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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 9503936" data-attributes="member: 42856">By RAW, it's a value of ruby dust, not an amount. One can rationalize it by considering it not an industrial process, where the ruby dust is a part of the continual flame. The ruby dust is just what you sacrifice to the Elemental Lord of Flame you contacted with the spell to loan him a minor spirit forever. So if ruby dust are so rare that very few carat fetch 50 gp, then it is still valuable to the Elemental Lord of Flame. Wisely, the archwizard who designed the spell and bargained the terms forever didn't specify an amount but a market value when designing this ritual!Or, as D&D doesn't represent an economy, the prices are set. Either because they represent the equilibrium at the exact moment of the adventure and the PCs action are usually too small scale to unbalance the economy -- and objectively, few players would be thrilled by an adventure whose goal would be to corner the ruby market in Waterdeep. I'd buy this module, though. But you can make it more surreal. The prices are the price. A skilled laborer charges 2 gp a day. If he is the only skilled laborer able to reforge your sword in a 100 km radius and knows you need your sword fixed at all price and your purse is overflowing with rubies? 2 gp a day. Inversely, he's about to starve and you offer to pay him a meal for his family instead and he has no other choice? 2 gp a day, no less. The town is about to be destroyed by a dragon and the hero have a dragon-slaying sword to reforge? That's 2 gp for you, sir. Because the price were set in Mechanus, where Wilzygir the Economically-Obsessed wizard Wished for the price to be set after a bout of inflation that made him angry, using a non-standard application of the spell. Ever since, an inevitable will materialize and behead anyone who price goods and services at another value than what the law says. Nobody has ever seen an inevitable, but do you want to risk losing your head over this? That's 2 gp, then.Or 50 gp worth of ruby dust isn't just an amount of ruby, crushed with a mortar. You need a specific dust-creating process from the rubies, and the wizard guild is selling the result in a pouch, certified for use in the Continual Light spell, in convenient 50 gp package.The world would quickly evolve into something that is quite removed from the classical D&D setting.</blockquote>

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