#special materials

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Magic subject: a specific special metal or special metals in general

I'll do you one better, Special Materials™ in general: the more we get, the more silly they get, because it's really hard to strike a balance between how Precious and Special they try to be and how WotC flaunts it on cards to highlight its existence.

It's hard to sell me on how priceless Etherium is, or Halo, or Cosmium, or Powerstones, when they show up on every other card in the set and people are pretty liberal with their use. Hard to believe Darksteel is so rare when there's an entire foundry made of the stuff. Ixalan's story actually handled that a bit better than the card with Cosmium, I feel, since it wasn't treated as particularly special or precious there, even if it was sacred.

Generally, I think the Special Materials are better when they aren't a main focus, just a worldbuilding element in the background. Darksteel did that relatively well with a mechanical tie-in, Mizzium isn't flaunted left and right, Tyrite did it really well because it only appears a few times, and most of them are the same weapon. Aether is alright because it doesn't pretend it's particularly rare, but Halo isn't with how liberally it was used. Despite not appearing that much, Benalian enchanted Stained Glass was overused, I think, since it's supposed to be this precious family legacy material that only exists in small quantities, plastering it everywhere on all cards of the faction cheapens it (even if it looks fantastic.) Etherium has a canyon between how precious it's touted to be and how much we see of it everywhere on Esper.

If you're trying to sell a Special Material, don't plaster it everywhere if you want it to feel precious and special.

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Roleplay Ramblings: Strange Materials part 3

Exotic Materials

 So with the core set and mundane primitive materials out of the way, we can get to what new fare pathfinder offers us in its setting-neutral materials. These vary from exotic minerals, strange organic products, and the results of unique creation processes.

 For example, some evil craftsfolk fashion leather armor from tanned angelskin, which provides a screen between the wearer and various goodly effects.

Another is blood crystal, a strange quartz that eagerly, possibly actively absorbs blood, making it useful for weapons as it compounds the harm of various bleed effects.

Compounding on the uses of darkwood, darkleaf cloth, which is made from weaving darkwood tree leaves and bark strips into a flexible material, which serves well for lighter armors while maintaining the impressively light weight associated with the tree.

Some even experiment with the hide of electric eels to make a naturally insulating armor that is also quite flexible.

For something a little more exotic, there is elysian bronze, forged from metals found in the upper planes and sometimes gifted to great mortal heroes, elysian bronze empowers the wielder against magical beasts and monstrous humanoids, proving all the more deadly against them in weapon form, and more resilient agains them in armor form.

Fire-Forged and Frost-Forged Steel are actually the same substance, but careful manipulation of this alloy changes the direction its unique properties flow, granting protection against fire or frost in armor form, and being able to absorb heat, or become extremely cold when exposed to said energies in weapon form, adding a little bit of mundane elemental power to their strikes for a short while.

Those with wooden weaponry who wish to avoid having to make repairs sometimes seek out greenwood, a rare substance made from taking living branches from a tree animated by a treant, and enchanted by the words of a dryad. If all goes well, the result is a wooden weapon that is truly alive, able to heal damage with water, sunlight, and fertile soil. However, such weapons and items cannot be bought, only made and given freely.

Though called Griffon Manes, light armor made this way can be made from the fur of any magical leonine beast. The breezy material actually makes aerial maneuvers easier, and enhances the power of any magical flight the wearer possesses.

Thematically similar to greenwood, living steel forms in knodules of certain hard-bodied trees, absorbed from minerals in the soil. Harvested and forged properly, these lumps of metal retain certain plant-like qualities, and heal themselves when their current form is damaged. Furthermore, armor made from living steel is especially resilient to the touch of most other metals, denting and blunting metal weapons.

Another green material, viridium, is much less benign, for the hard volcanic glass exudes some strange, poisonous property that can make flesh rot on those who are struck by a weapon carved from it, and slivers can even break off and cause lasting damage. However, carrying such a weapon risks exposure to the same foul energies (read: radiation).

Some cultures, namely the vanara, make weapons with hafts made from woven wooden fibers rather than a single straight piece of would, making them much more flexible and whippy, hence the name: whipwood. This flexibility comes in handy for avoiding having the weapon broken.

Finally, wyroot, a curious woody root, has the ability to absorb energies from those struck by such weapons, particularly on critical hits. From there, magi or monks can absorb this energy, converting it to arcane energy or ki respectively.

 And that’s just the setting-neutral stuff. Tomorrow, we’ll be tackling some of the substances found specifically in the Golarion setting!

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Roleplay Ramblings: Strange Materials  part 4

Golarion Materials

 The folks at Paizo weren’t content to simply create materials for general use, they also made a selection for their official setting, integrating it into the lore of the world.

 The first major grouping of such materials is the 6 metals, that, with adamantine, form the 7 starmetals of the setting, called such for their only resource being mined from meteorites and other cosmic locales. They include Abysium, a blue-white metal that constantly flakes off like cold tin, and generates an unearthly radiance that poisons those that are exposed, making it mostly useful for weaponry, but also arcane power generators. Some say that this radiance comes from the Abyss.

Djezit is the only liquid star-metal, and is generally considered useless for crafting arms and armor, though the red liquid can be used to empower spellcasting as an additional component. Some say that certain genius spellcasters learned long ago to alloy djezit with other metals to create a craftable version, though the properties are not fully explored.

Horacalchum is an extremely rare skymetal with a coppery-gold sheen that bends time around it, making weapons made from it all the more accurate from the additional time given to correct a swing, while armor gives the wearer additional reaction time, allowing them to act faster when combat begins. It is also seen used in devices that speed up or slow down relative time in an area or for an object.

Sometimes called Ghost Iron, Inubrix is a softer metal that has the unique property of being intangible to iron and steel, allowing weapons made from it to ignore the benefits of any iron-based protection. However, its soft nature makes it hard to hold a damaging edge. That coupled with its special property makes it virtually useless as armor in worlds dominated by steel weaponry.

Questionably a metal at all, noqual resembles transparent green crystal, but can be melted down and worked like any metal. The alien species akatas incubate and hibernate in cocoons made from the stuff, though its unclear if it is a secretion of theirs, or something they consume, process, and utilize on the asteroids and stellar environs they inhabit. Regardless, noqual has natural anti-magic properties, dealing extra harm against creatures created by magic, such as undead and constructs, while armor made from it makes the wearer more resilient to spells, but also makes it harder for them to cast magic of their own.

Finally, we have siccatite, a metal that is either extremely hot or extremely cold, constantly generating or absorbing heat. Weapons made form it add a single extra point of appropriate elemental damage to their attacks, but also harm the wearer if they have no protection. Armor has a similar problem, but also harms whoever is foolish enough to grapple them. Thus, such materials are best coupled with magical or natural resistances to those elements.

 And that does it. Certainly there are other mystical materials in the golarion setting, including the ghoul-making lazurite crystals, and the starmetal alloys from Numeria, but those are the main set. Next time, we’ll get to the real juicy bit of all this: guidelines for making your own special materials for your own setting!

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Roleplay Ramblings: Strange Materials part 5

Making Your Own

 So we’ve seen what Paizo has come up with, but how do we create special materials that are wholly unique to our own personal settings? Certainly, Pathfinder already covers a lot of bases in that regard, but inevitably, you’re going to want to make your own if that sort of thing interests you.

 We’ll start with a concept. What IS this special material exactly? Is it some rare metal, stone, or even plant or animal with unique properties? An ordinary material treated by exotic and alchemical processes? Is it from another plane of existence where the rules of reality are different?

Then, we have to ask what exactly its special properties are. This can vary a lot, because a lot of magical enchantments are out there for both armor and weaponry. As such, a lot of materials that perform a similar function to an enchantment usually do so with a lesser effect, or with special rules on how it functions, such as how fire-forged steel requires the weapon to have absorbed heat from a fire attack, and hot siccatite also damages the wielder, but both are considered less than a flaming or flaming burst enchantment.

This, in turn, will affect cost. If an item is strictly better or worse than a similar enchantment, then its cost should reflect that. Any drawbacks the item has should also reflect this.

Further, you should consider what sort of items the material is viable for. Some are only good as weapons, such as inubrix, while others are only good as armor, such as dragonhide. Also consider what other sorts of devices they might be good for, such as cold siccatite being used in cold storage, or noqual being used in the prison cells of magic users in some high-end prison.

Also, in regards to material vs magic, consider how certain materials are made redundant by sufficiently powerful magic, such as silver, cold iron, and even adamantine’s purpose for negating damage reduction being replicated by ordinary steel with a high enough magical attack bonus.

 Simply put, with the right amount of research and forethought, you too can populate your setting with all sorts of wondrous, quasi-magical materials. Happy forging!

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Roleplay Ramblings: Strange Materials part 1

Intro

 If you’ve been a fan of fantastical fiction for any length of time, you know that there are moments of awesome that come around every once in a while that send shivers down your spine. One of those tends to be acquiring a magic weapon of some kind. A good GM can recreate that feeling, describing the feel of the weapon, as well as its appearance. Some forget, however, that oftentimes a new awesome weapon, or suit of armor, doesn’t just look different because its magical, but also because its made of something other than your standard fare.

 Pathfinder is full of such supernatural or otherwise unusual materials, each with their own properties. Some are useful as both armor and weapon, while others are only functional as one or the other.

In the core rulebook, there are a couple of simple, easy to find substances that, as far as most settings go, form the default of expensive, but useful alternatives to steel. There is adamantine, the shiny black metal found in certain meteorites, the supernatural hardness of which pierces most other materials, and proves impregnable against all but similar things.

As well as darkwood, a hard wood that is much lighter than it should be, making it perfect for lightweight shields.

Dragonhide, naturally, is the product of dragon scales and skin, which makes harvesting it dangerous and morally dubious work in many cases, but provides armor that is naturally resistant to various elemental energies, though protecting the actual wearer from said energies still requires magic, at a reduced cost, though.

Cold Iron is actually ordinary iron, or a rare strain of it, that prove inimical to certain creatures like fey if those properties are preserved by a careful process, one that proves quite expensive, even more so when trying to enchant them, the magic-defying properties of pure iron defying permanent enchantment.

Mithral, on the other hand, combines the benefits of light weight with the properties of silver for bypassing damage reduction, and is found in rare veins in the ground, and makes for either lightweight, yet strong armor, or silver-edged weapons that lack the weak edge that silver normally grants.

Alchemical silver is cheaper, but has the weakness of being a soft metal overlayed on a steel core, dulling the edge.

 And that is just the stuff in the core rules! Each of these materials serves a different role, and covers different fantastical themes. Of course, it takes a masterful smith to craft such items as well, so finding the weapon, having it bestowed upon you, finding the materials and having someone craft them, all of these can make for an adventure in and of itself!

Of course, silver and cold iron have the weakness of powerful enough magical enchantments counting as that type of damage reduction, reducing the need for them in all but the most low magic settings or low-level games.

 In any case, this is just the start, tomorrow, we’ll look a little deeper into other materials that have been introduced since then!

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Roleplay Ramblings: Strange Materials part 2

Primitive Materials

 Before we can talk about supernatural materials, we should also talk about more mundane materials that can be found.

We partially covered this back when we talked about technology levels in one’s setting, but it goes without saying that it took a while for steel to become the standard for weaponry in the real world, and we had to work up to that point, going from bone and stone to tools of copper, brass, and bronze.

Of course, those materials are much weaker than steel, and often need to be magically strengthened to be comparable. Otherwise they often break when critical fails or hits occur for weapons and armor respectively.

 In worlds where primitive materials are commonplace, steel weapons may be legendary in their own right, to say nothing of actual magical weaponry or those made from truly special materials.

Others might specifically use such tech out of special consideration, such as religious reasons, superstitions, or personal reasons. Some druids may take their refusal to wear metal armor further by not even wielding metal weapons, for example.

The result, however, is adventures in which the heroes may find themselves inadequately prepared, with every magical weapon becoming a unique, precious thing compared to their regular, fragile fare.

 The point is, just as there are myriads of amazing supernatural materials to make your weapons from, so too are there more mundane materials that can add an interesting aspect to the game. Tune in tomorrow to explore more special materials!

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ABYSSAL BLOODIRON

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