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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 5882002" data-attributes="member: 1861">Use a unit of energy that would make sense in the world.  The capacity of one stone is the equivalent of the needs to power one Y for X time.  The Candela, BTU, or the Carcel burner measure from the French could all be used as baselines at an output.  I would probably say that one coin-sized piece of this substance contains 1 candle-year of energy.  Per non-SI standards that would be a little over a month (~36 days) of constant burning of a <a href="http://www.associatedartists.net/images/uploads/xl/Pair-of-Barbedienne-Carcel-Lamps_1_1.jpg" target="_blank">Carcel Burner</a> lamp.  That would make each of these small stones worth (lamp oil [1sp * 36 *4])144 sp, or 14 gp 4 sp.  Two units and 30 lead balls would be around the same cost as 30 bullets for an Advanced Firearm in Pathfinder if you use them as your source of propellant for ammunition.  The use of one of these coin-sized objects to power anything would burn the device out.  Now, this makes the item sit right on the Good side of thing, but puts it out of the reach of most poor individuals.  A house with three lamps, for example, would have an upkeep cost of 432 GP/year... Which is actually cheaper than hiring and feeding three young poor servants (comm 1) with darkvision to sit with any non-darkvisioners who may live there to direct you through the house <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />.  Of course take into account that on average you're not burning the items all day in the average home, so let us say you use 2 hrs of 'oil' per night... Then you're going to keep these lamps around for an average of 14.4 30 day months, and adventurers will still have a substance that lasts longer than a similar weight of lamp-and-oil, but doesn't burn.Rechargable forms would be purchasable for 10x the cost.  This allows for a lamp to not burn its initial stock, and reduce the overall cost of the 'charge' to 1/5 of its base rate.  2gp 88sp brings the recharge savings to 11gp 52sp. This mean you will start saving after 13 recharges, which would come to savings after... 15 years of 2 hr use,  4 years of 8 hr use, or around 500 days of 24 hr 'burning'.  Then you're just looking at sweet savings.Now, we can surmise that on average a  <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-a-btu-and-how-many-shoul-112070" target="_blank">medium gas stove burner produces 7000 BTUs.</a> and a standard gas lantern produce <a href="http://www.coppergaslanternsplus.com/14.html" target="_blank">between 1050 and 1700</a>.  We're using very rough Googled numbers, but let us average the lamp's heat output to 1375 BTU.  A good sized grill, which we'll mark as a campfire, produces <a href="http://www.sears.com/weber-web566002-q-220-gas-grill/p-07106058000P?currentProductTitle=weber-web566002-q-220-gas-grill&partNumber=07106058000P&storeId=10153&isSEOCanonURL=true&PRODUCT_TITLE_BRAND=weber-web566002-q-220-gas-grill&catalogId=12605&catgroupId=07106058000P&pageInd=product&i_cntr=1334532618330" target="_blank">12000 BTU</a>.  Now these are all based on output/hr numbers.  A large oven at a cooperative bakery (not uncommon in some medieval settings)?  Let us take the basis of a pizza oven, at <a href="http://www.brickovens.biz/equipment/remco-questions.htm" target="_blank">250000 BTU.</a> for an inefficient but serviceable large-scale double-rack pizza oven, which would fit ~ two dozen loafs minimum to bake in 20-30 minutes.For such a large-scale operation as a bakery these costs would be prohibitive, though it is in theory possible to produce larger subsidized stones.  A family of four's basic oven would cost between 1 gp to 1 gp 5sp/day of use of a medium-sized burner if using the semi-permanent rechargeable stones.  Not horribly feasible for peasantry, but possible for use by the upper crust for the preparation of their foodstuffs.Now what would be the cost to do other things with these stones?  Figure that a 1500 watt space heater, with our current efficiency, is a little under the BTU output of a simple medium-sized burner (5100ish BTU), which would cover an area of 150 square feet (about 2 2/3 would make a Stronghold Space).  This should be enough to maintain heat in a stronghold space a bit higher than ambient temperature, but for roaring heat you're going to still prefer a fire.Hope some of these numbers will give you a soft set to work off of.Slainte,-Loonook.</blockquote>

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