[RPG] Can the sapphire crushed as part of the Drawmij’s Instant Summons spell be mended and sold for the original price

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The spell Drawmij's instant summons states (emphasis mine):

[…]
Components: V, S, M (a sapphire worth 1,000 gp)
Duration: Until dispelled

You touch an object weighing 10 pounds or less whose longest dimension is 6 feet or less. The spell leaves an invisible mark on its surface and invisibly inscribes the name of the item on the sapphire you use as the material component. Each time you cast this spell, you must use a different sapphire.

At any time thereafter, you can use your action to speak the item’s name and crush the sapphire. […]

The spell does not explicitly state the sapphire is consumed, which makes me wonder whether the sapphire can be mended with the mending spell1 and then sold. Rules designer Jeremy Crawford replied to a tweet asking whether the sapphire is consumed, stating:

Yep. You crush it: "Each time you cast this spell, you must use a different sapphire" (PH 235).

However, Jeremy Crawford's tweets are not official rulings, and the quote he refers to only indicates that mended sapphire cannot be used as a component to cast Drawmij's instant summons.

Would it be possible to mend the sapphire and sell it to a shopkeeper? If so, would the sapphire still be worth 1000 gp, or would the price be less because it lost the ability to be used as a component in Drawmij's instant summons?


1 I had missed that this would require a casting of the mending spell for every single broken link within the gem. Unfortunately this means mending the gem takes a little longer — a sapphire broken into 1000 pieces will need to be mended 999 times, which will take about two 8-hour-work days. I'd say 500 gp per day remains worth the cost.

Best Answer

The question seems to boil down to the ability to mend a crushed gem. The Instant Summons spell is not relevant to what you're ultimately asking.

Mending states:

"... repairs a single break or tear in an object ..."

The examples are equally clear and simple. Crushing is not a single break or tear in an object.

If you went with an interpretation that one could use Mending for each break endured by the gem; have you seen a crushed gem? Natural crystalline structures shatter. One would spend the next few weeks, 1 minute at a time, trying to put it all back together.

It would appear that a Mending spell would not work on a crushed gem, either by a strict reading of the Mending spell or for practical reasons, regardless of why it was crushed.

p.s. What a shopkeeper offers for "used" gems is entirely up to the DM.


The D&D game designers might not have had this in mind, but sapphires are nearly as durable as diamonds. They are highly resistant to scratching, chipping and cracking. So, the only way to "break" it is to apply a lot of force to shatter it.

So, "crush" is an appropriate term for sapphires. The result being quite a lot of dust.

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