A question for super science geeks!

[HeavenShallBurn]

OK, but what does it all mean in practical terms for the searchers in the ruins? What happens when they work the materials of the ancients into new masterwork & magical items?

Aluminium=give it hardness and hit points like bronze and make it take double damage from fire(it's neither as hard nor as stiff as steel in alloyed forms and has a low melting point). But I would have armor made with it reduce the weight class of the armor and ACP penalties. Also aluminum is non-magnetic so it would be immune to magnetic related spell effects.

Titanium=treat it as mithral and add reduced damage from fire. (Note titanium is heavier than aluminum but much stronger and harder doesn't have the fatigue problems of aluminum and while it loose strength at high temperatures does not fail if not unladen until significantly higher temps) ALSO: mithral is often called "true silver" and Titanium is often found associated with silver and occurs in trace levels in many sources of silver ore.

Plastics=immune to metal or wood based spell effects, the stats would vary based on what was found but in most cases I'd say equivalent to bone. Does not corrode, rust monsters fear the sharpened PVC spear! Maybe a Buoyancy effect, lower density after all so reduced penalty to swim in it?

Asbestos=If fire were a significant danger of this post-apoc setting I can see parties surviving structures to find this. Something like Fire Resistance 20? and bonus on saves to avoid catching fire.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Nope, I'm thinking of titanium. It burns crazy in oxygen. However, like magnesium and aluminum, it can be difficult to light--unless you get it up to the sorts of temperatures at which you can forge it or cast it. Titanium, aluminum, and magnesium are all closely related elements, with very similar properties, including flammability.

Yes under the proper conditions Titanium burns very well, a titanium powder dispersed into a cloud and exposed to a sufficient heat source also explodes rather well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To answer Quartz:

An ELE occurred when the fantasy world was about as advanced as we are today.

Before the time of the campaign, an Illithid-induced storm of meteorites reduced the average surface civilization to the stone age.

Aboveground, most former centers of population are decimated: buildings, bridges and other infrastructure are in ruins. Very little of the printed word- including magical text- survives because much of that which wasn't destroyed in the fires after the meteorite storm was burned for fuel. Currently, most people are nomadic, but some smaller townships have begun to rise from the ashes. Think: The Postman (the book, if you've read it)- so those townships actually have a tech level slightly below a normal D&D campaign.

Belowground, certain cultures survived more intact, but not unscathed. Mountain Dwarves were wiped out, replaced by their creations, the Warforged-like Inheritors who have taken up the standard of Dwarven culture. A Drow-like fey race and other similar empires fared slightly better in their deeper holdings, but still lost many people in the catacalysm. The Illithids who started the swarm were forced to crash land, and are currently ruled by an amnesiac Elder Brain.

Only the aboleth remember everything...

Your typical PC will be illiterate. Sorcerers will outnumber Wizards just because of the dearth of learning material & teachers, but Wizards will be more flexible (players will have more freedom with spells since they are the new pioneers of magic- unique spell design will be a perk). Most centers of learning will be tied to some religion, only a few wizards and other scholarly types either survived the ELE or have risen up since then.

Any kind of written text will be immensely valuable, and if its magical, all the moreso.

Masonry and metalworking fared slightly better than academic fields, since the practitioners didn't rely as much on books as on practical demonstrations of knowledge and technique, but they lost nearly all of their advanced tools in the ELE. Still, they know books of science are out there.

Firearms exist as a pipe dream. There are stories about them, but in the decades since the ELE, nobody has found any texts regarding the science of gunpowder and the neccessary metalworking skills, and the few caches of working weapons and ammunition are jealously guarded secrets.

 

[Deset Gled]

Aluminum is not likely to last very long in a post apocolyptic world. It does very well against enzymes and water, and can survive okay against salt and brine, but it is lousy when it comes to caustics. When the first acid rain starts to fall, aluminum is going to dissolve like a sand castle. Aluminum that is hard anodized will last a lot longer, but the anodization process also means that it will be horrible to work with; it will be much less maleable, and not suitible for metalworking.

Metalworking is also a huge problem with titanium. Even if it does survive as a material, how exactly do you go about working with it? You can't melt it back down (because of the problems noted above), and there's no easy way to deal with it at normal temperatures.

Specialty alloys like Hastelloy are going to last a darn long time, with Inconell and Carpenter-20 being not far behind. These materials are going to be priceless because of their strength, resistance to chemicals, and ability to be worked. However, even today these materials are not common. Good luck hunting down enough to make a suit of armor in a post-apolyptic wasteland.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For stuff that is hard to work with, like anodized aluminum or titanium, the metalworking would be limited to either working shards of the stuff into other things- bezel mounting it to make lightweight studs or some such; filing & crushing it into a more useful shape- there are still things (like the odd golem) capable of exerting pressure with supernatural strength, for instance; or working with the shape of what you have- a hard-anodized aluminum pot could make a decent helm with padding.

And, of course, everything is easier with magic. The odd Inheritor forge-master could still have a secret up his sleeve gleaned from his former master.

I doubt any of the truly exotic stuff would exist in quantities great enough to do something with, but there may still be something left over and relatively intact from the pre-ELE days. A single surviving suit of military "power armor," for example, stripped of its electronics and servos (or their advanced magical equivalent) and enchanted as a suit of full-plate could be the equivalent of a relic or artifact.

 

[Quartz]

Two words for you to consider: salt mines. Anything in a salt mine will be preserved as long as the mine remains intact and there's something inert between it and the salt. Tractors, generators, what have you. Of course, the generators won't be much use without oil. And people have all sorts of flights of fancy in salt mines - there's even a church in one, all carved out of salt. Who knows what crazy survivors might have carved? Or been turned into? In general, mines will be storehouses of gear. If they haven't flooded.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Two words for you to consider: salt mines. Anything in a salt mine will be preserved as long as the mine remains intact and there's something inert between it and the salt.

Yup. That's the reason why we store radioactive stuff in salt domes, use wikipedia to learn more about them. However, this means that the pre-ELE people might have known it as well. Make sure to put nasty stuff in there, because we do (or are planning to do).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pbartender]

Yes under the proper conditions Titanium burns very well...

Technically speaking, under the proper conditions, anything burns very well.

 

[pawsplay]

Titanium resists rust better than steel, and doesn't pit the same way, but time and the elements will destroy titanium that isn't well cared for. You'll end with a bunch of white powder.

 

[pbd]

Nope, I'm thinking of titanium. It burns crazy in oxygen. However, like magnesium and aluminum, it can be difficult to light--unless you get it up to the sorts of temperatures at which you can forge it or cast it. Titanium, aluminum, and magnesium are all closely related elements, with very similar properties, including flammability.

To quote Wikipedia,

Actually, chemically speaking they are unrelated metallic elements from different groups that happen to all be flammable under certain conditions.