D&D 5E (2014) Where do you get silver powder?

[Shiek4d5]

I wonder if the Water Genasi could use a drop of the Holy Water to fill 10 gallons of it in an open container or make it rain using the Create or Destroy Water spell? It would be a clever tag team maneuver.

 

[MGibster]

I saw the title of this thread and just thought to myself, "A metal file and some silver coins or candlesticks ought to do the trick!" It's really that simple!

 

[ECMO3]

I was noticing that the PHB states a divine spellcaster can make holy water by expending a spell slot and 25 gp-worth of powdered silver. I'm trying to understand why that would be useful. I mean, powdered silver sounds like it would be almost as hard to procure as holy water, and it costs just as much. Is the goal to give players a way to craft the item in just an hour if they can't find a place that sells it?

How do you make silver powder, anyway? I looked online a bit, and it seems like a pretty complicated process involving dissolving the silver into a variety of different acids to get first silver nitrate, then silver chloride, until eventually you're left with just pure silver powder.

[one hour of "looking up where all the different chemicals come from and how each of them are made" later]

...Oh. Or you can just grind up some silver, apparently. I wish I'd looked at that search result first.

But this raises an interesting question: can players make holy water by sacrificing silver coins or other possessions? It seems fitting, in a "give up your worldly possessions for the greater good" sense.

What we have done in my campaign is take 250sp and have an unseen servant use a file from the theives tools to file it into dust during a long or short rest.

If the party does not have 250sp it is a bit more difficult.

 

[Baron Opal II]

How do you make silver powder, anyway?

Buy a bar of silver, hold it to a medium speed grindstone, dip the bar in water periodically, and apply patience. Or, as you suspect, you could hire an alchemist to precipitate out elemental silver after dissolving it. Files and a vice if you must, but that takes a little while.

 

[see]

Freeze-dry a silver dragon corpse, and take it to a mill.

 

[Charlaquin]

Remember folks, we’re 8 years into the edition’s life. If the topic is a simple rules question, it’s almost certainly a necro thread.

 

[Stormonu]

To those just wanting to grind up their silver pieces - they're probably not pure silver in the first place, and at worst may just be plated (anodized), depending on a variety of factors.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Remember folks, we’re 8 years into the edition’s life. If the topic is a simple rules question, it’s almost certainly a necro thread.

I feel rickrolled, almost...

 

[Staffan]

I looked up the item Silver (trade goods) in the Item list, it must be a bullion or ingot because it is worth 5Gp.

It is specifically 1 lb of silver. Which weighs the same as 50 silver pieces, which are worth 5 gp.

 

[Staffan]

To those just wanting to grind up their silver pieces - they're probably not pure silver in the first place, and at worst may just be plated (anodized), depending on a variety of factors.

D&D coins are pure metal, as shown by the trade goods table. 1 pound of gold is worth 50 gp, and 50 gp weigh 1 pound. 1 pound of silver is worth 5 gp = 50 sp, and 50 sp weigh 1 pound.

And speaking of that, coins that are 1/50 lb each are fairly big, historically. The traditional medieval coin was the penny (or dinar, or denarius), which weighed 1/240 lb. That's where the pre-decimal English currency comes from (including abbreviating "penny"/"pence" as "d", for denarius) – the pound was originally supposed to literally represent one pound of silver.