So Veeky Forums, how many of you do the old gems are used for magic thing? I think it's an interesting idea...

So Veeky Forums, how many of you do the old gems are used for magic thing? I think it's an interesting idea, but it kind of takes away from the gems being treasures.

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I've always liked the idea of magical gemstones. It's a bit of a cliche, but they look cool and you can do fun stuff with it. It also kinda makes sense in general fantasy terms, more 'precious' materials like gold, silver and gemstones always seem to turn up on powerful magic artifacts, so it sorta makes sense that they're better able to hold or channel magic and stuff.

>it kind of takes away from the gems being treasures.
Literally how? Making different gemstones useful for magic makes it even better for them to be rewards from a treasure vault.

For magic items, I usually just use a list of what gems are associated with and describe appropriately, so e.g. a wand of Cure Light Wounds would be topped with Jasper.

It takes away from them being pure treasures, things to be sold and kept closely as valuable items if they now have magical value as well I mean.

>pure treasure
Nothing is pure treasure except for money. Everything else has uses if you're creative.

And useful treasure is the best kind of treasure.

This is especially true in TRPGs. Describe "pure treasures" all you want, but in the end, all that treasure is just a number to be exchanged for something of actual use.

I like the idea of gemstones providing a slight buff. Maybe amethyst lessens the effects of drunkenness or aquamarine improves your roles when you're at sea.

But making them useful in Magic actually gives them economic viability period now they are sought not just because they are pretty, but because there is some wizard somewhere trying to finish his life's work and damn it he needs at least 80 pounds of ametrine dust to perfect his device which will permanently repel goblins within an 80 mile radius of his Tower.


This changes them from being a luxury item to a valuable commodity. Wizards will go to war for a diamond mine. Governments will gladly hire Mercenaries to protect a group of miners digging a rich scene of Ruby from a couple of demon worshiping warlocks.


Making gems inherently useful for magic creations makes them more valuable. It is an economic stimulus.

It's a nice way to justify Bling Of War

Gems are for hugs!

But making them a commodity kind of diminishes their vanity appeal.

>But making them a commodity kind of diminishes their vanity appeal.
Not at all. Imagine being so wealthy you can afford to adorn your wife in gemstones with no use to them. It's the same thing as wearing ore, it's beautiful and could be put to better use but someone spent money purely to use them as jewelry.

Oh look, the most SJW IP ever created.

Actually it has been denounced by SJWs for promoting real tolerance rather than Marxism.

more

I'm on that right now, but only as "the crystalized remains of a extra dimensional plant that eats magic and life and turns it into blood"

Mages snort that shit like cocaine

magic items do tend to have a lot of expensive gems on them, would make sense that its helps with the enchantment

Reminds me of playing Angband and other Rogue-likes.
>you pick up an obsidian wand
>read which scroll?
>you have 1 wand of haste monster
>destroy which wand?

I justify magical gems in my setting by having it be easier to permanently enchant a repeating crystal structure.

Likewise, gold and silver are good for certain enchantments because resistance to tarnishing translates to the magic not weakening with age.

So a lot of magic items have embedded gems and gilt patterns. Though trying to make plate armor out of gold to enchant it doesn't work out well.

If crystals have healing powers, why are they so hard to swallow?

In my setting, magic can only be cast through items that have been attuned with the user. And although just about any item can be used, gem stones are the easiest, strongest and most efficient way to cast magic. Certain gems can even be used to enhance certain spells, such as a ruby giving +1 damage to fire spells, or an opal giving +1 to an illusion spell's DC.

I partly do it because the game I'm most likely to GM with enchanted items is Ars Magica, so a) there's mechanical reasons to make it specific, b) there's a reason to use gems on things, and c) players can identify what it does fairly easily. Although, mechanics can't counter stupid, so they might just decide
>neat, a basalt mask with red gold patterns
>im'a put it on

The same way modern electronics made gold lose its vanity appeal?

To take something that's a commodity and to use it for vanity appeal is one of the oldest past times for wealth.

That's why the idea of lawn grass exists now. It's evolved from when it was a show of wealth that you could have land and not have to use it to survive.(such as growing crops)

Nah I think she means more like how diamond-coated and lenses reduces diamond's vanity appeal

I would make up a reason for gems being magical or at least storage devices for magic energy but the real reason is that I think they look really pretty and deserve to be useful too.

1st to 3rd level spells consume 1gp(x spell level) worth of crystaline hexite dust.
4th to 6th level consume one small crystal worth the spell-level^3
7th to 9th level require the use of a hexite gem costing SL x 3000, but each one can be used 10 times before being expended.

how?
gems being magical doesn't affect their appearance in any way - they're still pretty.
just now they're even more valuable.

diamond is an interesting example, because the company responsible for mining most of the diamonds in circulation worked fairly hard to both make it artificially rare and try to increase the worth of it in the public's eye.
>diamonds are forever

man, that was a hilarious shitstorm to follow

Also it's much more fashionable to use a staff made of oak and encrusted with gemstones and gold and silver to cast a spell than to use one made of birch with cow horn and leather linings on it.

>industrial-grade diamonds aren't colorless, often having a red/pink/brown hue
>they used to be sold for dirt cheap to companies for industrial use
>some fuck in PR thought "holy shit chocolate diamonds"
>imperfect diamonds now marketed as chocolate diamonds around valentines day and christmas for a higher price than "perfect" diamonds
Fuck the diamond industry

Hey, don't blame the seller, blame the buyer.

They're both equally at fault

Seller paid the ad man.

Gems are treasures partially because they have the potential to be powerful magical focuses - even a non-magical gem of high quality is still a valuable reagent. That they look pretty means that they remain valuable even to the magically illiterate.

>Huge ad campaign for BIG diamonds.
>New mine opens up that is churning out loads of tiny diamonds.
>Huge ad campaign for LOTS of little diamonds.
Oh, and don't forget the 'oh, your widow can sell the ring if you croak' ad campaign. Which doesn't work. You can't even get back 30% of the original value.
>theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/?single_page=true

And God help you if you try to sell a diamond that you dug up yourself

Yeah, but if diamonds could literally bring the dead back to life for 10000gp worth of diamonds, then metaphysically, you really want that kind of artificial price inflation to go as far as you can make it.

Especially if they are relatively cheap to mine.

Actually, that bit raises all kinds of bizarre questions about DnD economics, most of which are best answered via divine price fixing.

Especially if the god of wheat is also the god of usury. Needless to say, I homebrewed the economics of my last 3.5 game, to hilariously bizarre consequence in all kinds of weird little details - but the large-scale economics, on the whole, worked in a fashion that closely emulated the real world, just with a lot less price volatility than you'd expect with large merchant groups.

I wholeheartedly disagree

>The steering wheel is on the wrong side.
Triggered.

>not having glorious centre steering

I'm a grog so I'm required to do this. I'm required to make a big deal out of selecting the right one, maybe paying someone else to grid it to the right shape and whatever, enchanting them. Maybe carving and inscribing them.

...and it's great.

What the fuck is the point of that?

Defense against AK totting gorillas - they never know to aim at center mass, wheel in the middle makes drive safe.

I've always kind of liked the way Path of Exile does it, where the individual gems might grant small bonuses, or have basic effects on them, but you can also chain them together through linked slots on your equipment to make more complex effects, but I've never been able to find a system that could support it.

Gems are nothing more than shiny minerals.
That is until they are imbued with magical properties.
You just pump mana into them and they release it in the form of whatever spell the have been tuned to.

Using gems gives every novice the ability to cast spells they haven't mastered yet. The problem with using gems s that some mana is wasted. If you can cast the spell yourself using gems becomes a waste.

Every kind of gem can be imbued with just about everything.
The color of the gem determines how efficient the magical property is going to be.
Rubys are good for imbueing them with fire spells. You can imbue them with cold, but they will drain more mana for the same effect. The ruby just isn't made for cold spells. Use a sapphire instead.
Garnets with their deep red color akin to blood are especially useful for healing spells. Citrine is the go to gem for all lightning related spells.

The colorless gem, the Diamond, is very inefficient in transforming mana in the various magical spells.
Despite that, the Diamond is the most valuable of all the gems.

It can act as a storage device for mana. Charge the diamonds in your staff with mana so you can use it later with whatever other gems are set into your staff.
It can also be used to improve the mana use efficiency. It purifies and tunes the mana to whatever form of energy te gems are using.
It can also be use to concentrate the effects of several gems into one blast.

Your normal Shotgun of Fireball is a piece of wood with a ruby on its end. You let your mana flow through the staff, into the ruby, to set the spell of.
Insert a diamond a few centimeters below the ruby and it will suck up that mana and give it to the ruby in a more efficient way, giving you the same fireball but with a decrease in mana usage.

>lolite

Insert a diamond at the tip of your staff and several rubies somewhat lower, and every ruby with his own transformation diamond and you have Staff of Massive Fireball.
Without the diamond it would be a Shotgun of Fireball.

Creating magical items will become the work of artisans, who buy the imbued gems from wizards, finetuning weaponry and jewelry to their greatest effect.

You are meeting with the king and notice he has a very shiny, almost glowing necklace adorned with several diamonds and other gems.

This necklace is not just a mere symbol of status, but a front facing nuke which he will set off in case of emergency.

Creatures that need magical energy to survive eat gems all the time (stuff like other magical creatures, blood, enchanted weapons and scrolls are also edible to them) as they can hold energy and passively gather it from the environment.

>telling children that murder is wrong is "problematic"
These people can't be real

Glad I wasn't the only one who saw it