Warforged: How much does their adamantine/mithral sell for?

[Imperialus]

Good luck getting out from where they're buried. Especially considering the area you're likely to be bringing it though is probably one of the most crime-ridden areas of Sharn.

God Bless portable holes

 

[ARandomGod]

Interesting points all. Keep 'em coming.

What continually amazes me is how people keep asking this question under the assumption that taking the adamantine body of a warforged is like looting armor off of a fallen foe.

Um, no.

It's like flaying the warforged and trying to sell its skin for profit! Within the scope of the D&D game that sound like a very evil act. Mutilating and desecrating bodies for jollies? What's next, kicking puppies?

It's not evil unless the warforged in question was still alive at the time. Of course, that moves us into a good/evil discussion, and I know that there are people out there who disagree with me on what's good and evil. They're wrong, of course, but once again that's MY opinion. ^_^

On the other hand, some characters ARE evil. They'd do it no problem. They'd probably go around killing off adamantine/mithral warforged for profit... (except it's probably too difficult).

On the gripping hand, if there were money to be made by skinning fallen humanoids and selling the skins, you just *know* someone's gonna do it.

On the issue of the Adamantine Doors from The Forgotten Forge:

1 - There's no way short of a Portable Hole to get them out of the ruins, since the only way out is a small hole that leads to a vertical shaft and is located 6' off the floor.

A determined party could get them out. Probably not as whole doors. But there are stats listed for how difficult it is to break up adamantine. And unless you're using that house rule that says broken adamantine is valueless* there's no reason not to break it up into manageable chunks. You're gonna melt it down anyhow.

*A house rule that does solve that problem neatly, I must say. Even if it 'should' make adamantine a little stronger than it is in RAW.

2 - The entire ruin is property of House Cannith, being an ancient forge, and they'll probably frown on cutting out chunks of such an archaeological find.

Yea well, I advise that you don't plan on telling them about it.
^_^

3 - A 6-pound adamantine battlexe costs 3010 gp, whereas a 1-pound adamantine dagger costs 3002 gp. You can see here that the ammount of adamantine used has next-to-no bearing on the value of an item, it's the craftsmanship that costs so much. One possible explanation for this is that you'd need a special super-hot forge, expert smiths and secret techniques to forge adamantine, so even if you drop a 1000-pound chunk of adamantine on a buyer's lap, you'd get little in return. At most, if a buyer could be convinced to use the doors as-is (and cut a fitting hole in his house to put them), you'd get around 6000 gp for the set of double doors.

4 - Same goes for a warforged with adamantine body: you'd need som many special tools to extract, refine and reshape the adamantine from its body that it wouldn't be cost-effective to do it.

Very good points, and along some of the lines I've been thinking myself. A lot of the value of the item is definitely in the craftsmanship, and in the labor needed to work the metal. That being said, it's also going to cost a lot to melt down adamantine for later reshaping.

In the case of a warforged, the PCs' best bet would be to stick it into a bag of holding and sell the inert body back to House Cannith, although that still counts as body trafficking by the Code of Galifar (warforged are treated as any other sentient race, with equal rights and protection).

Also a good point. So there will be some shadyness to the dealings as well. It's almost certainly going to be unlawful to attempt such a thing. They've *got* to make laws against doing it. However where there are laws, there are lawbreakers. And you know that by now someone has perfected the extraction down to a science.

****

I'm thinking that realistically it should sell for probably a little less than 1/2 the selling price of masterwork armor of the appropriate type. It would be just raw materials after all. For Adamantine body MW full plate. For Mithral Body MW chain mail. Well, mithral's easier to work so maybe a little more than that... Perhaps also with a boost if you have the skills/equipment to do the melting down to ingots yourself.

Which doesn't seem at all gamebreaking, and makes sense to me. Of *course* you can melt down the metals and sell them. And if you're fighting someone who's got better than MW chain or MW full plate, why shouldn't defeating those enemies get you a gold reward similiar to defeating an enemy wearing that type of armor (ignoring special materials)?

 

[Klaus]

Actually, Mithral body gives you the equivalent of Mithral Breastplate.

 

[Storm Raven]

But yes, it's pretty clear that the game designers didn't *mean* for it to sell for all that much. On the other hand, if someone could make an alloy that gives DR 2 by adding an insignificant amount of adamantine to normal armor, that opens up an entirely different can of worms. I mean, why not pay that extra 5 GP and lace your armor with adamantine for DR2?

How about this: the value for adamantium body doesn't come from the raw materials, but the magical process by which it is added to the warforged; a magical process that is disrupted and rendered worthless by the death of the warforged. As a result, the raw materials are not very valuable, but the armor is (while it is still attached to the warforged). If you want a suit of adamantine laced plate armor, you can have it, but you have to have the armor magically enhanced in a similar way, a very expensive process.

 

[Glyfair]

It's not evil unless the warforged in question was still alive at the time. Of course, that moves us into a good/evil discussion, and I know that there are people out there who disagree with me on what's good and evil. They're wrong, of course, but once again that's MY opinion. ^_^

Exactly. I'd say that flaying the skin off a dead elf and trying to sell it is, on the face of it, and evil act (especially if for profit). The warforged follows from that.

Yea well, I advise that you don't plan on telling them about it.
^_^

Except, if you want to go around selling adamantine, you're limited your market if you don't include House Cannith. They have a virtual monopoly on any of the businesses that would be interested in it.

 

[Kri8or]

What continually amazes me is how people keep asking this question under the assumption that taking the adamantine body of a warforged is like looting armor off of a fallen foe.

Um, no.

It's like flaying the warforged and trying to sell its skin for profit! Within the scope of the D&D game that sound like a very evil act. Mutilating and desecrating bodies for jollies? What's next, kicking puppies?

I would say it is an evil act, but it's one that's definately going to happen. It's really easy to apply 21st century American ethics to our fantasy, but things like this have happened in our own history. The term redskin didn't come from the color of a Native American's skin, it came from the color of the blood on their scalps that were turned in for cash. And organ harvesting is big business in certain parts of the world today. In another fantasy example, in Earthdawn Obsidiman armor is right there in the equipment list. It's accompanied by the caveat that wearing it will turn you into a pariah, but it's there. I think the idea that Warforged armor isn't covered in the Eberron rules a little silly. Yeah, it's evil, but there's evil in the world, right? Without it there wouldn't be much point in playing the game.

It's also funny that the door topic came up, as I consider my single biggest DMing mistake ever including a set of Mithril gates in a dungeon. If you put something like that in a world without a disgusting amount of magical protection it will be stolen. Once a party is high enough level turning the surrounding rock to mud to remove the gates, shrinking, portable holing, or teleporting the tons of metal, then melting it down is a pretty trivial task. I believe that mistake ended up giving the party something like 6 million gp. Yeah, that was the end of that campaign...

 

[trollwad]

"Once a party is high enough level turning the surrounding rock to mud to remove the gates, shrinking, portable holing, or teleporting the tons of metal, then melting it down is a pretty trivial task. I believe that mistake ended up giving the party something like 6 million gp. Yeah, that was the end of that campaign..."

or a pair of tireless warforged could use the body of a slain foe (warforged with an adamantium body) as a battering ram to beat down the walls around the door and rip the whole damn thing up to the surface with rope, pulleys, etc. admittedly yours is the more elegant solution

 

[GSHamster]

It's like flaying the warforged and trying to sell its skin for profit! Within the scope of the D&D game that sound like a very evil act. Mutilating and desecrating bodies for jollies? What's next, kicking puppies?

And yet using the scales of a red dragon to make armour is a proud tradition. Or is this now evil as well?

 

[ARandomGod]

And yet using the scales of a red dragon to make armour is a proud tradition. Or is this now evil as well?

Of course it is!

Er, or something. I mean it's at least AS evil.

 

[The Sigil]

Thread on the value of admantine (and, IIRC, mithral):

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?threadid=12885

Skip the last post in the thread (should be mine). One man's take on the situation. All you have to do now is figure out how many pounds of metal in a warforged are salvageable.

You're welcome.

--The Sigil