Dark Sun 4e - Metal Scarcity Help!!! - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 mvandersluis Nov 17, 2011 10:55:08	I just started running a DS game for a few buddies at work. I am familiar with the setting but by no means a expert. I've played the old TSR games from years ago. I've skimmed through some of the old books. I've read City Under the Sand. I'm struggling with the idea of metal scarcity(specifically in the rebirth within 4e) and 2 of my 3 players have approached me separately with the same thoughts/concerns with our own understanding. I think our current problem is are first dive into the world was with some gameday/first endeavor releases (Bloodsand Arena etc.). We spent a day discussing things and then I ran it with little prep. In the adventure the first named NPC the first thing the PCs do is escort a caravan they find out is containing a load of copper. When I showed them the portion of the MAP tha came with it the first thing they noticed was the iron mine or whatever outside of Tyr. They escort the caravan to a town whos captain of the guard shows up has a steel weapon (Tellemon - Alturak). When we were reading about the main influences and trade houses many list metal trades etc. I want to continue to use the pre-written materials. That's how I DM...I just roll with pre-written adventures and steal all my PCs cool ideas/interests that surface. So my thoughts are (not heavy criticisms so please dont read them as that) as we all read the flavor and baseline texts within our 4E materials and flavor we all got what I assumed was a relatively similar impression of the world. As we began to dig into more specifics within our WOTC adventure and the drilled down texts and details...we kinda felt that our original exposures to metal scarcity maybe were misleading or contradicting. The other thing is in the first 4E novel I read, the main character is essentially a blacksmith from what I remember. MY MAIN QUESTION: Has anyone else dealt with this diving into the 4E world of Dark Sun? I also understand that as a DM and gamers we can tailor this as much as we want. I also understand that sometimes in early installments its cool to expose people to items/things/thoughts that are rare as a 'hook'. It just seems to me in Dark Sun that pushing the rareness of metal is the hook, when people don't see things...that's what initially made us all say wow this is gonna be cool. If anyone has any examples of how rare things are within the 4E canon that would be great. I'm hoping to come to peace with an impression that will continue to let us all roll into Marauders of the Dune Sea adventure without experiencing derailment if metal shows up constantly in that adventure (haven't read through it). Im just trying to come up with a good answer for both my players and myself because %75 percent of us are struggling with how this property should feel.
#2 Raddu76 Nov 17, 2011 11:31:10	Metal is rare in my version of Athas. Its not so rare that no one's seen it, but the average person probably has never owned any worked metal items. THe common currency is Ceramic pieces. Silver and Gold is mostly used by nobles and merchants. The average person has never seen a Gold Coin. I use the old way of equipment, where, if it's not made of metal it costs 1% of the listed value (IE GP=Ceramic, Silver=bits) and if it is made of metal it costs the same price. Weapons come in , iron, bronze, and steel with steel being very uncommon and considered a "magical" weapon by have at least a +2. Fast merchant caravans may have wagons with metal shod wheels and metal parts to prevent breakage on the harsh athasian roads. As far as Mauraders....there are way too many magic items in it, its basically a regular D&D adventure with a few athasian words thrown in. I wouldnt recommend it. I had to do major revisions to make it more athasian, including removing the dungeon crawl aspect (IE pretty much gutting it).
#3 Ozmodious Nov 17, 2011 20:52:42	There is metal in Dark Sun it is just rare enough that common folk can not afford it. In my game, to keep things simple, every weapon listed is not metal. To own metal the cost is X100 per the normal cost, so a 5g weapon would cost 500g to be metal. That makes metal scarce to the players as well so when they do find something that is metal they wow over it, even if it is just a dagger. Another thing I do is make having it a perk, Metal does not break as easily as other materials so it isn't going to break and it is considered masterwork which gives it a +2.. Now metal is a huge wow thing when the players see it.
#4 DontEatRawHagis Nov 17, 2011 21:33:48	I loved City Under the Sand, no real issues I can recall. In the second Denning Book they mention that only a few of the weapons in their legion are actually made of steel. My current game is low metal. For the most part my players were given one special weapon, at creation. One has an augmentable stone warhammer for the Ardent, an Obsidian Pact Blade, a ceremonial cloak(players is playing as a death cultist Halfling), and I can't remember what I gave the rogue. For the most part my campaign only deals with ancient metal as they trek across the desert, but as they move on there will be small pieces here and there. The metal my players have encountered: A Knife and Fork, it was in a jewelry box with a few gem stones in it. The players lost the gem stones in the desert except for a very small one that is worth next to nothing. A metal rapier, they did not notice this since it was covered in the sand, clutched in the hands of a skeleton. Two rusty locks that broke off in less than a second. Their current plan for the Knife and Fork is to hire a Blacksmith in Balic to craft a metal dagger for the rogue. The cost for them to do this will probably be the ruby. So far the only other plan for them is to go into a noble's saferoom, which probably has some actual gold.
#5 Gallard Nov 18, 2011 1:44:29	remember this is a post-apocalyptic world, with most resources drained. it has a past filled with a violent history, and a common factor in violent history is weapons. put the pieces together ? there was once a ton of metal. most of it was mined out and worked into weapons, which were then used in wars and scattered among ruins. a steel sword from the green age ? supremely valuble, but not so rare. a steel set of dinnerware from the green age ? still supremely valuble, but mind-bogglingly rare; probably would be melted down to make more weapons of war. there is metal, but it's all old metal, and the vast majority is already shaped. as such, someone skilled in metallurgy/blacksmithing would be so precious as to be almost priceless. there is still some metals being wrested from the ground, but in such small quantities as to be a drop in the bucket. still, these drops are all that's left of raw ore, so it makes sense to hire something other than dumb brutes to guard it (hello PCs).
#6 waxwingslain Nov 27, 2011 17:47:27	I agree completely with the OP's confusion. There are plenty of metal inconsistencies in the published materials--either fabulously expensive metal being in places it shouldn't, or a complete lack of metal in places where there really should be. It reminds me a little of the first printing of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger" (the first Dark Tower book), where in one chapter the main character buys a lump of grilled hamburger meat wrapped in greasy paper from a saloon, and later in the book everyone is going on about how paper is so rare in this world that it's "worth its weight in gold" and such. (King corrected the inconsistency in later editions, I believe). I emphasize to my players how rare and valuable metal is, and how common folk rarely get their hands on it. However, unless you set the price of metal to be unrealistically high, there are some ways that metal would be used in the world, and it's not realistic for the PCs to never, ever encounter it. I set the general prices for my campaign as follows: 1 pound (50 coins) of gold 50,000gp 1 coin of gold 1000gp 1 pound (50 coins) of silver 5,000gp 1 coin of silver 100gp 1 pound of iron or copper 500gp 1 coin of iron or copper 10gp Metal longsword (4lb) (generally, double the materials cost) 4000gp Metal dagger or spearhead (1lb) 1000gp Crossbow (includes a couple of small metal parts) 750gp So far, it seems to make economic sense and balance. A thousand coins for a metal dagger means that it is out of the reach of common folk entirely, but it's sensible that a wealthy merchant would have metal items, and that elite guards would have metal arms as well. Remember that Tyr's iron mines are always referred to as equipping the armies of Tyr (and Urik, and anywhere else that depends upon them for a source of iron), so there's got to be iron weaponry in decent quantities in the military (without having it be so expensive that a common soldier given an iron spearhead immediately deserts and goes and purchases a whole town to rule over by selling the spearhead). I think that Athasians would also have gotten to the point where they use metal when it's really, really necessary and make the other parts out of things like mekillot bone. For example, I ruled that crossbows do exist, but need some small metal parts in the mechanisms. I think that metal would be well worth using in things like the wheel assembly of an argosy, the pivot point of a heavy catapult, and the lock on an immobile vault of treasure. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense NOT to use, but it has to be economically realistic to use it. Marauders of the Dune Sea was a crappy adventure for so many reasons, but one of them is how it violated the norms of Athas. From the "marketplace" map for the first encounter (which looked like a standard medieval market and even, I think, included cows and horses) to the huge pool of water to the locks and keys that make up part of the adventure (can you really make an effective lock out of bits of mekillot bone? So the metal locks and keys were probably worth as much as the whole adventure's worth of treasure)...it required a lot of rewriting to make it Dark Sun-ny.
#7 waxwingslain Nov 27, 2011 17:51:23	Oh...also, the "double the materials cost" rule I posted above is very much a rule of thumb for small quantities. The materials cost for a suit of full plate would be astronomical; the cost of working and shaping it would still be high (as it's a pretty rare skill) but maybe not enough to straight-up double the cost.
#8 arrik Dec 17, 2011 23:15:56	Some quick thoughts: 1) Use the breakage rules for non-metal weapon. I modified this rule for my players as below; If you miss, you can recklessly swing a weapon. However, it automatically breaks. If metal, it only breaks on a roll of 1-5. Non-metal weapons: Every time you roll a "1", your weapon takes some fatigue. Non-metal weapons can have a "1" rolled 3 times. On the third "1", the weapon breaks. This is true for magical non-metal weapons as well! 2) Armour rules--> Use the inherent bonuses for AC and defenses. Armour is hot, if heavier than "light". You can have the armour cause penalties to surviving the Athasian sun (I think it was double the normal Endurance penalty). Non-metal armour is also prone to fatigue. Every time an enemy scores a critical hit (natural 20 only) on non-metal armour, the armour loses 1 point of AC. This may be restored through use of the Martial Practice "Master Artisan". The idea of wearing a suit of metal is frankly ridiculous in the extreme temperatures of Athas. One last thing: Chains = Gianthair rope
#9 Reg06 Dec 18, 2011 11:49:57	2) Armour rules--> Use the inherent bonuses for AC and defenses. Armour is hot, if heavier than "light". You can have the armour cause penalties to surviving the Athasian sun (I think it was double the normal Endurance penalty). Non-metal armour is also prone to fatigue. Every time an enemy scores a critical hit (natural 20 only) on non-metal armour, the armour loses 1 point of AC. This may be restored through use of the Martial Practice "Master Artisan". 1) Martial Practices suck. 2) This system forces the PCs to constantly be repurchasing their armor, which is expensive in the poor world of Athas. 3) This penalty is forced upon the player, and is a permanent effect, which is vastly different from the weapon breakage rules. For my game, whenever a monster scores a critical hit on a player the PC can choose to downgrade the crit to a normal hit. If this is done the PC's armor is destroyed. It seems to be working well, and importantly, it doesn't force a penalty upon the players (it gives choice, like the weapon breakage rules do). The idea of wearing a suit of metal is frankly ridiculous in the extreme temperatures of Athas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphracts

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

mvandersluis

Nov 17, 2011 10:55:08

I just started running a DS game for a few buddies at work. I am familiar with the setting but by no means a expert.

I've played the old TSR games from years ago.

I've skimmed through some of the old books.

I've read City Under the Sand.

I'm struggling with the idea of metal scarcity(specifically in the rebirth within 4e) and 2 of my 3 players have approached me separately with the same thoughts/concerns with our own understanding.

I think our current problem is are first dive into the world was with some gameday/first endeavor releases (Bloodsand Arena etc.). We spent a day discussing things and then I ran it with little prep.

In the adventure the first named NPC the first thing the PCs do is escort a caravan they find out is containing a load of copper. When I showed them the portion of the MAP tha came with it the first thing they noticed was the iron mine or whatever outside of Tyr. They escort the caravan to a town whos captain of the guard shows up has a steel weapon (Tellemon - Alturak). When we were reading about the main influences and trade houses many list metal trades etc. I want to continue to use the pre-written materials. That's how I DM...I just roll with pre-written adventures and steal all my PCs cool ideas/interests that surface.

So my thoughts are (not heavy criticisms so please dont read them as that) as we all read the flavor and baseline texts within our 4E materials and flavor we all got what I assumed was a relatively similar impression of the world. As we began to dig into more specifics within our WOTC adventure and the drilled down texts and details...we kinda felt that our original exposures to metal scarcity maybe were misleading or contradicting.

The other thing is in the first 4E novel I read, the main character is essentially a blacksmith from what I remember.

MY MAIN QUESTION:

Has anyone else dealt with this diving into the 4E world of Dark Sun?

I also understand that as a DM and gamers we can tailor this as much as we want. I also understand that sometimes in early installments its cool to expose people to items/things/thoughts that are rare as a 'hook'. It just seems to me in Dark Sun that pushing the rareness of metal is the hook, when people don't see things...that's what initially made us all say wow this is gonna be cool.

If anyone has any examples of how rare things are within the 4E canon that would be great. I'm hoping to come to peace with an impression that will continue to let us all roll into Marauders of the Dune Sea adventure without experiencing derailment if metal shows up constantly in that adventure (haven't read through it).

Im just trying to come up with a good answer for both my players and myself because %75 percent of us are struggling with how this property should feel.

Raddu76

Nov 17, 2011 11:31:10

Metal is rare in my version of Athas. Its not so rare that no one's seen it, but the average person probably has never owned any worked metal items.

THe common currency is Ceramic pieces. Silver and Gold is mostly used by nobles and merchants. The average person has never seen a Gold Coin. I use the old way of equipment, where, if it's not made of metal it costs 1% of the listed value (IE GP=Ceramic, Silver=bits) and if it is made of metal it costs the same price.

Weapons come in , iron, bronze, and steel with steel being very uncommon and considered a "magical" weapon by have at least a +2.

Fast merchant caravans may have wagons with metal shod wheels and metal parts to prevent breakage on the harsh athasian roads.

As far as Mauraders....there are way too many magic items in it, its basically a regular D&D adventure with a few athasian words thrown in. I wouldnt recommend it. I had to do major revisions to make it more athasian, including removing the dungeon crawl aspect (IE pretty much gutting it).

Ozmodious

Nov 17, 2011 20:52:42

There is metal in Dark Sun it is just rare enough that common folk can not afford it. In my game, to keep things simple, every weapon listed is not metal. To own metal the cost is X100 per the normal cost, so a 5g weapon would cost 500g to be metal. That makes metal scarce to the players as well so when they do find something that is metal they wow over it, even if it is just a dagger.
Another thing I do is make having it a perk, Metal does not break as easily as other materials so it isn't going to break and it is considered masterwork which gives it a +2.. Now metal is a huge wow thing when the players see it.

DontEatRawHagis

Nov 17, 2011 21:33:48

I loved City Under the Sand, no real issues I can recall. In the second Denning Book they mention that only a few of the weapons in their legion are actually made of steel.

My current game is low metal. For the most part my players were given one special weapon, at creation. One has an augmentable stone warhammer for the Ardent, an Obsidian Pact Blade, a ceremonial cloak(players is playing as a death cultist Halfling), and I can't remember what I gave the rogue. For the most part my campaign only deals with ancient metal as they trek across the desert, but as they move on there will be small pieces here and there.

The metal my players have encountered:

A Knife and Fork, it was in a jewelry box with a few gem stones in it. The players lost the gem stones in the desert except for a very small one that is worth next to nothing.

A metal rapier, they did not notice this since it was covered in the sand, clutched in the hands of a skeleton.

Two rusty locks that broke off in less than a second.

Their current plan for the Knife and Fork is to hire a Blacksmith in Balic to craft a metal dagger for the rogue. The cost for them to do this will probably be the ruby.

So far the only other plan for them is to go into a noble's saferoom, which probably has some actual gold.

Gallard

Nov 18, 2011 1:44:29

remember this is a post-apocalyptic world, with most resources drained. it has a past filled with a violent history, and a common factor in violent history is weapons. put the pieces together ?

there was once a ton of metal. most of it was mined out and worked into weapons, which were then used in wars and scattered among ruins.

a steel sword from the green age ? supremely valuble, but not so rare. a steel set of dinnerware from the green age ? still supremely valuble, but mind-bogglingly rare; probably would be melted down to make more weapons of war.

there is metal, but it's all old metal, and the vast majority is already shaped. as such, someone skilled in metallurgy/blacksmithing would be so precious as to be almost priceless.

there is still some metals being wrested from the ground, but in such small quantities as to be a drop in the bucket. still, these drops are all that's left of raw ore, so it makes sense to hire something other than dumb brutes to guard it (hello PCs).

waxwingslain

Nov 27, 2011 17:47:27

I agree completely with the OP's confusion. There are plenty of metal inconsistencies in the published materials--either fabulously expensive metal being in places it shouldn't, or a complete lack of metal in places where there really should be. It reminds me a little of the first printing of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger" (the first Dark Tower book), where in one chapter the main character buys a lump of grilled hamburger meat wrapped in greasy paper from a saloon, and later in the book everyone is going on about how paper is so rare in this world that it's "worth its weight in gold" and such. (King corrected the inconsistency in later editions, I believe).

I emphasize to my players how rare and valuable metal is, and how common folk rarely get their hands on it. However, unless you set the price of metal to be unrealistically high, there are some ways that metal would be used in the world, and it's not realistic for the PCs to never, ever encounter it.

I set the general prices for my campaign as follows:

1 pound (50 coins) of gold 50,000gp

1 coin of gold 1000gp

1 pound (50 coins) of silver 5,000gp

1 coin of silver 100gp

1 pound of iron or copper 500gp

1 coin of iron or copper 10gp

Metal longsword (4lb) (generally, double the materials cost) 4000gp

Metal dagger or spearhead (1lb) 1000gp

Crossbow (includes a couple of small metal parts) 750gp

So far, it seems to make economic sense and balance. A thousand coins for a metal dagger means that it is out of the reach of common folk entirely, but it's sensible that a wealthy merchant would have metal items, and that elite guards would have metal arms as well. Remember that Tyr's iron mines are always referred to as equipping the armies of Tyr (and Urik, and anywhere else that depends upon them for a source of iron), so there's got to be iron weaponry in decent quantities in the military (without having it be so expensive that a common soldier given an iron spearhead immediately deserts and goes and purchases a whole town to rule over by selling the spearhead).

I think that Athasians would also have gotten to the point where they use metal when it's really, really necessary and make the other parts out of things like mekillot bone. For example, I ruled that crossbows do exist, but need some small metal parts in the mechanisms. I think that metal would be well worth using in things like the wheel assembly of an argosy, the pivot point of a heavy catapult, and the lock on an immobile vault of treasure. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense NOT to use, but it has to be economically realistic to use it.

Marauders of the Dune Sea was a crappy adventure for so many reasons, but one of them is how it violated the norms of Athas. From the "marketplace" map for the first encounter (which looked like a standard medieval market and even, I think, included cows and horses) to the huge pool of water to the locks and keys that make up part of the adventure (can you really make an effective lock out of bits of mekillot bone? So the metal locks and keys were probably worth as much as the whole adventure's worth of treasure)...it required a lot of rewriting to make it Dark Sun-ny.

waxwingslain

Nov 27, 2011 17:51:23

Oh...also, the "double the materials cost" rule I posted above is very much a rule of thumb for small quantities. The materials cost for a suit of full plate would be astronomical; the cost of working and shaping it would still be high (as it's a pretty rare skill) but maybe not enough to straight-up double the cost.

arrik

Dec 17, 2011 23:15:56

Some quick thoughts:

1) Use the breakage rules for non-metal weapon. I modified this rule for my players as below;

If you miss, you can recklessly swing a weapon. However, it automatically breaks. If metal, it only breaks on a roll of 1-5.

Non-metal weapons: Every time you roll a "1", your weapon takes some fatigue. Non-metal weapons can have a "1" rolled 3 times. On the third "1", the weapon breaks.

This is true for magical non-metal weapons as well!

2) Armour rules--> Use the inherent bonuses for AC and defenses. Armour is hot, if heavier than "light". You can have the armour cause penalties to surviving the Athasian sun (I think it was double the normal Endurance penalty). Non-metal armour is also prone to fatigue. Every time an enemy scores a critical hit (natural 20 only) on non-metal armour, the armour loses 1 point of AC. This may be restored through use of the Martial Practice "Master Artisan".

The idea of wearing a suit of *metal* is frankly ridiculous in the extreme temperatures of Athas.

One last thing:

Chains = Gianthair rope

Reg06

Dec 18, 2011 11:49:57

2) Armour rules--> Use the inherent bonuses for AC and defenses. Armour is hot, if heavier than "light". You can have the armour cause penalties to surviving the Athasian sun (I think it was double the normal Endurance penalty). Non-metal armour is also prone to fatigue. Every time an enemy scores a critical hit (natural 20 only) on non-metal armour, the armour loses 1 point of AC. This may be restored through use of the Martial Practice "Master Artisan".

1) Martial Practices suck. 2) This system forces the PCs to constantly be repurchasing their armor, which is expensive in the poor world of Athas. 3) This penalty is forced upon the player, and is a permanent effect, which is vastly different from the weapon breakage rules.

For my game, whenever a monster scores a critical hit on a player the PC can choose to downgrade the crit to a normal hit. If this is done the PC's armor is destroyed. It seems to be working well, and importantly, it doesn't force a penalty upon the players (it gives choice, like the weapon breakage rules do).

The idea of wearing a suit of *metal* is frankly ridiculous in the extreme temperatures of Athas.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphracts