Post/Author/DateTime	Post
BladeMage_1 10-17-04, 07:55 PM	I have been puzzling myself over how magic items are forged. I know that wizards and i think sorcerers can make magic weapons and armor, but can't they also be forged from gems and precious stones like Aquamarine, topaz, diamond, etc??? No, I'm not thinking this off of Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance II altogether. But what good are these stones and gems if all you can do is sell them. I want to know for my campaign.
tarkin 10-17-04, 08:54 PM	Gems are not good ideas for weapons or armors. While they can be made very sharp, they tend to be brittle. Diamond itself, when smashed with a steel hammer, will chip. Such stuff would look pretty, but be horrible as a weapon. The closest thing to what you desire "diamond hard weapons" in what we can create today are diamond files/drills. Sci-Fi books sometime talk about making a "mono-molecular filament" which is basically a single strand of carbon molecules, super thin and as reasonable strong, which makes it super sharp whip. Even so, such a thing would not be stronger than good steel, just sharper.
Grimgrin 10-17-04, 08:58 PM	Of course, but the crafting of the item depends on what you mean by gem weapons and armor. The standard treasure "gems" are jewelry sized and need a backing/setting to fuction. So what you end up with is a gem encrusted metal weapon or suit of armor. Craft (armorsmith and weaponsmith) would still be required and possiblely Craft (Jeweler). An example from the DMG of this type would be the Helm of Brilliance and most types of magic rings. On the other hand if you mean crafting a weapon or suit of armor from a single immense crystal then small treasure gems wouldn't work. In Oriental Adventures a Craft feat is given for making kuni crystal weapons called "Craft Crystal Weapon". Also many psionic weapons are solid crystal. Since crystal is inflexible, it can only be made into rigid weapons (maces, heavy swords, axes, etc.) and plate armors. The weapons should be more expensive and have special properties (i.e. harder, reduce or increase weight, non-magical bonus, increased crit, regenerating, etc.). The origin of the crystal is also important since such large crystals are extremely unusual. Do the grow in special caves, is sap harvested from trees and allowed to dry forming amber-like deposits, taken from crystaline creatures, from a "crystal" plane, or is the crystal magically (arcane/divine) or supernaturally (diety/devil/dragon) created. :mage: Figure out what you want crystal weapons to do in your campaign, and establish the needed skills, feats, cost, and construction time to mesh with other exotic materials such as adamantine, mythril, and darkwood.
Willie the Duck 10-18-04, 08:30 PM	I have been puzzling myself over how magic items are forged. I know that wizards and i think sorcerers can make magic weapons and armor, but can't they also be forged from gems and precious stones like Aquamarine, topaz, diamond, etc??? No, I'm not thinking this off of Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance II altogether. But what good are these stones and gems if all you can do is sell them. I want to know for my campaign. Realistically, no. crystals do not make good materials for weapons. Even "superscience" pure diamond or monofilament blades fail any realistic scientific analysis (the monomolecular idea was invented along time before "bucky"-tubes had been made in the laboratory. While they would make a really good building material, they are not so many orders of magnatude better than normal materials that a single strand could be used as such). Crystal weapons are used in fantasy games because they are cool, which is a strong enough reason to have them in your game if you so desire.
DragonsArt 10-19-04, 01:15 PM	I wouldn't make weapons or armors out of gems or cystal, however... you could say that magic needs some type of gem/crystal to store it's power and thus any magic item would have a gem or crystal embedded in in. This would actually make gems a prized commodity among magic using/creating countries. And... it would make magic items slightly easier to identify.... ie. a masterwork weapon with a gem in it's pummel would be assumed to be magical. You could carry it a step further and define what type of gem does what function...ie. Tiger's Eye gives low-light vision or dexterity improvement... enhancementa bonuses can only be stored in diamonds, etc. This does make the cost of magic items slightly more realistic too because you'd need to buy an expensive gem to hold the magic.
Sensei Gith 10-19-04, 04:13 PM	Why not? It wouldn't work in the real world, but if you like the idea, try it out.
DM Zoc 10-19-04, 10:22 PM	Particularly large gems make good material components for magical arms and armor. It's somewhat expected that a +1 Flaming longsword will have a large ruby in the hilt. This is what you pay for when you pay the 1/2 gold cost for creating an item. If your +1 Flaming longsword does not have a large ruby in the hilt, then you can safely assume that it was prepared using ruby powder. [/flavor text]
Watchman 10-20-04, 07:00 AM	Wonder if it would, theoretically, be workable to make an edged weapon so that the actual cutting edge is actually built up of small sharp pieces of diamond or whatever embedded in the base metal, not entirely unlike the way the Aztecs made their obsidan-bladed weapons (albeit they used wood as a base)...?
Dire Celestial Bonobo 10-20-04, 08:35 PM	But what good are these stones and gems if all you can do is sell them. What good is gold, if all you can do is sell it? By the rules---and the way most games are played---gems are simply more-portable forms of money than coins. That's it. You could assign either magical properties or magical affinities to various gems---i.e., any flaming longsword without a large ruby set in its hilt as a focus costs 10% more because the price assumes this affinity. This would add a little more flavour to the game, as well as a bit of ability to puzzle out the effect of a possibly-magical item just based on its appearance. If you do this, see if you can get your hands on a copy of Ars Magica, a wizard-centric game based in medieval Europe. Aside from having hands-down the best magic system I've ever seen in an RPG, it also contains a (historically-based, I believe) list of about 100 material components and their magical affinities (i.e., fire and blood for rubies, travel for boots, healing for hematite, etc.).