Adamantine Manacles

[Berserk Monk]

A player of mine wanted to know how much manacles made out of adamantine would cost and I have no idea. Suggestion? They don't have to be made out of adamantine, they just have to be super strong and better than masterwork.

[Jergmo]

Well, adamantine is about 5 times as expensive as mithral, so it'd be 2,500 gp per pound.

[Berserk Monk]

Well, adamantine is about 5 times as expensive as mithral, so it'd be 2,500 gp per pound.

Cool. Thanks.

[Cieyrin]

I believe they had adamantine manacles in the Stronghold Builder's Guide, though I can't say for sure.

[AslanCross]

Dungeonscape prices them at 2000 GP.

[Cieyrin]

Dungeonscape prices them at 2000 GP.

Ah, that's the book they were in! I knew I saw them, somewhere, just went the wrong direction.

[Harperfan7]

...or you could read the section on adamantine in the DMG where it says how much items made of adamantine weigh per pound.

[AslanCross]

...or you could read the section on adamantine in the DMG where it says how much items made of adamantine weigh per pound.

Strangely enough, while the Mithral entry has price per pound, Adamantine does not.

[Harperfan7]

Strangely enough, while the Mithral entry has price per pound, Adamantine does not.

Go figure. Once again, harperfan gets bit in the ass by his own comments.

[arkol]

I never will understand how something can cost 2500 gold per pound, yet when you use 45 pounds of this substance to create a shield, it only cost 2000 gold, including all the time and labor invested in the items' creation.

Yet another infinite gold loophole like the lader/10ft pole one. Buy an adamantine shield, melt it down, sell the adamantine, buy another shield....

[Talic]

The cost for crafting an adamantine shield is 2/3 of it's final price.

An adamantine shield is valued at 2000g.
Its cost to create is: 1333g 33s 33c.

An adamant shield weighs 45 pounds, and adamantine is worth 2500g per pound. The adamant, when harvested, yields 112,500g.

Net Profit: 111,166g 66s 67c, if you crafted.
110,500g, if you purchase.

[pingcode20]

Alternatively, there's less than 1lb of adamantine actually in an adamantine shield, and the rest of it is made up of other materials to make it a usable shield.

After all, Adamantine is super-hard - you wouldn't need much of it at all to make a good shield, and the rest would go into making sure all that force it absorbed doesn't go on to be absorbed by your arm.

[shadow_archmagi]

Alternatively, there's less than 1lb of adamantine actually in an adamantine shield, and the rest of it is made up of other materials to make it a usable shield.

After all, Adamantine is super-hard - you wouldn't need much of it at all to make a good shield, and the rest would go into making sure all that force it absorbed doesn't go on to be absorbed by your arm.

Except that the description promises pure adamantine.

[pingcode20]

Only in the same way that a steel shield is a brick of steel strapped to your arm by more steel.

[lord_khaine]

Yet another infinite gold loophole like the lader/10ft pole one. Buy an adamantine shield, melt it down, sell the adamantine, buy another shield....

thats only if you belive you get anything else than ½ a lader if you chop one in 2.

I guess the most logical reason will indeed be that a Adamantine shield is only parly made of steel.

[Jalor]

Dungeonscape prices them at 2000 GP.

Question answered. /thread

[Yahzi]

Well, adamantine is about 5 times as expensive as mithral, so it'd be 2,500 gp per pound.

I don't know how to get 5x.

Armor......Adamant....Mithril... Avg Weight
Light.........5K.............1K........22.5
Medium...10K.............4K.......31.25
Heavy.....15K.............9K........45
Shield........2K.............1K........8.6 (excluding Tower shields)

From this, I picked 250 gp/lb for both mithiril and adamantine. Mithirl weapons cost half as much as adamantine, but they also weight half as much.

It still leaves problems. Large shields and chainmail tunics are worth more than they sell for. One fix is to assume those light armors are lighter than listed because they are made from stronger materials. Another problem is that it specifically states mithril is +500 gp per lb; we can fix this by assuming only half of that is the metal, and the other half is labor for working such a difficult metal.

it is amazing to me that the authors of D&D did not simply state "Mithril items cost X gp per lb and adamantine cost Y per lb." They could have avoided a table, simplified things, unified the raw goods cost (we know how much a lb of pepper, silver, iron, and gold cost... but not mithril or adamant? How could an adventurer care about the cost per lb of iron?). They could have a simple formula; they chose a complex table.

This is because they worked backwards. They decided how much they wanted mithril/adamantine items to cost, based on their effectiveness per level. In other terms, Gamist rather than Simulationist. Which is fine. Until some poor DM asks "How much does X cost?"

The correct answer, according to the DMG, is that adamatine manacles cost as much as necessary to make your game "fun". But of course, if I could make up the correct answer off the top of my head, I wouldn't need to buy gamebooks in the first place.

I'm working on a unified price list, that changes as little as possible (the price of cows, for instance, had to go) while still making sense. I've figured out how peasants make 1sp a day and adventurers make 1gp. It leads to some interesting conclusions: the life of a peasant is closer to the worst period of the medieval period rather than the early renessiance tavern-hopping of most games. But then, few adventurers ever even notice the peasants, anymore than they notice the cattle, which is itself a very medieval mindset.


Edit: I'm looking at my 3.0 DMG, and it has a completely different table. Adamantinte weapons get a +1 or +2 enhancement bonus based on their damage dice; adamantine armor gets +1 to +3 enhancement bonus. The costs are insane: while the price for mithril doesn't change, the price for adamatine is 2K/5K/10K.

(sigh)