Magic materials in games: is there such a thing as too much Unobtanium?

[oudeis]

Many years ago, I read an opinion piece on a pop-culture site that made this argument about Skyrim. The author was complaining about the glut of item options in the game. I hadn't played it much, but my love of Morrowind and thus Bethesda led me to conclude that she was clearly a filthy casual not to be taken seriously. At the same time, though, she had made a well-reasoned argument, and the list or table of materials in the article did seem a bit long...

I've thought about this quite a bit since then, and based on some of my experiences with games and game-lore sites in the past few years, I have to admit she's right.

Back in the D&D 1st Edition days, there were only three types of magic materials: meteoric iron, mithral, and adamantine, necessary for +3, +4, and 'I am like unto a GOD!' +5 weapons and armor, respectively. When I switched to Runequest, the table of elements changed to bronze, iron, and Rune metals: pure silver, copper, lead, etc magically strengthened to weapons-grade quality, and I thought the greater number of options definitely added to the game. I stepped away from tabletop gaming for a long time and I didn't have any real experience with D&D until Dungeons and Dragons Online came out in 2006. DDO and 3.5 had added an extensive list (https://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Item_materials) of weapon materials, but each was distinctive enough that it just made me want to get one of each.

I had played World of Warcraft and Morrowind in the interim, but I never got far enough in WoW where I needed gear made from the latest entry in the transwonderflonium group to progress, and I simply didn't use Glass, Ebony, or Daedric items because they were overpowered, so the materials arms race never really affected my gaming (I have yet to finish Morrowind, but when I finally do, I'll use the Construction Kit to make these less powerful- trade damage for spell reflection/absorption, hostile reaction from NPCs when bearing Daedric gear, etc). Skyrim, however, definitely pushed this too far, and Blizzard passed the point of ridiculousness more than a decade ago in their drive to keep players on the consumption treadmill in order to wring as many subscription dollars as possible.


I don't know whow other games, tabletop or crpg handle this, but there has to be a balancing point between 'new ubermaterial of the month ("Look at this metal new metal!") and "We got both kinds, Country an- iron and steel." But how many different materials is enough?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YhCMQneyA4

How do you handle Unobtanium in your games? What are the available supersubtances? Do you go with the classics, i.e., Mithril, meteoric iron, etc? Is there a system or world mechanic or taxonomic hierarchy behind the choices, e.g. Terrestrial/Lunar/Solar/Stellar origin? Do players have to seek out long-lost mines, convince a legendary smith to come out of retirement, bargain with gods, dark powers, or worse?

[NichG]

I like there to be a wide diversity of magical materials but they should be things with equally diverse properties rather than an upgrade path. Maybe this particular metal is only special in that it absorbs heat at a different rate than it emits it, and finds use mostly in tinkercraft or particular magical rituals. Maybe this particular metal's utility is that it acts as a strong magnet for Force effects and you can pad your gloves with it to climb Walls of Force, or make a shield of it and stand next to someone you want to protect from magic missiles, or powder it and sprinkle it on the ground to track standing Force spells.

You do have to be careful to not just have one thing which you've gotta use over all else.

[kieza]

There are two real kinds of unobtainium in my Aetrimonde setting, and both are classics: mithril and adamantine.

Both exist in raw forms, similar to aluminum and tungsten respectively, and are just about useless in those forms: raw mithril is certainly quite light, but isn't particularly strong, and just purifying it is an expensive process on its own. Raw adamantine is dense and very hard: you could make weapons or armor out of it if you didn't mind them being impractically heavy, but they'd also be incredibly brittle.

The dwarves long ago figured out miraculous alloys of mithril and adamantine that keep most of their beneficial properties while toning down their drawbacks: true mithril is the classic "light as a feather and strong as steel," as long as you're talking about specific grades of steel. There are modern steel alloys that are marginally stronger than mithril, but not nearly as light. True adamantine is still denser than steel, but it's nearly indestructible and holds an incredibly fine edge.

The thing is, the dwarves lost the recipes for these alloys during the collapse of the first era of civilization. They rediscovered mithril by delving into their ruins (although they actually only got one version of the formula, and there are others they don't know about that have different properties), but adamantine remains lost to them. The only way even the dwarves can make anything new out of adamantine is to rework existing objects made of the alloy, and every time they do it, they lose a little material in the process. Everybody, not just the dwarves, are interested in figuring out adamantine, and there are some hardliner dwarves actively sabotaging other researcher's experiments with raw adamantine.

Cold iron used to be unobtainium, because the definition of "cold iron" is metal or alloy with a significant iron content that hasn't been worked by fire. Historically, the only source was certain nickel-iron meteorites, and about all you could do with them was strap a chunk onto a haft and call it a warhammer. Then some wizards figured out a ritual that can reshape raw materials into finished goods, and some bright lad noticed that you could use it to turn iron ore into swords without using any fire. So now, cold iron isn't exactly common (it's more expensive than your typical iron or steel) but it's not unobtainium.

[Mastikator]

I run an Eberron campaign, I run things pretty vanilla when it comes to magic materials, the metals are mithral, adamantine and byeshk, the crystals are the 3 dragonshards.

I do however import some oldschool materials like ironwood. Ironwood is not better than steel, in fact it's a little worse, but you can make armor and weapons that are non-metallic, which matters for things like rust monsters, heat metal and druids.

I do also homebrew magic items that are based on, and often made from monster parts. Taking inspiration from the displacer cloak being made from a displacer beast's skin. Like a troll leather armor, or a wyvern's tail whip, or a hide armor made from a yeti's pelt. But those are specific things, a magic item with a "story" rather than a better material.

-

I typically don't want the players mining materials to craft new cooler stuff. Not because I don't want them to have cool stuff but because I want them to go on adventures. The precious few hours of game time I can claw from the clutches of Real Life™ are not something I want to waste on mining-simulator.

[Leon]

No, Because ultimately its down to what the DM allows there to be in any given game ~ that there is often a lot of options is good, problems can arise from letting it be kitchen sink but again that's a choice made (or a lack of control) by the DM not the default.

[King of Nowhere]

I went with just mithril and adamantium.
Adamantium was the only one in widespread use by the players; the campaign had guns, and adamantium negated some of the armor penetration from bullets, while adamantine bullets had additional penetration. They went at 60 gp per bullet, but money was not a concern.

Dragon hide potentially was one, but it had no special properties in combat. It was just cheaper to enchant

[Xervous]

For my ongoing campaign there’s a variety of fantastical substances but they’re generally distinct in source and function.

Mithril, adamantine and meteoric iron are all that feature for metals. The first two behave as expected, fulfilling the two typical brands of super metal. Meteoric iron (and other star metals) is valued for its otherworldly affinity, being useful as a source of power or as a conduit for some extraplanar entity. A good portion of the campaign has ended up focusing on searching for meteors and meteor derived objects, with the rarity ensuring that every item involved is Name worthy.

A few other substances of note color the setting, more than a few of them being condensed power from slain, wounded or imprisoned (demi)gods. A large portion are simply consumable or otherwise expended in use, so they’re not strictly unobtainium labels for new fantastic equipment. Wishing Water does what it says on the tin. “Blue Cinnamon” has been summarized by players as magical Spice (Dune). Water from the fountain of youth is another ‘as advertised’. “Slag” is a wonderful unstable liquid metal appearing like mercury that reacts violently and unpredictably when brought close to magic; this one ends up being used as fuel for vessels and for the creation of a unique sort of living construct.

While the players are off chasing down massive gemstones to complete upgrades on their meteor core powered flying ship there’s no impression of material/substance over saturation. Everything is distinct and separate in function, and they’ll readily identify one or another material from even general descriptions.

Oh right I haven’t settled on there being a fancy wood. There was that one fantastical elven boat of living wood but I’m still pondering whether or not that’s some nonsense like “oh there’s X nature spirit type thing imbued in the ship” rather than it simply being a type of wood.

[stoutstien]

I personally prefer materials like this to be created as much as collecting and the means to do so are basically rituals that call for very specific steps.

For example My WIP has a material called bone steel that is a metal that is created via a very time extensive method that can only be performed by mortal races. Well in and of itself it is a beautiful metal but it's most notable aspect is that far can use it with the normal drawbacks associated with other worked metals. For smiths it's a powerful bargaining chip if they deal with fae.

The downside is the rituals to create it are limited to those who actually go and gather the resources themselves so only smiths who are willing to brave the wilds can create it. This magic cannot be easily circumvented.

The cool thing about this setup is you can maintain a logic where the sources of these rare metals aren't just collected like other ones because you can't just go there and set up a mine and pull it out it until it's depleted.

[Ignimortis]

The only thing that makes a magic material useless is just that - lacking a proper use. D&D has several useful materials - mithral is excellent for armor and theoretically useful for some weapons, adamantine is excellent for weapons and sometimes armor, cold iron bypasses resistances for multiple enemy types that tend to be among the most annoying. It does sometime contribute to the "golfbag of weapons" problem, though, but 3.5 had that solved with Metalline and Transmuting.

It's just that there are also kind of useless materials, too, like darkwood which is basically a "well, if your druid wants an easy-to-carry shield for some reason" material with no other purpose. The former kind of materials are good, as they serve a purpose in the game. The latter kind of materials are bad, especially if they provide a function that is easy to replicate with a different material.

As for Morrowind, I don't agree on your assessment of higher-grade weapon materials there. Daedric items in particular are balanced by their absolutely extreme weight - even a character who has 100 STR is going to lose a sixth of their encumbrance limit to just a single Daedric Claymore (81 out of 500), and a full set of Daedric armor (hard to get, too) is gonna take up a whopping 60% (309, to be exact), so a fully decked-out Daedric-wearing warrior is going to have just their gear taking up 390/500 of their carry weight - hardly ideal for adventuring. Everything else is balanced by being just rare as anything (with Ebony also being rather heavy) before you get dropped into Tribunal and find assassins stocked up on glass weaponry somehow (Tribunal was really the first time Bethesda went the "well, we gotta autolevel everything to hell to keep up with the player" route).

[kyoryu]

I'd go the other way.

Why do you have unobtainium at all? There's two reasons, really:

1. As a plot coupon.
2. To gate access to things.

These can definitely work together, and do. How many different unobtainiums do you need? Depends on what things you want to gate together. You can manage some of that with quantity, and that can work to make "higher" stuff harder to get, but can also end up devaluing the lower tier stuff.

Like, if we just go with "+1 to +5 weapons", then if you assume each +1 requires 1 unit of unobtainium, then if +1 weapons are at all attainable, getting a +5 isn't really hard. On the other hand, if you assume each tier requires ten times the materials of the previous level, then making even a single +5 possible would mean that there would be enough unobtainium available to create literally ten thousand +1s. So gating them behind a different material can make sense.

On the plot side, this can work at both the macro and micro levels - a party might go adventure for a small amount of the stuff, and kingdoms could war over a large amount.

There's lots of stuff in this thread that's good - having the materials be used for different not necessarily better purposes, tying it to the person crafting it in some way to prevent industrialization, etc. But the first question that really needs to be answered is why. Everything else comes from that.

[LibraryOgre]

My problems with magical materials and the like are the golf bag problem and the treadmill problem.

In the golf bag problem, your fighter needs to carry 12 different weapons to account for the 4 different energy types and 3 different damage types; I do this in TES: Blades, with cleaving, slashing, and bashing, plus fire, ice, lightning, and poison. Are the goblins vulnerable to bashing and cold? Then not using a frost mace is bad, especially since they might ignore poison damage.

Then you have the treadmill... I have to upgrade to silver weapons because normal steel isn't cutting it anymore, now I need orcish because silver weapons don't have enough damage... There is no Excalibur, because it's always going to be overshadowed by the next tier of magic/special material weapons.

[NichG]

My problems with magical materials and the like are the golf bag problem and the treadmill problem.

In the golf bag problem, your fighter needs to carry 12 different weapons to account for the 4 different energy types and 3 different damage types; I do this in TES: Blades, with cleaving, slashing, and bashing, plus fire, ice, lightning, and poison. Are the goblins vulnerable to bashing and cold? Then not using a frost mace is bad, especially since they might ignore poison damage.

Then you have the treadmill... I have to upgrade to silver weapons because normal steel isn't cutting it anymore, now I need orcish because silver weapons don't have enough damage... There is no Excalibur, because it's always going to be overshadowed by the next tier of magic/special material weapons.

That's a consequence of looking at materials specifically through the lens of weapons (or armor, or any other singular usage). But if materials are more about the weird things they can enable than modifying the numbers of things which already have very few numbers that specify their function, I think it resolves this. Even better if its not like materials are a single choice for an item ('a silver sword', 'an adamantine shield', etc) but can actually be used together as part of an overall craft or set of utilities.

For example:
- Materials that glow (and can be used as accents to add torch-like functionality to other things). Bonus if they're responsive glows - this metal glows in the presence of undead, that one in the presence of orcs, with detection radius based on how much of it there is.
- Materials that add aura effects based on the total weight they add to items, with the ability to get multipliers on that effect if they're incorporated into a completed craft with a high Crafting check. E.g. natural healing is faster near this kind of stone.
- Materials that have specific uses perhaps more in construction than in gear: Teleportation to targets within a radius of this kind of metal instead go directly to the largest concentration of that metal, this stone sweats water constantly and increases the ambient humidity, this stone is repelled by gravity rather than attracted by it and can be used to make flying cities, this metal blocks ethereal creatures, that one scrambles divinations near it.
- Specialized uses that are only really 'if you know what you're hunting': A bit of this metal in a wound shuts down Regeneration and Fast Healing, a bit of that metal in a wound gives a caster 30% spell failure until it is cleaned, etc. IMO these should all be terrible if used as the primary material of a weapon but instead find usage in arrowheads or even pastes.
- Weird material property stuff to be used in more complex engineering projects: This metal becomes a liquid in the dark but solidifies in bright light, this material is a universal catalyst that accelerates any sort of chemical reactions or fermentation processes.
- Adventuring utility stuff: this metal causes liquids to temporarily solidify on contact, this stone becomes painfully hot if someone tells a lie while holding it.
- Stuff useful to specific characters: when incorporated into a casting focus, this metal increases the CL of Necromancy spells by 2 but decreases the CL of all other spells by 1; this gem can be used in place of any other gem-like material component with value <500gp and in doing so captures the spell to be recast later when the gem is crushed.

Maybe rather than 'materials' these could be termed 'natural wondrous items? Anyhow, I tend to prefer this sort of thing to be something found or made naturally than for it to be the result of specific enchanted items...

[Batcathat]

I feel the same way about magic materials as I do about magic items. Just like I think a magic item that's just a slightly better version of the mundane item is kinda boring, a magic material that's just a slightly better than another material is kinda boring ("better at hurting creature X" can be an interesting quality, but I think games like D&D kinda overuses it). So I suppose "too much" depends on how many different uses and qualities are needed and/or wanted.

[aleph_null]

In a magic system designed for typical roleplaying game (= a small group of adventurers achieves great things by personally encountering exciting and dangerous situations) I would avoid magic materials unless they're needed for thematic reasons (silvered weapons in a game about hunting werewolves, mithril armor in a game that wants to be very close to LotR).

Notice that a typical player character needs:

some power (to be able to influence the situation),
independence (to let the player make decisions instead of following orders),
a motivation for taking risks and enduring pain.


If powerful abilities are primarily provided by personal talent and experience, then the powerful people have a motivation for taking risks, because they need to be there to use their abilities.

On the other hand, if the powerful abilities are provided by items, then those items will be very expensive and their rich and influential owners will usually send somebody else to the risky and frequently uncomfortable missions.

Of course there are several excuses for adventurers with valuable gear:

they are rich, but still want to go on exciting adventures (a.k.a. crazy if the adventure involves suffering and lethal danger),
they don't trust anybody else who could carry the magic items,
they are trusted agents of the owner of the magic item (e.g. a paladin who carries a holy sword owned by the church),
they found a unique, strange magical item, which is valuable for them, but would be difficult to sell

... but it's easier to play in a world where we won't need to make these excuses.

Items made of magical materials are especially problematic, because they have predictable, reproducible properties and they're (presumably) produced by urban master craftsmen (who are probably law-abiding and probably sell them to the highest bidder), so they will usually empower the non-adveturous, spoiled elite and their faceless, restricted agents.

In a world where expensive materials and sophisticated metalworking provide a big advantage, dragon-slaying will be the job of standardized crossbowmen squads equipped with unobtanium armor and bolts -- instead of the colorful, free adventurers that we all like...

There is also a second, unrelated disadvantage that if the magic is linked to the amount of the unobtanium, then its intensity must be proportional to the amount of the unobtanium (and its proximity to the target etc.).

There are some effects (e.g. lightweight metals, material that falls upwards, stronger-than-steel armor materials) where this proportionality is "natural", but in many other cases (e.g. slowing down the regeneration of monsters) the rules become significantly more complex if the effects need to scale with the amount of unobtanium.

(edited to fix copypaste error)

[Pex]

It comes down to can or should PCs craft magic items. There are pros and cons for both options. Understanding that not having PCs craft magic items is ABSOLUTELY NOT the same thing as PCs never having magic items, if you go that route just do it. Explain why you prefer not. Let it be a metagame reason immersion can take a hike if necessary. Don't passive aggressively ban it by allowing it then making it so hard to do a PC really can't do it.

[NichG]

IME at least, the game doesn't need the world to go so far out of it's way. Powerful elite having power through money is fine. A player isn't going to want to send minions through the newly discovered interdimensional rift, they'll want to explore it themselves. If they're rich they can also bring along minions with regen-blocking crossbow bolts.

If they do solve a problem with money, it means they weren't personally interested in making the sausage there, so maybe it's better it happen offscreen anyhow.

The flip side of this is, if magical materials are diverse according to their environment, that's a strong incentive to go to a variety of places. Because maybe the wealthy in your home country have cornered the market in mithril, but if you go to the elemental conflux you could come back with stuff no one else has ever seen, and then you get to push that advantage to go pursue power or wealth or the pinnacle of wandcraft or whatever.

Also, I think the effects of personal power for these utility materials to exist is exaggerated. If your crossbow bolts cost 100gp a shot, you're going to give them to the best shooters you have, not Lv1 guardsmen for whom one bolt is several year's wages.

[aleph_null]

It's clear that the players want to follow the interesting, dangerous and sometimes painful adventures (OOC); but I think it's still important to explain what's the (IC) motivation of the characters.

If practically all player characters become extremely wealthy, then the "acceptable" motivations and personalities are limited to those which would continue to go on adventures even in those situations. (By the way, these apply to all magic items, not just unobtanium -- sorry for partially derailing the thread.)

If expensive magical items are necessary at high levels, then the players cannot choose:

a "normal" person who would prefer a comfortable (probably luxurious) retirement or a less dangerous management-style job,
an impulsive person who would sell everything and waste the money on carousing,
a holy man who would take risks by selling secondary magical items and donate their value for causes where they can help many people,
a "focused" character like a tradition-bound barbarian, an ascetic warrior-monk or a "mind over matter" psion who wants to improve in one particular area instead of collecting an eclectic variety of strange items.

Personally I wouldn't like to play "extreme sport enthusiast" characters who go to dangerous places just because that's exciting, so I find it important to have a reasonable motivation. Obviously this is just my personal preference, whihc is not relevant for players/groups who simply enjoy the cool challenges.


Also, I think the effects of personal power for these utility materials to exist is exaggerated. If your crossbow bolts cost 100gp a shot, you're going to give them to the best shooters you have, not Lv1 guardsmen for whom one bolt is several year's wages.

Yup, that's right, but if the important equipment is coming from civilized well-organized urban craftsmen, then the best shooters would be organized like a professional army (formal organization instead of "we meet in a tavern", regular pay instead of random loot, equipment supplied by the leadership, commands must be followed, traitors are hunted down). Obviously the uber-weapons won't be given to Random Joe, but if the best shooter is unreliable/rebellious then they'll pick the second best shooter instead of him.

The main drawback of formal organizations is that they must be explained in infodumps (while you can jump directly into anarchy); but apart from that it would be very interesting to play a game where the PCs are all faithful, professional agents of the same formal organization (state, church etc.) and their equipment is coming from the employer.

This way the magic items could be more variable between the missions ("to exterminate the werewolves, you may take silver weapons from the Holy Vault, but please return the flying rock of Saint Aymari because it will be used during the construction of the new tower-church") and perhaps the players wouldn't become too attached to them. (If they lose their own flying rock, it's a tragedy -- if the flying rock of the church returns to the heavens, then it's not their problem and finding a good excuse / shifting the blame can be a good challenge for them.)

[King of Nowhere]

Also, I think the effects of personal power for these utility materials to exist is exaggerated. If your crossbow bolts cost 100gp a shot, you're going to give them to the best shooters you have, not Lv1 guardsmen for whom one bolt is several year's wages.

I don't know, the military world has several examples of weapons worth years of wages being given to common soldiers. generally rocket launchers.

which could translate to a d&d world. sure, if the bolts are worth 100 gp per shot, and they only give a 10% accuracy boost, you're not giving them to the guard. but if ghost touch arrows are the only way to hurt incorporeal enemies, and your region has many of those, then giving a handful of such arrows to each soldier makes a lot of sense.

of course, honesty is something to factor in. real world militaries have limited worries about the soldiers misappropriating those expensive rocket launchers because it's not exactly easy to find someone to sell them to. magic bolts may be easier to smuggle, and that would be an incentive to not give them out

[NichG]

I don't know, the military world has several examples of weapons worth years of wages being given to common soldiers. generally rocket launchers.

which could translate to a d&d world. sure, if the bolts are worth 100 gp per shot, and they only give a 10% accuracy boost, you're not giving them to the guard. but if ghost touch arrows are the only way to hurt incorporeal enemies, and your region has many of those, then giving a handful of such arrows to each soldier makes a lot of sense.

of course, honesty is something to factor in. real world militaries have limited worries about the soldiers misappropriating those expensive rocket launchers because it's not exactly easy to find someone to sell them to. magic bolts may be easier to smuggle, and that would be an incentive to not give them out

Do you mean a truck-mounted one or a shoulder-mounted one? Because the most expensive example I'm finding is $100k per shot for a truck-mounted rocket, which I guess is one to three years salary... I also don't know for such a real-world weapon how much the skill of the operator determines its accuracy - presumably they're just given firing coordinates to enter in which are calculated by a team of people who hopefully are actually pretty good at it? What's the range between the best truck-mounted rocket operator and the worst (who is still allowed to operate it)?

In D&D, a difference of five levels can be a +5 or more to hit, which can be more than a 25% cost savings depending on what kind of AC you're aiming at. If for example the Lv1 soldier hits 50% of the time, the Lv6 guy might hit 75% of the time; the specialized adventurer might hit 80 or 85% of the time with stat mods and feats coming into play (depending on edition ofc). That's better than halving the cost.

[King of Nowhere]

Do you mean a truck-mounted one or a shoulder-mounted one? Because the most expensive example I'm finding is $100k per shot for a truck-mounted rocket, which I guess is one to three years salary. I also don't know for such a real-world weapon how much the skill of the operator determines its accuracy

i'm thinking of shoulder-launched antiair stinger rockets; they are reported at 120000$ per shot at purchase power parity.
I'm not sure about the accuracy.
anyway, while they are expensive, you want to give a few of those around else your troops will be exposed and defenceless against air attack. and just like that, giving some magic ammunition to your fantasy army to enable them to fight enemies that may be immune to normal weapons would be sensible, even if expensive.

[warty goblin]

This all seems a very modern take on distinctly non-modern systems. Modern rich people don't fight because it isn't as renumerative as stock trading or whatever, but this is a quite recent development. In a muscle-powered weakly urbanized economy the rate of return on going out, stabbing people, and taking their stuff is really high. And if you outsource the stabbing too much, there's a substantial risk of your minions deciding its easier to stab and pillage your cowardly ass.

This later dynamic arguably gets even worse with extremely powerful magic weapons. If you own Wailing Doom, a sword that makes a man a match for 30 warriors and decide to loan it out for a nice percentage, do you really trust that Throndor the Slayer isn't going to stage a one man coup, chop his way through your guard, and use your innards for an interpretive art project?

(But what if you can mass manufacture Wailing Dooms? Then you don't have magic items, you just have a setting where swords insta-gib everything they hit.)


Most of this is also besides any sensible point anyway. The correct amount of magic stuff in your magic elf saves the world game is however much you enjoy, damn the worldbuilding.

[Kami2awa]

Mithril, adamantium and meteoric iron all have antecedents either in the roots of the fantasy genre (i.e. Tolkien) or in legend. Adamantine was supposedly the material that made up the weapons of the Greek gods, and meteoric iron was IRL a "magic" material as for a long time it was the only iron available, and had literally fallen from the sky. Other candidates for special materials would include orichalcum ("mountain copper") which supposedly made up the walls of Atlantis (and was probably brass, which did exist in the Bronze Age but was a lot rarer than bronze).

So your fantasy hero with a sword of meteoric iron, mithril or adamantium would happily fit in in a team with Lancelot, Aragorn and Hercules. However, having a laundry list of such materials, many of which seem completely made-up and have no real gravitas (unlike the examples above) starts to feel a little silly.

[warty goblin]

I'm actually rather curious about the genesis of meteoric iron as a component of fantasy weapons. I'm aware of its historical use - Tutankhamun was buried with a meteoric iron dagger for instance - but I find it difficult to believe that sky iron held on as this magical substance in people's minds through the ca. 30 centuries that separate modern fantasy from the end of the bronze age in the Mediterranean. Even as far north as Scandinavia, there's still well over two millenia between widespread iron use and modern fantasy.

I can't think of any mythological or folklore references either. Even the passing references to iron in Homer are more about its value than its origin. Excalibur doesn't seem to be, none of the notable swords in Beowulf are, I rather suspect it's a thoroughly modern trope.

But I also don't have a good idea when it's earliest appearance in fantasy is. The earliest that's springing to my mind is the sword of Martin the Warrior from Redwall, and that's as late as 1986. I can't remember if the first book establishes the sword's origin either, I have a vague idea that's added in a later book, through still early in the series.