Why would *any* class be unable to use a simple tool such as a file? You do realize that there is quite a huge difference between cutting gemstones and just filing someothing?
This depends on how you define "powder". Personally I'd consider filing down a bit of silver not good/fine enough. Perfectly ok if you go another route with this.
Ah, you want to move the goalposts? Sure. But could you at least answer the questions? How do you think silver powder is made if not by filing?
Am I moving the goalposts? I don't know, but I've played silver powder as something you can't create simply with a file and a hunk of silver since forever and insofar as it came up, so have people who DMed for me.
As for how it's made: chemistry (typical processes today seem to come down to dissolving silver to silver chloride using acid and then reducing the silver chloride to obtain fine silver powder) - so alchemy in D&D.
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Does it really need additional supply limitations?
I don't particularly worry about readily available vs limited supply - DMs can largely restrict access to a lot of normally common things if the want, or make things that are usually rare and hard to come by easy to obtain. So does holy water need supply limitations via powdered silver? No more or less than Identify needs it via a 100gp pearl requirement, so here we are.
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I have a habit of going into too much detail to get my point across. I don't see any reason why Druids, who considers all of nature to be Holy, can't use some water and make it so that it is so for other people who want to use it.
Why not? Is it really that game breaking?
No, that’s why I let them do it with an herbalism kit, and 25gp worth of materials to maintain game balance.
"that’s why I let them do it with an herbalism kit, and 25gp worth of materials to maintain game balance." It seems terribly expensive for what is essentially just a matter of time to hunt up the stuff you need, but you are correct, it's a game balance thing. Any cheaper, the Commoners would stockpile it, and few undead would make it out of the graveyard.
A skilled hireling gets 2 gold per day if you hire one. An Herbalism Kit costs 5, and needs more herbs. It's hard to know how much herbs cost. You can create Antitoxins and Potions of Healing with them, those cost 50 gold each. So if a Commoner wants to learn how to use an Herbalism kit, there are rules in Xanathar's for training, that say it takes 10 weeks, and 25 gold per week, to learn how to use the Kit, 5 more to buy it, and whatever you want to make they pay for herbs on top of that, to make Holy Water once a week.
They spend ten weeks to learn how to use the Kit, that will cost them 20 gold, then they have to spend 255 gold, which will take them 128 weeks to earn near as I can figure, to make 50 gold per week. I rather doubt this is going to be a problem. That's some very expensive oil there. Unless you don't think Potions of Healing qualify as a sort of back-up consumable Cleric thing?
"that’s why I let them do it with an herbalism kit, and 25gp worth of materials to maintain game balance." It seems terribly expensive for what is essentially just a matter of time to hunt up the stuff you need, but you are correct, it's a game balance thing. Any cheaper, the Commoners would stockpile it, and few undead would make it out of the graveyard.
Ummmm. Have you noticed that most graveyards don’t have any undead and you always seem to find commoners with 1-2 potions of healing for sale everywhere you go?
Are there actual rules somewhere for how long and how much and how often it takes to create antitoxin or potions of healing? Getting the herbs needed shouldn’t be a problem if you have proficiency with nature and the kit you should be able to gather the herbs on your own. If there are rules where are they? Or do I just treat them as magic items and use those rules?
Are there actual rules somewhere for how long and how much and how often it takes to create antitoxin or potions of healing? Getting the herbs needed shouldn’t be a problem if you have proficiency with nature and the kit you should be able to gather the herbs on your own. If there are rules where are they? Or do I just treat them as magic items and use those rules?
I don't run nitty-gritty games myself, and I've had no luck at all with trying to do a low magic setting. I'm forced to admit, D&D isn't a good system for that. When I use Undead at all, I consider them nothing but cannon fodder, and I don't bother to roll dice. I tell the players it takes a round or two and they can get on to the real fight.
It's perfectly fine if in your game Druids can't make Holy Water. I guess it's unnatural for Druids to do that, and having the Undead spring up naturally is also reasonable. Nature can be cruel, and Druids do have ways of their own of fighting them.
I think ceremony grade powdered metal can be recognized as something that could require some proficiency to produce.
Why? What process of using a file to file down a piece of silver do you think there is that requires special skills?
Lots of variables. Yes "filing" is "simple". So isn't a sledgehammer, but if you wanted something demolished at a worksite, you're probably going to go with someone who actually has some background in demolition so that it's done right and the mess is minimized. It's not hard for my imagination to see if I wanted a substance intended for a ritual, I may want it to be done with a certain grade of care. Also, I want someone with a high level of competency to avoid adulterants/contaminants and a true fine grade to my powder. Sposta is right that in a pinch tap water will do for holy water (though not to get into a theological debate with their partner, but there's a lot more to consider to the reason for the water to be blessed, it's not like they bulk prepare it, nor do they stockpile transubstantiated eucharist, that'd be sacrilege) so 25 gp of silver is simply a barrier to prevent ritual over run and a PC holy watering a bathtub whenever they have a chance to stock up. It would be hard to treat the substance as "precious" in the game otherwise, the cost puts some world verisimilitude on it, making the point that holy water is actually a revered substance in the game world and is not a simple game utility for mechanical effect. Having further quality controls on the preparations would be another hurdle so that the practice isn't taken for granted (given the whole money is easily taken for granted in game thing). Remember the holy water is being made holy in the name of a god and some gods have higher material standards than others, so it depends on the deity and vocations and what have you as well. Procurement of requisite items for anything in game can be a simple PC declares to DM and costs are noted accounting operation, or it can be a game in and of itself.
I'm still not going to force Druids to kowtow to the Cleric/Paladin racketeering operation that folks on this thread are just fine with.
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I think ceremony grade powdered metal can be recognized as something that could require some proficiency to produce.
Why? What process of using a file to file down a piece of silver do you think there is that requires special skills?
Lots of variables. Yes "filing" is "simple". So isn't a sledgehammer, but if you wanted something demolished at a worksite, you're probably going to go with someone who actually has some background in demolition so that it's done right and the mess is minimized. It's not hard for my imagination to see if I wanted a substance intended for a ritual, I may want it to be done with a certain grade of care. Also, I want someone with a high level of competency to avoid adulterants/contaminants and a true fine grade to my powder. Sposta is right that in a pinch tap water will do for holy water (though not to get into a theological debate with their partner, but there's a lot more to consider to the reason for the water to be blessed, it's not like they bulk prepare it, nor do they stockpile transubstantiated eucharist, that'd be sacrilege) so 25 gp of silver is simply a barrier to prevent ritual over run and a PC holy watering a bathtub whenever they have a chance to stock up. It would be hard to treat the substance as "precious" in the game otherwise, the cost puts some world verisimilitude on it, making the point that holy water is actually a revered substance in the game world and is not a simple game utility for mechanical effect. Having further quality controls on the preparations would be another hurdle so that the practice isn't taken for granted (given the whole money is easily taken for granted in game thing). Remember the holy water is being made holy in the name of a god and some gods have higher material standards than others, so it depends on the deity and vocations and what have you as well. Procurement of requisite items for anything in game can be a simple PC declares to DM and costs are noted accounting operation, or it can be a game in and of itself.
I'm still not going to force Druids to kowtow to the Cleric/Paladin racketeering operation that folks on this thread are just fine with.
The Oath of the Ancients really does describe a Nature oriented variety of Paladin. Paladins are traditionally (not automatically in 5e, I know) religious holy orders serving the faith as a physical combatant force as the clerics traditionally (I know, 5e is different here too) are the spiritual branch of the faith. So why wouldn't druidic circles have similar?
I mean, mechanically and flavor, you're sort of right. Yes Oath of Ancients is the most compatible with Druids, though the Oath doesn't half to be, ... but again think of the logistics. Why would Druids rely on half-caster martial members of their Circle to produce a spell component? I mean Clerics and Paladins can produce it for their own purposes.
And no, I don't think Druidic Holy water equivalent would necessarily have the same anti-undead mechanics as the clerical type, but it might. There's a lot of homebrew out there on varieties of holy water or sacred fluids, you could probably do a whole book on them. And they'll just use a spellslot in my game to make regardless of the class's access to Ceremony :) (As I reread Ceremony, I begin to think it's a bit of a silly spell. I mean what's the difference between a ritual and a ceremony in the so called "plain language" standard? Weren't there consecration spells in prior editions?
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I think ceremony grade powdered metal can be recognized as something that could require some proficiency to produce.
Why? What process of using a file to file down a piece of silver do you think there is that requires special skills?
Lots of variables. Yes "filing" is "simple". So isn't a sledgehammer, but if you wanted something demolished at a worksite, you're probably going to go with someone who actually has some background in demolition so that it's done right and the mess is minimized.
Not sure what any of that has to do with the actual topic, but sure "so isn't sledgehammer" indeed. You do realize that there is quite the difference between *filing* and safely demolishing a house, don't you?
It's not hard for my imagination to see if I wanted a substance intended for a ritual, I may want it to be done with a certain grade of care.
Then could you please answer the question as to what kind of special skills are needed or why filing for fun and filing for spell components is so different?
Also, I want someone with a high level of competency to avoid adulterants/contaminants and a true fine grade to my powder.
Are you saying that only people with special training can use files with a finer grit? That really doesn't make any sense at all.
Sposta is right that in a pinch tap water will do for holy water (though not to get into a theological debate with their partner, but there's a lot more to consider to the reason for the water to be blessed, it's not like they bulk prepare it, nor do they stockpile transubstantiated eucharist, that'd be sacrilege) so 25 gp of silver is simply a barrier to prevent ritual over run and a PC holy watering a bathtub whenever they have a chance to stock up. It would be hard to treat the substance as "precious" in the game otherwise, the cost puts some world verisimilitude on it, making the point that holy water is actually a revered substance in the game world and is not a simple game utility for mechanical effect. Having further quality controls on the preparations would be another hurdle so that the practice isn't taken for granted (given the whole money is easily taken for granted in game thing). Remember the holy water is being made holy in the name of a god and some gods have higher material standards than others, so it depends on the deity and vocations and what have you as well. Procurement of requisite items for anything in game can be a simple PC declares to DM and costs are noted accounting operation, or it can be a game in and of itself.
Yet again, what in the process of filing to you think is so advanced and complicated that you need special training to do in a special way when filing for a spell component? And why only for this particular spell? If you use a copper wire to cast "message", does that particular piece of wire has to have been made in a special way? If you use guano for your fireball, does the bat have to eat something special before it takes a shit? It makes no sense from either an artisinal point of view or a game mechanics point of view to have demand special training to perform literally one of the simplest tasks in crafting.
If you're fishin' for a response that makes you feel like you've been given permission to allow the druids in your game to create their own holy water then:
1) It's a spell component of Regenerate that doesn't have a cost associated. Every druid is assumed to have access to holy water. Whether they create it themselves or obtain it through other means (which are glossed over), at the end of the day, your druids have the holy water they need when they need it. They can cast a level 7 spell afterall. Getting non-specific spell components is so trivial at that point, it's nearly unnecessary to discuss how.
2) What value or increase in gameplay occurs by not having your druids able to make their own holy water. If the answer is, "none" or close to it, then simply allow druids in your game to create their own holy water.
I think ceremony grade powdered metal can be recognized as something that could require some proficiency to produce.
Why? What process of using a file to file down a piece of silver do you think there is that requires special skills?
Lots of variables. Yes "filing" is "simple". So isn't a sledgehammer, but if you wanted something demolished at a worksite, you're probably going to go with someone who actually has some background in demolition so that it's done right and the mess is minimized.
Not sure what any of that has to do with the actual topic, but sure "so isn't sledgehammer" indeed. You do realize that there is quite the difference between *filing* and safely demolishing a house, don't you?
It's not hard for my imagination to see if I wanted a substance intended for a ritual, I may want it to be done with a certain grade of care.
Then could you please answer the question as to what kind of special skills are needed or why filing for fun and filing for spell components is so different?
Also, I want someone with a high level of competency to avoid adulterants/contaminants and a true fine grade to my powder.
Are you saying that only people with special training can use files with a finer grit? That really doesn't make any sense at all.
Sposta is right that in a pinch tap water will do for holy water (though not to get into a theological debate with their partner, but there's a lot more to consider to the reason for the water to be blessed, it's not like they bulk prepare it, nor do they stockpile transubstantiated eucharist, that'd be sacrilege) so 25 gp of silver is simply a barrier to prevent ritual over run and a PC holy watering a bathtub whenever they have a chance to stock up. It would be hard to treat the substance as "precious" in the game otherwise, the cost puts some world verisimilitude on it, making the point that holy water is actually a revered substance in the game world and is not a simple game utility for mechanical effect. Having further quality controls on the preparations would be another hurdle so that the practice isn't taken for granted (given the whole money is easily taken for granted in game thing). Remember the holy water is being made holy in the name of a god and some gods have higher material standards than others, so it depends on the deity and vocations and what have you as well. Procurement of requisite items for anything in game can be a simple PC declares to DM and costs are noted accounting operation, or it can be a game in and of itself.
Yet again, what in the process of filing to you think is so advanced and complicated that you need special training to do in a special way when filing for a spell component? And why only for this particular spell? If you use a copper wire to cast "message", does that particular piece of wire has to have been made in a special way? If you use guano for your fireball, does the bat have to eat something special before it takes a shit? It makes no sense from either an artisinal point of view or a game mechanics point of view to have demand special training to perform literally one of the simplest tasks in crafting.
Interestingly, I poked around a few other parts of the DnD pundit verse and forum melees and it seems there's what I'd call the reasonable consensus that the 25 gp of powdered silver is not 250 silver pieces ground down to powder (that would be 5 pounds of silver added to somewhere between a gallon (high end of what might be ruled flask capacity) to vial, that's going to make either a very expensive sludge of a solution that would give the most zealous colloidal silver fan pause, like the silver equivalent of Milk of Magnesia. Rather the 25 gp of silver is by many considered to be the cost of the powder ... which in terms of scale sounds pretty artisanal in valuation.
"But but that's bunk!" you and Wildbill may hiccup rhetorically demonstrating your non-proficiency capacity with an emory board and a Silver Eagle (yikes! talk about investing in an argument, and I kid about the emory board). The reason I mentioned sledgehammers and demolition by analogy was because both files and sledgehammers are both tools and I wanted something at hand to hit over your rhetorical head to recognize that there's folks who can use a tool well and there's the rest of us, the latter of whom may get the job done but not up to the quality and efficiency of a professional (plus I know a thing or too about sledgehammers for both demolition when looking for hidden goods as well as making breached entries through a door, I also know quite a few artists who know about using things like files with precious metals to put a fine, so to speak, point on it).
If I'm just filing something, like some oxidation off a surface, I may practice a lot less care (though still some care since I'm trying to fashion something precious) than I would if I was say filing the metal to add to paint, where rather than simple "off" or ground up, I'll actually want a consistently uniform product and to do with efficient discipline that requires craft the untrained just don't have.
And it's a fact that powders, like any substance, can be graded on a spectrum of everything from how fine, to amount of adulterants or impurities allowed to make it through the process, etc. Again, in Sposta's supposition some gods could be meh on quality and production and maybe even allow for substitutes, heck I'd even argue many. But since we're talking about imaginary divinities, that just means there are possibly as many gods who would be more prissy about the matter <rimshot>.
Again, these aspects of the game entertain me, and I find them entertaining to my players, so I push them a bit when we have time. You don't have to. But to be as perplexed as you or anyone else has been over my assertions goes beyond "I choose to leave rather than take this detail" and into the realms of the obtuse.
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Midnite let me clear up a misunderstanding on your part (or 3). I’m actually quite happy to have the actual amount of silver be much smaller or nonE at all and that it be a price for materials. That is a lot simpler. Actually I’m happy for the OP to work it out anyway they want although the idea of druids stepping into the realm of clerics by making Holy Water that then affects undead and fiends annoys me somewhat, that they make some sort of “spiritual water” of their own that can be used as a component for the spell I’m perfectly happy with. That’s one.
I am a trained geologist whose specialty before I started teaching was geochemistry - where we regularly reduce rocks including ores and metals to powders as part of the prep for analysis so we also have to be very careful about adulterants and quality. That’s 2.
further in HS and college I took classes in lapidary work and in silversmithing and worked at the trade as an amateur with an interest in being as skilled as I could. That’s 3
i know I run my mouth a lot since I got on here and yes I may well come across as a blowitall but I actually try to speak only about things I have expertise in - yes there are a lot of them I’ve lived an interesting and adventurous life.
Are there actual rules somewhere for how long and how much and how often it takes to create antitoxin or potions of healing? Getting the herbs needed shouldn’t be a problem if you have proficiency with nature and the kit you should be able to gather the herbs on your own. If there are rules where are they? Or do I just treat them as magic items and use those rules?
I don't run nitty-gritty games myself, and I've had no luck at all with trying to do a low magic setting. I'm forced to admit, D&D isn't a good system for that. When I use Undead at all, I consider them nothing but cannon fodder, and I don't bother to roll dice. I tell the players it takes a round or two and they can get on to the real fight.
It's perfectly fine if in your game Druids can't make Holy Water. I guess it's unnatural for Druids to do that, and having the Undead spring up naturally is also reasonable. Nature can be cruel, and Druids do have ways of their own of fighting them.
yes, you don’t have to turn/destroy undead or burn them with holy water to kill them. Clerics are the worldly warriors in the ongoing battles between the upper and lower planes and as such have special weapons for that combat. Druids (normally) aren’t part of that war. But they could be involved in planar balancing wars of their own (vs the Fey, the Shadow Realm, the Far Realm or others) so I have no problem with them being able to create a spiritual water of their own that has some effect on one or more of those groups - it’s homebrew until WOtC actually listens to me (😳🤪😂🤪) but I don’t see it as unbalancing if done well. Additionally if the did have their own I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked as well as holy water as the material component for the regenerate spell when cast by a Druid.
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Am I moving the goalposts? I don't know, but I've played silver powder as something you can't create simply with a file and a hunk of silver since forever and insofar as it came up, so have people who DMed for me.
As for how it's made: chemistry (typical processes today seem to come down to dissolving silver to silver chloride using acid and then reducing the silver chloride to obtain fine silver powder) - so alchemy in D&D.
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I don't particularly worry about readily available vs limited supply - DMs can largely restrict access to a lot of normally common things if the want, or make things that are usually rare and hard to come by easy to obtain. So does holy water need supply limitations via powdered silver? No more or less than Identify needs it via a 100gp pearl requirement, so here we are.
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My DM allowed me to find some druidic holy water from a sacred spring in the wilderness guarded by a dragon.
Nice
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Why? What process of using a file to file down a piece of silver do you think there is that requires special skills?
No, that’s why I let them do it with an herbalism kit, and 25gp worth of materials to maintain game balance.
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"that’s why I let them do it with an herbalism kit, and 25gp worth of materials to maintain game balance." It seems terribly expensive for what is essentially just a matter of time to hunt up the stuff you need, but you are correct, it's a game balance thing. Any cheaper, the Commoners would stockpile it, and few undead would make it out of the graveyard.
<Insert clever signature here>
A skilled hireling gets 2 gold per day if you hire one. An Herbalism Kit costs 5, and needs more herbs. It's hard to know how much herbs cost. You can create Antitoxins and Potions of Healing with them, those cost 50 gold each. So if a Commoner wants to learn how to use an Herbalism kit, there are rules in Xanathar's for training, that say it takes 10 weeks, and 25 gold per week, to learn how to use the Kit, 5 more to buy it, and whatever you want to make they pay for herbs on top of that, to make Holy Water once a week.
They spend ten weeks to learn how to use the Kit, that will cost them 20 gold, then they have to spend 255 gold, which will take them 128 weeks to earn near as I can figure, to make 50 gold per week. I rather doubt this is going to be a problem. That's some very expensive oil there. Unless you don't think Potions of Healing qualify as a sort of back-up consumable Cleric thing?
<Insert clever signature here>
Ummmm. Have you noticed that most graveyards don’t have any undead and you always seem to find commoners with 1-2 potions of healing for sale everywhere you go?
🤪😳😁😜
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Are there actual rules somewhere for how long and how much and how often it takes to create antitoxin or potions of healing? Getting the herbs needed shouldn’t be a problem if you have proficiency with nature and the kit you should be able to gather the herbs on your own. If there are rules where are they? Or do I just treat them as magic items and use those rules?
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Yup, in Xanathar’s:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/downtime-revisited#CraftinganItem
potion of healing costs 25gp and takes a full day to make. (I guesstimated 25gp and a Long Rest for Antitoxin.)
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I don't run nitty-gritty games myself, and I've had no luck at all with trying to do a low magic setting. I'm forced to admit, D&D isn't a good system for that. When I use Undead at all, I consider them nothing but cannon fodder, and I don't bother to roll dice. I tell the players it takes a round or two and they can get on to the real fight.
It's perfectly fine if in your game Druids can't make Holy Water. I guess it's unnatural for Druids to do that, and having the Undead spring up naturally is also reasonable. Nature can be cruel, and Druids do have ways of their own of fighting them.
<Insert clever signature here>
Lots of variables. Yes "filing" is "simple". So isn't a sledgehammer, but if you wanted something demolished at a worksite, you're probably going to go with someone who actually has some background in demolition so that it's done right and the mess is minimized. It's not hard for my imagination to see if I wanted a substance intended for a ritual, I may want it to be done with a certain grade of care. Also, I want someone with a high level of competency to avoid adulterants/contaminants and a true fine grade to my powder. Sposta is right that in a pinch tap water will do for holy water (though not to get into a theological debate with their partner, but there's a lot more to consider to the reason for the water to be blessed, it's not like they bulk prepare it, nor do they stockpile transubstantiated eucharist, that'd be sacrilege) so 25 gp of silver is simply a barrier to prevent ritual over run and a PC holy watering a bathtub whenever they have a chance to stock up. It would be hard to treat the substance as "precious" in the game otherwise, the cost puts some world verisimilitude on it, making the point that holy water is actually a revered substance in the game world and is not a simple game utility for mechanical effect. Having further quality controls on the preparations would be another hurdle so that the practice isn't taken for granted (given the whole money is easily taken for granted in game thing). Remember the holy water is being made holy in the name of a god and some gods have higher material standards than others, so it depends on the deity and vocations and what have you as well. Procurement of requisite items for anything in game can be a simple PC declares to DM and costs are noted accounting operation, or it can be a game in and of itself.
I'm still not going to force Druids to kowtow to the Cleric/Paladin racketeering operation that folks on this thread are just fine with.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I mean, mechanically and flavor, you're sort of right. Yes Oath of Ancients is the most compatible with Druids, though the Oath doesn't half to be, ... but again think of the logistics. Why would Druids rely on half-caster martial members of their Circle to produce a spell component? I mean Clerics and Paladins can produce it for their own purposes.
And no, I don't think Druidic Holy water equivalent would necessarily have the same anti-undead mechanics as the clerical type, but it might. There's a lot of homebrew out there on varieties of holy water or sacred fluids, you could probably do a whole book on them. And they'll just use a spellslot in my game to make regardless of the class's access to Ceremony :) (As I reread Ceremony, I begin to think it's a bit of a silly spell. I mean what's the difference between a ritual and a ceremony in the so called "plain language" standard? Weren't there consecration spells in prior editions?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Not sure what any of that has to do with the actual topic, but sure "so isn't sledgehammer" indeed. You do realize that there is quite the difference between *filing* and safely demolishing a house, don't you?
Then could you please answer the question as to what kind of special skills are needed or why filing for fun and filing for spell components is so different?
Are you saying that only people with special training can use files with a finer grit? That really doesn't make any sense at all.
Yet again, what in the process of filing to you think is so advanced and complicated that you need special training to do in a special way when filing for a spell component? And why only for this particular spell? If you use a copper wire to cast "message", does that particular piece of wire has to have been made in a special way? If you use guano for your fireball, does the bat have to eat something special before it takes a shit? It makes no sense from either an artisinal point of view or a game mechanics point of view to have demand special training to perform literally one of the simplest tasks in crafting.
To simply answer the question, no they can't.
If you're fishin' for a response that makes you feel like you've been given permission to allow the druids in your game to create their own holy water then:
1) It's a spell component of Regenerate that doesn't have a cost associated. Every druid is assumed to have access to holy water. Whether they create it themselves or obtain it through other means (which are glossed over), at the end of the day, your druids have the holy water they need when they need it. They can cast a level 7 spell afterall. Getting non-specific spell components is so trivial at that point, it's nearly unnecessary to discuss how.
2) What value or increase in gameplay occurs by not having your druids able to make their own holy water. If the answer is, "none" or close to it, then simply allow druids in your game to create their own holy water.
TLDR: It's your game. Do what you want.
All things Lich - DM tips, tricks, and other creative shenanigans
Interestingly, I poked around a few other parts of the DnD pundit verse and forum melees and it seems there's what I'd call the reasonable consensus that the 25 gp of powdered silver is not 250 silver pieces ground down to powder (that would be 5 pounds of silver added to somewhere between a gallon (high end of what might be ruled flask capacity) to vial, that's going to make either a very expensive sludge of a solution that would give the most zealous colloidal silver fan pause, like the silver equivalent of Milk of Magnesia. Rather the 25 gp of silver is by many considered to be the cost of the powder ... which in terms of scale sounds pretty artisanal in valuation.
"But but that's bunk!" you and Wildbill may hiccup rhetorically demonstrating your non-proficiency capacity with an emory board and a Silver Eagle (yikes! talk about investing in an argument, and I kid about the emory board). The reason I mentioned sledgehammers and demolition by analogy was because both files and sledgehammers are both tools and I wanted something at hand to hit over your rhetorical head to recognize that there's folks who can use a tool well and there's the rest of us, the latter of whom may get the job done but not up to the quality and efficiency of a professional (plus I know a thing or too about sledgehammers for both demolition when looking for hidden goods as well as making breached entries through a door, I also know quite a few artists who know about using things like files with precious metals to put a fine, so to speak, point on it).
If I'm just filing something, like some oxidation off a surface, I may practice a lot less care (though still some care since I'm trying to fashion something precious) than I would if I was say filing the metal to add to paint, where rather than simple "off" or ground up, I'll actually want a consistently uniform product and to do with efficient discipline that requires craft the untrained just don't have.
And it's a fact that powders, like any substance, can be graded on a spectrum of everything from how fine, to amount of adulterants or impurities allowed to make it through the process, etc. Again, in Sposta's supposition some gods could be meh on quality and production and maybe even allow for substitutes, heck I'd even argue many. But since we're talking about imaginary divinities, that just means there are possibly as many gods who would be more prissy about the matter <rimshot>.
Again, these aspects of the game entertain me, and I find them entertaining to my players, so I push them a bit when we have time. You don't have to. But to be as perplexed as you or anyone else has been over my assertions goes beyond "I choose to leave rather than take this detail" and into the realms of the obtuse.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Midnite let me clear up a misunderstanding on your part (or 3). I’m actually quite happy to have the actual amount of silver be much smaller or nonE at all and that it be a price for materials. That is a lot simpler. Actually I’m happy for the OP to work it out anyway they want although the idea of druids stepping into the realm of clerics by making Holy Water that then affects undead and fiends annoys me somewhat, that they make some sort of “spiritual water” of their own that can be used as a component for the spell I’m perfectly happy with. That’s one.
I am a trained geologist whose specialty before I started teaching was geochemistry - where we regularly reduce rocks including ores and metals to powders as part of the prep for analysis so we also have to be very careful about adulterants and quality. That’s 2.
further in HS and college I took classes in lapidary work and in silversmithing and worked at the trade as an amateur with an interest in being as skilled as I could. That’s 3
i know I run my mouth a lot since I got on here and yes I may well come across as a blowitall but I actually try to speak only about things I have expertise in - yes there are a lot of them I’ve lived an interesting and adventurous life.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Thank you! 😁👍
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
yes, you don’t have to turn/destroy undead or burn them with holy water to kill them. Clerics are the worldly warriors in the ongoing battles between the upper and lower planes and as such have special weapons for that combat. Druids (normally) aren’t part of that war. But they could be involved in planar balancing wars of their own (vs the Fey, the Shadow Realm, the Far Realm or others) so I have no problem with them being able to create a spiritual water of their own that has some effect on one or more of those groups - it’s homebrew until WOtC actually listens to me (😳🤪😂🤪) but I don’t see it as unbalancing if done well. Additionally if the did have their own I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked as well as holy water as the material component for the regenerate spell when cast by a Druid.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.