adamantine non-ferrous? [2003 thread]

[CRGreathouse]

Adamantite is the ore it's made from, but that doesn't mean they don't adds stuff in to help. Also the reason magnets work is that they move the electrons, if the electrons are anything like steel/iron ones it could work. I need some more help on why it's just the iron ones that are affected. Also It seems like magnets and rust in D&D effect all metals.

Looking at the rust dragon in the Draconomicon, I see that its breath weapon destroys any metal: "iron, steel, silver, gold, even mithral and adamantine".

 

[Dakhran the Dark]

Also a previous campaign I was in, adamantine was considered "True Iron" and Mithiril was "True Silver" so that keeps tripping me up in the current camapaign.

"What do you mean the mithril arrows bounce off the werewolves?"

Cool, glad to know I'm not the only GM that does this. I've got quite a list of True Earths in my game...

Anyway, I tend to treat adamantite as the raw ore of True Iron formed by exposure of iron deposits to emanations from the elemental plane of Earth. Any item forged from this ore must be mixed with mundane iron before it can be properly worked by anything less than a god, which brings about the descriptive of adamantine steel, which is steel with a significant content of True Iron, but not entirely made of it. Godforged True Iron has the properties of both adamantine and cold iron materials. And both adamantine and True Iron items are magnetic, but True Iron does not oxidize and cannot be affected by rust attacks.

Granted, this is bordering on house-rule territory, but even if you treat adamantine as a separate metal with its own properties, I'd think that if it were specifically immune to magnetism and rusting, considering the number of magical effects and creatures that can do one or both, they would have specifically mentioned these properties.

 

[Dakhran the Dark]

Obviously, DnD cosmology is not medieval. It might be amusing to come up with 'True' analogs to the other materials, however. Some thoughts:

Iron->Adamantine
Copper->???
Silver->Mithril
Tin->???
Gold->Traditionally, gold would be the most pure of materials already. If there was a desire for a gold-like material, Orichalcum sounds good (though historically inaccurate). As its primary property is resistance to corruption, it would probably have effects on magic.
Mercury->again, generally considered an exotic material already. Not particularly useful for armor regardless.
Lead->Lead is noted for weight (even though gold is denser) and general dullness. An anti-magical material might be lead.

If you can find an old copy lying around, I recommend that you check out "The Compleat Alchemist" by Pandevelopment, which joined with Wizards of the Coast before the book went out of print. It was a sourcebook created in the old days of AD&D that was meant to be compatible with any fantasy or medieval system (an old GM of mine used it in his Arcanum / Atlantean Trilogy campaign). It had descriptions of all sorts of potions, brews, elixirs, and essences that a skilled alchemist could create with time and money. I use an adaptation of the True Earths for my campaign, with mithril as True Silver, orichalcum as True Gold, adamantite as True Iron, and obdurium as True Copper (noted for its extreme hardness). I also use True Lead as an antimagic material that can be formed into heavy blunt weapons, but cannot hold an edge or point.

 

[Voadam]

Wait a minute: it was a spell, right? A magic spell?
(Is it really necessary to argue physical laws when they don't apply?)

It could very well be that the spell itself does affect "metals" because of their inherent "metalness", just in the way that an alchemist could conceivably transmute lead to gold, but not wood to gold. Just another interesting property based on where the element is on the periodic table... So, while mundane magnetism works normally, the *spell* Magnetism does something similar but wildly more interesting. (Magic should be interesting.)

This is a failing the spell description, more than anything else. It should have set its paramaters more clearly in the description. What level is this spell?

In this particular case, the DM ruled in a very safe way... but also pretty much rules out any creative uses for the spell--on both sides of the DM screen--in the future. Sure, picking up gold with a magnet may be impossible, but causing an engineer an aneurism because you picked his pocket from a distance can be lots of fun.

On the flip side, if you set the precedent that all metals inherently have some potential magnetic property, then you're making some sweeping changes there, too. For example: ship's compasses would be useless. They're typically housed in brass--not steel--for that very reason. That would cause all navigators aneurisms.

Actually, the spell is quite clear it only affects iron or steel. I just thought adamantine counted. It is a 3rd level spell from oriental adventures (a 3.0 sourcebook).

"This spell allows you to draw iron or steel objects to yourself by projecting a magnetic ray at any object within range. The magnetic ray draws objects to you with an effective Strength score of 30. Each round the spell lasts, you can target one item with a ranged touch attack."

So now to further destroy the engineers, by its own terms this spell will draw iron, but not nickel or cobalt. Ha! Take 1d4 damage and 2d6 nonlethal damage. This is a mind-affecting attack upon humanoids with the engineer subtype.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

IMHO, Adamantine is just a catch all mechanic for a superior material, whether it is a special ore or secret processing technology is really beside the point.

The joke is that Cold Iron is the "same thing" as Adamantine. Cold Iron hurting fey or other magical creatures is most likely a transformed memory of superior iron technology vanquishing barbarous and peculiar other cultures. Adamantine is just a reinvention of this mythology with a thin veneer of pseudoscience created for contemporary period comic books.

For purposes of D&D, it is completely up to the DM whether Adamantine is ferrous. If you ask me Adamantine should be make from found gifts from the Gods, i.e. ferrous meteorites.

 

[LongKnight]

If you can find an old copy lying around, I recommend that you check out "The Compleat Alchemist" by Pandevelopment, which joined with Wizards of the Coast before the book went out of print. It was a sourcebook created in the old days of AD&D that was meant to be compatible with any fantasy or medieval system (an old GM of mine used it in his Arcanum / Atlantean Trilogy campaign). It had descriptions of all sorts of potions, brews, elixirs, and essences that a skilled alchemist could create with time and money. I use an adaptation of the True Earths for my campaign, with mithril as True Silver, orichalcum as True Gold, adamantite as True Iron, and obdurium as True Copper (noted for its extreme hardness). I also use True Lead as an antimagic material that can be formed into heavy blunt weapons, but cannot hold an edge or point.

I also use "True Earth" (though 1st ed from bard games) but in that edition, it does not call Adamantine, that I can rememmber, true iron (and I thought true copper was ornithal?? But then again that last damage role went badly for me... I think the dice gave me a concusion... lol)

In both the systems I use (Arcanum and Talislanta), Adamant is used as an alloy in making magic items and weapons... so yes I let magneticmagic spells work on them. And like your idea of only alowing a god to work it in a pure form.
Actualy I usualy think of Adamant as a magical version of Titanium... Which would explain a lot, I think (ounch)

L8tr

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Though I think that its interesting to speculate about True Silver and similar materials, consider that there is already something along those lines in Magic of Faerun's special materials section.

At any rate, I'd stick with the wording of the spell (iron and steel) and the general principle that most RW metals are non-ferromagnetic, and thus rule that, unless a special material is specifically noted as containing a known ferromagnetic metal, it is not affected by the spell or similar effects.

 

[Alzrius]

In previous editions of the game, adamantine was the proper name for meteoric iron. Keeping that in mind, I'd say it is indeed a magnetic metal.

 

[Darklone]

Thread necromancy!

Titanium does not allow you to make superior swords (or the relevant alloys haven't been discovered yet - and they do look!).

I always considered adamantine as some sort of orichalkum from SR. Magical alloy and stuff. Simply because I liked the explanation of a secret recipe more than "you can dig it out of the ground but only the dwarves know how to shape it".

 

[frankthedm]

Img

Adamantite / Adamantine = Weapon quality diamond / steel alloy, so yes magnetic, yes ferrous. Super hard, with enough flex so it doesn’t shatter on impact. I dropped the ‘ignores hardness’ and changed many Adamantine DRs to weapon type DR.

Mithral = Weapon grade silver, non ferrousm, non rusting. The elves have always known how to deal with lycanthropes. I dropped Alchemic silver and retained the 3.0 PHB silver weapons. Due to lack of mass, most mithral bludgeoning weapons are penalized 2 points of damage. There is a way to ‘curse’ the mithral to have the normal weight of steel to remove this penalty.