Tougher than adamantine

[Scharlata]

Hi, fellow smelterers and smiths!

I'm looking for a particularly tough (very, very, very tough indeed) metal within the 3.5 D&D (d20) cosmology. I've searched the books high and low (DMG, BoED, Arms and Equipment Guide, Races of Stone [RoS], and the Planar Handbook) and found no metal with a hardness higher than 20 (adamantine). Even when my Ardanian dwarven smiths would forge a dwarvenwork (dwarvencraft?, don't have my copy of RoS at hand), they wouldn't make it tougher than 22.

I desperately need a metal, let's call it "plotdevice-ium" , that can withstand power attacking blows that cause more than 27 points of damage. I could go with a combination of dwarvenworked adamantine AND any (official) spell that hardens an object (metal in particular), such as a spell from any DRAGON/DUNGEON, splatbook, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron (?).

Pa-leeze

Kind regards

 

[DanMcS]

Are you the DM?

 

[Darklone]

Well, adamantine with a +5 enhancement bonus? Hardness 30 and MUCH more hitpoints.

Edit: This is only true for weapons and armours, IIRC.

 

[Scharlata]

Are you the DM?

Well, sometimes I'm the screen monkey...

P.S.: If I were or were not the DM, would you conspire with me and tell me your secrets?

 

[DanMcS]

If you are the DM, and you need something with hardness 30 for any reason, you MAKE IT UP!

It's a privilege, it comes with the parking space, secret handshake, and the hat.

 

[Knight Otu]

It's 3.0, but the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has Obdurium - Hardness 30, hp/inch 60, costs double of adamantine.

 

[Scharlata]

Well, adamantine with a +5 enhancement bonus? Hardness 30 and MUCH more hitpoints.

Edit: This is only true for weapons and armours, IIRC.

Excellent! That would work.

Is there any spell (like an abjuration) or a special armor (weapon) quality that reinforces metal, enhances hardness, gives protection from blows (fortification)? Is the Greater Arcane Lock from the Caste Guide transferred to 3.5? Does Arcane Lock help (don't have my books here).

Kind regards

 

[Scharlata]

If you are the DM, and you need something with hardness 30 for any reason, you MAKE IT UP!

It's a privilege, it comes with the parking space, secret handshake, and the hat.

Privilege must not be abused
I could make up things, but I'd have sitting several grim looking players at my table that would try to deny the existence of "plotdevice-ium" by pure argumentative force.

Kind regards

 

[Scharlata]

It's 3.0, but the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has Obdurium - Hardness 30, hp/inch 60, costs double of adamantine.

Wonderful! That's it! "Cost is irrelevant" as the Borg say
"Obscurium" err obdurium will be assimilated!

Very kind regards

 

[DanMcS]

Privilege must not be abused
I could make up things, but I'd have sitting several grim looking players at my table that would try to deny the existence of "plotdevice-ium" by pure argumentative force.

Kind regards

It's not an abuse. You're trying to make something interesting happen. It is in no way wrong to create something that makes that thing doable.

Besides, how would your players know the thing's hardness and hps? If they want to attack it, let them, and then tell them that it looks like they might have scratched the black metal door in front of them, but probably not, and by the way, you did more damage than your sword's hardness against something harder than your sword, so take some hps off of it, too.

Besides, you're going about this the wrong way, really. If your problem is you can't keep them from power-attacking through doors, then giving the door a few more hardness/hps isn't going to stave this off for long, because a few points of BAB or a Bull's Strength later and they're going right through it again.

If you don't want players to get through a door, don't put a door there. This is a fundamental guideline for dungeon design, because there's nothing players love more than getting through that door. If they can't get through it, they'll move heaven and earth to find a way.

Fill your dungeon with a magically thick fog that limits people to a 5' step per round, and provides 50% concealment within 5', 100% any farther. Blast a magical wind down a narrow tunnel- there's no door, but if they don't know the password to pause the wind for a couple rounds, then they're making climb checks at a hefty penalty to crawl up the tunnel past the wind.

Set the adventure on a series of small islands in a swamp. There are no doors, just 15' of black, murky water surrounding the islands and narrow bridges or fallen logs to the next island.

Beyond a certain point, doors and even walls just don't hamper players like they used to. In our game saturday, our group landed on the roof of a stronghold and rather than battering our way in the front door, shattered one of the big ceiling stones and jumped through it. The party average is 4th level.