It is always cool to have fantastic materials. Mithril probably is the most famous example of such a metal.
Yet in TTRPGs I have never seen them done well. D&D have a tons of materials with tons of descriptions and yet their effect is: weapons are masterwork, weight is reduced by half, reduce DEX penalty.
In various fictions it is always just a more resistant form of steel. And while it is cool you can only insert 1 such superresistant material in a setting before it feels lame. Dreadwood may sound cool but what are proprieties that makes it interesting and makes players want to use it?
Examples are Adamantium, Mithril, Gromril and Valyrian steel.
What fantasy metals have YOU used? What are some ideas that make the metal REALLY useful (honestly how the fuck uses weight rules in D&D?)?
I've got an anti-magic material that doubles as a compass, basically magic normally flows freely from "north" to "south" but the material interacts the flow according to the regular physical laws. To make a compass all you have to do is create a weather vain out of the material, the flow of magic will then push the pointer to the north
Isaiah Murphy
interacts with*
Robert Collins
Theres numerous dnd materials with strange effects. You'd have to read through a thousand splat books though. PF has a fair number, even more and stranger ones with third party. One cool 3.5 one was a pandemonic silver which screamed as it was swung or thrown due to holes in the metal and its anarchic nature. Relevant links: d20pfsrd.com/equipment/special-materials/ imarvintpa.com/dndlive/Glossarys.php?ID=333
Logan Bailey
Anti magic field on self, excluding your magical sword, rings and boots is very useful. For a not caster.
Christopher Cruz
Warpstone from WFRP is basically a toxic mutagen to any race but the Skaven or Halflings. Warp mutations are not fun, unless that's your magical realm.
Zachary Jones
I use a special metal that is super conducive to magic, but when treated with a certain chemical becomes resistant/repellent to magic. It's typical for people to wear accessories (Or in more expensive cases, suits of armor) or carry weapons that are made of the metal, with only the outside being treated. This makes them resist magic while also amplifying their magical ability.
Robert Butler
molybdenum-chromium-manganese steel tough enough to withstand repeated impacts while still holding an edge and never rusts
Robert Murphy
The mysterious seer's water is said to be the tears, or even the blood, of a fallen god and to provoke visions of the future or of the divine. Actually, unknowingly to all, it just reflect the observer's mind, showing him mostly what he expect to see. For example the current "seers" came into contact of the water while fleeing enemies in their darkest hour, so their terror made them see an eldritch god they fell in dread adoration to. Later initiates would inherit their elders fear and the cult still endure to this day.
As no one truly understand the property of the water, no one truly understand the property of weapons quenched in it either. It is believed that such a weapon strike with the strength of its victim fear, and as such is used mostly by sinister cultists or deranged assassins. It's not totally wrong but it's actually more complicated than that: will, doubts, fears and hopes of both opponents affect the performances of the weapon, making it a battle of will against oneself and another. Ironically, that would make it an excellent weapon for those who wish to avoid confrontation, as the will not to harm may find a way through the magic of the blade.
Oliver Edwards
I'd have it give spell resistance and any weapon made out of it ignores any magical defenses
Isaiah Williams
I fucking love Bismuth.
I heard that it has a half life older than the age of the universe. No idea how they figured that out.
Jacob Long
>Yet in TTRPGs I have never seen them done well. D&D have a tons of materials with tons of descriptions and yet their effect is: weapons are masterwork, weight is reduced by half, reduce DEX penalty. Well what are you expecting?
Adrian Hughes
...
Joshua Martinez
Exalted has five magical materials with various properties related to the five elements. Orichalcum, Moonsilver, Jade, Starmetal, and Soulsteel.
Andrew Phillips
Tactics Ogre's crafting system lacked a real gameplay element to it but did a good job by showing the stages that raw ore is refined into a finer ore and then into an ingot and then into the final product.
i.e. A Bronze Sword actually requires you to refine a Raw Material into Copper & Tin ores which are then refined into Copper and Tin ingots and then into Bronze Ingot. A piece of refined wood is also required for the handle.
Baldur & Wootz are a bit more involved, Wootz being an end game material that requires you to refine some 60+ raw ore per ingot. Baldur is comparatively better than the iron weapons you can make at that point and requires you to produce magicked silver. You make silver ingots and mix them with raw baldur ore and refined crytals(also made from baldur ore) to produce a single Baldur Ingot. You usually end up mixing it with Silver. Weapons & Armor made out of baldur hampered your luck stat, gave a considerable damage boost and defense to dark, and also had massive bonus damage to undead and mages.
Of course the crafting later devolves into: Metal + Elemental Orb = Magic Sword
Wyatt Ramirez
>What are some ideas that make the metal REALLY useful How about "Is made of poison"? SenZar's got more than 30 of these things, ranging from Super Drow-equivalent Spandex to metal that actually regenerates to metal that will steal your soul if you touch it.
Gabriel Howard
Supermanium is cool. So dense only I can lift an duse it. If we ignore it would automatically think to the center of the earth....
Durability - How strong it is. Malleability - How easy it is to form or create Conductivity - How easy it is to conduct or transfer energy Utility - Other effects of the material or its usefullness Rarity - How rare or difficult to procure the metal is Enchantability - Can it be imbued with magical properties, and if so, is it stable. Ease of enchantment or magical use.
Nathaniel Thompson
There's a few different isotopes, all with different half-lives. Five days for the most unstable one (Bi209), 19 000 000 000 000 000 000 years for the most stable one (Bi210, which is basically all of the naturally occurring bismuth), a bit over a billion times the age of the universe.
How to measure such? The atomic nuclei decay at random, with a certain probability per time unit. Say it's one in a billion per second. So if you only have one nuclei, you will on average need to wait half a billion seconds to see it decay. But if you have a billion nuclei, you will on average get a decay per second instead. Knowing the number of decays per second and the number of nuclei you have, you can calculate the chance of decay per nuclei and second, and from that the half life, even if your measurement is a lot shorter than the half life. You just need a large number of nuclei to do this, and luckily atoms are really fucking small, so it's usually easy to have a lot of them. A pound of bismuth, probably less than what's in OP's pic, contains more than 1 200 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 atoms. Even with the extreme half-life of Bi210, that's seven decays per hour if I got all the zeroes right. You'll have to spend a while getting accurate measurements of that, but we're talking something like days or weeks (with more than one pound ideally) to do it properly, not billions of years.
Colton Miller
Can soulsteel be used to steal souls? Or perhaps to steel souls?
Chase Perez
It only steals steel souls.
Dominic Martinez
My brother! SenZar is great. Glad to hear that people still play it.
Wyatt Green
It's made by smelting ghosts right into the molten iron and steals motes of essence from those struck.
Jason Diaz
I have a list.
>Virgin Gold Known as a weak and expensive anti-undead metal, few ever bother blessing their gold implements. Virgin Gold is created by cleaning gold ore with holy water, and sundrying the extracted nuggets. After melting the nuggets in incense, mistletoe, and palm leaves, the molten slurry can be cast directly into tools.
>Lunesilver Lunesilver is a potent weapon against the undead, but like silver, is too soft to hold an edge. It is commonly inlaid or engraved into a harder metal, rather than alloyed. Lunesilver gives off light that illuminates the wielder's surroundings as though the moon were shining on a cloudless night. This light waxes and wanes with the moon itself, completely inert during a new moon. Its undead-harming properties do not fluctuate like this. When submerged in water, Lunesilver exerts a slight pull on water, just as the moon itself pulls the tide. Its strength is powerful but subtle, and through clever use one can discover hundreds of applications. Unless submerged in water, Lunesilver tarnishes in darkness and must be polished regularly. The tarnish will only rub off under moonlight. Tarnished surfaces lack any magical properties.
To create Lunesilver, silver must be melted in a fire fueled by hazel wood, and purified under the light of both full moons. This can be accomplished in a single night, or re-purified on a second full moon with the addition of an exorcising pyre and a choir.
>Brimslade Brass Slade dust chipped from the edge of Hell is poured into brass to create an incredibly heavy, hard metal used in occult rituals, to bind or banish spirits and demons. It is brittle and not suitable for bladed weapons, but ritual knives are sometimes forged from it.
Aiden Gray
>Nullium Nullium is a para-magical metal that dampens the effects of magic. Spells slow down, or are even deflected if cast from far away. Passive enchantments slacken, and weaker spells can fizzle entirely. It is indiscriminate, targeting friend, foe, and object alike. Nullium is not powerful enough to permanently dispel or counter magical effects.
To make nullium, one must start with Nullite, an average lodestone in any other situation. When heated past the Curie point, it loses it's magnetic properties and becomes much easier to work. From here, magical energies are fed into it. Unique to Nullite, the magic will concentrate into small, glowing lumps within the molten mass. These lumps are fished out, and the metal left behind will act as Nullium once cooled. High temperatures may cause Nullium to lose its dampening effect.
The leftover magical lumps make a great snack for dragons, and as a consequence they seem to ignore Nullium's effects.
>Nyxum Also known as Vampire's Pride, and derogatively as Vampire's Arrogance, it is a metal that heats up absurdly quickly in sunlight, and only sunlight. By the time it reaches scalding temperatures, it bubbles up and dissipates in a relatively harmless smoke.
Its properties make it a poor weapon and even poorer industrial tool, but it has found some unusual use for assassins. Those wishing to boast about their skill and technique wear a ring of Nyxum on their person. Either they prove themselves right as terrors of the night, or burn off a finger in a rather embarrassing display.
Owen Thompson
>Infernite Known to the common folk as "weeping steel", Infertinite is a reddish-black alloy of iron, carbon and firestone, a chalky red mineral used in various alchemical processes. When exposed to the air, it secretes a thin, flammable oil.
Weapons made of Infernite (swords being the most common choice because of the large amount of exposed metal on the striking surface) are often sold with a matching gauntlet that contains a bit of flint worked into the crease between the thumb and index finger: striking the blade on the flint creates a spark, igniting the oil that has coated the blade after exposure to the air, creating an intense flame that burns for a short time as it consumes the oil. The soot left on the blade prevents any more oil from being secreted until after a thorough cleaning. Alternately, some blades are sold with a sheath that contains a small bit of flint near the opening, allowing the blade to be sparked as it is drawn... this can be dangerous, however, and there are many stories of careless warriors setting themselves on fire in an attempt to draw their swords too hastily.
Unfortunately, Infernite loses structural integrity over time as the firestone is leeched into the oil, and the blade becomes pitted and brittle. Most infernite blades last for only a dozen or so uses. Left to the elements, the oil produced continues to pool and leech, giving the blades an unmaintained lifespan of just under a month.
Hunter Morris
>Attricite A pale brown metal with blue-purple “veins” running through it. Generally found from ruins rather than made, Attricite's key property is how it negates energy. Any source of energy, whether flames, kinetic force, or electricity that touches the veins are absorbed and converted into NEGATIVE heat: the Attricite gets colder.
Attricite Golems are well known dangers in ancient ruins, bypassed rather than fought for the sheer difficulty in even harming them. One who finds himself grappled by an Attricite Golem will quickly find their own struggles freezing them to death.
>Varytite Also known as “Golem-slayer”, Varytite in its inert state is an incredibly light and soft material, close to chalk in strength. It activates when struck upon minerals charged with magic. The Varytite absorbs the magic and sucks in the minerals to form a crystalline outer layer, often used as improvised weapons or armor. Releasing the magic shatters the outer layer into shrapnel and propels them outward with concussive force.
The main limiting factor is the need to charge the raw minerals with magic, but Golems are by definition constantly charged. A skilled mage knight can activate and release Varytite far faster than a Golem can react to its lack of limbs or regerate mass.
In response, some have encased their Golems in metal armor to protect the minerals within, but the sheer cost of production and in losing the Golem's ability to regenerate make such variants a rarity.
Brody Taylor
>Volkisite A popular choice as batteries, Volkisite is also used in explosives. When Charged Volkisite is shattered, the shrapnel wreath themselves in an electric aura and snake across the floor and other grounded surfaces. Victims are paralyzed, especially metallic foes, who are anchored to the floor for the duration of the aura's effect.
Shockwave troopers are famous for dominating the plains with their Blitz offensives, opening a battle with Volkisite grenades and striking a decisive blow while the enemy is paralyzed. “Lightning Strikes Twice”, when Dragoons take to the field.
>Heliodic Quicksilver This light and silvery material looks similar to mercury and molten lead. It is heavy and liquid even at room temperature. However, when under pressure, even light pressure from rotational force it becomes a solid. This odd condensing of its form tends to tear electrons from nearby substances including air, and create an often deadlier variety of mercurial weapons.
In colder climates, Heliodic Quicksilver is much more difficult to use. Fires and other heat sources are needed to bring it back into a liquid state, and the electrical impact of the material tends to damage such contraptions.
