Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

So recently since I have been able to turn out masterwork armor, and full plate more specifically. It has come to my attention that mithril armor here in FK does not follow standard 3rd ed dnd /srd rules.

Weight appears to be correct, armor check seems correct, arcane spell fail reduction I havnt looked at closely enough to know. But what I noticed right away was the Dex bonus.

Full plate mithril armor currently in FK is only 2 max dex bonus. It should be according to srd a max dex bonus of +3. It appears there is a typo on the full plate reference page(which I am only assuming is what was used as the reference) that says the max dex bonus is increased to +2, where as it should be increased BY 2 for a total of +3 max dex bonus.

Not sure what others think about this. But in my personal opinion, given the considerable amount of time invested and involved in even being able to make masterwork mithril armor, that it should indeed be the full +2 dex bonus in addition to whatever the base armor type already has. Full plate +3, heavy mail +5 etc

If people are interested in having this changed. What I propose would be non masterwork mithril be as it is now(+1), and masterwork mithril be the +2. Since srd assumed all mithril is masterwork, and that is not the case here.

I am not sure of adamantine armor properties here in game, if anyone has any input on those I would be interested in seeing that also.
Reference link and snippit:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Mithral

Mithral

Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 2, and armor check penalties are lessened by 3 (to a minimum of 0).

An item made from mithral weighs half as much as the same item made from other metals. In the case of weapons, this lighter weight does not change a weapon’s size category or the ease with which it can be wielded (whether it is light, one-handed, or two-handed). Items not primarily of metal are not meaningfully affected by being partially made of mithral. (A longsword can be a mithral weapon, while a scythe cannot be.)

Adamantine armor should have damage reduction depending on the armor type, but it does not in FK, from all I have seen in old forum posts about that and this discrepancy. I'd fully support giving mithril armor (both character-generated and other) the full +2 max dex, as well as giving adamantine armor the +1, +2, or +3 DR.

On a somewhat related note, I've seen recently in game elven steel armor, and I believe that material is similar in function to mithril (though haven't looked through sources to confirm that). If it should be, and if it is decided that this change should be made, I'd suggest checking elven steel to make sure it also does what it's supposed to.

I 100% agree that these armor types should be given their appropriate benefits. As Thurgan mentioned, specifically because to actually craft Mithril armor, is an incredible undertaking by the player involved. And I imagine adamantine is even harder.

An added bonus in my opinion is with these armors doing the appropriate benefit, you may actually see people wearing them rather than just full plate.

I agree that crafted armors should be canonical, after all this is potentially -hundreds- of hours of work to accomplish masterwork ingots and armors.

+2'd

Just giving this a bump. Seems not many gave input in this regard. I would very much like to hear from a larger portion of the player base/staff on this topic.

Be it in favor of, against, or a "hey I don't really care", let us know what you think!

It may be the pain killers making me less enthusiastic. However, if these materials currently don't give enough of a mechanical benefit, or cosmetic benefit in their use. I see little reason for people to pursue this aspect of the game. At least, this is the reason I don't do so myself. The crafting system for mundane items currently isn't something I myself enjoy. A bit of a shame since work has gone into making it possible in the first place, but there we have it.

If there are no plans to make special materials, Mithral, , adamantine, dark wood more plentiful through NPC shops, then not only should Mithral and other items solely for fighters and martial types be considered, but other things like, dark wood, celestial mitral, silver sheen, primordial and cold iron, fire-forged steel and frost-forged steel.

I suppose I'm saying that in this or a related thread. a list of a reasonable amount of special materials should be composed, and a brief blurb of it's properties given so people looking, staff and players can go, wait, but there's this iconic under dark material missing. Or propose the reverse that some materials are entirely unnecessary.

Perhaps this is how we finally implement holy weapons and armor into the game? Who can say.

To go back specifically to Mithral and adamantine though. I feel part of my melancholy on the topic comes from the fact that I have what I consider to be a subpar fighter. I've had him for a while and have already paid glory for some custom nonmagical pieces of armor. He would greatly benefit , due to stats from a +3 max dex full plate mithril set. However, I can't imagine ever actually changing out his armor for him now. As he is, in his subparness. He still destroys a lot of things he comes up against so my drive to improve him through magic or equipment is low. My drive to improve his skills however is rather high. I hope that perspective from a consumer rather than a producer is helpful.

We do have supplicated holy weapons and armour though. I'm happy either way with the +2 or +3 for mithril and the benefits for adamantine towards weaponry.

It's a shame more folks aren't chiming in on this. All materials should be observed as from SRD. in particular, I can't imagine how many years hours were spent grinding to achieve the ability to Smith at that level. It's so much that I personally just do not have the patience for it, and it's just upsetting knowing that if I had spent the literal months grinding it out, I would have been met with this unfortunate issue.

Yeah, well, makes sense they are like in srd, especially given all the time and effort required to get them.

Although personally I am a bit perplexed by the crafting mechanics here, since, due to the lack of enchanting, even with a massive amount of time invested in them they yield items that are often inferior to stuff aquired from the very first newbie quests. :/

I agree that it would be nice to have special materials be as they are in SRD.

Mithril armour as is simulates +1 armour by increasing max Dex by 1. SRD would have that become +3, and unfortunately +2 armour alone is already mythically rare. +3 only exists in a handful of supp items. My point is, it may be suitable for SRD but here we are limited to +2 almost everywhere and even +2 is huge. I'd agree with increasing the max dex from mithril armour but maybe not all the way to SRD.

Yes this change would essentially make mithril armor +2, as long as users had the dex to get full benefit.

And while I completely agree that a +2 piece of armor is very very rare, and +3 non existant/only from supplicated items. The time invested in being able to mine the ore, smelt the ore, and then actually make it into masterwork armor is extremely long. It was several RL years before I GMed the applicable trades to be able to make it. And now that I am finally here, it's cool and all, but doesn't really seem worth the effort. Why not have it match SRD? It's not like mithril Is super common(its rare as is), and even if you do get your hands on some you still have to smelt it, and if you've never had the incredibly pleasureable experience of smelting it then you are in for a surprise. Not sure what the actual DC is, but Thurgan maybe gets 1 outstanding ingot out of maybe 100 pieces of mithril. Trade Focus helps a good deal but not every character has those feats.

I don't think it would be overpowering to make the change, simply from the fact that its so hard to get, so hard to smelt, and so hard to work into armor, especially full plate armor

I still am unsure if adamantine gives the correct bonuses or not, havn't found enough to make a piece yet.

I think GM at smithing armour should give you +3, this is a rare feat in itself. Getting ahold of this armor is another thing, once people catch wind of this. yeah, anyhow I think PC created items should be better than ones within the game as well. Input given!

It may sound a weak argument to some. But there is a matter of consistency. A PC made item should never be stronger than a god given one.

When I gave my input, I completely forgot how things scaled on FK vs SRD.

As is, in practice it takes a long time to make masterwork armor, but once you have that skill level, you have it forever. It's possible for a single character to produce these items on their own time table and technically possible for them to make a set for a majority of the mud. Though because of the large upfront cost of time and effort in getting there. They will most likely treat these items more dearly than they actually deserve to be treated. Which here again is an inconsistency. In Fr, mithril is a rare material to outsider races, but Dwarves and other underdark races have what I would call an abundance of it. The book isn't called streams of silver for nothing. And other novels detail how entire legions of dwarves all have mithril shirts etc.

In essence, I don't think adjustments should be made to materials until the crafting system, mining and all are readjusted so all these problems can be hit in one go.

I think Thurgan's point about rarity and difficulty of mining and smelting is a good one. Technically, there should be different levels of abundance of ores in different zones. Mithril should technically be as common as a low end precious metal in MITHRIL hall or even more common than that and so on.

In case those not familiar were wondering, Thurgan's estimate of 1 outstanding grade ingot out of a hundred pieces of ore is not far off at all. You end up destroying half of all you mine at the very least just trying to smelt it down, even at GM in smelting and 20+ in the relevant stats, and a single piece of plate armor (the type most commonly crafted with mithril) requires eleven ingots (i.e., seventy-seven outstanding quality ingots for a suit). So yeah, the enormous effort that's put into it is the biggest reason why I think mithril armor should grant the +3 max DEX as it does in SRD.

However, I think Yemin's point about other aspects of crafting/material-gathering needing to be worked on is a good one, and maybe it would be best not to change the products before you change the processes by which those products are made. As is, mmithril plate for the arms and legs is a large benefit for most, let alone making the max DEX 3 in all locations, and so we'd not want to make it accidentally too common after those hypothetical changes would come in, either.

I don't really forsee mithril armor becoming too common other than for the smiths themselves and those that dedicate a lot of time to the other associated trades.

For one, to make an average wear slot of full plate mithril armor takes around 2-8 RL weeks depending on skill checks. and that is staying logged off the vast majority of the time, and doing a once a day log in/check.

When you really think about it, that would take some serious dedication to fitting the mud with mithril armor. Not to mention the time spent finding the raw materials and then smelting them.

In any dnd game you can buy mithril armor one way or another, it just costs a darned lot. I see no reason it shouldn't be that way here too. The only thing that makes it uncommon is the lack of smiths, and a somewhat prohibitive price.

Contray to some others, I don't really see an issue with the trade system as it is. Sure I would like to see a few changes, but overall it works. I would like to see some other trainers added in, and I do really wish there was an online version of crafting for some trades, or at the very least u would make progress while logged in at the forge. That way you could at least RP and do some other menial things and still make progress.

Another check and balance I think a lot of folks are overlooking is that it's not full plate +3. In fact, mithril armor is nonmagical full plate with +2 max dex allowance. And since full plate is already +1 max dex allowance, it becomes full plate with +3 max dex allowance.

What this means is that a character needs 16 dexterity to take full advantage of mithril armor. The check and balance comes from stat distribution and making people choose between having a certain dexterity versus say more con.

As heavy plate, this will affect warrior classes and clerics the most, both of which will have to sacrifice other stats on the chance they may one day own a set of mithril

Has this reached any staff member? There seems to be a breakdown of communication that has one side at a frustrating disadvantage.

The trade material needs to follow SRD. If every other material is cannon, why not this piece?

Having the dex bonus raised by 2 would be better for martial focused PCs in regard to high-level dungeon NPCs. These NPCs, no doubt, are cannon and as such, have AC scaled to 3.5 tabletop standards. They are not what I would call 'inflated', but at those levels, the DM and game design take into account that weapons can and would be enchanted. +10 is a realistically achieved enchantment and enchantments beyond that are feasible, but at the cost of piles of gold. FK doesn't have that option.

Martial focused PCs, or at least the majority, save a potential select few, are running on +2 or <20% potential. And that's just in the weapon category. Armour suffers the same symptoms here on FK. +2 dex bonus for rare metal is SRD. It would benefit martial PCs and potential others.

Adamantine armour would follow suit to the martial PC's benefit. Adamantine weapons already cut through DR.

Three months since the thread was opened and others have voiced their affirmation on this desired change. Confirmation for staff-review is the next step.

My only additional input is that I now sometimes cry myself to sleep. lol

I would elaborate, but due to ongoing story/plot line that would reveal too much IC information not privy to most.

I am still for changing mithril to be completely srd. Still havnt had a chance to test Adamantine armor.