D&D 3E/3.5 [semi-OT] [semi-3.5] What is "Cold Iron?"

[green slime]

So this RL world consists of nothing but level 1 commoners??? Where are our 20th level Commoners that laugh at x2 Criticals from Steak Knives?

Who says the fantastic isn't involved in the creation of Cold Iron? The whole caboodle is fantastic. The entire concept of "DnD" is fantastic.

Many of the rules aren't even remotely realistic, but in general, yes they do attempt to simulate reality, in a very crude fashion. I'm suggesting that if you can't accept the fact that something called Cold Iron exists in the game, and that it is particularly deadly to certain beasties, then nerf it.

But I personally think you are turning your back on a cool concept, in a fantasy role playing game, for a silly reason: realism, and that at a level of detail that has no real bearing on the adventurers' lives.

By contrast, according to the DMG rules, I have sustained 15d6 damage at 100 foot of depth after 15 minutes of dive time, so I can surely shrug off most knife wounds... OR maybe I just have an incredible Fortitude save... making 15 successful Fort saves over a period of 15 minutes, from DC 15 to DC 29, (DMG page 86 water pressure damage)...

We are ALL aware of laws of science, OR if we feel the need, know where to turn to find out this information. The question is, why bring it up here and force this "In RL, it wouldn't work, thus this stinks" attitude. In a fantastic DnD world Rocs and Giants exist, without the aid of magic. So to do gargantuan insects, and the list just goes on. Are these more credible than some ill-defined Cold Iron metal substance that is great for carving up fey?

 

[Bugaboo]

Any here read Julian May's Pliocene Epoch series? The Tanu (and maybe Firvulag?) had problems with certain metals when they contacted them. ... Made for a wonderful pseudo-origin of sidhe myths thousands of years later.

 

[jeffwik]

The thing is, though, green slime, is that cold iron is not undefined. Cold iron is normal workaday iron. If we were talking about Zwitterium alloy or something I'd agree with you.

It's like saying, ah, I read that in D&D 3.5 there's a mention of unbleached wool, what is unbleached wool? And then someone says it's wool that's harvested from the rarest princes of the sheep, spun by fairies trained in the court of Oberon and Titania. And that if unbleached wool is ever immersed in water it loses all its magical powers. And that it costs way more than normal wool, because the ultrarare special sheep have to be fed truffles or else they produce normal wool instead of unbleached wool...
When really unbleached wool is just wool that hasn't been bleached.

 

[Hypersmurf]

It's like saying, ah, I read that in D&D 3.5 there's a mention of unbleached wool, what is unbleached wool? And then someone says it's wool that's harvested from the rarest princes of the sheep, spun by fairies trained in the court of Oberon and Titania. And that if unbleached wool is ever immersed in water it loses all its magical powers. And that it costs way more than normal wool, because the ultrarare special sheep have to be fed truffles or else they produce normal wool instead of unbleached wool...
When really unbleached wool is just wool that hasn't been bleached.

"Hmmm... Lisa, I will give you one hundred gold pieces for your unbleached wool!"

-Hyp.

 

[green slime]

Well, rather belatedly I look up "Iron" in an online encyclopedia:

From here

2. Nomenclature.—Until about 1860 there were only three important classes of iron—wrought iron, steel and cast iron.

The essential characteristic of wrought iron was its nearly complete freedom from carbon; that of steel was its moderate carbon-content (say between 030 and 22 %), which, though great enough to confer the property’of being rendered intensely hard and brittle by sudden cooling, yet was not so great but that the metal was malleable when cooled slowly; while that of cast iron was that it contained so much carbon as to be very brittle whether cooled quickly or slowly. This classification was based on carbon-content, or on the properties which it gave. Beyond this, wrought iron, and certain classes of steel which then were important, necessarily contained much slag or” cinder,” because they were made by welding together pasty particles of metal in a bath of slag, without subsequent fusion. , But the best class of steel, crucible steel, was freed from slag by fusion in crucibles; hence its name, “ cast steel.”

For those really interested in this subject:

from the same source
Between 1860 and 1870 the invention of the Bessemer and open-hearth processes introduced a new class of iron to-day called “ mild “ or “lowcarbon steel,” which lacked tho essential property of steel, the hardening power, yet differed from the existing forms of wrought iron in freedom from slag, and from cast iron in being very malleable. Logically it was wrought iron, the essence of which was that it was (I) “iron” as distinguished from steel, and (2) malleable, i.e. capable of being “wrought.” This name did not please those interested in the new product, because existing wrought iron was a low-priced material. Instead of inventing a wholly new name for the wholly new product, they appropriated the name “steel,” because this was associated in the public mind with superiority. This they did with the excuse that the new product resembled one class of steel-—cast steel—in being free from slag; and, after a period of protest, all acquiesced in calling it “ steel,” which is now its firmly established name. The old varieties of wrought iron, steel and cast iron preserve their old names; the new class is called steel by main force. As a result, certain varieties, such as blister steel, are called “steel” solely because they have the hardening power, and others, such as low-carbon steel, solely because they are free from slag. But the former lack the essential quality, slaglessness, which makes the latter steel, and the latter lack the essential quality, the hardening power, which makes the former steel. “Steel” has come gradually to stand rather for excellence than for any specific quality. These anomalies, however confusing to the general reader, in fact cause no appreciable trouble to important makers or users of iron and steel, beyond forming an occasional side-issue in litigation.

From the above and what people on this board have been saying I assume there is a connection being made between "cold iron" and "wrought iron" of which I was not altogether aware of, as a layman. Perhaps I am merely being thick headed, but I see no references to cold iron in my searches on the web, other than this poem.

I'll not subscribe to "cold iron" being merely "wrought iron" on the basis of one poem. If I could find other references that refer to a iron as "cold" I'd be more happy to go along with this concept.

I did find some further interesting readinghere

Another means of producing wrought iron raw material from cast iron was used in the Han and somewhat later times. Whereas in the fining process the iron is heated so hot that it is in a pasty state and can be stirred about, it is also possible to use a lower temperature and decarburize the iron in the solid state. Cast iron from the blast furnace is cast into thin plates, typically on the order of 10 x 20 cm and 0.4 cm thick (e.g. KGXB 1978.1: 21, pl. 2.4). These are heat-treated, presumably in a kiln, in an oxidizing atmosphere, perhaps at a temperature of 750-850deg.C for a period of days. This process removes the carbon and results in wrought-iron plates which can be easily formed by the smith by either hot or cold hammering. This process was probably less fuel-efficient than fining, but may have been more labour-efficient and, perhaps most important, lent itself to large-scale production by unskilled labourers with quality control by sampling rather than piece-by-piece testing. We shall see below certain artefacts found in Korea and Japan which resemble these Chinese artefacts and may be imports from the large-scale iron industry of Han China.

Which refers to cold hammering of wrought iron, but apart from that...and until WotC explains what exactly it means by "cold iron", Vaxalon's explanation is just as good as anybody elses!

 

[Agback]

G'day

WotC are of course free to decide that in the D&D universe 'cold iron' is something special. And DMs are of course free to make whatever rulings they like about their worlds. Until they do (if they do) we must suppose that 'cold iron' means the same thing in D&D as it does in 'ordinary' poetical English. And in everyday English 'cold iron' is contrasted not with any other sort of iron but with hot lead. For example, read the poem Cold Iron by Rudyard Kipling.

That's right, folks. "Cold iron" just means "iron".

As for the suggestion that cold iron must be manufactured entirely without the use of heat, that would definitely require magic. Iron ores are not iron mixed with impurities, they are chemical compounds such as iron oxide. No amount of mechanical handling of any sort whatever will turn them into iron. You positively need high temperatures and a reducing environment.

Metallic iron does occur in small quantities: for example in some meteorites, and as a spongy mass that precipitates ought of the water in some anoxic bogs. You might just manage to shape meteoric iron without magic. But you would never weld bog iron into a solid mass without heat.

As for a contrast with cast iron and steel, in mediaeval technologies that amounts to no contrast at all. The Chinese have had cast iron since the first century, but it was unknown in Europe until the 17th century. And carbon was deliberately alloyed with iron to make that steel called 'wootz' or 'bulat' in mediaeval India, but steel was not made in Europe until the invention of the Bessemer Process (except that smiths inadvertently and without knowing what they were doing made a little mild steel on the surface of their workpiece whenever they heated iron in a forge). In mediaeval and ancient technolgy in the West there was only wrought iron, and it had all been heated (though none of it had been melted).

There has been a lot of error and nonsense about iron and steel, cast iron and wrought iron, written in this thread. I would urge anyone who has not already done so to trust nothing that they have read above, but to read the article on 'Iron and Steel Making' in Encyclopaedia Britannica or some other trustworthy source.

Regards,


Agback

 

[green slime]

For example, give me more examples of references to Cold Iron, OTHER than that oft refered to poem.

I know what Kipling was talking about, but that does not preclude another definition. I doubt very much that the "Cold Iron" referred to in 3.5e will just be:

WotC rep: oh we are just talking poetically about "Iron", in a general sense. Why? Because Iron - Cold Iron - is master of them all.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Most of the references I've found online to cold iron in smithery seem to mean iron that is worked while cold.

Refining the ore with heat doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. It's once the smith decides to turn a lump of iron into something less lumpy - working it cold is... well, somewhat more difficult that when it's hot.

Hence we have expressions in English like "strike while the iron is hot", "too many irons in the fire", or "a teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron".

There's also the saying that "Only two blacksmiths ever went to Hell. One beat cold iron and the other didn't charge enough."

-Hyp.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Most of the sayings seem to have to do with the fact that beating unheated iron is a pretty worthless thing to do if you want to make something out of it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Well, that's what Fabricate is for

-Hyp.