What are your rules on custom weapon materials?

[Puxido]

I was reading the ultimate equipment guide, and I went through the custom materials section. Some of the materials don't work in some of my campaign ideas, so I went on to try to create my own. Too my dismay, unlike the ultimate race guide, there was no section on building your own ideas, so I didn't know how to go about it without it being game breaking. I was wondering what you guys did to fix this dilemma?

How do you go about making your own custom weapon/armor materials?

 

[Celebrim]

How do you go about making your own custom weapon/armor materials?

You have to be really careful about introducing materials on top of enchantments. You don't want to stack abilities and produce something that is out of scale of system expectations. You also don't want to inadvertently remove class restrictions, for example by introducing non-metallic cloth with the properties of metal, and letting Wizards effectively wear magical plate armor.

So its best to keep the effect of custom materials rather subtle and not all that out of scale of simple masterwork items.

The best usage in my opinion for custom materials is increasing durability to the point that it is scaled to the potential threats higher level characters face. If you don't for example have a steel that is better than steel, then swords are going to be too easy to sunder when players are higher level. If your better than steel material only provided say +30 hit points and +30 hardness and otherwise was just like steel, it would still be quite worthwhile.

 

[gamerprinter]

I generally don't allow exotic materials for armor, unless its a less sophistocated or less effective armor, like SE Asian bamboo armor or something similiar. I agree with Celebrim that armors of materials that are better than mithral tend to break the game. If you made a special material armor available, there should be weapons of the same material or better able to defeat the armor be available as well. Again, I don't allow it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I work very hard to keep them in line with other exotic materials, and/or make their availability more challenging to the PCs.

For example, I had a 3.5Ed campaign in which glassteel was a bit better than Mithril...but it was harder to get. Not many casters had the necessary spellcasting ability...and they were very busy. And not necessarily interested selling their time and efforts to passing ragamuffins. So not only was it hard to find, prices were astronomical.

 

[garrowolf]

You could have regional differences based on smelting technologies and iron ore purity. What we think of as modern steel would destroy any ancient sword because they were not capable of smelting iron and making it a liquid until basically the industrial revolution. Most of the time in sword making the skill of the sword smith was mostly used to compensate for the poor quality of the local iron ore. That was the primary reason for folding steel, to beat out the impurities.

You don't need a lot of different materials. Just have different alloys in different locations.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I use a lot of additional materials, but it fits in my game (which has non-magical 'super-heavy' armor that grants non-magical, stacking deflection bonuses, SR, stuff like that) pretty well.

Arcanium: Magic resonant metal that's incredibly hard to refine and is rare as hell. (Formed where a volcano's caldera opened into the para-elemental plane of magma and some other stuff) It makes it cheaper and easier to enchant and holds enchantment better.

Etherium: A metal in the ethereal plane, you can find it in some mountain ranges, and growing in some of the trees in particularly misty/close to the ethereal plane forests.

Astralite: Metal from the astral plane.

Orichulum: Standard magical metal. Fun stuff.

Chromium Steel: Mixture of chrome and steel made usable only by alchemy.

Like I said, I've got about a dozen.

now, the REAL trick, is balancing it all out. You have to decide what stacks and what doesn't. Do you add a new type of enhancement bonus category? Do you meld it into another category?

You hand it to your players, and ask them to break it. It might not seem like a big deal that Etherium is almost as tough as steel with 1/4 of the weight, but then you get "Why can't I make a standard thickness platemail with the same weight? Solid etherium?" and decide what would happen if you did.

To be honest, it took YEARS to balance that stuff out, and even then, you can break it.

Which means you have to put your foot down on some stuff. You can make it so you can't do microthin layering on armors/weapons. That arcanium can't be 'folded' with etherium. Stuff like that.

Your best bet, hand it to your rules lawyers and power gamers and say "Try to break this, let me know the steps you took."

 

[Celebrim]

So, things you can do in my game:

Mithril: Pretty much by the RAW except that I retain the Tolkien trait that Mithril is 'true silver', meaning it counts as silver for the purposes of damage reduction.

Adamantium: 'True Iron', and counts as 'cold forged iron' for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction. Largely otherwise by the book except that DR is about halved in my game so its DR overcoming ability is also halved.

Orichalcum: 'True Gold'. At 5% heavier by volume than gold, is generally too heavy to use as equipment, and too expensive and rare to find in quantity. Usually found in parts per million with normal gold and other metals and must be magically separated from it. Gold or copper with even parts per thousand of orichalcum counts as a rich lode. Hard as adamantium but easier to work do to lower melting point and the fact it doesn't crack, but will not take an edge. Naturally magical and so even unenchanted over comes enchantment related DR. Objects can be magically plated with Orichalcum to make them largely immune to alchemical effects including acid and giving them minor SR and improving their ability to overcome magic related DR. Orichalcum plated metal armor confers minor SR, scry resistance and acid resistance, minor enhancements to freedom of action in some circumstances (web spell, for example), and is immune to rust. On the down side, it makes the armor interfere even more with spellcasting and plating adds weight. Even the plating is rare and expensive though, and is as showy as all heck. The Dwarven High Thane has the only orichalcum plated armor I'm aware of in my campaign world. That's how rare the stuff is. It's like vorpal swords. I know they are out there in theory, but good luck ever getting one as a PC.

Galvorn: 'True Tin'. Also from Tolkien. Galvorn is used to make highly pliant metal objects that can be bent without becoming hard. It's roughly the same weight and cost as Mithral but can't form rigid plates without alloying it and thereby losing some of its better qualities. You can weave cloth from galvorn, and although its more interfering with spell casting than normal gear, armor made from galvorn has basically no armor check penalties. It's also night black unlike mithril which pretty much glows. It's not possible to make heavy armor from galvorn though, and in general mithril is your better bet for most purposes. The goblins weave galvorn wires together to form deadly metal whips that can slash through steel. Small amounts of galvorn can be added to copper to create bronze with the properties of superior steel, but this is mostly just showing off.

Dragon Hide: Can be used to create superior hide or scale armor that provides energy resistance. Hide and scales from old dragons can be used to create superior plate with the same qualities.