Quintessence - What is it good for?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Quintessence! - huh- yeah-
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh

Quintessence! – huh – yeah-
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again y’all

Quintessence! – huh – good God
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me…

Apologies to Edwin Starr

 

[Thanee]

What about using it as a psionics dampener? If you're going up against an illithid, create satchels of the stuff with a tanglefoot bag attached to the outside. Toss it and SPLAT, it's glued to the mind flayer and hampering their psionics.

Well, the effect is rather minor... almost ignorable, since the save DC to ignore the effect is only 16. At the levels where you can have this kind of stuff, I suppose, that's not very hard to make.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Piratecat]

True. Maybe a bad guy covers his throne room floor with it, so that anyone walking on it will futz up their psionics. Truth is, it's just a plot device used by the DM to keep really old bad guys alive in sealed tombs.

Here's an interesting question: if it were really easy to make (1st or 2nd lvl power), what would people do with it? How would bad guys use it?

 

[CyberSpyder]

A good point was brought up. How much do you need to coat something? It seems to imply that a single use of the power makes enough to coat a size Fine item, like a ring or a coin. So how many drops do you need to coat a Medium object like a body? And why wouldn't you just buy some Oil of Gentle Repose instead? How many months worth of fabrication would it take to get enough of this stuff to be even marginally useful...especially considering that if you have more than a little of it, it starts to play hell with your psionic powers.

If your party member dies, by the time you've made enough quintessence to preserve his body, he's already long been rotten and dried out. So...sandwich?

Well, typically, going up a size category is supposed to increase the size in each dimension by a factor of two. If we take a simple sphere as an item of comparison, the surface area is proportional to the square of the radius, so doubling it in each dimension would increase the surface area, and presumably the doses of quintessence necessary to cover it, by four. Going up four size categories from fine to medium, therefore, would increase the number of doses required from 1 to 256.

That is indeed an awful lot.

 

[Piratecat]

It's 16 lbs worth, what an 11th lvl psion can produce in 2 weeks. That seems a bit excessive, when you consider that temporal stasis can do the same thing.

 

[Storyteller01]

Question? How much space does an once of this stuff take up (no thought about density yet. Yea Me!!)? j/k

Here's a thought: Has anyone ever seen how much area a shattered vial of blood can cover? Yea, I know it's about the same as water, but seeing blood has a greater impact...

It covers quite a large area, for being only a few onces.

Before I go on, I have a question? Does frozen in time mean unmoving?

Anyway, how about this: Put the stuff in a vial attached to a sting, then give it to the fighter. He swings it like a flail, but instead of doing damage, the effected portion is frozen (legs cease to move, the frozen rib cage cannot expand with the breathe, being hit in the face means no spells, etc).

It's a stretch, and requires of great deal of improvisation by the DM, but it could work...

 

[The Forsaken One]

The real question is of an amor made of it would make you practically unvulnerable

 

[green slime]

It's 16 lbs worth, what an 11th lvl psion can produce in 2 weeks. That seems a bit excessive, when you consider that temporal stasis can do the same thing.

Except Temporal Stasis, is, as you know, an 8th level spell.

What is the Psion doing when the wizard sits down in his lab and creates dohickeys, wands, staves, and scribes scrolls? Obviously scraping together goo....

 

[Taloras]

The real question is of an amor made of it would make you practically unvulnerable

Hmm...only one problem there....try walking in armor that wont move.

Heres a use for it.....hair gel.

 

[Gez]

What about stabilizing a dying guy by applying it to its wounds? Wouldn't it stop the hemorrhage?