mithril vs. silver

[kreynolds]

Hey, cool. We're in the house rules forum now.

I'm interested to see how they will handle Baatorian Green Steel officially in 3.5. It hasn’t been presented anywhere yet since the revision has it?

I don't forsee baatorian green steel becoming a new material that would be required to bypass a new type of DR. With that said, however, it wouldn't really surprise me if it becomes lumped in with another type of material that already can, and it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't do anything with it at all.

But, personally, I think it would be cool if baatorian green steel was expanded upon. Maybe it could be considered cold-iron, but only in regards to the DR of Demons. It _does_ come from Baator after all. I don't think such a thing would even warrant a further price increase for the material either.

Astral Driftmetal could be handled the same way. Perhaps it could be considered magical for the purposes of bypass DR X/magic in regards to creatures from or on the astral plane.

Now, I do indeed like your idea for mithral being able to bypass the DR of more powerful lycanthropes. Perhaps it would replace the silver requirement for any lycanthrope that has more than 10 or 15 hit die. (That's all a werewolf lord is, by the way).

Here's another material that most people forget about—obdurium. You could have that considered adamantine.

For each material beyond silver and adamantine, you could basically just allow it to be considered one of the aforementioned, but limit it to a very small group of creatures.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Ah, we are in house rules forum now

I really like the idea of treating Mithril "as if" silver for damage reduction, and I think I'll use it straight away. As it stands Mithril is used for armour (because of its lightness) but not for weapons. I think it would give my campaign a nice, flavourful reason for having mithril weapons.

Cheers

 

[coyote6]

What Plane Sailing said.

In addition, I was thinking of redoing the prices for weapons; the "500 gp per lb" can end up with some excessively large price tags, relative to what heavy & medium mithral armor costs. Use a set "+x000 gp" system, like the other materials do.

PS: As long as we're talking about house rules relating to silver -- I was thinking of rule 0ing the bit about alchemical silver doing -1 damage. It seems like a pointless downside -- none of the other materials have such downsides, and it's already an unreal substance, so I don't see the need for the "realism".

 

[LoneWolf23]

Mongoose Publishing's Quintessential Dwarf book had some exemples of exotic metals like Pure Silver (aka Elemental Silver), and Lustruous Silver, which is "glow-in-the-moonlight" silver.

I'd wager that Pure Silver would definetly count... Perhaps it could even give a bonus against creatures vulnerable to Silver.

 

[Technik4]

After doing some fairly extensive work on material costs (see earlier in this thread, page 1) I think the reason is because Alchemical Silver, for all that it such a wondrous process to do, is very very very cheap DR penetration.

Adamantine: 3,000 gp per weapon
Cold Iron: Double base cost of weapon, +2,000 gp when weapon is enchanted
Silver: +2/ammunition, +20/light weapon, +90/One-handed weapon, +180/Two-handed weapon

Silver and Cold Iron are about equal, until Cold Iron gets enchanted at which point it is MUCH more expensive. Silver doesnt cost anything extra, but retains the -1 damage.

PS: As long as we're talking about house rules relating to silver -- I was thinking of rule 0ing the bit about alchemical silver doing -1 damage. It seems like a pointless downside -- none of the other materials have such downsides, and it's already an unreal substance, so I don't see the need for the "realism".

 

[paulewaug]

The -1 damage is kind of odd, I guess they reason that Silver is a soft metal so it would make poor weapons, although in lots of movies (poor reference I know! but) Sterling Silver is enough to do the job.
I have no knowledge of how well Silver and Sterling silver hold up to each other with regards to retaining form, so I can't accurately comment on this.

Note that Alchemical silver:
"A (apparently) complex process involving metallurgy and alchemy can bond silver to a weapon made of steel..(blah blah blah)] and Alchemical silver has 10 hp/inch of thickness and hardness 8.

Now to me that brings up another thing "muddying the waters" so to speak in that Wotc went with "Alchemical Silver" (basically some form of "silver plating") rather than Actual silver weapons. (do you use "karats" to refer to how much silver would be in something as you would in referance to 14k 18k 24k gold?)

So do you make the item and then "Alchemically plate" it?
So is it 'dulling' the item?
Then what about an "a.s." coated Mace? If the A.S. is just a plating process it wouldn't change the maces properties. And does it's hp and hardness stack with the weapons? Kind of silly to have a HP and hardness rating for something that is (apparently) just a thin(?) coating. It seems to me to be complicating things.
(I admit I must be way over thinking this, but it looks like Wotc over thought it too, yet didn't think it through enough. Well I'll stop before I go into a full on rant! ha! obviously-for me silver is loosing it's luster!)

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Good point about the price of Mithral for Heavy Armor (ex.) and lbs./weapon not jiving too well!
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I guess economically it is better to think of a Enchanted Cold Iron weapon as being an ehcanted weapon paying the extra 2000gp to gain "bypass DR/Cold Iron, rather than paying the 2000gp extra to enchant a cold iron weapon in the first place.

Semantics I'm sure but-
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Re: Tehcnik4's statement:
The cost of a +1 weapon bonus is 2000gp and the enchanted cold iron weapon costs 2000gp (the same amount) more to "magic up."
So on one hand you are paying 2000gps for "half the effect" of a +1 enhance bonus, but on the other hand you need to ehance it less to compensate for the damage to even out overall. Although mine really is only a valid comparison as a "general use item" because the c.i. would not bypass the DR/silver so at that point I guess it's moot.
-but your right about alchemical silver being the chapest Dr bypass of it's type.
That makes me think again of it being "cool" to have mithral bypass DR/silver. Reason being "alchemical silver" is the "poorman's" DR bypass. The well financed creature killer would go for the Mithral! And skip the -1 damage. I guess that would be a good reason to keep the -1 dam if you allow Mithral to counts as Truesilver.
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kreynolds
Here's another material that most people forget about—obdurium. You could have that considered adamantine.

What is "obdurium?" I don't recall hearing of that before?

kreynolds
For each material beyond silver and adamantine, you could basically just allow it to be considered one of the aforementioned, but limit it to a very small group of creatures.

Yes, some things could just be different names for the same thing, maybe based on culture and region, etc. Or slightly different "alloys" (such as the difference of green gold yellow gold and red gold). Others could just share such similar properties that they would effectively be the same.
BTW thanks for your input!

(darn this is a long post! sorry-)

 

[kreynolds]

What is "obdurium?" I don't recall hearing of that before?

It's an ultra-hard metal from the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. Here's a blurb...

"Treat weapons and armor crafted from obdurium as adamantine, except for hardness (30), hit points (60 per inch of thickness, or twice as many hit points as a typical item), and price (twice the listed price for adamantine)."

It's great for walls, if you can afford it.

Others could just share such similar properties that they would effectively be the same.

That's pretty much what obdurium does, but I it can do that because it's so expensive. I'd avoid doing that to other materials. The reason I accounted for such limited DR bypassing capabilities for Baatorian Green Steel was so that a price increase wasn't warranted. Keeps it simple.

BTW thanks for your input!

No problem.

 

[magnas_veritas]

"Treat weapons and armor crafted from obdurium as adamantine, except for hardness (30), hit points (60 per inch of thickness, or twice as many hit points as a typical item), and price (twice the listed price for adamantine).

Hrm. Yeah, I don't see why it wouldn't breach DR n/adamantine, since the (admittedly 3.0) description you quote above says it's pretty much the same. If nothing else, it's the most durable substance in the game, and probably the best epic weapon material; once you're spending 1m+ gp on a sword, you want to make sure it's as tough as you can make it.

Brad

 

[Spatzimaus]

In addition, I was thinking of redoing the prices for weapons; the "500 gp per lb" can end up with some excessively large price tags, relative to what heavy & medium mithral armor costs. Use a set "+x000 gp" system, like the other materials do.

I know it's a bit of an old post, but I've been on vacation for a couple weeks so this is the first chance I've had to comment.

The whole "500 gp per pound" rule was silly, because items aren't made entirely of one material. Your spear may weight a lot, but most of that is the wooden shaft, not the adamantine spearhead. A glaive has a smaller blade than a longsword, but weighs more, so why should its metal cost more?

Here's the rule we used in my campaign. The concept was to price by the effectiveness of the item, since that tends to imply how much of a cutting/piercing edge the weapon has. Warning: it's in metric.

For weapons, to determine how much of a material is needed, do the following:
1> Take the average number of points of damage it does and round down. (1d4 = 2, 1d6 = 3, 1d8 = 4, 1d10 = 5, 2d4 = 5, 2d6 = 7).
2> For each point of threat range below 20, add 1. (19-20 = +1, 18-20 = +2)
3> For each point of threat multiplier above 2, add 1. (x3 = +1, x4 = +2)
4> If it's a double weapon, subtract 2.
5> If it's an exotic weapon, add 1.
Whatever number you have here, that's how many kilograms of metal the blacksmith needs, assuming no failures. If a metal has a weight multiplier (like mithral's 1/2), multiply that here.
So, a longsword needs 5 kg of metal, a bastard sword needs 7. A glaive only needs 6. All you need to do is come up with an appropriate price per kg and you're set.

They already knew this for armors; your breastplate may be mithral, but the listed weight isn't just that breastplate, it's also the leather padding, chain for certain areas, helmet, and so on. What's really important here isn't how much the weapon or armor weighs, what matters is how much of the expensive material was used in the item's creation.

Now, we still didn't like how they priced armors, so we used a similar system there; an armor uses 2 kg per point of AC, plus a size modifier (1 for less than Small, 2 for Small, 4 for Medium, 8 for Large, +4 for each above that)

 

[Dirigible]

I think we're overlooking the real issue here : what about tighmaevril ?



In one of my campaigns, a PC got a hold of a selenium-alloy sword. Silver weapons let you pierce a werewolf's skin... selenium made it blow up real good

I figure that as silver's mythological power is it's connection to the moon, a metal NAMED after the moon should be even better...