Transmuters get the minor alchemy power at second level. This allows them to turn a small group of substances into each other, and they revert back after an hour.
So, what happens if you take some wood, turn it into silver, melt it down, alloy it with iron, then it turns back into wood?
FuelDrop wrote:
1eejit wrote:
I would say it gets very brittle and probably falls apart, like 1eejt said.
You can't actually make an alloy of silver and iron just by dropping them into a furnace together, but if you replace "iron" with "gold", say, the question is still valid. You could imagine alloying the silver with gold to make electrum and then ask what happens when the silver changes back.
I think the way I would resolve this, if I were your DM, is to note that Minor Alchemy applies to objects. You could transmute a wooden plate into a silver plate, say, but the moment you tried to melt it down, the plate, qua plate, no longer exists, and you have a different obect, namely a pool of molten silver, which is under no obligation to remain as silver and is free to revert to being wood. So you would get a sticky mess of molten wood, which I might rule would catch fire and explode spontaeously inside your furnace with cinematic results but even if it didn't, would not be suitable for making alloys with iron, gold or anything else.
It's a nice question, though.
That is totally the sort of thing a Transmuter would do in their spare time.
d8
- You discover a formula for making wood out of silver and iron
- Your crucible grows legs and runs away
- You are dismissed from the Transmuters Guild for being too smart
- Your blood turns to silver inside you. You die.
- There is an explosion. Take 6d8 damage and lose all your hair and eyebrows.
- The iron reacts with the silver to create a new substance. Roll on New Substances Table B to see what it is
- The transmutation becomes permanent but so does your concentration on it.
- You immediately receive enough XP to go up a level
New Substances Table B
- A radioactive isotope with a half-life of six seconds and a critical mass of 1.6 milligrammes
- A metal with the tensile strength of butter
- A substance that is as strong as steel but so light that it floats on air
- A bright green powder that is completely inert and doesn't dissolve in even the strongest acids
- Magnetic gold
- A yellowish liquid that can dissolve pottery
You know 3-6 are pretty danged useful looking, and damned if 1 & 2 don't have some potential applications.
rampant wrote:
FuelDrop wrote:
What temp do you go up to, what atomic ratio, how rapidly do you quench? There's no solid solubility of ag and fe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for you. If there was complete atomic level mixing, after the hour you'd have carbon and hydrogen mostly randomly immersed in fe. I'd guess very brittle. As it is, I'd expect micro scale phase separation, and on reversion you would have a composite of some sort with properties dependent on my original question.
All this has given me an idea for a cheap way of mass-producing marble statuettes for selling to temples. Might makes a good downtime business for an out-of-work transmuter.
.
- Pay a woodcarver to carve a little wooden statuette of a suitable deity.
- Make lots of plaster moulds from it.
- Take a lump of marble, approx 1 foot across.
- Transmute it into copper. Concentrate!
- Melt it down and pour it into the plaster moulds.
- Let it cool down for half an hour and break the new copper statuettes out of the moulds.
- Stop concentating. Grab a coffee.
- You now have lots of marble statuettes.
- Sell them to the local temple.
- Leave town before the Guild of Sculptors and Statuesmiths catch up with you.
What happens one transmuter makes oxegen, 2 other's make hydrogen, and then they mixed them with a spark...
(hint: 2H + 0 -> H20 + energy)
and then one of them stops concentrating?
BoldItalic wrote:
Since most Magic completely dismisses the laws of Thermodynamics, I'm comfortable with also ignoring how Chemistry works. I'd allow this weird wood-metal alloy.
one prblem is that Wood is made op of multiple monicules.
So it depends on how well you mix it while in the metal state you might enh up with silver with hydrogen oxigen and carbon monucules scattered around in it
I think you've discoverd how Cadbury gets the caramel into the Caramilk bars.
Could D&D alchemy to create equivalent to materials from real world? For example the sticky foam (the real "Spiderman's web"), or the cooling sprays, or a layer of foam for resistance to hear and fire.
In a fantasy world when you can fly by skyship, be polymorphed to a toad or come back from the death, the cement to build may be discovered and used.
mellored wrote:
Doesn't it become self aware then jump onto your face like in alien?
I think I've finally worked it out. We were doing it backwards.
- Transmute a lump of silver into a lump of wood.
- Throw it into a crucible of molten iron and you get molten steel with some slag on top and a lot of steam.
- Cast the steel into flat sheets and quench it before the hour is up.
- Stop concentrating.
- You get sheets of a strange silver-steel alloy.
- It's Mithral !
Some random fun uses for this ability my GM and I brainstormed:
1: Crafting wooden or stone sculptures that are impossible to carve normally but can be made easily using metal (stuff with wires ect)
2: Mass produce iron/stone/wood products (Copper is far easier to melt and pour into a mold than iron is)
3: Convert rocks into firewood (I have no idea what kind of thing would happen after the wood is ash and you stop concentrating...)
4: Remote trigger (turn wood into iron, set up as counterbalance to trigger mechanism. Stop concentrating, wood reverts and becomes lighter, trigger is no longer counterbalanced.)
5: Screwing over ransom demands (Turn copper coins into silver. Pay ransom in silver. One hour later, ransom is copper again (or wood or even rocks if you feel really nasty) and the ransomers are really really pissed off at you. If you've managed to sow mistrust among them then maybe you'll be lucky and they'll be pissed off at each other, hurling unfounded accusations around.)
1eejit wrote:
Would minor alchemy used with smithing be able to make tempered wood items like armor and weapons? If so then it'd be great for druids, people fighting rust monsters, or where metal is hard to obtain. I suppose that even if it doesn't you could easily make, say, lamellar armor pieces out of stone by turning it into copper first, though that would be a lot harder.
Also, would you be able to turn part of a stone wall into wood so you can chop through it easier with an axe, or burn it away, or does it only work on whole objects? Also, what if you have a composite material, like steel, or an object made of pieces that are different substances, like a spear?
mellored wrote:
* Book of Exalted Deeds had got a (1st level?) spell where metal weapons could become silver temporaly.
* If something is created or transformed by magic... could be destroyed(/reversed to original state) by a enemy spellcaster using the same spell?
* What if a player wish to add to his D&D world materials from d20 Modern or d20 Future? For example the graphene. Do remember the Final Fantasy worlds where modern technology and fantasy are mixed.
* Could bones, shells and scaled skins be used to craft no-metalic armours for druids? And a necromancer to use flesh to create "artificial muscles" for biopunk tech ("living machines")?
* What if a beguiler uses magic to transform metal to gold to cheat people?
LuisCarlos17f wrote:
LuisCarlos17f wrote:
Oriet wrote:
Gold isn't an option, but silver is! at 1/10th the value of gold, you can still do quite well by turning firewood into silver.
Missed that it was per cubic foot, thought it was per pound. Wow, that is so much more useful now.