How to break a gem og Diamant?

notjer · Mar 30, 2004

What is the hardness of a gem and a diamant? and what can break? any spell, and how much streng? My DM have made some kind of ultimate streng-gauntlet and don´t really see how those gauntlets can break a gem!plz help

how can it works...

btw it´s 3.0

The Mirrorball Man · Mar 30, 2004

This is a tobacconist's.

Frostmarrow · Mar 30, 2004

notjer said:
What is the hardness of a gem and a diamant? and what can break? any spell, and how much streng? My DM have made some kind of ultimate streng-gauntlet and don´t really see how those gauntlets can break a gem!plz help how can it works...

btw it´s 3.0

The hardness of adamantine is 20. It's break DC is 66. Adamantine in itself ignores 20 points of hardness when used to destroy other stuff. There is nothing in the SRD with higher hardness than adamantine. (Adamantine is some sort of fabulous super-metal, by the way.)

So, it's really up to the DM whichever is harder - diamonds or adamantine. I would probably rule that diamonds are equal to adamantine in hardness. Especially since diamonds being the hardest material in the world, is such an important fact for your group.

Can you make a Str-check and hit 66? If so, you could crush the diamond with your Gauntlet of Ultimate Strength.

Zappo · Mar 30, 2004

Meh, just use disintegrate.

Kilamar · Mar 30, 2004

Or to use real world physics, use two stones and crush the diamant between them.

Kilamar

Treebore · Mar 30, 2004

Diamond may be the hardest substance on Earth, at least naturally occurring, but it is easy to break because of natural fracture lines. That is why they have been broken by a simple hammer and chisel for centuries. IT would be very rare to find a gemstone that was so perfectly formed that it doesn't have fracture lines. In fact I have never heard or read of such a stone. Not even man-made stones.

I do not know the hardness rules well enough to recommend what a diamonds hardness would be, but it should be relatively easy to accomplish with a hammer blow.

Adamantite and Mithril are definitely fantasy metals. Titanium comes close to Mithril and there are other alloys that come closer. However there is no "real world" pure metal that comes close to doing what these two metals supposedly can. In my opinion a metal that has a hardness of 20 should give a bit better protection when made into armor then it currently does. That is assuming an actual relationship between the hardness scale in the game to the Moh's hardness scale in real life. For example, the diamond is a 10. The scale of difference between a ten and a 9 on the Moh's scale is a factor of 100x's plus. So Adamantite, assuming it would take the Moh's scale up to 20 if it were real, would be a 100,000,000 times harder than a diamond. Actually much more than that. Totally unimagineable in comparsion to any real life example. A certain "unbreakable" skeleton with claws wouldn't even scratch the surface of the implications of such a metal. Pun intended, BTW.

Jolly Giant · Mar 30, 2004

Breaking gems is what the shatter spell is for...

Umbran · Mar 30, 2004

Frostmarrow said:
So, it's really up to the DM whichever is harder - diamonds or adamantine. I would probably rule that diamonds are equal to adamantine in hardness. Especially since diamonds being the hardest material in the world, is such an important fact for your group.

Do not confuse game hardness for real world hardness.

In the game, "hardness" is a measure of the overall toughness of a material, and it's general resistance to damage.

In the real world, "hardness" is technically a measure of how easy it is to scratch a material. Other measures of durability (like "tensile strength") cover other stresses. Diamond is the hardest substance known to man - no other known substance will scratch a diamond surface. However, due to it's crystal structure, one needs very little force to shatter a diamond, if you hit is just right.

LGodamus · Mar 31, 2004

this is true , I have seen too many diamonds shattered by accidently bumping them on a wooden table or dropping them off a waist high ledge onto a tiled or hardwood floor.....never seen a hammer break under those circumstances though

Agback · Mar 31, 2004

Treebore said:
IT would be very rare to find a gemstone that was so perfectly formed that it doesn't have fracture lines. In fact I have never heard or read of such a stone. Not even man-made stones.

Naturally not, since cleavage planes are intrinsic to crystals, and have nothing to do with imperfections.

Diamond is hard and strong. But it isn't tough: it is susceptible to cracking.

Regards,

Agback