Metal pricing

[J-H]

My players (high level) successfully destroyed an adamantium golem (my brew, not whatever's in whatever monster book it's from) instead of trying to capture it and turn it into a mech suit like I expected.

They have, approximately (away from notes):
2000 lbs of adamantium
28000lbs of steel
50 lbs of mithril

They have an extradimensional storage space to pack this into, so hauling it off is actually a solved problem. The artificer has Fabricate to shape it into ingots as well.

Given the DMG/XGTE magic item pricing (uncommon = 500, rare = 5000, etc.) as a frame of reference, does anyone have some ideas about how to value raw metals?

Looking at all-metal weapons:
A greatsword is all metal, weighs 6#, and is worth 50gp.
A longsword at 3# is worth 15gp.
A scimitar at 3# is 25gp.
I think what we can learn from this is that weapon pricing is arbitrary and doesn't make sense, so it doesn't help at all.

1gp per lb of steel, 100gp per lb mithril or adamantium?

[PhantomSoul]

If it suits your world, PHB157 has some trade goods that you could use as a starting point (I thought steel was in the list, but apparently not). Not perfect, but it's something! Ball bearings and things like that could also be inspiration for steel. Rarity is probably especially relevant to think about for adamantium and mithril in your world.

[nickl_2000]

Is it going to cause problems in your game if your PCs get 250,000 gp? Because if not then it should be fine and I wouldn't put more thought into it than you already have.

If you are going for realism, adding that much material to the market would probably tank the local market for those materials, meaning that it would sell for 10% of the normal selling price (unless the PCs are careful, sell only a little bit at a time, or spread it out around the world. Additionally anyone buying that much material would expect to get a substantial discount.

[Phhase]

Waterdeep dragonheist, I think, has price per pound on adamant, at 1000 gp.

[JackPhoenix]

Iron, per PHB trade goods, is 1 sp/lb. Steel may or may not be more valuable- the game certainly doesn't seem to care enough to differentiate between the two.
W:DH has adamantine bar, with 10 lb bar being worth 1000 gp, which would put adamantine at 100 gp/lb. ToA, on the other hand, has 1 lb adamantine ingots worth 10 gp.
There's no price listed for mithral anywhere I can remember. 3.5 had non-armor ITEMS made from mithral valued at 500 gp/lb, but light armor (chain shirt) made from mithral cost extra 1000 gp for 12.5 lb armor, so it's not like it was especially consistent.

[Chronos]

Quoth Phhase:

Waterdeep dragonheist, I think, has price per pound on adamant, at 1000 gp.
I just looked it up-- It's actually a 10-pound bar for 1000 GP (pg. 90). And it's not a standard item: That's the price the party would have to pay for a smith to make inquiries and find one for them, so if anything, the party should expect to get less than that.

[dafrca]

Depending on how much you want the characters to get from the haul, you do not have to assume pure metals either. The metals could be tainted from other materials used in building the golem thus the value is lowered or they need to pay to refine the metals themselves thus lowering the final haul value.

You could also have some metals devalued by the destruction. For example some metals can change properties based on how they were heated up.

As was suggested above a sudden flood of supply could devalue the metal for a while in the market place.

Are the characters sure the golem is destroyed? You could always pull an "Iron Giant" style resurrection and the players wake to find their large haul has walked away?

I guess it will all come down to what you want the characters to get their hands on.

[PhantomSoul]

Depending on how much you want the characters to get from the haul, you do not have to assume pure metals either. The metals could be tainted from other materials used in building the golem thus the value is lowered or they need to pay to refine the metals themselves thus lowering the final haul value.

You could also have some metals devalued by the destruction. For example some metals can change properties based on how they were heated up.

As was suggested above a sudden flood of supply could devalue the metal for a while in the market place.

Are the characters sure the golem is destroyed? You could always pull an "Iron Giant" style resurrection and the players wake to find their large haul has walked away?

I guess it will all come down to what you want the characters to get their hands on.

(Emphasis mine, to show what I'm building on)

And the quantities might be large enough that individual buyers usually don't want to full amount (you normally get a better deal if you get more!) and/or can't as easily store the full amount.

[Zhorn]

For Mithral;
The Waterdeep modules make some interesting choices on pricing things and how much values it just has lying around, so I tend to not trust them for much consistency or sanity (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?621450-Flame-Cannons-are-too-expensive-to-use-but-a-good-source-of-volatile-loot).
Example; WD:DotMM p176, 7b Treasure has 1 pound gold ingots at 100gp, twice the value the PHB gives.

For that reason I halve the value it gives for mithral per pound from 50gp per pound (p85, 'Mithral Thieves' Treasure) down to 25 gp per pound.


For Adamantine;
ToA (p63, 6 Treasure) - 1 pound = 10gp
ToA (p73, 'Rite of Stolen Life' Treasure) - 1 pound = 10gp
SKT (p60, Vonindon Fragment) - 1 pound = 15 gp

I tend to go with the 1 pound = 15 gp, mostly since I use SKT as a reference point more often.

For both Mithral and Adamantine, you don't want to set the price per pound for the raw material too high since dungeons with doors made of the stuff is a common trope that you don't want to accidently break your economy with.
For explaining the higher price for weapons and armor, I use the same logic as is for Silvered weapons, there's a large component of the cost tied up in the labour and skill used to properly craft the items made of or treated with these substances.

Having them more valuable per pound than Platinum works fine, but avoid going an order of magnitude greater.

[Mastikator]

One thing to consider is how much money merchants have and are willing to part with in exchange for a gazillion adamantine and steel. The mithril should be easier to offload since it's only 50lbs. Whoever is buying that adamantine or steel must believe that they're either a) able to put it to good use immediately or b) able to sell it.

The steel you can probably sell to a king or emperor, they can easily use it to make swords, armor, tools, whatever, steel is amazing.
The adamantine is orders of magnitude more expensive and harder to work with, so you should expect to sell it to some dwarf king at least.
The mithril is a small enough amount that you could theoretically just dump it on a very wealthy merchant and call it a day.

I agree that 250k is a decent amount they can expect, you've given them a ridiculous amount of adamantine which is a ridiculously valuable metal.

[JNAProductions]

How invested are your players in the economy?

Put another way, are they the kind of group that's going to figure out how this will affect the local prices of metal (as mentioned above) and how to properly dole it out to maximize profits... Or are they just "Heck yeah, we got loots! Let's sell it and hit the alehouse!"

If you enjoy this kind of thought exercise, by all means, think it over with great detail! But if your players don't care too much, and are happy to just have a crapload of cash without bothering the exact details... You can always do that.

[Chronos]

Quoth Zhorn:

For explaining the higher price for weapons and armor, I use the same logic as is for Silvered weapons, there's a large component of the cost tied up in the labour and skill used to properly craft the items made of or treated with these substances.
This is in fact how titanium and some other durable metals work, in the real world. Titanium, the material, doesn't actually cost that much. But it's a pain and a half to turn it into anything. The melting point is high, so it's tough to cast. It's hard, so you need to use diamond tools and work slowly to mill it. It's less flexible and malleable than steel, so cold-working it is difficult. Similar story for tungsten.

Maybe the ancient dwarves had now-lost techniques, that let them make huge doors and statues and whatever out of the stuff. And those are great loot, if you can find someone who wants an indestructible door or statue. But to turn them into anything ELSE, you'd need the help of those ancient dwarves.

[loki_ragnarock]

If you wanted to limit the value you could also use the justification that it's not extra virgin adamantine; it's already been enchanted once, for a specific purpose, and the process of scrubbing all the residual magic - the memory of the enchantment - is such a chore that it's only worthwhile to the most dedicated metal recyclers.

Which is to say: determine how much money you'd like for your party to have. Give whatever post facto justification you'd like.


And beware the "destabilizes the market" angles; savvy PCs would unload it specifically to destabilize the market after and use their gains from doing so to then start buying the metal back for coppers on the gold, allowing an exploitation of market volatility.

[Chronos]

Oh, and you don't necessarily need to be afraid of giving your players vast wealth. It just means that anything that money can buy, they can buy. But there are a heck of a lot of things money can't buy.

In practice, it'll mostly just mean that they never run out of healing potions, they might have some piece of real estate they can use as a base, and they can spend their way past some social encounters. Now that magic marts are gone, it doesn't have all that much impact on the game.

In my experience, the big reward of money isn't opportunities to earn it; it's opportunities to spend it. The best reward any of my characters has received was the opportunity to sponsor the education of a couple of orphans: It cost a big chunk of his wealth at the time, and provided no mechanical benefit whatsoever, but it was totally worth it.

[J-H]

Thanks everyone! Yes, I have soft-enforced "X only has so much cash on hand" when it comes to magic item sales. Finding/delivering to buyers also takes time.

Final answer to the party:

Steel 1gp/lb (sell all = 28k gp)
Adamantium 50gp/lb (sell all = 100k gp)
Mithril 100gp/lb (sell all = 5k gp)
You will have a hard time finding someone sitting around with 133,000 gp in liquid cash. A casual smith is also not going to be equipped to work adamantium.

[Waterdeep Merch]

You could have some wizard or craftsman that would be interested in a trade instead. Something cool that would make the trouble feel worth it? Players like airships, for example- it'll change the nature of travel, but it also won't make them overpowered in fights.

[J-H]

I've got that covered. If they use 80 lbs of adamantium to get their bones plated, that's (IIRC) about 32000gp in surgery costs to become immune to critical hits.... and a few weeks of downtime while the enemy gets to move freely.

[Angelalex242]

"Hey, guys, let's all be Wolverine!"

"...I should mention you don't all have permanent Regeneration, as the spell."

"It'll be fiiiiine...."

"...you get your bones plated with adamantine. Cool. Roll me a con save....nothing happens."

10 sessions later: "You've failed enough con saves that you're poisoned...permanently. You think you'll die in the next week or two unless you get that adamantine out of you."

(Remember how old man Logan died in the movie Logan!)

[J-H]

Nah, permanent regeneration is only if they can find some troll hearts to get implanted. THAT surgery requires a CON save or die at the end, and they know it.

Nobody has gone for the retractable bone spike short swords in the forearms yet, which would be the full wolverine.

The local fey also want the fleshcrafter dead, and he's also alcoholic and a bit crazy... and there's the time factor, tick tock.

So far everyone's on the body modification train, which surprised me a bit.

[Waterdeep Merch]

See if anyone's down for acid blood. That one's pretty easy to do.

Might want to have a cleric with diamonds on standby.

[JNAProductions]

Can I just say your game sounds pretty awesome, J-H? I do like me some cybernetic (is that the right word, for this context?) upgrades. :)

[J-H]

Thanks!
Here's the post with the fleshcrafter options. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25066889&postcount=26)

[JLandan]

Donate it all to a church for a favor from the gods, and let them deal with the minutiae.

[Scarytincan]

The thing I really wanna do if I ever get in a campaign that's long enough and has a DM willing to give us that kind of wealth at some point...buy a warship and crew and pimp it out with magic components from saltmarsh book...can then use that to go on trade journeys to other parts of the world to try to offload the excess materials

[Chronos]

Put a dwarf smith in a cave somewhere who tells them that, for the Light Warriors, he would craft a truly legendary sword, but his supply of ADAMANT is depleted.

[Angelalex242]

Put a dwarf smith in a cave somewhere who tells them that, for the Light Warriors, he would craft a truly legendary sword, but his supply of ADAMANT is depleted.

After the players hand it over, he then creates XCalber. Not Excalibur, mind. XCalber.

And if the players hand over the entire supply of adamantine, he eventually churns out Holy Avengers at the rate of 1/year, so they decrease in rarity...from legendary, to very rare, to rare, and by the time the next campaign starts, they're just uncommon and you can't throw a rock without hitting a holy avenger wielding paladin.

[Yakk]

Do you play with magic marts? (Ie, fixed magic item pricing and expectations you can find an item if you have cash).

If not, it honestly doesn't matter.

The price of the components is going to vary a lot depending on *where* and to whom you sell it.

If you are before T3, getting to places is an adventure. Finding someone needing that much mithril/adamant could be fun.

Past T3, again assuming no magic mart, this using this wealth remains a challenge. Who has something the PCs want and will trade for it? Maybe a quest as well?

Can it hook into a larger narrative. A demigod of smithing needs the material to make a macguffin?

[Amechra]

Honestly, I'm... surprised... that you gave them hard values for each material — I don't think I've ever played a character who was money-savvy enough to know what the going price for a hyper-rare material would be.

But yeah, part of the issue with extrapolating the value of steel (or adamantine) by weight from the item tables is that it's pretty obvious that they were priced with gameplay in mind first. I think the biggest example is if you compare Ring Mail and Halfplate — both of them weigh 40lbs, but Halfplate literally costs 25 times as much. Why? Because Halfplate it gives an additional 1+Dex(max +2) AC and only requires medium armor proficiency. And that's not getting into how, if the tables made any sense, the cost of labor would be incorporated into item prices.

...

Honestly, if I were in your players' shoes, I'd get the adamantine-lined bones, and spend the rest of it on "base building". Given that (as far as I can tell) your game involves military action, so giving friendly smiths access to literal tons of high-quality metals is probably the best use of it at the moment.

[Sigreid]

For Mithral;
The Waterdeep modules make some interesting choices on pricing things and how much values it just has lying around, so I tend to not trust them for much consistency or sanity (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?621450-Flame-Cannons-are-too-expensive-to-use-but-a-good-source-of-volatile-loot).
Example; WD:DotMM p176, 7b Treasure has 1 pound gold ingots at 100gp, twice the value the PHB gives.

For that reason I halve the value it gives for mithral per pound from 50gp per pound (p85, 'Mithral Thieves' Treasure) down to 25 gp per pound.


For Adamantine;
ToA (p63, 6 Treasure) - 1 pound = 10gp
ToA (p73, 'Rite of Stolen Life' Treasure) - 1 pound = 10gp
SKT (p60, Vonindon Fragment) - 1 pound = 15 gp

I tend to go with the 1 pound = 15 gp, mostly since I use SKT as a reference point more often.

For both Mithral and Adamantine, you don't want to set the price per pound for the raw material too high since dungeons with doors made of the stuff is a common trope that you don't want to accidently break your economy with.
For explaining the higher price for weapons and armor, I use the same logic as is for Silvered weapons, there's a large component of the cost tied up in the labour and skill used to properly craft the items made of or treated with these substances.

Having them more valuable per pound than Platinum works fine, but avoid going an order of magnitude greater.

The only thing the game's pricing guide lets us really know is that the designers are neither merchants nor economists. I honestly think they just pull prices out of their backsides based on the effect they want the item's purchase or sale to have on the party's finances rather than any actual understanding of how things are valued. Not that I'd do better, it's just very inconsistent with no reasoning behind it that I can see.

[Zhorn]

The only thing the game's pricing guide lets us really know is that the designers are neither merchants nor economists. I honestly think they just pull prices out of their backsides based on the effect they want the item's purchase or sale to have on the party's finances rather than any actual understanding of how things are valued. Not that I'd do better, it's just very inconsistent with no reasoning behind it that I can see.
Even so, a more conservative pricing on mithral/adamantine I think is far more preferable to one that goes into the 50-100+ gp-per-pound range. That's just my 2 cp on this.

The more exaggerated the price point becomes on treasure, along with the sheer volume of 'rare' treasure type trade goods that the party comes across, the more out of touch the players become on how things are valued within the game world, and the more work there is the DM to put things into their games that can justify such extreme levels of wealth.

It's a rant I've had multiple times in the past, but numbers bloat of any form I generally view as a danger to a game's longevity.

The price OP is going for is far from the most extreme version I've seen, and as supportive as I want to be I still think either of them should stay well under the 50 gp per pound value and see it as a mistake to go higher.

[Mastikator]

The only thing the game's pricing guide lets us really know is that the designers are neither merchants nor economists. I honestly think they just pull prices out of their backsides based on the effect they want the item's purchase or sale to have on the party's finances rather than any actual understanding of how things are valued. Not that I'd do better, it's just very inconsistent with no reasoning behind it that I can see.

The values are whatever they need to be to satisfy the expected wealth of the party at the given time. Honestly that is how any DM should price treasure. Consistency between games and tables is but the dream of a madman

[dafrca]

The values are whatever they need to be to satisfy the expected wealth of the party at the given time. Honestly that is how any DM should price treasure. Consistency between games and tables is but the dream of a madman

The bolded part is going into my signature for sure. :smallbiggrin:

[Sigreid]

The values are whatever they need to be to satisfy the expected wealth of the party at the given time. Honestly that is how any DM should price treasure. Consistency between games and tables is but the dream of a madman

What you say is true, but consistency within a setting location would be expected. The price varying from location to location is just supply and demand at work and the reason merchants have incentive to transport their goods somewhere else.

Funny thought, the fact that steel is the rare currency in Dragon Lance and weapons and armor are typically iron means one of 2 things. Either physics and chemistry work differently in that setting than in the others, or the inhabitants simply never figured out how to turn iron into steel so every instance of steel is an accidental creation of nature. :smallbiggrin:

[Amechra]

I could honestly see a setting using a particular type of steel as currency, though. Something like mangalloy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalloy) is easy to distinguish from normal steel, and isn't something you could really produce by accident (unless your iron ore is rich in manganese to begin with).

EDIT: Then again... don't listen to me. I'm one of those freaks who would be perfectly fine with the price tables being in pre-decimalization British currency.

[J-H]

True Rez costs 25,000gp a pop, also. That can eat through a cash stockpile really quickly.

[Chronos]

Quoth Sigreid:

Funny thought, the fact that steel is the rare currency in Dragon Lance and weapons and armor are typically iron means one of 2 things. Either physics and chemistry work differently in that setting than in the others, or the inhabitants simply never figured out how to turn iron into steel so every instance of steel is an accidental creation of nature.
Or then there's Dark Sun, where all metals are precious, and most weapons are therefore made of bone or obsidian.

[Sigreid]

Or then there's Dark Sun, where all metals are precious, and most weapons are therefore made of bone or obsidian.

That is completely logical for a setting. But, I think if Iron is plentiful, someone will figure out steel. I suppose unless the gods interfere for some reason.

[da newt]

It's all scrap metal - a destroyed golem, so I'd give them scrap prices or send them off on a quest to smelt and refine the scrap into ingots for sale.

BTW a strict reading of fabricate does not allow a fabricated thing to be turned into raw material and it doesn't work on creatures or magic items at all. If you want to make this difficult, it would be very easy and justifiable.

Maybe a quest to the land / plane where warforged are built?

[Sigreid]

It's all scrap metal - a destroyed golem, so I'd give them scrap prices or send them off on a quest to smelt and refine the scrap into ingots for sale.

BTW a strict reading of fabricate does not allow a fabricated thing to be turned into raw material and it doesn't work on creatures or magic items at all. If you want to make this difficult, it would be very easy and justifiable.

Maybe a quest to the land / plane where warforged are built?

I'd personally allow a player with smithing tools to smelt ingots. Same with the forge cleric's ability.

[Zhorn]

It's all scrap metal - a destroyed golem, so I'd give them scrap prices or send them off on a quest to smelt and refine the scrap into ingots for sale.
I'm inclined to say 'no' but 'yes within reason' to this.
It'd be needless complexity to add an extra layer of 'scrap' quality for in-game prices. A crafted good is worth however much the person willing to buy it is willing to pay, but for the materials cost (specifically metal since it would need to be meted down to make something new anyway) the value should hold stead at the set trade good value for the material.
example: a 1 lb. art object made of gold might be worth 120 gp, but if it's broken (or 'scrap') it's value would never drop below the 50 gp per 1 lb. that is for gold as a trade good, no matter how beaten up or busted it gets.


I'd personally allow a player with smithing tools to smelt ingots. Same with the forge cleric's ability.
Or any old town's metal smith that had a a crucible big enough for a given piece (and a forge hot enough).

We did something like that in SKT a few times. The vonindod fragments made of adamantine, too big for the local smiths to fit in their equipment to attempt to melt down, or in some cases they just didn't have forges hot enough for adamantine in general. Usually is was regular city forges could get hot enough, but the fragments were just too big, and small towns had neither the heat nor capacity for such large pieces of adamantine.

For those fragments, the party had to get the pieces off to the dwarven citadels or the like, where finding the equipment and heat to melt down such large pieces was relatively simple.
Just also happened to be a logical place to sell off such large volumes of metal of any type, or easily find crafters to start making the base forms of something new.

[Mastikator]

That is completely logical for a setting. But, I think if Iron is plentiful, someone will figure out steel. I suppose unless the gods interfere for some reason.

Steel is a matter of technology since it's just iron and carbon :smallwink: But I think the same should apply to mithril and adamantine. IMO forging mithril should be a well guarded trade secret that only a few dwarves know, same for adamantine. (and it shouldn't be the same blacksmiths, the smiths that know how to forge mithril should be bitter rivals with the smiths that know how to forge adamantine).

To be honest I think allowing a wizard to Fabricate mithril and adamantine scrap into ingots is a bit too generous, merely making ingots from a metal does require craftsmanship and the spell explicitly says that you need proficiency if

create items that ordinarily require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as jewelry, weapons, glass, or armor, unless you have proficiency with the type of artisan’s tools used to craft such objects.
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Fabricate

I think mithril ingots counts.

[J-H]

In this case, the caster of Fabricate was an armorer artificer equipped with the Anytool (I forget the real name), so proficiency wasn't an issue.

[Chronos]

Making ingots requires a nonzero level of craftsmanship, but there's no plausible interpretation by which that level of craftsmanship is "high". The usual technique a master smith would use to craft ingots would be to say "Hey, apprentice, make me a dozen ingots of this, and have them done by tomorrow morning".

[dafrca]

Making ingots requires a nonzero level of craftsmanship, but there's no plausible interpretation by which that level of craftsmanship is "high". The usual technique a master smith would use to craft ingots would be to say "Hey, apprentice, make me a dozen ingots of this, and have them done by tomorrow morning".

So the Master Smith is using his Leadership Skill?


Sorry I had to. I will go stand in the corner for a time out now...... :biggrin: