Adamantine, Darkwood, Mithral

[cure]

According to canon, do any of the following exist in Ravenloft?

* Adamantine
* Darkwood
* Mithral

And if they do, should they be available at the Player's Handbook prices, or what sort of modifiers, perhaps domain and/or cultural level modifiers, should apply?

[steveflam]

I'm no expert about those 3 but I think Mithral is mined underground is it not? Any dwarves mining somewhere in RL?

[cure]

Sure, in the Sleeping Beast Mountains and the Moutains of Misery/Madness. But I recall no reference to mithral coming from those mines.

For some reason, I associate adamantine with meteors, and I know we have had one of those, unless of course it was only a doppelgagger plant . . .

[HuManBing]

The most likely source of dwarven communities will be Darkon. I don't recall seeing mithral offhand in any source material.

BUT...

If it works for your campaign, put it in there by all means! This goes especially if you plan on using an enemy that has DR against stuff (except for mithral/adamantine etc).

Just because the source books don't say it doesn't mean you must follow the sourcebooks like gospel. It's conceivable that any race, especially gnomes, humans, and dwarves, may have mined some such and refined it to metal.

[steveflam]

Just because the source books don't say it doesn't mean you must follow the sourcebooks like gospel. It's conceivable that any race, especially gnomes, humans, and dwarves, may have mined some such and refined it to metal.

Yes and they are not likely going to share it with just anybody either!!!

[NeoTiamat]

I see no reason Mithril or Adamantine can't exist. Darkwood would work well in Kartakass (explains the lumbering tradition nicely, and sounds good 'Darkwood Forests')

[cure]

Well it is a question of authenticity. Dragonhide, for example, isn't a good fit unless one has just finished slaying Ebb and her family.

Mithril and adamantine too might not be ideal in a low magic, low fantasy, and decidedly claustrophobic setting. And given, for example, that the Great Detective was armed with a +4 gold dagger rather than a mithral one, I half suspect that there has been some conscious decision of the designers to exclude the metals.

On the one hand I agree that, to some extent at least, the DR of certain monsters, golem's I believe for example, argues for the inclusion of the metals.

On the other hand, the Sithican elves hardly seem up to the task of crafting mithral into chain shirts and mail, presuming there is any mithral in Sithicus, and I don't recall the dwarves and elves of Darkon ever being mentioned as crafting such valuable items.

Darkwood, by some other name, from Sithicus and cut unscrupulously by Kartakans does strike me as a good fit. Though I wonder if there are any other or better possible sourcing candidates for it.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

IIRC, there was a dwarf ghost in VRGtG which could only be slain by mithril (or was it adamantine?). Van Richten and his sidekicks managed, after an exhaustive search, to scrape together enough of the exotic metal to craft a single arrowhead, which fortunately did the job.

So yes, at least one of those metals has made a formal appearance in a Ravenloft book. But it is extremely rare, possibly even existing only in outlanders' adventuring equipment.

[HuManBing]

Well, think of it this way.

Are you more likely to have an interesting adventure by giving your PCs a rare and exotic material that they're going to have research and find?

Or are you better served by just giving them a nondescript sword +5?

The whole issue with moving away from the 3.0 DRs types (which really was just "immune to weapons of +2 or lower") and towards 3.5's DR types (which run a whole gamut of weapon types) is to encourage research and gameplay.

So instead of carrying a +5 sword and being confident of bypassing all DRs in existence, you now have to track your prey and study what you can about their habits. Check out a few tomes in the library and figure out what the ancient sages have to say about it.

The lich, for example, is very similar to a skeleton. Skeletons have DR 5/bludgeoning, so carrying around a magical sword just isn't going to be very effective against them. A lich is like a super skeleton, so they made its DR 15/bludgeoning and magic.

Likewise, the Tarrasque stems from a French legend where it could only be tamed by a virgin maiden's belt.

Interesting!

Maybe the Tarrasque has a DR of 15/good and leather. So a Paladin with a Holy Avenger +5 will not do particularly well against it. Time to do some research and figure out what makes it tick.

(And another thread earlier had the Tarrasque's DR more accurately as DR 15/virgin and leather, which tickled my greys... as the mayor of Roswell might say.)

I think it's a mistake to characterize Ravenloft as "poor" or "backwards" or "underpowered". We don't lower the frequency of magical items just to be mean to the players, do we? No - we do it so they rely on other strengths to survive, and it makes the role playing different (and we would hope... better ). The emphasis isn't so much on "keep them poor and desperate" as it is on "encourage other methods of role playing apart from Carry The Biggest Weapon, Thwack The Biggest Enemy".

If the PCs hear about mithral or adamantine, that's fine as long as you work it into the plot well and make a compelling story about it.

Suggestions:

- Tarlyn St Denfer makes a good point. Perhaps the material is so rare, and the people who can craft it are so limited, that the PCs never actually own them outright. Instead, the keepers of the equipment ONLY will lend them to people, and then only to those whom they deem worthy to carry them (and who have proven themselves worthy of trust, too). Sounds like an excellent excuse for the PCs to embark on a side quest...

- Even an adamantine weapon is not particularly overpowered in a land where not many creatures are unusually susceptible to adamantine. Our old sample lich friend mentioned above would have the same disdain for an adamantine sword as he would for a masterwork steel sword. To truly get his attention, you'd need an adamantine magical mace or something similar. Limit the usefulness of the weapon by limiting the number of enemies it's truly effective against. (This is similar in some ways to the old Oriental Adventures module featuring Kara-Tur... the natives there used nonmetal armor, which gave them an inferior AC... but the designers made the entire continent so humid that metal armor starts to degrade anyway, thus levelling the playing field.)

(On the other hand, adamantine has a general bonus to breaking inanimate objects, which would give your PCs a boost there. Still, I don't *think* it translates directly into a combat bonus, unless they plan on using a lot of Sunder attempts?)

- If you make things like sling bullets and arrowheads out of mithral, that puts your PCs in a delicate balancing test. Sure, they can go ahead and use them, but they're darn well going to want to be able to retrieve them, especially if you've already established that this metal is very very rare. This will likely dissuade your rogues from taking too many "I feel lucky" potshots with a -10 penalty with the enemy standing by a cliff, because they know if they miss, they're probably not going to retrieve that rare arrowhead ever again. (A bit like silver bullets, I suppose. Having paid all that money to get them, you'd want to take a careful aim before firing them.)

[alhoon]

The Shadow fey have a version of Dark Mithril. IMC Adamantine and Mithril are a bit more rare than in Prime material but not unheard of.

[Jester of the FoS]

I think I included mithril in my Guide to Dwarves and it has come up in a few places. Mithril isn't that powerful and doesn't have any benefits for being a weapon but makes a nice reward in place of magic. "Here, have some extra-cool shiny armour").
Darkwood would likely only be found in Darkon or Sithicus, again no problems with it.

Adamantine should be rare as heck. It's from meteorites which shouldn't be very darn common in Ravenloft at the best of times.

[Sylaire]

Maybe the Tarrasque has a DR of 15/good and leather. So a Paladin with a Holy Avenger +5 will not do particularly well against it. Time to do some research and figure out what makes it tick.

Am I the only one who immediately started thinking of Castlevania upon reading that?

As for me, I'd have to agree with you that, in Ravenloft, the value or lack thereof of some uber-cool special material almost solely depends upon its roleplaying value.

As nearly everyone else has already said, mithril (is it really spelled "mithral" now in 3Ed?) and adamantine are essentially high-fantasy concepts which may or may not go well with the Ravenloft setting. Whether or not to introduce them almost depends entirely upon what domain you're in and the overtones of the adventure. A dinner-table mystery of social manipulation in Dementlieu or a haunted manor in Mordent? Probably better leave out mithril. Haunted dwarven mine in the Mountains of Madness? A "Weekend in Hell" adventure where the PCs hail from a standard fantasy world? Parts of Darkon where demihumans are met regularly on the streets? Sounds good.

But yes, regardless of its acceptability or not, it should be judged as a roleplaying tool rather than by strict adherence to game stats.

(And on a complete side-note: I find it intriguing that now adamantine is made from meteoric sources when in 1st Ed it wasn't; meteoric iron was what you needed at a minimum for +3 enchantments, mithril for +4, and adamantine for +5. Similarly, drow gear was made largely from alloyed adamantine, though the enchanting process drawing upon the mysterious and arcane energies of the Underdark-which-wasn't-called-that-yet and enabled their mass-production made them unstable compared to the genuine stuff. And come to think of it, wasn't it called adamantite back then? Man, I'm a fogey!).

[cure]

For some reason, I associate adamantine with meteors, and I know we have had one of those, unless of course it was only a doppelgagger plant . . .

This may be a false association on my part, perhaps inspired by the 1ed quotation give above.

[HuManBing]

Yeah, I'm still used to spelling it "AdamantiTe" and "MithrIl", instead of Adamantine and Mithral.

I just Wiki'd mithril and found it has its sources in Tolkien. If true, this would be entirely in keeping with the de-Tolkienization of D&D. (Elminster and Mordenkainen have been changed to look different from Gandalf, etc.)

As for adamantine, it appears to be a genuine mineral!

[Mangrum]

We didn't make any attempt to exclude special materials.

Note, in particular, that if you eliminate adamantine, many constructs -- golems in particular -- notch up the challenge they pose, whether intended or not.