Transmuting Adamantine

[Beriadan]

I am preparing a campaign where one of the character creation options is Alchemists from FMA. I've devised an entire system where you make skill checks to preform transmutations. Now, I know that one of my friends is gonna constantly bug me on wanting to transmute his armor into adamantine. What I am asking is help on determining how much of X equals one gram of adamantine. Not all of the info is complete, mainly all the rules for the actual Alchemy ability, but if you want to see it go here: https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1TruiRrzXkk65X2MTQ05PQ7dzpAGDIywiUnbWH6xbF Yk&authkey=CPTbiGg&hl=en#
Please don't edit anything without my permission, me being Imperialdrone.

We're currently in the middle of another campaign now, but if you'd like to join after this one PM me and I'll see what I can do.

Le hannon,
Beriadan

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, even according to FMA's alchemy rules, you can't transmute a base metal to adamantine without a Philosopher's Stone. In fact, in real-world alchemy, the fabled philosopher's stone was best known for the supposed property of transmuting base metals into gold.

FMA's alchemy lets you change the form of a substance, or do chemical reaction stuff with it, like Mustang breaking down the water in the air (or sometimes in liquid form) to make hydrogen and oxygen gases, which are flammable. Particularly the hydrogen.

[Beriadan]

I am aware of that, but this isn't necessarily FMA alchemy, and it fantasy after all. Still, Ed turned his steel arm into a combination of other elements, so why couldn't an alchemist take a bunch of steel or something similar and transmute adamantine?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, steel itself is an alloy of different metals. So he was just swapping around its composition to provide the same function with a different structure. If I'm remembering right, he did that to foil Scar by mixing up the composition of his automaille. Another example would be against Greed's ultimate shield of carbon.

It's entirely possible to allow intra-metal transmutation...it might make more headache than it's worth, though. On the other hand, I guess 3.5 has stuff that fills that sort of function, yes?

[Beriadan]

I've been discussing with my friends and one of them says that uranium is similar to adamantine, so I've decided to figure out how much iron equals 1 kilogram of uranium. How ever there is no where on the interwebs about this sort of conversion, so after doing some math which I am pretty sure is wrong I've emailed my science teacher only to remember that he won't be getting the email for another week or so. So can any one here tell me the answer to my new question, how much iron equals 1 kg of uranium?

[Pie Guy]

If we tell you that, would'nt we get put on terrorism watchlists?

[Tetrasodium]

So can any one here tell me the answer to my new question, how much iron equals 1 kg of uranium?

Which weighs more?... one pound of feathers, or a pound of lead?

1kg of uranium is an equal weight to one kg of iron.

Alchemy in FMA and general fantasy alchemy doesn't typically allow transmuting mundane material into something of value hence the whole quest for transmuting things to gold. Since you went with FMA as the basis for the alchemy though, go for equivalent exchange they were always harping about... Xgp worth of specially prepared materials can be transmuted into Xgp worth of specialty materials. Tack on an XP cost for certain materials or file it under the same sort of taboo that human transmutation had in FMA that wound up causing them to lose an arm/leg/body/organs/vision/etc.

[Sindri]

The real question here is what the chemical composition of adamantine is. If it's an alloy of iron that's never been reproduced and so only comes from meteorites (one of several explanations I've heard) then making it with FMA style alchemy is a matter of determining the proper elements and proportions, which sounds like an arbitrary amount of time and money spent in research to gain the ability, followed by an ingredient list for when you need to make it in the field.
If It's an entirely new element, then you can't make adamantine out of anything other than adamantine, but you can reshape it as you choose (meaning that the better equipped your opponents are, the more cool things you can make out of their armor after a successful touch attack).

[flabort]

What he said is not really what he meant, in this case:
"What is the volume of 1 Kg of Urainium, compared to the Volume of 1 Kg of Iron", is what I think he meant.

I'd think you'd have to transmute Cold Iron into a Gold-based & Iron alloy/substance (Cold-Gold? wouldn't count as either, though, I guess), and that into Adamantium, using a slice off the old philosopher's stone for each. That is, if you believe that the stone can swap off protons to produce new/different elements. Else-wise, you'd better hope Adamantium is an alloy of sorts, and a bloody brilliant one, at that.

[Mando Knight]

one of them says that uranium is similar to adamantine,

It really isn't. DU is preferred in heavy armor and penetrating rounds because it's dense and easy to machine, two things that adamantine isn't really known for. It's closer to a heat-treated high strength titanium alloy or 300M steel, both of which are strong and hard, with the former being notoriously difficult to machine. Since both are as strong as or stronger than medieval carbon-steels, they'd appear to behave like adamantine compared to such steel.

Adamantine Spar is a brownish corundum, the mineral that makes up rubies and sapphires and is nearly as hard as diamond (which in turn claims the origin of the word adamant).

[Beriadan]

What he said is not really what he meant, in this case:
"What is the volume of 1 Kg of Urainium, compared to the Volume of 1 Kg of Iron", is what I think he meant.

Yes that is what I meant, thank you. And if it isn't similar to uranium, then what is the volume of 1 kg of the.... titanium stuff compared to the volume of 1 kg of Iron?

[erikun]

Yes that is what I meant, thank you. And if it isn't similar to uranium, then what is the volume of 1 kg of the.... titanium stuff compared to the volume of 1 kg of Iron?
This would be determined by density. Uranium is around 2.5x as dense as Iron, and so would produce 1/2.5 (around 0.4x) the amount of material with the same mass.

Iron has 30 HP/inch and 10 hardness. Adamantine has 40 HP/inch and 20 hardness. This looks to be roughly a 1.3x to 1.5x increase in density, so transmuting Iron to Adamantine (using this logic) would produce 1/1.3 to 1/1.5 as much, 0.75 to 0.66.

Of course, Adamantine is probably magical and thus, such physical laws might not fully apply. The "Law of Economic Conservation" would be just as appropriate for fantasy materials.

[hamishspence]

If this was the case (given that adamantine weapons and armour in the DMG weigh no more than standard ones) wouldn't they be exceptionally thin for their size?

Magic of Faerun clarifies that gold armour and weapons do weigh more though.

[Fable Wright]

The easiest way to do this: it has to be an equal gold value. This could be explained because adamantine is much denser than iron. It's light to wear it, no heavier than steel, because thinner sheets are used of it, and the carbon forms a compound which easily distributes the weight more effectively.

This is also known as the "Law of Economic Conservation", as previously mentioned by erikun.

[Beriadan]

Thank you Erikun, you have answered my question.