Magical Materials

[Prak]

I've always liked the idea of them using vines. But, yeah, as Digger suggests, about the only harm they could do is some nasty blunt head trauma if they got someone prone.

[Maxus]

Also, damn, hindsight is 20/20.

I need to remember that damn vampire tree for the D&D game I'm running. Might get some use from it.

[shadzar]

obsidian is what the mesopo... machu pi... THOSE people used for swords right? glassy and black? if not, then what was it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl

yeah that thing, thank you!

[icyshadowlord]

Interesting. This makes me think of what monsters in D&D could have their bones or teeth made into weapons and armor...

[shadzar]

Interesting. This makes me think of what monsters in D&D could have their bones or teeth made into weapons and armor...

seriously? this idea is something new to you?

[icyshadowlord]

It's not new to me, but I had an asshole DM who didn't like it when his players tried to think outside the box.

[Ancient History]

Shadowrun provides a setting (usually Seattle) and a purpose (you are a shadowrunner, go do shadowruns) and a ruleset; that's actually more than most games. Most variations of D&D only provide a purpose (adventuring/dungeoneering) and a ruleset, with setting optional. Vampire only provides a setting and a ruleset, with purpose optional (or maybe existential: you are a vampire, go vampire). GURPS just provides a ruleset, everything else optional.

So Mister Cavern has more tools going into Shadowrun than some other games. Running a railroad is just being weak. (Unless it's a classic module your PCs begged you to play for them. Then they deserve all the choo-fucking-choo they get.)

[shadzar]

It's not new to me, but I had an asshole DM who didn't like it when his players tried to think outside the box.

did you ever own a PHB? spell components and magic item creation rules..... they are INSIDE the box.

[icyshadowlord]

Which edition, Shadzar?

[shadzar]

Which edition, Shadzar?

you should be telling me that.

1st and 2nd had things like spell components and poisons.

3.x had the item creation rules in the PHB i thought, and it had spell components.

4th... it didnt have shit unless you wiped your ass with it. but it had something about rituals in the PHb i thought?

[icyshadowlord]

I thought we were specifically speaking of scenarios like my character skinning a Bulette to make armor out of the hide and crafting some javelin tips from the teeth. That kind of stuff is not specifically alluded to even in those rules, though dragon hide is mentioned separately as a thing. I have the Monster Manual, the DM book and the PHB of 3.5e yet I never came across the scenario I just named. I know spell components, poisons and magic items are a thing but those have SPECIFIC examples instead of things a player could potentially do that isn't directly cited from the book.

Edit: Did I just give a serious reply to Shadzar? Should I feel bad for doing so?

[ishy]

Do you mean stuff like the unicorn:

A unicorn’s horn is renowned for its healing properties. Evil and unscrupulous beings sometimes hunt a unicorn for its horn, which can fetch up to 2,000 gp, for use in various healing potions and devices. Most good creatures refuse to traffic in such things.

It is quite rare in the books.
I'm guessing because if say you get Bugbear skin, dire tiger skin, Ankheg chitin and want to turn it into armour, people probably want those to do different things. Which can be quite hard to create a good system for. Especially if it is not a priority for your gaming system.

[shadzar]

you mean in all the crap having to pay XP to create items in 3.5 it didnt have anything for using monster parts or other unique things as magic items? only dragon hides? what the hell was masterwork made out of then, only gold? no ivory or bone or anything?

i know there was item creation that allowed multi-function magic items so the bugbear skin ankheg chitin armor could easily be made. i had to make a damn item with different things for one of those games i had to play and it was surely more annoying that 2nd, but 3rd could still do it.

did 3rd not explain how bags of holding were made from displacer beast and phase spiders? where did it tell people anything came from? dragonscale armor didnt exist in 3rd?

[violence in the media]

Do you mean stuff like the unicorn:

A unicorn’s horn is renowned for its healing properties. Evil and unscrupulous beings sometimes hunt a unicorn for its horn, which can fetch up to 2,000 gp, for use in various healing potions and devices. Most good creatures refuse to traffic in such things.

It is quite rare in the books.
I'm guessing because if say you get Bugbear skin, dire tiger skin, Ankheg chitin and want to turn it into armour, people probably want those to do different things. Which can be quite hard to create a good system for. Especially if it is not a priority for your gaming system.

The thing I don't like about these entries in the MM is that there is rarely an incentive for PCs to purchase these sorts of things (exotic mounts an obvious exception).

If any magical healing item required powdered unicorn horn to create it, that would be one thing as it would be a baked in part of the game. As things are, the MC that requires such a component is often just throwing up arbitrary and annoying roadblocks. However, doing something like specific components to magic item creation would require some MC-independent system to cover when the PCs want to gather materials outside of the regular course of the adventure. You'd need something that impartially determined whether the PCs could harvest wolfsbane in the surrounding fields, purchase diamond dust in the market, or find a unicorn when they're specifically looking for one. That chance could be something like [always--requires 1 day of gathering] or [market, check daily, 50% chance of stock, 20 gp].

I'm probably being influenced right now by playing The Witcher 2 (thanks GOG sale!) and the limiting factor of various components for crafting and alchemy seems to be how much time to I want to spend picking flowers in the forest or poking around in caves. You can also buy the stuff you need from merchants and come back the next day to see if/how much they've restocked.

[K]

If you are going to run DnD as "Butchers and Dragons," I think the important thing is to not actually make any specific material the only source for select magical properties. You don't want to risk having your game feel like an MMO where people are camping a spot for the rare Unicorn Testicle drop in order to make a Belt of Health.

I think there is enough room in magic logic for a fire sword to have efreet blood, hellhound teeth, OR demon steel. Heck, phoenix feathers are just as thematic as forging normal steel in a volcano or the Elemental Plane of Fire, so getting stuck on materials seems conceptually limiting.

As for substances that can be found that ARE magic, you run into the basic problem of "magic as tech." I mean, the instant you loot the ice palace and get all the Blue Ice, players are going to want to go into the refrigerator sales business and your game with mythic storytelling becomes about economics, progress, and logistics.

[RobbyPants]

Jade is protective from what I remember, blocking possession or corruption.

In Unearthed Arcana (and possibly Oriental Adventures?), jade is used to absorb taint when the wearer is traveling through a corrupted area. It slowly becomes dark and brittle. Once it is saturated, it no longer protects the wearer. I have no idea if this has any basis in folklore or not.

Did you just say silver never stains? The one that blatantly tarnishes and goes black?

I think the folklore around silver and purity are more based on antibacterial properties. Wiki link. Also, I don't know that it would have factored into folklore, but a lot of people fap to colloidal silver woo. My dad totally bought into this when I was in high school.

[DSMatticus]

If you were going to have a crafting system based on butchering creatures for their parts, you'd give creatures tags paired with numeric values. A phoenix's feathers are (fire, 1)(life, 2), and you can use them to craft any item that would require (fire, 1) or (life, 2) or both.

[shadzar]

If you are going to run DnD as "Butchers and Dragons," I think the important thing is to not actually make any specific material the only source for select magical properties. You don't want to risk having your game feel like an MMO where people are camping a spot for the rare Unicorn Testicle drop in order to make a Belt of Health.

thing is not everything can be made from anything like the bag of holding needing the extra demensional space function so those creates that have those abilities are used.

for STR boosts or some such then any ass-kicker monster part should be just as good as the next. want a fire-brand or flame-tongue item, use nightmare hairs, fire giant femur, kirin hooves, whatever.

this is why 2nd had research of spells with its spell components and first had some really weird things like what it took to make magical inks for scribing scrolls or such.

it was up to the DM and player to work it out together what made sense and would be interesting.

if you find the tome of enchanting cockrings of protection that the DM created though, you likely should follow those instructions and get the 3rd knuckle from the left leg of a cockatrice since that is how the DM created the item.

player research gives magical ink that lets you write in the air from the blood of a xatc.... the stingray looking mother fucker!, or protection from falling damage underwear made from flumpf tentacles.

bascially if it is a magical creature, ALL of it has magical properties relative to its own magical abilities... again bag of holding and displacer beasts and phase spiders.

[violence in the media]

it was up to the DM and player to work it out together what made sense and would be interesting.

The problem with this approach though is that it goes back to arbitrary dicking around on the MC's part, or acquiring the particular component turns into a whole side-quest on it's own.

Sometimes that sort of thing is okay. One player wants to go hunt up some phase spider hides to make magic backpacks and everyone gets on board with that and things are cool. Other times, the players and/or the MC just want to background that action. Maybe one player is just electing to round up some components while the party is waiting for some other reason; maybe the other players don't want to get derailed with some picking elderberries mini-quest; maybe the MC just doesn't feel like coming up with a phoenix encounter on the fly.

The impartiality of the acquisition system would be for those other times, rather than leaving it up to MC whim.

[Orca]

Jade is protective from what I remember, blocking possession or corruption.

In Unearthed Arcana (and possibly Oriental Adventures?), jade is used to absorb taint when the wearer is traveling through a corrupted area. It slowly becomes dark and brittle. Once it is saturated, it no longer protects the wearer. I have no idea if this has any basis in folklore or not.

I can't remember where I read the possession-blocking bit, but that does sound familiar about the taint. A quick google of jade magic properties brings up several references to jade being a protective stone.

Did you just say silver never stains? The one that blatantly tarnishes and goes black?

I think the folklore around silver and purity are more based on antibacterial properties. Wiki link. Also, I don't know that it would have factored into folklore, but a lot of people fap to colloidal silver woo. My dad totally bought into this when I was in high school.

It's possible to convert silver back to the metal from the oxides or sulphides of tarnish with some basic chemistry, and the effect is quite magical. I can imagine it starting stories.

[Koumei]

I'm not so much interested in farming X critter type and chopping them up, mostly about searching for areas where meteors fell, mining weird stuff, doing alchemy and sorts. The Temple of Fiscally Irresponsible Elves got me thinking about the idea of characters that specifically track down all the special materials and do a trade in exotic metals and stone, a "Logistics and Dragons" thing that still has normal crisis situations where players need to use class features on people. In the face.

[shadzar]

then just make up whatevr you want to have whatever properties from flora to geologic specimens. you have vegetable and mineral, and don't want animal.. then whatever you decide is what there is.

you want the curative properties of herbs, there are books on that subject. try finding the old netbooks from Olik on herbs and poisons and such.

http://www.acc.umu.se/~stradh/dnd/mirro ... x_HTML.zip

http://www.acc.umu.se/~stradh/dnd/mirro ... _ASCII.zip

http://www.acc.umu.se/~stradh/dnd/mirro ... _ASCII.zip

http://www.acc.umu.se/~stradh/dnd/mirro ... ns_W60.zip

http://gnba.netdemons.com/books/olik/Fi ... WW_PDF.zip

http://gnba.netdemons.com/books/olik/Fi ... _ASCII.zip

it was up to the DM and player to work it out together what made sense and would be interesting.

The problem with this approach though is that it goes back to arbitrary dicking around on the MC's part, or acquiring the particular component turns into a whole side-quest on it's own.

it is time the children grew up and learned what the DM is. anyone who doesn't trust their DM to do anything right, should just stop fucking playing. there is no excuse for you to continue to punish yourselves in an environment you are not comfortable in. just quit fucking playing if you dont have the ability to trust the one running the game. excuse time is over.

you want to play a game when you have control, you DM it. you want to play the bog standard version where everything is the same, get a job at WotC, or only play in WotC events. stay the fuck out of the gaming community either way, because you are not a fit for it. i would also suggest staying out of anything that involves someone other than yourself having control over adjudication of anything, so maybe the moon is a place you wish to move to.

well if the side-quest isnt wanteed to b taken on by the group, then the thing needing it wasnt that important too them. maybe the payer wanting it is in the wrong group, and should find another they fit better in.

[icyshadowlord]

It's kind of hard to automatically trust a DM when your very first DM didn't do his job right.

Edit: Anyway, which books have those special materials, aside from Unearthed Arcana?

[shadzar]

It's kind of hard to automatically trust a DM when your very first DM didn't do his job right.

Edit: Anyway, which books have those special materials, aside from Unearthed Arcana?

no two people are the same. you cant blame someone new for someone else's actions. you have to mature and realize that like everyone else. aka don't judge a book by its label (DM).

every D&D book has those sorts of materials in them, and there are probably more than those i gave links for. i don't have my copies handy but there is more materials listed for D&D in netbooks than just about anything else, cause people always came up with new stuff like cupro-nickle today for making coins.

basically any rocks or mineral can have any property you want, and you can make new ones such as unobtanium, kryptonite, etc.

[icyshadowlord]

I've had better DMs lately, and the old one seems to have improved to an extent.

And yeah, I'm well aware of the fact that when I'm at the DM seat, I can have anything have any property.

The thing is, I recall there being some Arms and Equipment guide with a few examples and some splatbooks as well.