Stoneskin

[Rystil Arden]

I agree that diamonds, especially low quality diamonds - those with lots of flaws and other materials mixed in - should be fairly easy to turn into dust.
That's exactly why a 250 gp diamond is not longer worth 250 gp when ground into dust. It would be worth much less because the same quantity of diamond dust could be created from several smaller, cheaper diamonds. An XXXX gold piece diamond is worth much less when turned into dust.

Edit: Of course that is much more realism than I would actually bring into a game.

Plus, if you use the 'GP value of a commodity is what makes it work, not actual quantity' school of thought, you fall prey to the PC who points out:

PC--"So we just cast True Res five times and spent 125,000 gold in diamonds. That will probably cause the value of diamonds to increase dramatically as supply drops, right?"

DM--"Of course."

PC--"Okay, great. Let's say in doubles. In that case, we use what use to be 12,500 GP worth of diamonds but is now 25,000 GP worth of diamonds for the last true res."

 

[phindar]

I've always assumed the diamond dust wasn't made from perfectly good diamonds (except in the case of dire emergency), but rather from the pieces of the rough stones jewelers remove when sculpting the diamond (unless I'm radically misinformed, and diamonds come out of the ground in perfectly symetrical princess-cuts). Thus, 250gp of diamond dust is just that; and not a 250gp diamond ground up.

This came up in a game when our characters needed 100gp in D. dust. The GM, as the jeweler, said "Okay, that's 100gp for the diamond, and 10gp for the grinding fee." That didn't make any sense to me. Its fine if prices vary according to local economy, or if a npc wants to overcharge the pc's because he thinks they're a bunch of yokels, but that ground up diamonds were worth more than their equal weight in cut stones was bizarre. A 100gp's of D dust shouldn't cost 110gp.

(And even more bizarrely is that spell components are listed by value rather than quantity. If diamond dust costs double somewhere, presumably you only need half as much to cast the spell, because you only need 100gp. At least if it said "1oz, normally 100gp", it would give you something to work with. But then D&D has always presumed a world economy more stable than even our own. The price of diamonds goes up and down all the time.)

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Wow, Stoneskin's so hot right now! When I last checked this thread yesterday afternoon (my time) it had only a couple of replies. I come back this morning and it has over 30 replies and has created it's own spin-off poll!

Olaf the Stout

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

A CL 7 scroll of Stoneskin costs 25*4*7 + 250 = 950gp and absorbs 70hp of damage for a total cost (if fully utilized) of 950/70 = 13.57gp/hp.

Which, per HP, makes it slightly cheaper than a Scroll of Cure Moderate Wounds (13.64gp/hp assuming an average roll)

An interesting calculation. If scribed, the scroll would then work out to 8.571 gp per hit point. Not quite competitive with a purchased wand of cure light wounds (2.73 gp/hit point), but it doesn't take one of your actions to benefit from it which is worth something. Increasing the caster level also makes it more efficient since it works out to be 10gp/hit point of increase by increasing the caster level on a full price scroll and 5gp/hit point increase on a scribed scroll.

On the other hand, if you only get hit for 35 points of damage, then it works out to twice the gp/hp calculation that you figured and if you don't ever take enough damage that stoneskin either saves your life or prevents expenditure of non-renewable resources (spells, etc) then it's not a good deal.

 

[Mechnomancer]

i don't see much use of it in my games and i even handwaived all material components to spells. Plus, we, as a group, decided that energy bypassing DR was stupid, so the DR 10/ x stops anything that is not x.