Helping a DM - Calculating a few things

[Balor01]

1. Party recently killed an ankheg. And from their experience from Baldurs gate they looted some of the armor from him. They are not taxidermist or skinners so you can imagine this was a pretty crude job, but still I ruled they got four large pieces of armor from him. Now my questions are:

- could this armor really be remade into say, breastplate? There are only common blacksmiths in the region. If so, what kind of armor could be made of it and how much would it cost?

- if not, would it be reasonable for a merchant to buy this from them? How much would these raw parts of ankheg armor be bought for?

- how much should each piece of looted armor weigh?

2. Party got to a 30 ft. tall and 50 ft thick Ice wall. It was a side effect of a certain powerful spell guarded by wall of ice and they have decided to melt it and make stairs for them to climb. One of the guys is a psion and has matter agitation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/matterAgitation.htm). Now the thing is, they have a horse with them they want to bring along so this stair should be large enough for a horse to traverse. How long would it take to melt the stairs by your accounts? They are level 3, so psion can burn the ice for three minutes for one power point as long as he is concentrating. (it can melt led by 3rd round so it should be pretty darn hot.
Also, they only need stairs to get up, wall slowly slopes toward the ground on other side so they can slide down there.

3. The initial spell also caused fire and water elementals to appear on the outer side of the wall where party currently resides. How should I shape a random encounter table if it turns out they may stick around for a longer period of time due to shaping of the stairs?

thanks

[some guy]

1. Party recently killed an ankheg. And from their experience from Baldurs gate they looted some of the armor from him. They are not taxidermist or skinners so you can imagine this was a pretty crude job, but still I ruled they got four large pieces of armor from him. Now my questions are:

- could this armor really be remade into say, breastplate? There are only common blacksmiths in the region. If so, what kind of armor could be made of it and how much would it cost?

- if not, would it be reasonable for a merchant to buy this from them? How much would these raw parts of ankheg armor be bought for?

- how much should each piece of looted armor weigh?


1. -Races of the Dragon has rules for chitin armor (chitin armor heightens the Max Dex with 1). According to those, one ankheg will provide enough chitin for 2 medium-sized breastplates or tower shields or 1 medium sized half-plate or full plate or 4 shields (heavy or light). The costs for it are double the normal costs for masterwork armor, but seeing as the party is providing the material I would deduct 900 gp from the cost.
-I would say it's reasonable and just give them 900 gp for it; the treasure value for a CR 3 encounter.
-Seeing as 1 ankheg could provide 1 full plate, I would say the 4 pieces together would weigh a fair bit above 50 lbs. 60 or 80.

2 & 3. Seeing that Matter Agitation can melt lead at the third round and lead has a melting point of 600 K, I would say 3 minutes is enough. 3 minutes would not be enough for a random encounter check, unless they make a lot of noise or spend 10 minutes failing balance checks (those melty ice stairs would be incredibly slippery, I imagine. Suddenly melting a Wall of Ice also creates a fog cloud which could make balance checks even harder).

[Balor01]

1. -Races of the Dragon has rules for chitin armor (chitin armor heightens the Max Dex with 1). According to those, one ankheg will provide enough chitin for 2 medium-sized breastplates or tower shields or 1 medium sized half-plate or full plate or 4 shields (heavy or light). The costs for it are double the normal costs for masterwork armor, but seeing as the party is providing the material I would deduct 900 gp from the cost.
-I would say it's reasonable and just give them 900 gp for it; the treasure value for a CR 3 encounter.
-Seeing as 1 ankheg could provide 1 full plate, I would say the 4 pieces together would weigh a fair bit above 50 lbs. 60 or 80.

2 & 3. Seeing that Matter Agitation can melt lead at the third round and lead has a melting point of 600 K, I would say 3 minutes is enough. 3 minutes would not be enough for a random encounter check, unless they make a lot of noise or spend 10 minutes failing balance checks (those melty ice stairs would be incredibly slippery, I imagine. Suddenly melting a Wall of Ice also creates a fog cloud which could make balance checks even harder).
Amazing work, some guy. I was just thinking ... would such intense melting also not cause immense amounts of steam and thus prevent LOS and thus LOE? He would need to really take time to wait for steam to dissipate after each attempt at melting, I guess?

Nad what would be REF saves PCs would need to success at to get on top of these stairs?

[some guy]

Amazing work, some guy. I was just thinking ... would such intense melting also not cause immense amounts of steam and thus prevent LOS and thus LOE? He would need to really take time to wait for steam to dissipate after each attempt at melting, I guess?

Nad what would be REF saves PCs would need to success at to get on top of these stairs?

Well, within a fog cloud you still have vision for the nearest 5 ft., so the melter could walk around and melt the ice near him. A problem would then be he would stand on the slippery ice. So unless the players think of a solution against slipping on ice or find a way to disperse the steam he would roll balance checks every round.
I would not ask for reflex saves but for balance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm) checks. A baseline of 10 (as with Grease) and maybe a +2 for angles or obscured vision.