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Some spells have expensive material components. In the case of restoration(s) it takes the form of 100-5,000gp worth of diamond dust, which seems to be a common spell casting material component. Now resurrection requires a diamond worth 10,000.

They both require diamond, just the form of it changes. Would it be acceptable to use diamond dust worth 10,000 since that should be much easier to acquire than a single diamond worth 10,000? Its also more versatile since you can just keep pouring diamond dust until you run out or have enough than having diamonds.

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4 Answers 4

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A diamond worth 10,000 gp is a grand jewel; diamond dust is just diamond dust

An uncrushed diamond can't substitute for diamond dust nor vice versa. That is, the diamond dust that's needed as part of the the material component for the spell stoneskin, for example, can't be sifted, put in a big pile, and used instead of the lone diamond needed as a material component for the spell resurrection et al.

As an aside, Dungeons and Dragons, Third Edition mandated a lone diamond as the material component for the spell resurrection et al., but 3.5e changed this material component to diamonds collectively worth a certain amount because randomly rolling such a lone valuable diamond was too rare. Pathfinder returned to the lone diamond but, instead of random gem generation, uses DM-placed gems, recommending that gems valued at 5,000 gp or more be rare.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ "It works! I can't believe it! And they said imitation diamond wasn't good enough!" (and few moments later) "Uh oh..." "I knew I should've bought a real diamond" - Dr 'weird' Fred Edison, Day of the Tentacle II \$\endgroup\$
    – G0BLiN
    Oct 29, 2016 at 11:40
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No

Restoration has a listed material component of diamond dust, so you need to have diamond dust on hand to cast it.

Resurrection has a listed material component of a single diamond worth 10000 gp, so you have to have a single diamond worth 100000 gp on hand to cast it.

A 100000 gp diamond can likely be ground down into 100 or 1000 gp worth of diamond dust (at huuuge loss since the value of a large high quality diamond is much greater than its weight in tiny diamonds) but that'll take time, tools, and likely some expertise to produce. Assuming you've got those available and are willing to take the loss you could likely get away only carrying around large expensive diamonds.

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If the diamond dust used to be one single diamond, then with a generous interpretation of the rules, it might be possible to use the Mending spell to turn it back into a complete diamond.

This spell repairs damaged objects, restoring 1d4 hit points to the object. If the object has the broken condition, this condition is removed if the object is restored to at least half its original hit points. All of the pieces of an object must be present for this spell to function.

A generous DM might let you turn a pulverized diamond back into a diamond. But I could also very well see that a more strict DM denies it on the basis that "All of the pieces of an object must be present", so just one missing grain would be enough to cause the spell to fail. And unless the diamond was destroyed right now under very controlled conditions, it's just not plausible that you did not lose even a single grain.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ This doesnt take into account the value of the two, what are you going to end up with? Will that 100gp of dust become a 10gp diamond or 50gp diamond? Im assuming the dust is more valuable otherwise its hard to justify the grinding except for spells. \$\endgroup\$
    – Fering
    Jul 30, 2021 at 14:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Fering The mending spell does not care if the object's value increases or decreases by fixing it. The spell description does not mention the monetary value of the object at all. But keep in mind that it requires that all the dust comes from one single diamond. It can't combine the dust from several diamonds into a new one. If there is a diamond economy in the game world which deals with both complete diamonds and diamond dust, they likely would grind the small and flawed diamonds into dust while selling the more beautiful one as they are for a much higher price than they would make as dust. \$\endgroup\$
    – Philipp
    Jul 30, 2021 at 14:30
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It has a value of 100gp. Don't give it too much thought. Although it is true that converting a precious diamond into powder would diminish its total value, D&D/Pathfinder does not model luxury item pricing in such detail.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Could you elaborate on how this answers the question? You don't seem to say whether diamond dust can be substituted for with real diamonds. In addition, it doesn't seem to add much to the existing answers. \$\endgroup\$
    – Gloweye
    Jul 30, 2021 at 7:22

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