A vial of holy water requires 25 gp worth of powdered silver to make by a cleric, but 50 coins equal a pound. Why so much silver? It seems both impractical and overpriced for something that only deals 2d6 damage if it hits a fiend or undead. I think I'm going to homebrew it so that it only takes 5 gold. One pound of powdered silver for a one-pound vial.
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Check out my blog for homebrew D&D stuff and other projects!
Holy Water costs 25gp per pound to buy. So the ritual to create it costs the same. In addition, the cost to procure metal is not the same when it's in different forms. It's powdered silver - a process has to turn it from solid metallic silver (or heck, mineralogical silver stuck in a rock) to a fine powder, and that requires knowledge, parts, and labour. 25gp worth of powdered silver may not weigh the same as 250 sp. Heck, 250 sp is not likely to be pure silver anyway.
It makes no sense for the creation of holy water to cost as much as the retail value of holy water. There should be a benefit to creating your own items rather than buying them, otherwise crafting is stupid and useless.
It makes no sense for the creation of holy water to cost as much as the retail value of holy water. There should be a benefit to creating your own items rather than buying them, otherwise crafting is stupid and useless.
Unless you’re the only guy in town that can make it...
It makes no sense for the creation of holy water to cost as much as the retail value of holy water. There should be a benefit to creating your own items rather than buying them, otherwise crafting is stupid and useless.
Since any cleric can make holy water themselves, I figure that the churches sell it at cost as a loss leader. Get the people in the door, upsell them on donations to the church, helping with maintenance, killing pesky monsters, etc.
2D6 Radiant damage can be pretty damn good to just have constantly and use at a range of up to 20 feet, and being able to make your own for 5GP would honestly be a way for Clerics to carry massive amounts and to have the entire party suddenly be able to deal Radiant damage all the time to Undead and Fiends. Also, the cost is a throwback to 3.0 where holy water was sold for 25GP exactly BECAUSE it was being sold at what it cost to make by most churches because they had an interest in making it easy to fight the Undead.
If you are the only guy in town who could make it you would charge way more than the creation cost for it. But as it stands, there is no way a shop would stay in business if it is selling things from the same cost it takes to create them.
The 25 gp for holy water as retail value kind of just assumes that the time and labor spent to make it is valueless if powdered silver to manufacture said holy water costs the same. I can understand why the devs wrote in a 25 gp cost for materials to discourage players from throwing holy water vials at any and all undead, but the retail value should be 35 gp minimum.
It's pretty clear that, along with its various merits, 5th edition also has some downsides. The difficulty and expense of crafting using printed rules is one of them.
That's why most shops don't carry them in the world. Its a specalist item to say the least. They are sold in almost any Good alignment church at cost because: A - Commoners and normal folk need quick and easy ways to dispose of undead without getting any poorer. B - Chruches take in tithes and other donations, so its not exactly dirt poor plus if the people are being protected they are more like to donate to "the God that's saving them"
Also I feel like Holy Water isn't just something a normal shop could round up anyway, given that the person would have to know the special ritual and also be blessed or ordained themselves to have the power to give it its properties and it not just be a sack of water with silver bits in it. If you take into account that even for players its a 1 hour ritual AND the cost of materials, normal shops would be selling them for probably 100GP each. I guess if a PC wanted to start a store in a town selling them for more they could, but if there's a church nearby they can just get it from them.
That's why most shops don't carry them in the world. Its a specalist item to say the least. They are sold in almost any Good alignment church at cost because: A - Commoners and normal folk need quick and easy ways to dispose of undead without getting any poorer. B - Chruches take in tithes and other donations, so its not exactly dirt poor plus if the people are being protected they are more like to donate to "the God that's saving them"
Also I feel like Holy Water isn't just something a normal shop could round up anyway, given that the person would have to know the special ritual and also be blessed or ordained themselves to have the power to give it its properties and it not just be a sack of water with silver bits in it. If you take into account that even for players its a 1 hour ritual AND the cost of materials, normal shops would be selling them for probably 100GP each. I guess if a PC wanted to start a store in a town selling them for more they could, but if there's a church nearby they can just get it from them.
This argument has merit in a campaign setting where undead and fiends are quite common. That said, knowing how the Church operates in the real world, I am not inclined to believe that all churches in the D&D world would be so generous if not for a matter of necessity. Let's also not ignore that having holy water available for buying at 25 gp and having the cost of making it also creates a Disincentive to players who might want to craft it. Is this purely a coincidence?
This argument has merit in a campaign setting where undead and fiends are quite common. That said, knowing how the Church operates in the real world, I am not inclined to believe that all churches in the D&D world would be so generous if not for a matter of necessity. Let's also not ignore that having holy water available for buying at 25 gp and having the cost of making it also creates a Disincentive to players who might want to craft it. Is this purely a coincidence?
Not every party has a Cleric or Paladin, and one willing to pick up Ceremony.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
This is the crux of my argument. It should be cheaper to craft things than to buy things, because you are absorbing the cost of the labor. Things like weapons and armor should be significantly cheaper to make than to buy because the majority of the cost is associated with the artisan who crafts them.
I'm not arguing that holy water should only be sold at astronomical prices. Essentially, what we're debating are 2 things:
A) Do markets for goods, esp. those pertinent to the typical adventurer, make sense in the D&D world?
B) How do the crafting rules as written either help or hinder players who enjoy crafting items? Holy water is just one of many possible examples.
Unless there have been any rules or history to state otherwise, in 3.5 it was established as such which is why the cost for materials remains the same in 5e. While the tooltip has been updated to include Fiend, there is nothing else stated on the cost as far as purchasing from churches. If you as a DM were to decide to alter the price thats one thing, but I have seen no other places with an official update to the cost beyond material at churches:
"Holy Water
Holy water damages undead creatures and evil outsiders almost as if it were acid. A flask of holy water can be thrown as a splash weapon.
Treat this attack as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet. A flask breaks if thrown against the body of a corporeal creature, but to use it against an incorporeal creature, you must open the flask and pour the holy water out onto the target. Thus, you can douse an incorporeal creature with holy water only if you are adjacent to it. Doing so is a ranged touch attack that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
A direct hit by a flask of holy water deals 2d4 points of damage to an undead creature or an evil outsider. Each such creature within 5 feet of the point where the flask hits takes 1 point of damage from the splash.
Temples to good deities sell holy water at cost (making no profit)."
This is the crux of my argument. It should be cheaper to craft things than to buy things, because you are absorbing the cost of the labor. Things like weapons and armor should be significantly cheaper to make than to buy because the majority of the cost is associated with the artisan who crafts them.
This is not often the case for specialized goods. Many people buy things because, for them, it would not be cheaper or easier to make it than to simply buy it. If you are wasting time and energy or materials doing the construction or production in a less efficient manner as a competing source is also producing those same goods, then it might very well be cheaper to buy the finished goods than to attempt to build it yourself.
If you're having a hard time with that, or if it fights your intuition, just think: That's why we buy things from other people instead of handcraft every single thing we ever own.
You can buy things far, far, far cheaper than you can make them yourself. Especially when the tools and instruments or facilities required to manufacture them are highly specialized. Build me a modern era fully competitive to the market computer... from scratch. No, not from pre-assembled and packaged store bought components, I mean make those too. Just raw material goods. Could you even do it? Could you do it for less than the cost of one on the market?
We can even tackle your argument from another angle. One blacksmith might mine, refine, smelt and craft weapons. Another might simply mine, refine and smelt. You know how to craft weapons from smelted iron and figure you can save some coinage by making the final goods yourself. BUT what if that first guy is just better at his job than the 2nd one? He can more efficiently produce the final goods than the second guy can produce the smelted stuff? Then, again, it becomes a cheaper proposition to buy the finished good than the intermediary materials.
And, again another point to consider if a shifting market. Say the thousand year war finally dies down and weapons are all over the place... but demand for quality steel remains for reconstruction. No one needs an eight greatsword, and their prices will plummet to the point where people are actively smelting them down for raw metals again. In this situation you'll find the finished goods are again cheaper or at cost to the materials.
Anyway, there are millions of reasons a finished product could be cheaper than or equal to the cost of materials. Yes, as a general rule labor is a portion of the cost. But the number of circumstances where people take quality materials and produce a product of lesser value is also pretty often. Simple mistakes happen. Imagine you take some top shelf quality wood and set out to make some amazing table and chair sets. But let's also say your sense of fashion is weird and no one wants the bizarre and poorly crafted furniture you've produced. Now what? Demand payment of more than the material cost even though an objective look at the garbage you created reveals that it simply isn't worth the weight in wood from which it was crafted?
Anyway, I digress. The stated reason the good-aligned churches makes Holy Water, specifically, available at-cost is as a community service. They seek to propagate it out to as many hands as people brave enough to use it. The use of holy water fighting undead and fiends is aligned with the church's mission. It is more like a beach-cleanup brand charity handing out bags and trash receptacles for cheap to areas that need them. That's literally their mission and helping people achieve it is the goal. They're not a business and the goal isn't to amass wealth, it is to fight off the forces of evil and protect mankind.
A vial of holy water requires 25 gp worth of powdered silver to make by a cleric, but 50 coins equal a pound. Why so much silver? It seems both impractical and overpriced for something that only deals 2d6 damage if it hits a fiend or undead. I think I'm going to homebrew it so that it only takes 5 gold. One pound of powdered silver for a one-pound vial.
Check out my blog for homebrew D&D stuff and other projects!
Holy Water costs 25gp per pound to buy. So the ritual to create it costs the same.
In addition, the cost to procure metal is not the same when it's in different forms. It's powdered silver - a process has to turn it from solid metallic silver (or heck, mineralogical silver stuck in a rock) to a fine powder, and that requires knowledge, parts, and labour. 25gp worth of powdered silver may not weigh the same as 250 sp. Heck, 250 sp is not likely to be pure silver anyway.
Because magic...
It makes no sense for the creation of holy water to cost as much as the retail value of holy water. There should be a benefit to creating your own items rather than buying them, otherwise crafting is stupid and useless.
Unless you’re the only guy in town that can make it...
Since any cleric can make holy water themselves, I figure that the churches sell it at cost as a loss leader. Get the people in the door, upsell them on donations to the church, helping with maintenance, killing pesky monsters, etc.
Agreed, beneficial churches aren't for profit businesses.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Wysperra with the hot take, apparently isn't familiar with my Free Market Domain homebrew for clerics :)
"Not all those who wander are lost"
25gp for holy water?!
The church knows the real secret to cost savings...
Boil the hell out of it! 🤣
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2D6 Radiant damage can be pretty damn good to just have constantly and use at a range of up to 20 feet, and being able to make your own for 5GP would honestly be a way for Clerics to carry massive amounts and to have the entire party suddenly be able to deal Radiant damage all the time to Undead and Fiends.
Also, the cost is a throwback to 3.0 where holy water was sold for 25GP exactly BECAUSE it was being sold at what it cost to make by most churches because they had an interest in making it easy to fight the Undead.
If you are the only guy in town who could make it you would charge way more than the creation cost for it. But as it stands, there is no way a shop would stay in business if it is selling things from the same cost it takes to create them.
The 25 gp for holy water as retail value kind of just assumes that the time and labor spent to make it is valueless if powdered silver to manufacture said holy water costs the same. I can understand why the devs wrote in a 25 gp cost for materials to discourage players from throwing holy water vials at any and all undead, but the retail value should be 35 gp minimum.
It's pretty clear that, along with its various merits, 5th edition also has some downsides. The difficulty and expense of crafting using printed rules is one of them.
That's why most shops don't carry them in the world. Its a specalist item to say the least. They are sold in almost any Good alignment church at cost because:
A - Commoners and normal folk need quick and easy ways to dispose of undead without getting any poorer.
B - Chruches take in tithes and other donations, so its not exactly dirt poor plus if the people are being protected they are more like to donate to "the God that's saving them"
Also I feel like Holy Water isn't just something a normal shop could round up anyway, given that the person would have to know the special ritual and also be blessed or ordained themselves to have the power to give it its properties and it not just be a sack of water with silver bits in it. If you take into account that even for players its a 1 hour ritual AND the cost of materials, normal shops would be selling them for probably 100GP each. I guess if a PC wanted to start a store in a town selling them for more they could, but if there's a church nearby they can just get it from them.
This argument has merit in a campaign setting where undead and fiends are quite common. That said, knowing how the Church operates in the real world, I am not inclined to believe that all churches in the D&D world would be so generous if not for a matter of necessity. Let's also not ignore that having holy water available for buying at 25 gp and having the cost of making it also creates a Disincentive to players who might want to craft it. Is this purely a coincidence?
Not every party has a Cleric or Paladin, and one willing to pick up Ceremony.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I'm not arguing that holy water should only be sold at astronomical prices. Essentially, what we're debating are 2 things:
A) Do markets for goods, esp. those pertinent to the typical adventurer, make sense in the D&D world?
B) How do the crafting rules as written either help or hinder players who enjoy crafting items? Holy water is just one of many possible examples.
This is the crux of my argument. It should be cheaper to craft things than to buy things, because you are absorbing the cost of the labor. Things like weapons and armor should be significantly cheaper to make than to buy because the majority of the cost is associated with the artisan who crafts them.
They also probably wouldn't be as good as the same thing produced by someone who does it full-time.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Unless there have been any rules or history to state otherwise, in 3.5 it was established as such which is why the cost for materials remains the same in 5e. While the tooltip has been updated to include Fiend, there is nothing else stated on the cost as far as purchasing from churches. If you as a DM were to decide to alter the price thats one thing, but I have seen no other places with an official update to the cost beyond material at churches:
"Holy Water
Holy water damages undead creatures and evil outsiders almost as if it were acid. A flask of holy water can be thrown as a splash weapon.
Treat this attack as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet. A flask breaks if thrown against the body of a corporeal creature, but to use it against an incorporeal creature, you must open the flask and pour the holy water out onto the target. Thus, you can douse an incorporeal creature with holy water only if you are adjacent to it. Doing so is a ranged touch attack that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
A direct hit by a flask of holy water deals 2d4 points of damage to an undead creature or an evil outsider. Each such creature within 5 feet of the point where the flask hits takes 1 point of damage from the splash.
Temples to good deities sell holy water at cost (making no profit)."
This is not often the case for specialized goods. Many people buy things because, for them, it would not be cheaper or easier to make it than to simply buy it. If you are wasting time and energy or materials doing the construction or production in a less efficient manner as a competing source is also producing those same goods, then it might very well be cheaper to buy the finished goods than to attempt to build it yourself.
If you're having a hard time with that, or if it fights your intuition, just think: That's why we buy things from other people instead of handcraft every single thing we ever own.
You can buy things far, far, far cheaper than you can make them yourself. Especially when the tools and instruments or facilities required to manufacture them are highly specialized. Build me a modern era fully competitive to the market computer... from scratch. No, not from pre-assembled and packaged store bought components, I mean make those too. Just raw material goods. Could you even do it? Could you do it for less than the cost of one on the market?
We can even tackle your argument from another angle. One blacksmith might mine, refine, smelt and craft weapons. Another might simply mine, refine and smelt. You know how to craft weapons from smelted iron and figure you can save some coinage by making the final goods yourself. BUT what if that first guy is just better at his job than the 2nd one? He can more efficiently produce the final goods than the second guy can produce the smelted stuff? Then, again, it becomes a cheaper proposition to buy the finished good than the intermediary materials.
And, again another point to consider if a shifting market. Say the thousand year war finally dies down and weapons are all over the place... but demand for quality steel remains for reconstruction. No one needs an eight greatsword, and their prices will plummet to the point where people are actively smelting them down for raw metals again. In this situation you'll find the finished goods are again cheaper or at cost to the materials.
Anyway, there are millions of reasons a finished product could be cheaper than or equal to the cost of materials. Yes, as a general rule labor is a portion of the cost. But the number of circumstances where people take quality materials and produce a product of lesser value is also pretty often. Simple mistakes happen. Imagine you take some top shelf quality wood and set out to make some amazing table and chair sets. But let's also say your sense of fashion is weird and no one wants the bizarre and poorly crafted furniture you've produced. Now what? Demand payment of more than the material cost even though an objective look at the garbage you created reveals that it simply isn't worth the weight in wood from which it was crafted?
Anyway, I digress. The stated reason the good-aligned churches makes Holy Water, specifically, available at-cost is as a community service. They seek to propagate it out to as many hands as people brave enough to use it. The use of holy water fighting undead and fiends is aligned with the church's mission. It is more like a beach-cleanup brand charity handing out bags and trash receptacles for cheap to areas that need them. That's literally their mission and helping people achieve it is the goal. They're not a business and the goal isn't to amass wealth, it is to fight off the forces of evil and protect mankind.
I got quotes!