Diamond Dust & Resurrection

"The phoenix must burn to emerge." - Janet Fitch

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” – Janet Fitch

In order to refine the high fantasy magic system proposed for the Golarion GURPS campaign setting found herethis post addresses the issue of the Resurrection spell, and other such energetically expensive spells by introducing the concept of material spell components from the Dungeons & Dragons system.

Diamond Dust

As a Spell Component

To cast a spell, you must be able to speak (if the spell has a verbal component), gesture (if it has a somatic component), and manipulate the material components or focus (if any). Additionally, you must concentrate to cast a spell. 1

In the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, as well as in Dungeons & Dragons, it is established that all spells require different degrees of spell components. A small number of spells are said to require diamond or diamond dust, typically worth somewhere in the vicinity of a set number of gold pieces, and include the following.

Spell Material Component  Reference
Restoration diamond dust (100-1,000 gp) SRD
Restoration, Greater diamond dust (5,000 gp) SRD
Resurrection diamond (10,000 gp) SRD
True Resurrection diamond (25,000 gp) SRD
Temporary Resurrection diamond dust (500 gp) SRD
Limited Wish diamond (1,500 gp) SRD
Wish diamond (25,000 gp) SRD

As an Energy Source

In GURPS Thaumatology, the section on Material Magic discusses the notion of using materials as raw energy for the purposes of casting a spell (T96). In this regard, the writer of this article will treat this as an equivalent notion of spell components, far more akin to the idea of sacrificial magic and other such component-based magic.

Used correctly, some materials might instead supply energy, or reduce a casting’s energy cost (which comes to much the same thing). 2

While the system comprised by Threshold-Limited Magic discussed earlier leaves room for the notion of spell components, the discussion of the system for the purposes of a high fantasy world did not take much stock in this notion, leaving the GMs that use it to take care of implementing this into the system.

If such materials make the difference between triviality and real power for wizards, and are quite rare, then magic will suffer from the economics of scarce resources. Magicworkers will have to scrabble around looking for the substances needed to cast really worthwhile spells – but it’s always possible, so they’ll try. 3

This article will be a start of introducing extraordinarily key spell components from the D&D d20 system and the Pathfinder list of spells in order to better capture the notion of how magic is meant to be modelled there. The first material component to be considered is both diamond and diamond dust, which will be collectively grouped to be merely diamond dust to better emphasize the mystique of the material.

Resurrection

Without Materials

If we consider the Resurrection (VH) spell (M94), it is said to have an energy cost of 300. In a Threshold-Limited Magic system, this would require the use of Ceremonial Magic in order to effectively remove the possibility of sheer failure or calamity. To do so safely, this would mean the need for at least 8-10 component divine magic spellcasters who are capable of casting this spell at an effective level of 15.

This rules out the possibility of having this cast in a small town chapel or by a small congregation of casters if nothing can be substituted for this energy cost but the addition to a spellcaster’s power tally. Furthermore, this would drive the cost of such a spell to be extraordinarily high, especially given how it would render a caster unable to cast more rudimentary spells for at least a couple of days.

Juxtaposed with Material Components

Now, considering how the D&D system requires diamond worth 10,000 gp in order to cast the spell, it can be easily established that diamond dust, as a spell component, can be said to be able to offer 1 energy for every 2g of diamond dust. In this regard, 10,000 gp worth of diamond dust would correspond to 200 energy or the equivalent of 5 casters who are casting to their threshold from an empty power tally.

The above formulation of weight to energy is taking into account the estimations made here and instituting that, with modern day technology, about 20 carats of diamond dust is worth 1 gp. Let us assume that the crushing of diamond into dust would require a far greater amount of effort without modern-day technology, so let this rate of conversion be roughly reduced by two orders of magnitude. Given that carats are a unit of mass, where 1 carat = 0.2g, 0.2 carats would equal 0.04g. Thus, 1gp of diamond dust in Golarion would be equal to 0.04g of the dust. This means that 10,000 gp worth of diamond dust would weigh 400g or 0.9 lb. Therefore, 25gp of diamond dust would provide 1g of diamond dust.

In order to keep this appropriate to the material’s association with a subset of all divine spells, it can be established that this material is only useful for those ceremonies used in the casting of a certain number of spells. Since, in the above table, only one or two spells really have a direct mapping to GURPS Magic spells, a number of new spells will be introduced to mirror these spells, but this is material for a later article.

Suggested Reading

Consider reading the following articles on material components.

 

Notes:

  1. Pathfinder Core Rulebook by Jason Bulmahn
  2. GURPS Thaumatology by Phil Masters
  3. GURPS Thaumatology by Phil Masters
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