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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geoarrge" data-source="post: 7204159" data-attributes="member: 6801238">You have to wonder, specifically, how diamonds would be handled in the economy where their chief use is resurrection insurance. I tend  to think that whatever their open market value, diamonds would be hoarded and traded at highly inflated values except perhaps in areas directly around where they are mined.Consider that chromatic orb and gate both use diamonds as components (not consumed).  How does society look at wizards who hold onto diamonds for these purposes?   The 50-gp diamonds for casting chromatic orb are probably too small to be a target for someone looking for a proper resurrection, but if you got gentle repose on promptly, you only need six for revivify. That could be a tempting target for theft, if, say, you had a wizard academy or battlemage corps known to issue diamond-tipped wands. People are less likely to have common knowledge of how gate works, but the size of its diamond component is interesting (5000gp) because while you could gather five for a true resurrection, it's overkill for anything less. Splitting a 5kgp diamond into smaller diamonds is less economical than you probably think, because of these rules (an approximation of IRL traditional gemcutting):The value of a gem is based on the square of its weight.The value of a cut gem is about six times an uncut gem of the same weight.Broken pieces of a cut gem have to be treated as uncut. However, even a master gemcutter removes about 50% of the material when cutting a gem, so the end product in the best case is typically worth only 50% more than the raw material. For simplicity, set a base value for which tiny gems and powder are interchangeable. A problem you might want to consider is what justification a high level caster would have for withholding a gate diamond from use in resurrection.  The most obvious argument is that if you summon an angel a few times and have them use their raise dead powers, the diamond pays for itself in a way that can be directly measured in diamonds.   Although of course it's probably not desirable in your setting to allow angels to be used for cheap resurrection, perhaps it shouldn't be totally beneath them or else it's much harder to justify keeping the diamond.   Maybe the problem is that they're willing to perform resurrections on request but they typically require payment in the form of noble but perilous quests.</blockquote>

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