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N1njato
Staj
(4/19/04 6:48 am)
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'Blue Adamantine' in the CRM
To make a long story short, I've got a player who *really* wants to forge his own great maul using Adamantine. Now before I get carried away I'll have to force myself to make this explanation brief, because this isn't the point of my thread... here goes...
He (the player) thinks all rare items are available in any town any time as long as the town gold piece value covers it. I disagree. I make nearly anything available, but not all things, especially mithril and adamantine because I consider rarity something that GP value can't always cover. Yes, you can take into account the prices = more expensive that's why they're rare, but I agree only to some extent. Rare= more expensive, but more expensive doesn't mean 'available' if the town has enough money. I started a thread about this a while back, and I decided to keep to my original idea that rare does in fact = rare, and not just rare=expensive. There's more to rare than simply a price.
So, here's his problem. He wants to make this great maul from adamantine, so I said 'you CAN, but you have to find adamantine to do it, and is your player going to spend that much time to make it? (100+ weeks)'. He was instead going to try to buy an adamantine great maul, masterwork of course  , and going by the PH it takes something like 72 weeks for a 20th level smith to make one. And, going by the 'gp=available' rule, there should be hundreds (or is that infinite??) of them readily available for purchase in Verbobonc. Riiiiiight. Sorry I don't think so. So here's what I've set up.
He's heard from the smith in Rastor that there is a rumour of a
Blue Adamantine vein somewhere in the CRM. I've said "Blue Adamantine" because I want the player to get a little something extra seeing as how he's risking his life to get the stuff, and going through a bit of hell to do it.
The rumour isn't exactly a rumour at all, at least as far as one NPC is concerned. In fact, the dwarf smithy of Rastor knows it exists, because low and behold, he actually has a tiny shard of the metal hidden away that he found in the mines when he lived there. He's told other adventurers where it is, and none have returned. He agrees to tell anyone where he found the shard as long as they promise to return and give him half of the blue adamantine ore they find. He has no way of knowing if they'll keep to their side of the bargain, but he takes a chance at their honesty as he has no choice. He's never, ever going to be foolish enough to go into the CRM looking for it himself, so he may as well at least *try* to get some this way.
Phew. Now that that's all the backstory done, here are my three questions:
1: Wtf is Blue Adamantine, and what does it do? I remember Red Steel and Green Steel (only their names. I never knew what they actually 'do', so can anyone fill me in here? I'm talking about the 2nd edition version. I hear the 3rd edition Green Steel just makes your stuff masterwork or something... how lame is that), which gave me the idea, but I was thinking of Blue Adamantine as having some extra property. I want to make it 'cool' without it being too overpowering. Any suggestions?
2: Where can I place this vein of ore? The long description below is just my idea, but the short of it is this simple question. If you want you can skip to 3:
I told the players that the little shard the dwarf found was at the foot of the bridge where there is a HUGE statue of Moradin, the dwarf god. I know there isn't a statue there, but for my compaign, now there is. The statue stands at the foot of the Earth Temple bridge (maybe) and he's holding a massive hammer in his hand. I was thinking that the party should go there and search for clues, and have something somewhat dramatic happen. Let's say someone/thing has tried to defile this statue, but failed miserabely, as the stone is too hard and well crafted to cause any significant damage. What the defilers did manage to do however, is weaken the base that connects to the bridge. After the PC's fool around with it or poke/prod etc, I was thinking of having the massive structure fall forward, the hammer smashing the ground and revealing an ultra thin vein of it leading off into a cavern. If the PC's ventured in this direction, eventually they might find this source and manage to get a thick vein of it (blue admantine ore) there. They can then proceed to mine away once they find the actual vein, but warn them that the cavern that it's located in is unstable. Once they've mined a certain amount (not too much) have the cavern collapse, fill with lava and thus end the chance at getting more (actually, I just want to limit it's availibility).
This all sounds like divine intervention, which it is. I imagine Moradin would be highly pissed off at having Tharizdun's priests driving out his dwarves from one of his prize strongholds and taking over for 100 years, so I thought Moradin might take some personal interest in seeing to the destruction of this 'annoyance'. If any PC's could survive to the CRM to that point, it's basically like passing a test, and thus Moradin provides them with some help, that being a vein of Blue Adamantine.
How does this sound? If you think this is a decent enough approach, can anyone suggest an area to place this vein?
3: How can the players, once they've found the ore, get around the time frame needed to craft items? Read down for my take on this, or just make a suggestion.
I was thinking of having the player spend time on the Astral (or which plane is it that 1 day real time = 1 year planar?? I forgot) after seeing a projection/vision in a mirror/portal of a smithy working a forge in some magical domain. The smith beckons the PC inside with a smile. If the player enters carrying his ore, he can go there and make his item in 1 or 2 days of game time, but after which the image fades and there is no way of getting back to that realm from that method.
Edited by: N1njato at: 4/19/04 7:10 am
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Taxman66
Briar Beast
(4/19/04 8:39 am)
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Re: 'Blue Adamantine' in the CRM
I'm not sure about where a good place to put a vein of ore (other than perhaps one of the many unmarked/mapped tunnels that are supposed to populate the mines).
However, the dwarven smithy is a perfect and logical place to put some adamantine, both in raw form and perhaps replacing one or two of the weapons.
Taxman
"It takes an uncommon mind to think of these things, Hobbes." - Calvin
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N1njato
Staj
(4/19/04 8:58 am)
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Re: 'Blue Adamantine' in the CRM
Alright sounds good. I'll look for that area.
*Still* trying to read through the entire module... taking me a while...
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HWRNMNBSOL
Human
(4/19/04 9:05 am)
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Re: 'Blue Adamantine' in the CRM
One suggestion for the game effects of blue adamantite:
Perhaps the metal has an affinity for magical enhancements. Any weapon or armor made using blue adamantite requires only x% of the usual experience point cost to create. x should be set small enough that seeking out the metal is worthwhile, but high enough that it's not ludicrously easy to create +5 items.
It being adamantite, it should also have properties involving reduced weight, reduced armor check penalties and increased hardness. On the downside, it should take forever to make an item, and of course finding blue adamantite should be rather difficult.
On a final note, I think it would be interesting if items made from blue adamantite had a small flat percentage chance to spontaneously develop a personality. So, even if it's not created to be intelligent, the character's maul could wind up being smart anyway. This could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how the player and item alignments coincide....
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