Making diamonds

[zenten]

So the thaumaturgy difficulty can be based on the difficulty to do something mundanely.  People can now make diamonds, of good enough quality to sell for jewlery.  So what difficulty is that?  And as the technology improves and it gets easier to do this does that make doing so with thaumaturgy easier?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

With enough prep time and not getting in a hurry about finishing the spell in as few turns as possible, it could be done pretty easily.  Transforming one form of inanimate carbon, say Kingston charcoal, into another isn't going to be nearly as difficult as transforming a human into a wolf, for instance.  If for no other reason than you have no will opposing your own.

Which is fine if you want a bag of gems to scatter on the ground and cause one heck of a distraction.  If you want diamonds that're worth a damn though you're going to have to go for as pure a carbon source as is humanly possible to find.  The kind of diamonds you'd get out of common sources of carbon (without adding a goodly bit of complexity to filter out impurities) wouldn't be worth as much as even industrial grade diamonds.

[computerking]

It might be quite a bit easier to conjure diamonds, if you don't mind them melting into ectoplasm.

[Onkel Thorsen]

I doubt improvements in industrial production will change the difficulty for wizardly production.
The process ultimately doesn't change: heat and pressure for the non-magical transformation. The machinery becomes smaller, faster and more economical, but the physics and chemistry involved is the same.
You might say that Industry's skill level has become higher.

[Tsunami]

So the thaumaturgy difficulty can be based on the difficulty to do something mundanely.  People can now make diamonds, of good enough quality to sell for jewlery.  So what difficulty is that?  And as the technology improves and it gets easier to do this does that make doing so with thaumaturgy easier?

Go with the Value of a Diamond. Check out buying things and see what a Diamond costs. Then use that as your base difficulty for creating a Diamond with thaumaturgy. If you then want to create a really huge and really expensive diamond... well, cost will go up quick.
Really Big diamonds will be at Legendary and above.

That would be creating raw diamonds... if you want ones that are already shiny i'd add a few shifts on top of that.
To represent magical cutting and polishing if you will.

So a really big Diamond that's already shiny will start at 10-12 shifts... more can be added.
and that's assuming you have material that you can transform. If you want to conjure it... add another few shifts for duration.

Smaller diamond will be easier, just look at the buying things table for base difficulties.

[noclue]

Generating the kinds of heat and pressure to create even a small, gem quality diamond should be freakin' difficult.

[CaptFisher]

So since Thaumatugy can magic up a skill roll you don't otherwise have...wouldn't making a diamond just be a magic resources roll?  With a Superb resources roll I can afford a 100,000 dollar diamond. (that is quite the rock)  It seems as though that should be the difficulty of Magic-ing up one from coal.

Now turning said diamond into spendable currency might be another story in its own right...Pun intended

[zenten]

If you let someone magic up valuable things (and not just conjure something that looks like them) then PCs with thaumaturgy basically don't need the Resources skill anymore.

[CaptFisher]

If you let them use divination then they don't need investigation any more...law breaking aside mind magics can make social skills unnecessary...the real question is why we want a diamond...does the magic death ray need one...or are we trying to get a resources skill without paying for it. 
In his own home a Wizard could have all sorts of nice conjured stuff...that he would have to re-conjure if his pipes break...with all the trappings of resources. In that situation I would tell my player to lose the stuff or buy the resources, but if the story needed a diamond and the getting of the diamond wasn't a big part of the plot...I don't see why it would be so hard...if i needed a specific diamond there are lots of reasons a magic one wouldn't work.

if the problem is a player trying to nerf the system...that is a complexity issue of the player not the diamond

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Generating the kinds of heat and pressure to create even a small, gem quality diamond should be freakin' difficult.

There's no need to generate heat or pressure.  A simple mechanical rearranging of the carbon atoms into the proper crystal matrix would do fine.  I'd start with a base of a teleportation spell with an effect like the escape potion in SF and tweak the back end.

[noclue]

There's no need to generate heat or pressure.  A simple mechanical rearranging of the carbon atoms into the proper crystal matrix would do fine.  I'd start with a base of a teleportation spell with an effect like the escape potion in SF and tweak the back end.

A simple rearranging of carbon atoms in a proper crystal matrix? Using what elemental magic? You realize we don't even know what an atom looks like, but can only hypothesize what they look like.

[ARedthorn]

If you let someone magic up valuable things (and not just conjure something that looks like them) then PCs with thaumaturgy basically don't need the Resources skill anymore.

Sure they do... for one thing- magic transformations should probably still have to pay for longevity (which can get ritually expensive fast). Diamonds eventually decay back to raw carbon- normally over the course a century or two- but if you rush the formation, degradation will probably be a quicker problem too.

As for needing heat and pressure... magic's about taking short-cuts... and it's also a lot about instinct and visualization. Any given zoologist will recognize a werewolf as being wrong, because holding a perfect image of a wolf's anatomy in one's head to transform into is impossible... but get close enough, and the magic just sort of fills in the gaps to make sure it works close enough. I'd say the same goes here- you'd be able to create an authentic enough forgery to fool yourself (and by extension, anyone else who's not more of an expert than you are).

I'd almost suggest adding shifts for "authenticity"- ie, the difficulty for identifying the diamond as a forgery.

[zenten]

Sure they do... for one thing- magic transformations should probably still have to pay for longevity (which can get ritually expensive fast). Diamonds eventually decay back to raw carbon- normally over the course a century or two- but if you rush the formation, degradation will probably be a quicker problem too.

As for needing heat and pressure... magic's about taking short-cuts... and it's also a lot about instinct and visualization. Any given zoologist will recognize a werewolf as being wrong, because holding a perfect image of a wolf's anatomy in one's head to transform into is impossible... but get close enough, and the magic just sort of fills in the gaps to make sure it works close enough. I'd say the same goes here- you'd be able to create an authentic enough forgery to fool yourself (and by extension, anyone else who's not more of an expert than you are).

I'd almost suggest adding shifts for "authenticity"- ie, the difficulty for identifying the diamond as a forgery.

OK, that kind of stuff I can get behind.  If you're doing like a 30 complexity ritual to pull off what a diff 6 Resources roll could do then I think it's fine (but lower complexity if you want there to be a bunch of flaws that make it have a lower utility).  It's the idea that you can pull it off with a complexity 6 ritual that I have a problem with.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

A simple rearranging of carbon atoms in a proper crystal matrix? Using what elemental magic? You realize we don't even know what an atom looks like, but can only hypothesize what they look like.

Well, I was thinking thaumaturgy but it could fit under either earth because they're both rocks or spirit because of the teleportation method.  Remember, we do have precedent for taking something apart at the atomic level and putting it back together again with only Harry's skill in SF.

AS for knowing what carbon atoms look like, we do.  Granted it's not exactly a good picture but with magic the point isn't so much correctly knowing what a carbon atom looks like as much as it is believing you know what you're doing and that you should be doing it.  A little time spent with a chemistry textbook can take care of the former;  the latter is up to you.

[Delmorian]

Sounds to me like you are trying to create Geo-Alchemy. Big Earth magics, mixed with trasmorgrative spells, to let shifts in form be permanent. With the addition of polish and cut to the jem, I would put this about as difficult as building a sparrow from scratch. Not impossible, but not a snap.