D&D 5E Value of 1 lb. of mithral?

[Agglomérante]

At what value would you set 1 lb of mithral in your campaign? According to the DMG (p.157):

• 1 lb of gold is 50 gp
• 1 lb of platinum is 500 gp

Does anybody recall any reference in D&D material to the value of mithral bullion (coins, ingots)?

The party is about to enter Wave Echo Cave, where I've added a vault full of 20 lb mithral ingots (and a purple worm tunnel that allowed Rust Monsters in). The PCs are about to sign a contract with Gundren allowing them to carry out as much as they can carry on their backs, and no more.

If I make those mithral bricks too valuable, I'll damage my campaign.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Doesn't the PHB list a mithral shirt as light armor? Given a price and weight, you could determine the maximum price per weight for a finished product made out of that material. The base cost for materials - the bulk cost of mithral - would be half of that.

 

[trentonjoe]

It isn't in the PHB, it's in the DMG.

Mithral the metal is only mention twice in the PHB, once in the CREATION spell (you can make it, kinda) and once as a spell component for imprisonment.

 

[the Jester]

Back before there was a cost for mithral in 3e, I used to value a mithral coin at 10,000 gp. An adamantine coin would fetch probably twice that.

In 3e, a mithral shirt weighed 10 lbs. and was valued at 1,100 gp. A chain shirt was 100 gp, so that comes out to 100 gp/lb., including the labor to forge it.

That always sounded too cheap to me, but hey.

I don't think there has been anything in 5e to help give an official price for mithral yet.

 

[Agglomérante]

Thanks all for chiming in.

For what it's worth, mithral armour is classified as uncommon (max value 500 gp).

In 3e, a mithral shirt weighed 10 lbs. and was valued at 1,100 gp. A chain shirt was 100 gp, so that comes out to 100 gp/lb., including the labor to forge it.

That always sounded too cheap to me, but hey.

Thanks Jester. That's something at least. So let's say 600 gp for 10 lbs, or 60 gp/lb. Only 20% more valuable than gold.

So, for your consideration in your own campaigns:

• A mithral ingot weighing 20 lbs is worth 1,200 gp. That's the same weight as a real-world ingot of copper, btw.
• A gold ingot of the same dimensions weighs 26 lbs (in the real world too) and is worth 1,000 gp

Not unreasonable when you consider that all it's got over steel is it's light.

The funny thing is that steel was really hard to make in the middle ages so it was reserved for weapons, armour and tools. Steel ingots would be valuable, too.

The characters will be wealthy if they survive, but there's been so much talk of wanting to build a keep that I think I'll enable it. They could totally geek out designing their headquarters

 

[Astrosicebear]

Heres a good thread.

Now these estimates put mithral at 500gp/lb.

Others, like this thread, put it at ~90/lb.



D&D has always stipulated that 50 coins equate to 1 pound. But mithral/adamantine do have different wieghts, so we can assume that 50 adam. coins weighs much more than 50 copper coins.

So the whole thing is flawed.

 

[Celebrim]

At what value would you set 1 lb of mithral in your campaign?

Since 1e era, I've used 5 times the value of Platinum. Adamantium was priced at twice that, or 50 times the value of gold. I also have Orichalcum, which is worth twice that, or 100 times the value of gold. I should note however that I don't have 50 coins to the pound, so 1lb of gold is 20 g.p., so using my larger coins, mithral is 500 g.p. to the pound.

The 3.5e era price for mithral was 500 gp to the pound. This would be 10 times the price of gold using the 50 coins to the pound standard, or 25 times the price of gold using 20 coins to the pound, or 50 times the price of gold using 10 coins to the pound.

 

[the Jester]

D&D has always stipulated that 50 coins equate to 1 pound.
So the whole thing is flawed.

Nerd quibble: 1e and earlier, it was 10 coins to 1 pound, so those were some big, fat, meaty coins! (I don't recall off hand whether it was still 10:1 in 2e or not, but I know that 3e and later have been 50:1.)

 

[baradtgnome]

I suggest you set it where you want and simply clarify that the mithril and adamantine items as priced are not 100% pure material. The items are often compounds because 'pure' metal does not work as well for complicated reasons only these special smiths and alchemists understand. As previously noted, armor has other elements of padding & buckles etc. You can imagine similar limitations for other items.

Save yourself a heachace trying to making everything tie out perfectly. As a DM you have enough headaches already.

 

[Agglomérante]

Save yourself a heachace trying to making everything tie out perfectly. As a DM you have enough headaches already.

Sage advice. The 1,200gp per 20 lb ingot is fine with me, even it it's at the low end of the scale. Mithril's more common in my world then. Done!

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