Ridgewell's Eternal Spark

[Eldan]

"While fireworks do make nice, pretty lights, they are so fleeting, gone almost before you know it."
-Xenobia

Ridgewell's Eternal Spark is a tiny alchemistic masterpiece, created by modern alchemists from the notes and sketches done by the legendary dwarven alchemist Rothgar Ridgewell. While it is said that in Ridgewell's time, he created huge balls of flaming fire, called Eternal Conflagrations, most of the secrets of their creation has been lost, leaving modern followers of Ridgewellian tradition with only tiny sparks.
Many exotic and volatile ingredients go into an eternal spark, and the process is complicated and dangerous enough that only master alchemists should attempt it. They keep the exact formula well hidden, but it is known that the end product is a mote of elemental fire trapped in an inch-diameter crystal of elemental ice.

Effects: The eternal spark is a tiny sphere of flame about an inch in diameter. It gives of light like a candle, but is much hotter, dealing one point of fire damage per round to any liquid or solid object touching it, though, by a strange fluke of planar atomics, does not heat up surrounding gases. The spark is available in a variety of colours, most commonly red and yellow, but green, blue and purple sparks aren't unheard of.
The spark hovers in mid-air, between two and three feet over any surface it's brought into contact with, bobbing gently up and down. It can be easily moved by being pushed, or by any wind. Light to moderate winds move it at a speed of five feet per round, strong and severe winds at ten feet per round, windstorms or stronger at twenty feet per round.
The spark is, while made from elemental material, not technically magical in nature, and therefore survives dispelling, antimagic fields or similar treatment unharmed, though being brought on any plane where fire-magic is impeded temporarily extinguishes it.

Creation: Creating an eternal spark takes a DC 30 craft: alchemy check and [amount] worth of rare ingredients.





Inspired by the above quote from one of my players. My question to you, fellow homebrewers: how breakable is this? What should it cost?

[Debihuman]

Interesting. I'm not sure why the ice elemental ice wouldn't melt from the spark being inside it or you'd have to define the requirements for creating the globe of elemental ice as the container. However, any container with fire immunity could house the spark. I would think that the spark wouldn't need air to keep burning but you didn't expressly state this.

Rather than just requiring a gold piece amount of rare materials, you could state that it needs an ember from the elemental plane of fire.

Debby

[Eldan]

The ice is mostly a fluff thing, for "freezign the fire in place".

Not requiring air is a good point, I'll write that down.

Now, for the production: requiring the elemental ember works, but I'd say that you would still need a few more ingredients to stabilize it, and after all, you could just buy the ember.

[Debihuman]

Do you keep embers from the Elemental Plane of Fire readily available to your players? If so, than perhaps that is the problem. In my campaign, it would never be available. Sending the PCs on a quest to the Elemental Plane of Fire to retrieve the ember would be a requirement :-)

Debby

[Eldan]

My players usually spend about half of all game time (or more, in my current two campaigns) in Sigil. There's surely an iffrit merchant around somewhere.

[Debihuman]

Good enough. I can imagine it wouldn't come cheap. There's nothing wrong with plane hopping and it sounds like your players are of sufficient level that having an eternal spark might be of limited interest. It can cause things to burn, but once it is out of the orb, the PCs don't really have a way to control it.

Debby

[Eldan]

Actually, my two groups are level 2 and level 6, respectively, not very high level at all.

But this is mostly intended as a fluff item anyway, and most likely, won't show up in any of my games any time soon. Basically just an idea I had and wrote down.

[Cieyrin]

By RAW, it won't even burn paper, since objects take half damage from fire and you round down by default, so half of 1 point of fire damage is 0. It's more of a curiosity or as an alternative to a tindertwig/flint and steel.

Going by what the Planar Handbook says about Pure Elements, which go for 1000 gp a piece, I'd say this should probably go for 250 gp or so, which should cover the cost of the spark and materials to stabilize and maintain the spark.

[Eldan]

Hmm. I didn't consider that.

However, a lit torch also only deals one fire damage, by RAW. Does that mean a torch can't burn paper?

[AyeGill]

i think it says somewhere in the DMG that objects/materials take double damage from appropriate sources. which is why a pickaxe can surpass the hardness of rock.

[Debihuman]

Hmm. I didn't consider that.

However, a lit torch also only deals one fire damage, by RAW. Does that mean a torch can't burn paper?

Here are the rules for catching on fire from the SRD:

Characters at risk of catching fire are allowed a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid this fate. If a character’s clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out. (That is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he’s no longer on fire.)

A character on fire may automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse himself. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like permits the character another save with a +4 bonus.

Those unlucky enough to have their clothes or equipment catch fire must make DC 15 Reflex saves for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character.

If the spark causes 1 point of damage then the PC needs to make a Reflex save (DC 15) to avoid it. So does his his equipment.

Paper has 2 hit points per INCH of thickness. One sheet of paper would burn if it took even a single hit point of fire damage. (See the table on hardness and hit points).

Debby

[Cieyrin]

i think it says somewhere in the DMG that objects/materials take double damage from appropriate sources. which is why a pickaxe can surpass the hardness of rock.

Actually, that's in the PHB as well, under Vulnerability to Certain Attacks, which, if I'd looked down when I looked at the Energy Attacks section, I would have noticed. So yeah, 2x1/2=1 fire damage. Hurray, it can make paper and rope burn!

[Eldan]

As Debihuman said: hardness per inch of thickness. I doubt paper is an inch thick.

[Cieyrin]

As Debihuman said: hardness per inch of thickness. I doubt paper is an inch thick.

Hardness doesn't vary by thickness, HP does.