Pure Crafting

[Raineh Daze]

You're overestimating the number of 17th level smiths in the world that are willing to use an obscure variant of crafting that requires they take extra time to do everything bit by bit on their own. This isn't 'village blacksmith' type stuff, here, this is 'master recluse living atop a mountain'.

Anyway, this comment:

Artifactwork weapon: So basically, you auto-hit with every attack, if the target has at least as many HD as you. This might be a little much, even for 350,000gp.

You need to be at least 18th level (assuming rough adherence to WBL) to make anything like that, given the sheer cost of upgrading it that high. Ninth level spells are freely available. To get two such items puts you into epic levels. This is assuming you don't want any other good equipment, which'll probably cost you into 19th level. At least consider that the Phantasmwork stuff is ridiculously hard to get.

[zioth]

You're overestimating the number of 17th level smiths in the world that are willing to use an obscure variant of crafting that requires they take extra time to do everything bit by bit on their own. This isn't 'village blacksmith' type stuff, here, this is 'master recluse living atop a mountain'.

At the given costs, this really is "village blacksmith" stuff. If a pure iron dagger costs 1gp, that means that pure iron is a readily available material. If it were so rare, it wouldn't be so cheap. I mean, who wouldn't tear mountains apart for this stuff? The first kingdom that gets their hands on a significant amount of it will rule the world.

If the material is common enough not to raise the base costs of items, then you can assume that everyone has it. Anyone fighting with a regular or magic sword will be dead after their first battle, no matter how great their skill.

Artifactwork weapon: So basically, you auto-hit with every attack, if the target has at least as many HD as you. This might be a little much, even for 350,000gp.

You need to be at least 18th level (assuming rough adherence to WBL) to make anything like that, given the sheer cost of upgrading it that high. Ninth level spells are freely available. To get two such items puts you into epic levels. This is assuming you don't want any other good equipment, which'll probably cost you into 19th level. At least consider that the Phantasmwork stuff is ridiculously hard to get.

Except that I made a mistake about the costs. Artifactwork only costs 35,000gp, which means that every 10th level character will auto-hit with every attack, be able to completely disable a spellcaster without trying, and be basically immune to magic.


I have some general suggestions: Apply the "special" property to base items. Raise each level up by one (standard powers become masterwork powers, etc). Add an additional sum of a couple thousand gold to the base price, to reflect the scarcity of the materials. Address some of the most unbalancing powers. Do all that, and you'll have a nice basis for a world where fighters rule and wizards cast their spells from the shadows. This is a really interesting idea with a lot of potential, but it's too powerful as-is. You don't want a 10th level Commoner with a sword, armor and shield below his WBL beating an entire party of 10th level adventurers with magic equipment.

[Raineh Daze]

How the hell have you gained a 10th level commoner?

Uh... the reason the base materials are so cheap is given in the fluff text: you take normal iron/silver/mithral/whatever and purify the magic out of it.   The cost is time and skill, not raw materials. The important question has got to be: what the hell is a random commoner doing with weaponry that requires such an obscure preparation method?

Though there's something really up with Masterwork Cold Iron being able to permanently disenchant any magic item it's struck by, since that penalises fighter types using magical stuff.

Require that the person in question have Pure Crafting or something themselves to be able to use the Masterwork and above abilities? Something about too much uncontrolled magical contamination to effectively benefit. Also solves the ubercommoner scenario, though why you would give a commoner this stuff...

[Nanshork]

How the hell have you gained a 10th level commoner?

Uh... the reason the base materials are so cheap is given in the fluff text: you take normal iron/silver/mithral/whatever and purify the magic out of it.   The cost is time and skill, not raw materials. The important question has got to be: what the hell is a random commoner doing with weaponry that requires such an obscure preparation method?

Though there's something really up with Masterwork Cold Iron being able to permanently disenchant any magic item it's struck by, since that penalises fighter types using magical stuff.

Require that the person in question have Pure Crafting or something themselves to be able to use the Masterwork and above abilities? Something about too much uncontrolled magical contamination to effectively benefit. Also solves the ubercommoner scenario, though why you would give a commoner this stuff...

It is only obscure if your campaign setting says it is.  That's just fluff text, and we all know that fluff is mutable.

[Raineh Daze]

If you're handing out this stuff like cheap candy, you'll be getting problems like that regardless of how high you shift the abilities, simply on the principle that if a commoner can get it, any foe with any capability is going to have the best stuff. >_>;

[zioth]

If you can get a pure iron dagger for 1gp, then it's common, whatever the fluff text says, and everyone has one. If it's uncommon, then the dagger costs more than 1gp.

I mean, hand-painted wooden dolls take skill to craft, but imagine if holding a hand-painted wooden doll made you virtually immune to all harm, and granted you the ability to dodge bullets, and could be used to heal wounds, and the going price was $20. You can bet that demand will be ridiculously high. Either they would be produced by the millions where labor is cheap, or the price would skyrocket, or governments would keep the secret closely guarded and send out armies with dolls to take over the world.

You just can't have a cheap but uncommon item in ridiculously high demand. Economies don't work that way.

[oslecamo]

This is a really interesting idea. I liked it a lot, both flavor-wise and as a way to balance melee with magic, until I started reading the descriptions of individual materials.

First, are you aware that, with this rule, 7000gp gives you equipment which is more powerful than 20 levels of some melee classes? A 20th level commoner with a relicwork pure iron sword and relicwork pure iron armor is significantly more powerful than a 20th level fighter, barbarian or monk with a ten times that value in magical equipment. For that matter, a 20th level commoner with a non-masterwork pure iron dagger and non-masterwork pure iron splint mail could hold his own against PC classes.

A 20th level commoner only has 10 Bab. They cannot benefit from relicwork abilities.

Even with nonmasterwork, how dangerous are they? The basic pure iron dagger is hiting for 1d6+10, the splint mail is granting +15 AC and 5 hardness. The commoner still has 1d4 HD for life and all bad saves. It just doesn't drop if you breath its way, but will still handily drop to a pimped charger. Even if the 20th level PC just stands there the commoner will need dozens of turns to wear down the hundreds of HPs the high level PCs should have now.

Pure Iron

Standard weapon: This requires knowing your target's BaB, which takes information away from the DM. I suggest making this based entirely on numbers the player actually knows. Also, adding extra math like this will slow down the game.

Relicwork: Now you're almost guaranteed to completely disable a spellcaster of higher level than you, provided you can get a full attack (easy with ranged weapons). How do you disable someone's mouth without killing them anyway, or asked in a better way, if your sword strike is that precise, why not just stap them through the eye and kill them?

Relicwork armor: So you get mettle and evasion. I'm not sure whether this is unbalanced, but it will sure annoy DMs.

I like the special ability of pure iron. In traditional fantasy and mythology, iron is the bane of extraplanar creatures such as fey and demons. Maybe you should work more off that theme for the weapons, having extra affects against fey and outsiders.

That's for what cold iron is for.

Standard-The DM doesn't have to give you the enemy's Bab, he just has to say if your attack roll is a crit threat or not. Much as you can gauge an oponent's AC by power attacking for diferent amounts. Anyway it makes sense that a skilled warrior could gauge an opponent's martial skill.

Relicwork-cannot be combined with fullattacks (only standard action or charge, both explicitly limited to one attack). Also eyes are pretty tiny targets protected by the eye socket and one that the owner will instinictively protect, in particular you'll always see it coming. Disabling mouth is simply a matter of smashing/cuting someone's jaw off.

Pure Silver

Artifactwork weapon: So basically, you auto-hit with every attack, if the target has at least as many HD as you. This might be a little much, even for 350,000gp.

Meh, not really, ACs in the 40s- 50s are pretty common for optimized PCs/enemies by those levels.

Geting some form of wraithstrike will probably be cheaper and just as efficient.

Masterwork armor: Immune to ability damage and drain. Seems like a lot for 3500gp. Maybe instead, you suffer half ability drain/damage, or there's a 50% chance of it failing?

Relicwork armor: This is balanced enough, but it's strange. Why would a non-magical item make you immune to fear?

Artifactwork armor: You might want to explain this better. If it blinds creatures with darkvision, then shouldn't it shine really brightly? That means that, while you blind such creatures, they always know where you are. Ooh -- what if, while blinded, they can only see you? Everyone else is just too dim to see. That could be an interesting effect.

Again, I like the special effect.

Masterwork-You'll need both the shield and armor to resist ability damage (7000 GP), and then heavy armor (full plate will run you an extra 3000 GP) to resist ability drain. Notice also that not everybody gets default heavy armor or tower shield proficiency.

Relicwork-Being clad in shiny awesome silver-white plate can do wonders for your self confidence.

Artifactwork-It's suposed to be more along the lines of "It is so pure it burns us precious!", overwhelming the senses of dark creatures. Didn't you see Lord of The Rings? 

Cold Iron

Standard weapon: So for as little as 1gp, you can make a spellcaster completely ineffective. Preventing defensive casting is an epic feat. Given the power level of this rule in general, I can accept that, but also vastly increasing concentration DCs makes this too powerful, in my opinion.

Phantasmwork weapon: Maybe okay for 350,000gp, but this could grind the game to a halt. Every time you're struck, you have to figure out your AC and effects without spells, powers, and spell-trigger items.

Standard-The basic defensive casting rule is one of the most nonsensical things in 3.X (defensive casting against Lancelot the 20th level paladin is as hard as Bob the 1st level thug). They can still 5-feet step away from your or whatnot, or gain cover/concealment, or one of their million other tricks. But at least they can no longer just stand in front of you taunting while casting as long as they somehow focus really hard.

Phantasmwork-You're telling me you wouldn't have your base/unbuffed character statistics readily available?

Masterwork armor: These powers are interesting but pointless. No one in a world with this rule will use magic armor, since pure metal items are easily a hundred times more powerful for the same cost.

Artifactwork armor: Completely disable all spellcasters in a 60 foot radius at will. If you have a melee-only party (which is very likely, given this rule), there will never be a spell, SLA or SU ability used in a dungeon crawl, where most rooms will be smaller than 120' from end to end.

Phantasmwork armor: What is a permanent spell turning? What happens when you use up the turned levels? Does it renew instantly? If so, then you might as well say the character automatically turns all spells. Does it renew as a standard action? Once an hour? Once a day?

Masterwork-Guys with spellcasting (rangers, paladins, clerics, gishes, wizards with mythril stuff) will still want magic armor obviously. Animated magic shields will still be used by those wanting to two-hand weapons for extra offense. If nobody got the ranks and feat to craft it in the party, geting hold of pure metal armor will prove tricky as well. Then there's also exotic magic weapon/armor abilities you may want to pick.

Artifactwork-Hmm, ok, reduced the radius a bit.

Phantasmwork armor-Renews automatically at the start of your turn, meaning it can still be overloaded in a single turn.

Special: The school of divination is now obsolete. Every city with 140,000gp will be protected by a permanent divination blocker. Every home owner with 200gp to spare will have their home protected. Every enemy will be protected.

Maybe rich people can get some privacy in D&D now. Commoners in their farmlands probably can't afford it still. Also the protection can still be ruined by simply disrupting one of the pieces, meaning you can have adventure and intrigue around agents send to disrupt a city's pure metal defensive measures.

I'll stop here, because I don't have time to review the other metals. Basically, I think this is a really interesting idea. It creates a world where spellcasters don't rule. Rather, they lead exceedingly risky lives, and must protect themselves at all costs, preferably with a hoard of level 1 commoners with 1gp pure metal daggers. It's a world where every warrior is a legendary fighter, and every wizard is a cowering figure, grasping at power. I wouldn't want to use your rule for any old game, but it would be an interesting thing to try out for a special campaign.

Thanks!

Now if you were to weaken the abilities, making them 2-3x as powerful as magic items of the same cost instead of hundreds of times as powerful, this could be an interesting rule to apply to a wider range of campaigns.

To be honest, in one hand I believe you're both overstimating a lot of the pure metal abilities, on the other magic weapons/armor are kinda overpriced as they are now. Basic armor protects against so few things while still limiting your max Dex and movement speed that most people just go with the light options. Having to pay thousands of GP just for just 1d6 more damage or +3 to hit is horrible as well. Spellcasters meanwhile get plenty of cheap efficient items to bolster their abilities such as scrolls, pearls of power, beads of karma, the list goes on.

This is a really interesting idea with a lot of potential, but it's too powerful as-is. You don't want a 10th level Commoner with a sword, armor and shield below his WBL beating an entire party of 10th level adventurers with magic equipment.

Commoners aren't proficient with armors or shields. Meaning they have to burn their feats to be able to use Pure Metal armor and shields. And even then they just have 5 Bab. So at 10th level they burned all their feats.

Now let's say the commoner 10 and a 10th level barbarian. Both have the same base elite array of stats, say 15 Str, 14 Con, 13 Dex, nobody cares about the mental stats. Let's put the 4th and 8th level boosts in Str and Dex for 16 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex.

Commoner has pure iron fullplate, pure iron heavy shield (AC 31=10+1 Dex, +14 armor, +6 shield, touch 21, hardness 10), pure iron dagger+8 dealing 1d6+8), 10d4+20=45 HP

Tecnically speaking, the commoner autoloses because he's slugging around at 15 feet speed (in case he isn't even more encumbered by the weight). The barbarian just has to run away while throwing javelins or something. A caster could be flying in the air laughing while raining down death from above.

But let's say the barbarian is an honorable foe and charges head on. Feats are, say, EWP spiked chain, combat expertise, improved trip, weapon focus on spiked chain.

Has a +2 spiked chain and a belt of giant Strength +4, for a total of attack bonus +18, dealing 2d4+9.

Barbarian  hits commoner's touch AC on a 3 or more (1+ if he charged first), probably making him tripped. Now maul down on the poor commoner. With hardness 10 he'll last a bit (barbarian needs just 9+ to hit the tripped commoner, deals average of 4 damage), but his chances of geting back up are basically nill. Even if he manages to get up and deliver an attack, the barbarian has 10d12+20=85 HP, DR 2 and AC 21 (10+2 Dex+7  magic Breastplate+1 ring of protection +1 amulet of natural armor). The commoner needs 13+to hit and will deal an average 9 damage. Tecnically the commoner is dealing slightly more damage, but is hiting less often, if he hits at all because he'll spend most of his time tripped, and the barbarian has basically double HP. And the barbarian still didn't even use his main feature, raging.

EDIT:

If you can get a pure iron dagger for 1gp, then it's common, whatever the fluff text says, and everyone has one. If it's uncommon, then the dagger costs more than 1gp.

I mean, hand-painted wooden dolls take skill to craft, but imagine if holding a hand-painted wooden doll made you virtually immune to all harm, and granted you the ability to dodge bullets, and could be used to heal wounds, and the going price was $20. You can bet that demand will be ridiculously high. Either they would be produced by the millions where labor is cheap, or the price would skyrocket, or governments would keep the secret closely guarded and send out armies with dolls to take over the world.

You just can't have a cheap but uncommon item in ridiculously high demand. Economies don't work that way.

Think of it more of a caster lobby. Wizards and clerics hate pure crafting, and they have superior communication/propaganda and travel/transport abilities. They're more than willing to make sure any merchant openly selling pure metal items has an "acident", and commoners in particular will meet awful demises if they're found with pure metal items in their possession.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

You just can't have a cheap but uncommon item in ridiculously high demand. Economies don't work that way.

Economies in D&D don't work like anything faintly resembling reality. Of particular relevance to this discussion, a mundane item's production cost is always exactly 1/3 of its market price. No such thing as supply/demand in the rules. It's exactly as expensive to craft a sword next to an iron mine as it is 100 miles from the nearest source of metal. It costs the same to make a wooden shield in the middle of a desert as in the middle of a forest.

The reason for this is probably that trying to model something as subjective (and ultimately irrelevant to the majority of campaigns) as supply/demand based prices was considered better left to individual DMs to implement, or not, as their campaigns call for.

What that means for Oslecamo designing pure metal items is that raising the market price = raising the production cost and raising the production cost misses the point that the power of a pure metal item comes from the smith, not the metal.

[Raineh Daze]

Where does the extra cost in upgrading come from, by the way? I want to know how, if making it myself, I'm spending 350,000GP on this sword. Am I purifying gold, diamonds, and sapphires for use in the blade or something?

[zioth]

A 20th level commoner only has 10 Bab. They cannot benefit from relicwork abilities.

Okay, commoner wasn't the greatest example, but a 20th level NPC warrior equipped with a 120k in artifactwork items will pretty much always beat a 20th level melee character equipped with 400k of magic items. And a 20th level warrior with only 20k of relicwork items including a bow will almost always beat a 20th level wizard with 400k of magic items. He can probably beat four or five 20th level wizards if the fight is in an enclosed space.


Pure Iron

That's for what cold iron is for.

Good point. Then I think the cold iron entry could use a bit more flavor, though that one isn't bad as-is.

Standard-The DM doesn't have to give you the enemy's Bab, he just has to say if your attack roll is a crit threat or not. Much as you can gauge an oponent's AC by power attacking for diferent amounts. Anyway it makes sense that a skilled warrior could gauge an opponent's martial skill.

When creating a rule that's meant to be generally used, you can't assume your own DMing style. Either the DM has to do a bunch of math with player rolls, or the DM has to give away information he might want to keep secret. Regardless, I think this will bog down play. Maybe I'm wrong.

Relicwork-cannot be combined with fullattacks (only standard action or charge, both explicitly limited to one attack). Also eyes are pretty tiny targets protected by the eye socket and one that the owner will instinictively protect, in particular you'll always see it coming. Disabling mouth is simply a matter of smashing/cuting someone's jaw off.

These items give you large bonuses to attack. Hitting a dimminutive or even fine target won't be a problem, and as a melee character, you have multiple attempts per round from your high BaB. I would get 50 relicwork arrows for 3500gp, and in the first round of combat, disable every spellcaster in range.


Pure Silver

Artifactwork weapon: So basically, you auto-hit with every attack, if the target has at least as many HD as you. This might be a little much, even for 350,000gp.

Meh, not really, ACs in the 40s- 50s are pretty common for optimized PCs/enemies by those levels.

Geting some form of wraithstrike will probably be cheaper and just as efficient.

Melee characters have high BaB, which means they hit much of the time. This basically gives 20th level melee characters at-will Truestrike as a free action, multiple times per round, for 35,000gp. At lower levels, when you're less likely to encounter ridiculous AC monsters, this is even more powerful. I think that, if you playtest this, you'll find that melee characters never miss, starting around 10th level.

I suspect that most DMs won't let you put wraithstrike on a weapon. One DM let me do that once, and he regretted it.

Standard weapon: So for as little as 1gp, you can make a spellcaster completely ineffective. Preventing defensive casting is an epic feat. Given the power level of this rule in general, I can accept that, but also vastly increasing concentration DCs makes this too powerful, in my opinion.

Standard-The basic defensive casting rule is one of the most nonsensical things in 3.X (defensive casting against Lancelot the 20th level paladin is as hard as Bob the 1st level thug). They can still 5-feet step away from your or whatnot, or gain cover/concealment, or one of their million other tricks. But at least they can no longer just stand in front of you taunting while casting as long as they somehow focus really hard.

You've just made a really good argument for changing the defensive casting rule. That's not a good argument for allowing some characters to get around the rule pretty much all of the time. Remember that you're totally negating an ability of more than half the classes in the game, for an item costing 1gp.

Masterwork armor: These powers are interesting but pointless. No one in a world with this rule will use magic armor, since pure metal items are easily a hundred times more powerful for the same cost.

Masterwork-Guys with spellcasting (rangers, paladins, clerics, gishes, wizards with mythril stuff) will still want magic armor obviously. Animated magic shields will still be used by those wanting to two-hand weapons for extra offense. If nobody got the ranks and feat to craft it in the party, geting hold of pure metal armor will prove tricky as well. Then there's also exotic magic weapon/armor abilities you may want to pick.

Mentioning rangers and paladins brings up an interesting point. These pure metal items are so powerful that you can create a more effective character by wearing them and never casting a spell. That should tell you that there might be a balance problem. I mean really, would you rather have 4th level ranger spells, or be almost completely immune to magic and effectively double your BaB on every attack, for a fraction of your WBL?

Regarding crafting, I maintain that, if these items are that powerful and that cheap to produce, you'll soon have thousands of crafters from all over the planes creating the items. Even if you do require PCs to have the feat, who wouldn't? It's by far the most powerful feat in the game.

Another thing to consider: If you really want to say that pure metal is exceedingly rare and thus, somehow, these items are rare, then you still have a balance problem. Imagine a party of PCs who don't have this feat, so they're using regular magic items. Then they run into an encounter which theoretically has an appropriate CR, and theoretically has the appropriate WBL, but their enemies are using pure metal. The PCs lose, plain and simple. There's just no way they can win such a fight. All spellcasting PCs are disabled in the first round by arrows costing almost nothing. In the second round, the monsters charge with their doubled BaB, antimagic fields and high AC and DR. The PCs die.

Phantasmwork armor: What is a permanent spell turning? What happens when you use up the turned levels? Does it renew instantly? If so, then you might as well say the character automatically turns all spells. Does it renew as a standard action? Once an hour? Once a day?

Phantasmwork armor-Renews automatically at the start of your turn, meaning it can still be overloaded in a single turn.

I suspect this will be problematic. Yes, it's an expensive item, but it lets you turn 13-16 levels of spells every round. If you're facing only one spellcaster, you're probably completely immune to targetted spells. That's a lot, even for an item which will probably only be in the hands of epic characters.

To be honest, in one hand I believe you're both overstimating a lot of the pure metal abilities

Possibly, but you are granting some powerful class abilities (evasion and metal), giving huge attack bonuses, and making spellcasters almost irrelevant in a battle, all at very low cost. This seriously throws of WBL, since these items are always far more powerful than any magic item with the same cost.

on the other magic weapons/armor are kinda overpriced as they are now.

Here's another case where you're creating a new rule to work around something you don't like, instead of addressing the original rule. The problem with your approach is that only some characters have access to this super-powerful equipment, while others still have to deal with the rule you don't like. Fighters, rogues and barbarians get a huge boost. Rangers and paladins get the same huge boost, but they can no longer cast spells, since pure metal items are much more powerful than weak spellcasting. Bards drop way down in power level compared to other classes. Monks go from being one of the least powerful classes to not being an option at all. A commoner using items he's not even proficient with can now easily beat a monk.

This is a really interesting idea with a lot of potential, but it's too powerful as-is. You don't want a 10th level Commoner with a sword, armor and shield below his WBL beating an entire party of 10th level adventurers with magic equipment.

Commoners aren't proficient with armors or shields. Meaning they have to burn their feats to be able to use Pure Metal armor and shields. And even then they just have 5 Bab. So at 10th level they burned all their feats.

So commoner wasn't a great example. How about warrior. A 10th level warrior with a bow could hold his own against a 10th level party equipped with magic, if he wins initiative.

If you can get a pure iron dagger for 1gp, then it's common, whatever the fluff text says, and everyone has one. If it's uncommon, then the dagger costs more than 1gp.

Think of it more of a caster lobby. Wizards and clerics hate pure crafting, and they have superior communication/propaganda and travel/transport abilities. They're more than willing to make sure any merchant openly selling pure metal items has an "acident", and commoners in particular will meet awful demises if they're found with pure metal items in their possession.

If crafting or trading in such items is so hazardous, then they're worth more. Value doesn't come from materials alone. It comes from power, and a combination of all costs. Also, if posessing a pure metal item makes you the instant enemy of all spellcasters, then why would anyone risk owning such a thing, unless they could raise an army of pure metal users and start a crusade against spellcasters (which they will surely win, given the power of these items)?



Please don't take anything I'm saying as too insulting. I really like your idea, and I just want to give you some arguments and ideas so you can work out the kinks.

[Raineh Daze]

Either the DM has to do a bunch of math with player rolls, or the DM has to give away information he might want to keep secret.

How is that any different from normal roleplaying?

I suspect that most DMs won't let you put wraithstrike on a weapon. One DM let me do that once, and he regretted it.

Ah, so any casters get a near-perfect chance to hit? Got it.

If crafting or trading in such items is so hazardous, then they're worth more. Value doesn't come from materials alone. It comes from power, and a combination of all costs. Also, if posessing a pure metal item makes you the instant enemy of all spellcasters, then why would anyone risk owning such a thing, unless they could raise an army of pure metal users and start a crusade against spellcasters (which they will surely win, given the power of these items)?

You're dealing with D&D economy. Raw cost x 2 = price (barring exceptions). Deal with the complete lack of logic. :/

[zioth]

Either the DM has to do a bunch of math with player rolls, or the DM has to give away information he might want to keep secret.

How is that any different from normal roleplaying?

It's not, but every added complication slows down the game more. Why create a mechanic that slows down the game, when you can just as easily create a simpler mechanic which doesn't?

I suspect that most DMs won't let you put wraithstrike on a weapon. One DM let me do that once, and he regretted it.

Ah, so any casters get a near-perfect chance to hit? Got it.

Yes, any caster willing to spend a 2nd level slot to make a single melee attack with a held weapon or natural weapon can get an increased chance to hit against armor-focused opponents. That's a lot more limited than a +20 bonus on every standard or full attack, all the time, against all opponents, for just 35k.

You're dealing with D&D economy. Raw cost x 2 = price (barring exceptions). Deal with the complete lack of logic. :/

I'm not sure why you're stuck on this "logic isn't allowed" argument. I think the OP made it clear that he wanted additional logic in the game (with the explanation for why wizards can't get rich from walls of iron). When creating a new rule, you might as well at least try for some logic.

Logically, if I can craft a 3500gp item that grants me the equivalent of an epic feat, I should expect to sell the item for 100k-1m gold, if it's really that hard to find the materials, avoid the wizards' guild and craft the item. Logically, a mundane item that's as powerful as 400k in magical equipment should sell for more than 400k, since it's not affected by antimagic fields. I'm not really arguing for that, since it would ruin the point of this new feat, which is to balance melee characters a little better with magic users, but I am arguing for a somewhat higher price, and a reduced power level, to explain how these items aren't in the hands of every person in the world.

[Anomander]

Since it might be relevant to the discussion, especially in the idea of making a Wraithstrike-like item, if it wasn't brought up already: Things to Avoid

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

The rules specifically tie market price to production cost by a fixed ratio that does not take any external factors into account.

So unless Oslecamo is going to write an entirely new game, he'll have to leave the supply/demand aspect of pricing pure metal items to the DM.

[zioth]

The rules specifically tie market price to production cost by a fixed ratio that does not take any external factors into account.

So unless Oslecamo is going to write an entirely new game, he'll have to leave the supply/demand aspect of pricing pure metal items to the DM.

Or he can increase the prices, or reduce the power-level of his own rule. He doesn't have to rewrite the game.

Anyway, the game's system does take other factors into account. It just doesn't list those factors in the rules. For example, mithral costs 500gp/lb, which means the material is the major part of the cost, but adamantine adds 3000gp to weapon cost, whether it's for a dagger or a greatsword. To me, this means the material itself is expensive, but the bulk of the cost is in how difficult it is to work with. Even with something like mithral, you can't guarantee that cost is entirely due to rarity, or some inherrant value of the substance. Maybe mithral requires a difficult refining process to extract it from the ore. Maybe it's only available in the far reaches of blablaland, which is in the middle of a dead magic zone full of dangerous monsters, so that adds to the cost.

Oslecamo has already decided that relicwork and artifactwork items cost more to produce. There's nothing stopping him from increasing the cost of all items. He can also say that these items can be crafted more quickly than normal metal items if he wants.

[Raineh Daze]

The rules specifically tie market price to production cost by a fixed ratio that does not take any external factors into account.

So unless Oslecamo is going to write an entirely new game, he'll have to leave the supply/demand aspect of pricing pure metal items to the DM.

Or he can increase the prices, or reduce the power-level of his own rule. He doesn't have to rewrite the game.

No, he just has to rewrite the economy of D&D. Second option depends entirely on whether it's necessary.

Anyway, the game's system does take other factors into account. It just doesn't list those factors in the rules. For example, mithral costs 500gp/lb, which means the material is the major part of the cost, but adamantine adds 3000gp to weapon cost, whether it's for a dagger or a greatsword. To me, this means the material itself is expensive, but the bulk of the cost is in how difficult it is to work with. Even with something like mithral, you can't guarantee that cost is entirely due to rarity, or some inherrant value of the substance. Maybe mithral requires a difficult refining process to extract it from the ore. Maybe it's only available in the far reaches of blablaland, which is in the middle of a dead magic zone full of dangerous monsters, so that adds to the cost.

But that is factored into the cost. Sale is exactly twice production. The only mitigating costs for production are if you magic item is situational, or if the DM steps in and overrules the guidelines (see the Ring of True Strike)

Oslecamo has already decided that relicwork and artifactwork items cost more to produce. There's nothing stopping him from increasing the cost of all items. He can also say that these items can be crafted more quickly than normal metal items if he wants.

I would imagine common sense is stopping him from increasing or decreasing the cost of all items due to the knockon effects.

Either the DM has to do a bunch of math with player rolls, or the DM has to give away information he might want to keep secret.

How is that any different from normal roleplaying?

It's not, but every added complication slows down the game more. Why create a mechanic that slows down the game, when you can just as easily create a simpler mechanic which doesn't?

Please name a simpler mechanic, then, that achieves the same effect without actually mitigating any advantages gained.

I suspect that most DMs won't let you put wraithstrike on a weapon. One DM let me do that once, and he regretted it.

Ah, so any casters get a near-perfect chance to hit? Got it.

Yes, any caster willing to spend a 2nd level slot to make a single melee attack with a held weapon or natural weapon can get an increased chance to hit against armor-focused opponents. That's a lot more limited than a +20 bonus on every standard or full attack, all the time, against all opponents, for just 35k.

Who said I was talking about melee attacks? Touch attacks. Spells targeting saves. AoE.

This works as normal crafting, but takes 8 hours of  time regardless of the ite and double the material costs, as you need to properly purify them (those materials must still be acquired directly from the material plane, materials created/altered by magic or from the other planes are plain useless for Pure Crafting).

What the hell is the ite? And does this mean crafting an item takes 8 hours, or purifying the materials? What if I decide to build a castle out of pure iron?

[oslecamo]

Fixed typo, put in clause for wanting to make bigger items (short answer: you'll take quite long).

Also, for the record, anyone else but zioth thinks that right now pure crafting is OMGUBERPWNRZ?

Where does the extra cost in upgrading come from, by the way? I want to know how, if making it myself, I'm spending 350,000GP on this sword. Am I purifying gold, diamonds, and sapphires for use in the blade or something?

Fluff is mutable, and each smith has his own prefered method. Perhaps indeed you need to add lots of shiny jewels. Perhaps you need multiple tons of raw material refined to get just those few pounds of phantasm quality pure metal. Perhaps you need to add dragon blood or unicorn hair.

A 20th level commoner only has 10 Bab. They cannot benefit from relicwork abilities.

Okay, commoner wasn't the greatest example, but a 20th level NPC warrior equipped with a 120k in artifactwork items will pretty much always beat a 20th level melee character equipped with 400k of magic items. And a 20th level warrior with only 20k of relicwork items including a bow will almost always beat a 20th level wizard with 400k of magic items. He can probably beat four or five 20th level wizards if the fight is in an enclosed space.

No, he cannot. Wizard time stops and gates in 1d4+1 epic monsters. For starters. Then there's also shapechange, contigency, undead hordes. Forcecage is just 7th level and will auto-beat the warrior (even AMF can't remove the wall of force).Trivia, you knew wizards actually have an high level spell that allows them to cast inside an AMF? Or the cleric of mystra that simple laughs at AMFs? Meanwhile any melee build will probably be an unbercharger or lockdown, and they'll always outmaneuver the warrior because they have magic items. They get the first hit dealing hundreds of damage, warrior dies.

Pure Iron

That's for what cold iron is for.

Good point. Then I think the cold iron entry could use a bit more flavor, though that one isn't bad as-is.

Noted.

Standard-The DM doesn't have to give you the enemy's Bab, he just has to say if your attack roll is a crit threat or not. Much as you can gauge an oponent's AC by power attacking for diferent amounts. Anyway it makes sense that a skilled warrior could gauge an opponent's martial skill.

When creating a rule that's meant to be generally used, you can't assume your own DMing style. Either the DM has to do a bunch of math with player rolls, or the DM has to give away information he might want to keep secret. Regardless, I think this will bog down play. Maybe I'm wrong.

I've seen worst. You know what bogs down gameplay? At-will arcane sight, which I've seen quite a bunch of people around here put on their homebrews.

Relicwork-cannot be combined with fullattacks (only standard action or charge, both explicitly limited to one attack). Also eyes are pretty tiny targets protected by the eye socket and one that the owner will instinictively protect, in particular you'll always see it coming. Disabling mouth is simply a matter of smashing/cuting someone's jaw off.

These items give you large bonuses to attack. Hitting a dimminutive or even fine target won't be a problem, and as a melee character, you have multiple attempts per round from your high BaB. I would get 50 relicwork arrows for 3500gp, and in the first round of combat, disable every spellcaster in range.

That's your own house rules, not mine. D&D doesn't have called shots by default, and metal work specifically says you only get one attack per round at a specific body part.

Pure Silver

Artifactwork weapon: So basically, you auto-hit with every attack, if the target has at least as many HD as you. This might be a little much, even for 350,000gp.

Meh, not really, ACs in the 40s- 50s are pretty common for optimized PCs/enemies by those levels.

Geting some form of wraithstrike will probably be cheaper and just as efficient.

Melee characters have high BaB, which means they hit much of the time. This basically gives 20th level melee characters at-will Truestrike as a free action, multiple times per round, for 35,000gp. At lower levels, when you're less likely to encounter ridiculous AC monsters, this is even more powerful. I think that, if you playtest this, you'll find that melee characters never miss, starting around 10th level.

I suspect that most DMs won't let you put wraithstrike on a weapon. One DM let me do that once, and he regretted it.

I'm currently running a game with a gish character that uses several tricks to basically have an almost always-on wraithstrike on himself. He's pretty nasty, but then the prced wizard at his back is throwing all kind of fogs and rays and other disabling effects, and in the end the monsters are more worried about the wizard than the wraithstrike guy.

Standard weapon: So for as little as 1gp, you can make a spellcaster completely ineffective. Preventing defensive casting is an epic feat. Given the power level of this rule in general, I can accept that, but also vastly increasing concentration DCs makes this too powerful, in my opinion.

Standard-The basic defensive casting rule is one of the most nonsensical things in 3.X (defensive casting against Lancelot the 20th level paladin is as hard as Bob the 1st level thug). They can still 5-feet step away from your or whatnot, or gain cover/concealment, or one of their million other tricks. But at least they can no longer just stand in front of you taunting while casting as long as they somehow focus really hard.

You've just made a really good argument for changing the defensive casting rule. That's not a good argument for allowing some characters to get around the rule pretty much all of the time. Remember that you're totally negating an ability of more than half the classes in the game, for an item costing 1gp.

Basic dagger is 2 GP. Double it for cold iron, 4 GP. Double again for pure crafting, 8 GP.
Meanwhile casters didn't pay a single dime to get defensive casting in the first place.

Masterwork armor: These powers are interesting but pointless. No one in a world with this rule will use magic armor, since pure metal items are easily a hundred times more powerful for the same cost.

Masterwork-Guys with spellcasting (rangers, paladins, clerics, gishes, wizards with mythril stuff) will still want magic armor obviously. Animated magic shields will still be used by those wanting to two-hand weapons for extra offense. If nobody got the ranks and feat to craft it in the party, geting hold of pure metal armor will prove tricky as well. Then there's also exotic magic weapon/armor abilities you may want to pick.

Mentioning rangers and paladins brings up an interesting point. These pure metal items are so powerful that you can create a more effective character by wearing them and never casting a spell. That should tell you that there might be a balance problem. I mean really, would you rather have 4th level ranger spells, or be almost completely immune to magic and effectively double your BaB on every attack, for a fraction of your WBL?

I'll admit the core spells of the ranger/paladin aren't very hot, but there's plenty of cool powerful magic in splatbooks for those classes, in particular when combined with that option for paladins to cast their spells as swift actions.

Regarding crafting, I maintain that, if these items are that powerful and that cheap to produce, you'll soon have thousands of crafters from all over the planes creating the items. Even if you do require PCs to have the feat, who wouldn't? It's by far the most powerful feat in the game.

Leadership, Item Familiar, wild companion and friends would like a word with you.

Another thing to consider: If you really want to say that pure metal is exceedingly rare and thus, somehow, these items are rare, then you still have a balance problem. Imagine a party of PCs who don't have this feat, so they're using regular magic items. Then they run into an encounter which theoretically has an appropriate CR, and theoretically has the appropriate WBL, but their enemies are using pure metal. The PCs lose, plain and simple. There's just no way they can win such a fight. All spellcasting PCs are disabled in the first round by arrows costing almost nothing. In the second round, the monsters charge with their doubled BaB, antimagic fields and high AC and DR. The PCs die.

Again, arrows disabling spellcasting is your personal house rule, not my problem.
Then, if you're pimping your nonhumanoid monsters with full wargear, well, the PCs would be in for a world of hurt even if it was "just" magic equipment.

Phantasmwork armor: What is a permanent spell turning? What happens when you use up the turned levels? Does it renew instantly? If so, then you might as well say the character automatically turns all spells. Does it renew as a standard action? Once an hour? Once a day?

Phantasmwork armor-Renews automatically at the start of your turn, meaning it can still be overloaded in a single turn.

I suspect this will be problematic. Yes, it's an expensive item, but it lets you turn 13-16 levels of spells every round. If you're facing only one spellcaster, you're probably completely immune to targetted spells. That's a lot, even for an item which will probably only be in the hands of epic characters.

There's a reason why most of the great spells either indirectly attack you with area effects, or bring in uber monsters to do the caster's bidding, or turn the caster itself into an uber monster.

To be honest, in one hand I believe you're both overstimating a lot of the pure metal abilities

Possibly, but you are granting some powerful class abilities (evasion and metal), giving huge attack bonuses, and making spellcasters almost irrelevant in a battle, all at very low cost. This seriously throws of WBL, since these items are always far more powerful than any magic item with the same cost.

Perhaps in terms of raw numbers, but one of the main advantages of magic is versatility. A phantasmwork weapon is useless if you can't actually detect your target. A phantasmwork armor is useless if the very terrain changes around you to entomb you.

on the other magic weapons/armor are kinda overpriced as they are now.

Here's another case where you're creating a new rule to work around something you don't like, instead of addressing the original rule. The problem with your approach is that only some characters have access to this super-powerful equipment, while others still have to deal with the rule you don't like. Fighters, rogues and barbarians get a huge boost. Rangers and paladins get the same huge boost, but they can no longer cast spells, since pure metal items are much more powerful than weak spellcasting. Bards drop way down in power level compared to other classes. Monks go from being one of the least powerful classes to not being an option at all. A commoner using items he's not even proficient with can now easily beat a monk.

Bards have loads of strong splatbook support (including the option of easily reaching 9th level spells, not to mention all the bardic music cheese options out there), so not very worried about them. Monks do get a bit shafted I'll admit, but then monks already were shafted so meh.

However notice again that you can only benefit from pure metal wargear if you're actually proficient with it

This is a really interesting idea with a lot of potential, but it's too powerful as-is. You don't want a 10th level Commoner with a sword, armor and shield below his WBL beating an entire party of 10th level adventurers with magic equipment.

Commoners aren't proficient with armors or shields. Meaning they have to burn their feats to be able to use Pure Metal armor and shields. And even then they just have 5 Bab. So at 10th level they burned all their feats.

So commoner wasn't a great example. How about warrior. A 10th level warrior with a bow could hold his own against a 10th level party equipped with magic, if he wins initiative.

How exactly? Fighter/barbarian drinks potion of invisibility (which also gives it time to gulp down some extra buffs), gets near with a spiked chain and trip feats, warrior is screwed because a pure metal bow still provokes Aoos for attempting to fire in melee.

If you can get a pure iron dagger for 1gp, then it's common, whatever the fluff text says, and everyone has one. If it's uncommon, then the dagger costs more than 1gp.

Think of it more of a caster lobby. Wizards and clerics hate pure crafting, and they have superior communication/propaganda and travel/transport abilities. They're more than willing to make sure any merchant openly selling pure metal items has an "acident", and commoners in particular will meet awful demises if they're found with pure metal items in their possession.

If crafting or trading in such items is so hazardous, then they're worth more. Value doesn't come from materials alone. It comes from power, and a combination of all costs. Also, if posessing a pure metal item makes you the instant enemy of all spellcasters, then why would anyone risk owning such a thing, unless they could raise an army of pure metal users and start a crusade against spellcasters (which they will surely win, given the power of these items)?

What something costs to build, and how much people pay for it, are two very diferent things, only loosely related. I give the price to build them. What it costs to buy from someone is up to the campaign/region/DM. If they're available at all to sell.

As to why people risk owning such things, well, in the real world plenty of people out there own stuff the local government doesn't want them to own. From drugs to certain guns to sensitive information and whatnot. Sometimes they indeed are planning to revolt against the ruling authority. Other times they just want it for their personal use.

Either way, pure metal will not help you much when the casters start spliting the earth and droping shrinked builders over your head or will simply go after your family if you make too much ruckus.

Please don't take anything I'm saying as too insulting. I really like your idea, and I just want to give you some arguments and ideas so you can work out the kinks.

Well, it would help if you readed the whole thing, like needing to be proficient with the equipment to benefit from it, or how commoners only have poor Bab so they don't really benefit that much from pure metals. And I still don't get where you're geting the disabling arrows, when in the very last page I pointed out just sticking a pure metal arrow in someone won't disable their spellcasting. Even if you make them cold iron, the concentration DC isn't anything special, just 10+half damage dealt.

[Nanshork]

My 2cents, these were definitely more powerful than I expected them to be.  However I'm not the best at judging balance so I don't have anything more specific.

I can attempt to come up with actual analysis of the things that popped out at me if requested.

[oslecamo]

That would be helpful yes.

Meanwhile reduced the bonus from artifactwork Pure Silver to just +50%, doubling may've indeed been too much.

[Nanshork]

Alright, I'll stop being a lurker and actually contribute.   

Be aware that all of this is from a personal perspective and is just my opinion.  Feel free to disagree with any/all of it.

Pure Iron

(click to show/hide)

Weapon: The ability does sound like extra work, if for no other reason that it is going to add an extra step to combat actions (especially play-by-post games).  It just seems awkward to me and I can see avoiding a Pure Iron weapon just so I/my DM don't have to deal with it. Also, how does the threat range increase interact with other threat range increases?

Relicwork Armor: Armored Evasion + Mettle at level 9 seems like a bit much.

Pure Silver

(click to show/hide)

Weapon: Bypassing all regeneration at level 1 seems like a lot.  I honestly think this should be moved to one of the higher tiers or tone down somehow (not sure how).  Ghost Touch + Criticals on Undead feels fine for level 1.

Artifactwork Weapon: The bonus seems fine now, it is still extra work but it's just a simple yes/no function instead of multiple extra steps so I have zero issues with it.

Phantasmwork Weapon: I assume that it just fails if you attack something that isn't undead but is immune to fatigue or exhaustion?  What if it is immune to fatigue but not exhaustion?  (You probably don't need to add a ruling for this.)

Armor/Shield:  I'm curious, what is the flavor reasoning for only a bonus against natural attacks?  Balance wise I'm not against it, I'm just curious.

Relicwork Armor: Is the doubling for any morale bonus you gain from fear effects or for any morale bonus ever?

Pure Cold Iron

(click to show/hide)

Artifactwork Weapon: Dispelling on threatening on a critical seems like a bit much, especially when you can combine Iron and Cold Iron to have a huge threat range against casters.  Also, you should probably define effects.  What about magic items?

Masterwork Armor: There is too much here for the level IMO.  I'm also against destroying magic weapons.  Sunder is regarded as a horrible ability for destroying treasure and thus WBL, this does the same thing but as a passive ability.  The wearer of Masterwork Cold Iron Armor will be hated by his friends.

Pure Mythril

(click to show/hide)

Weapon: Mythril + Cold Iron Artifactwork Weapon vs. a caster is even worse than Cold Iron + Iron.  Cold Iron Artifactwork weapon definetely needs to be toned down.  I can't think of anything else that triggers on a threat so Mythril should be okay.

Artifactwork Weapon: How does the extra attack interact with other extra attacks such as the permanent haste from Masterwork Armor?

Artifactwork Armor: This seems abusable but the most abuse I can come up with is two Martial Strikes in a turn from two Standard Actions.  That still seems pretty crazy though.

Phantasmwork Armor: Attack should be defined.  What about spells?  AoE spells?  Breath weapons?

Pure Adamantine

(click to show/hide)

The things that looks strong to me don't actually pop up as overpowered on my radar so I've got nothing to say here.