them in that time, but that's a scam big time, and I doubt you will get away with it without consequences.

Yes, thank you, I know how the spell works.

Of course it's a scam. Consequences are adventures. If you're not supposed to use the gems for this, then why can the spell even make gems?

[King of Nowhere]

It's not avoiding a cost, it's replacing one cost with another cost. I don't see how this qualifies as cheese. I mean, by this logic cure light wounds is cheese, because it lets you avoid having to wait for your injuries to heal naturally.

it replaces a monetary cost with a spell slot. more generally, it replace an expenditure of a resource you get in finite amount and have to sweat to gain, with a resource you can get by sleeping. you can't say the two are identical.


Yes, thank you, I know how the spell works.

Of course it's a scam. Consequences are adventures. If you're not supposed to use the gems for this, then why can the spell even make gems?

You know how the spell works, I know how the spell works, but maybe the OP didn't? I think it was worth specifying.

[CrazyNoob]

... Maybe..

Revenance (pg 175 SC): Target is brought back to life as raise dead for a short time with half hit points. “She is alive (not undead) for the duration of the spell and can be healed normally, but dies as soon as the spell ends.”

Revivify (pg 176 SC): Target is brought back to life as raise dead but does not loose any exp, but must be cast within one round of the targets death. MC 1,000gp.

[Uncle Pine]

... Maybe..

Revenance (pg 175 SC): Target is brought back to life as raise dead for a short time with half hit points. “She is alive (not undead) for the duration of the spell and can be healed normally, but dies as soon as the spell ends.”

Revivify (pg 176 SC): Target is brought back to life as raise dead but does not loose any exp, but must be cast within one round of the targets death. MC 1,000gp.
I like how these two spells are printed side by side in the same book yet combining them never occurred to me.

[Menzath]

We'll if you are still hitting issues, it's in the same vein as peanut butter=diamonds.

Buy lots of coal(as many tons as possible), buy a scroll of polymoph any object.

Profit(until dispelled).

[Telonius]

This site (https://www.livescience.com/32266-how-are-diamonds-made.html) lists the "natural recipe" for diamonds as:


1. Bury carbon dioxide 100 miles into Earth.

2. Heat to about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

3. Squeeze under pressure of 725,000 pounds per square inch.

4. Quickly rush towards Earth’s surface to cool.


If we really wanted to massacre some catgirls, I think we could achieve that through magic.

[flappeercraft]

Time for some RAW and to get as much resurrections as you can out of this.

1. Chip out 8 tiny fragments of the diamonds you have
2. Give them to one of your party members
3. Have that party member sell it to you for 10,000 each fragment
4. Have your party member give you back the 80,000 gp
4. Now you have 80,000 gp worth of diamonds for free
5. Resurrect whoever you want with it
6. ???
7. Profit

In all seriousness, why not use Raise dead? It's half the price.

[Vertharrad]

The bodies might be more than 9 days old by the time they get there? Raise Dead can work on those that have not been dead more than 1 day per caster level(5th level spell means at least 9th lvl caster). Resurrection on the other hand has having been dead no longer than 10 years per caster level(7th level spell means at least 13th lvl caster)...

So you see the price isn't the only consideration. Another consideration I'm not sure has been weighed is whether or not they died by death effects. If they are unable to get the diamonds they may have to prioritize who to bring back from the land of the dead and who gets handed over to surviving family or loved ones.

Revenance and/or Revivify might be enticing options.

[Venger]

Time for some RAW and to get as much resurrections as you can out of this.

1. Chip out 8 tiny fragments of the diamonds you have
2. Give them to one of your party members
3. Have that party member sell it to you for 10,000 each fragment
4. Have your party member give you back the 80,000 gp
4. Now you have 80,000 gp worth of diamonds for free
5. Resurrect whoever you want with it
6. ???
7. Profit

In all seriousness, why not use Raise dead? It's half the price.

probably because they don't want to lose a level. it doesn't sound like anyone got turned into an undead.

[Jack_Simth]

Hellig my Fellow playgrounders

In my current campaign the party is nearing a big city after completing a plot thing that made them discover (among other things) 8 dead bodies, which they decided to cast gentle repose on to preserve and get ressurected at a Temple later. (Among the Bodies are a nobel from the country they are in and a royal from a neighboring country).
The City they are approching have two big temples, but neither have more than 10.000 gold Worth of diamonds. so not enough to get All 8 bodies Up again.

The party is mostly martial focused so not that Much magic is available to Them, but! The city Also have a highly sought after artificer workshop with loads of apprentices, so they might be able to get help here.

So my question is. Is There a RAW legal Way to make Diamonds for this?
They have a Lot of Money atm. So if it costs Them a great amount, so be it :)

Scrolls of True Creation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/spells/trueCreation.htm).
Planar Binding something that can cast Wish as a spell-like ability (which can create mundane goods).

[Telonius]

Hmmm ... is it possible to Gate in, or otherwise attract, a Diamond Golem (under Gemstone Golems, Monsters of Faerun)? If you kill it, it leaves a diamond worth exactly 10,000gp.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Cast wall of salt, since salt can be used, ounce-for-ounce, as silver. It's a trade good, so it can be spent just like silver, and costs exactly the same. Purchase a scroll of plane shift, either to a static time plane (where you can store the bodies) or to a planar metropolis (such as Sigil, or the City of Brass) that you can spend the rest of the absurd amount of money you've got on some diamonds.

[flappeercraft]

probably because they don't want to lose a level. it doesn't sound like anyone got turned into an undead.

Resurrection still makes you lose a level. You're thinking of True Resurrection.

[Segev]

A wish can generate up to 25,000 gp worth of diamond (at the cost of 5,000 XP).