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View Full Version : [3.x/PF] Revaluing Special Materials



LibraryOgre
2009-12-28, 04:43 PM
So, I'm dissatisfied with how the cost of special materials works in 3.x and PF. For why, consider a dagger, a gauntlet, and a heavy mace. All are items which are made primarily out of metal, to the point where the non-metal parts are almost incidental (not quite with the gauntlet, but that's actually part of my point).

A dagger is a single piece of metal, with wood and/or leather on the hilt. It weighs about 1 pound, and costs a base of 1gp.

A heavy mace is a single piece of metal, with wood and/or leather on the hilt. It weighs about 4 pounds, and costs a base of 12gp.

A gauntlet is an intricate working of several pieces of metal and leather. It weighs about 1 pound, and costs a base of 2gp.

Each of these... simple and small, simple and heavy, and intricate and small... all cost 3000gp additional to turn it into a weapon made of adamantine. Similar problems exist, IMO, with Masterwork quality items... adding Masterwork to a shirt of Chainmail is the same cost as adding Masterwork to a Chain Shirt, which seems to make little sense to me.

I've been tempted to go with changing all of the GP values into percentages. Instead of paying base cost + 300gp for a masterwork weapon, you pay base cost + 300% for a masterwork weapon. Instead of base cost + 3000gp for adamantine, you pay base cost + 3000% (i.e. about 30 times as much) for it.

Does that sound reasonable? How would you handle this?

bosssmiley
2009-12-28, 05:37 PM
Seems fine. Although you'll have to watch out for weird edge cases like zero weight shuriken and such...

I had similar thoughts when I was tinkering with Crafting a few months back (it all got a bit Dorf Fortress, with value as function of raw material x weight x skill invested x blah...)

Signmaker
2009-12-28, 05:41 PM
I've been tempted to go with changing all of the GP values into percentages. Instead of paying base cost + 300gp for a masterwork weapon, you pay base cost + 300% for a masterwork weapon. Instead of base cost + 3000gp for adamantine, you pay base cost + 3000% (i.e. about 30 times as much) for it.

Does that sound reasonable? How would you handle this?

Make it a hybrid cost. Have a static baseline for the special material, with a weight-dependant addition tacked on. That way you aren't necessarily gypping the high-weight weapons (not all of them rock, sadly. Additionally, many low-weight ones do).

ericgrau
2009-12-28, 05:48 PM
It's labor cost in all cases. Where it falls into silliness is that the crafting rules still require you to pay 1/3 the final cost in raw materials. To some extent I suppose you might need special expendable materials to forget the weapon, but this only goes so far.

Also note that mithral and darkwood are more or less charged per pound. This issue is only with masterwork and adamantine. As hard as adamantine is, I can easily see it being more difficult to craft than normal.

DragoonWraith
2009-12-28, 05:54 PM
While a hybrid system might work, a straight percentage is going to run into problems with, say, a quarterstaff.

LibraryOgre
2009-12-28, 06:51 PM
While a hybrid system might work, a straight percentage is going to run into problems with, say, a quarterstaff.

Yeah, there's that, too. For things like that, I'm almost tempted to define the minimum cost as 1gp... thus, a masterwork quarterstaff costs around 3gp.

Kantolin
2009-12-28, 07:12 PM
That's reasonable, but... well... that really, really hurts full plate.

If you're cool with that, that's fine, but... ow.

Random832
2009-12-28, 07:21 PM
How about a higher price for sharp weapons (reflecting e.g. wear and tear on grindstones) than bludgeoning weapons?