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That never was a problem for me--outdoors it was usually straightforward to get out of range of potential counterspellers, and indoors it was usually straightforward to break line of sight to the counterspellers by going around a corner. As long as you could get it down to only one PC...

Why doesn't it come up every time you hand out high-value gems as treasure to your players and they try to sell it? The high-value gems in the treasure tables are cut (none of the gems are described as "rough" and rough stones wouldn't be transparent as the descriptions in the book specify.) If...

Ok, I think we crossed wires at some point. @Maxperson is (assuming I'm understanding him correctly) treating the price listed in the book for cut gemstone treasure as excluding any value added from the cutting process. So my question for him was whether that means that cut gemstones found as...

I do indeed use a rough estimate that raw materials cost half the finished product. :) I'm good with simple crafting systems. But I thought you said in your games the difference in price between raw materials and finished products was extraneous detail? Did I misunderstand your post when you...

Fair enough! The difference between raw materials and finished products comes up a lot in my games, both indirectly when people who want to hire adventurers have more goods available than cash, and directly when the PCs want to get into crafting. Just last session my PCs, noticing they were...

I totally get that versimilitude is idiosyncratic, but I'm having a hard time with this one. :) You really think think that the difference between a rough, unfinished diamond and a cut, finished diamond is extraneous detail? To me that's like saying that the difference between lumber from the...

In my example the gem is already cut. Edit: To elaborate, I'm assuming the PCs are selling the already-cut gem to an end-user or a broker. If they can't get substantially more for a cut stone than they could for a uncut stone of the same mass, then there's no point in gemcutters existing in the...

Ok, so you're treating book prices as "multiversal inherent values" and "multiversal inherent values" are always the uncut value. Let's say the players find in treasure a cut diamond that the book says is worth 1000 GP. They go into a town in your campaign setting not experiencing any unusual...

Thanks for the expanded explanation. I'm still not entirely sure whether you're considering the increased value of cut diamonds to be included or excluded from the "multiversal inherent value." In the case of an uncut gem with a value listed in the book, can its "multiversal inherent value" be...

Largely the second, although I'm sure there are spells out there written with components that effectively require the first. I would also add that while my take on the mechanistic approach doesn't consider "sacrifice value," it's not just raw material cost. If a spell requires finished...

I think that's an entirely reasonable approach. I just personally find the idea of cutting a gemstone to increase its value when crushed to be just-unpalatable-enough to be worth the added complexity of breaking that straightforward correlation in the specific case of crushed gemstones.

Wait what? Now I'm confused. I thought you were arguing that a solid ruby worth X was still worth X when crushed into dust? But the above post seems to contradict that completely. To make sure I'm understanding you correctly, could you please clarify your answers to the following questions? If...

To my limited understanding of gemology, your assumption that gem cutting is mostly about mechanical removal of inclusions isn't true in the real world. While one could, of course, design a fantasy setting where your assumption is true, it seems overkill to do so just to allow gemstones' cut and...

I suppose it's possible that's what the designers intended. However, the wording for the material component for the Continual Flame spell in 5e is: "Ruby dust worth 50 gp, which the spell consumes." If they intended it the way you're suggesting, it would have been a lot clearer and only slightly...

@Maxperson, on your general point that it's sufficient to know the value of diamond (or ruby, etc.) dust required to cast the spell, I agree with you. I also agree that the price paid for that same amount of dust might change depending on local economic conditions, and that such can be...

The rarity of rubies in a game world is inherently linked to the price of them. In a world where rubies are particularly rare, they would be more expensive, and so 50gp worth of ruby dust would be a smaller amount. Conversely, in a world where rubies are particularly common, they would be...

I didn't mean my question to be rhetorical--I'm curious: under your reading, what change did they intend to make to the function of the rule when they changed the language of the rule?

The fact that they changed the wording is strong evidence that the intent changed. If they did not intend to permit OAs against allies, why else would they have removed the language that restricted OAs to enemies?

Because whether or not I personally consider it degenerate depends more on how silly the tactic is, and less on how much damage output it causes. Hence, I consider the move-the-cleric-every-turn tactic more degenerate than I consider party full of Clerics, regardless of relative damage output...

My personal subjective sense of when it becomes degenerate is long before party size + 1. :) But even if it does less total damage, I personally feel moving the Cleric around off-turn is more degenerate than multiple Clerics, just due to the fact that multiple Clerics are actually paying for...