Save the smithers, mithril and adamantine

[The Man of the Moon]

Cheers
After the improvement of the fighters class (that I am charmed with), the crafting category of the smithers has suffered a hard blow and especially, the metals supposedly valuable as difficult to obtain: mithril and adamantium.

Now that fighters can get better bonusses from simple not enchanted bronze armors, mithril and adamantine are a joke for them.

Any fighter level 10 will wear bronze as if that were mithril... at level 15, as if they were dressed on adamantine.

Now let's look what classes used mithril and adamantine armors...

1. Fighters (Not longer now after the new feature for them)
   
   Paladin
   
   Priests (They use rather bronze since they can cast their wards for better protection than mithril or adamantine, so they will prefer to use bronze enchanted with wisdom and other stuff)
   
   Armored mages (very rare)

So we get that now, only the paladins still interested in mithril and adamantine...

Basically, we could consider those metals as NERFED.

Now, and after a talk with Eisgrin, I have some sugestions to make smithers and mithril/adamantine valued as they should.

- Mithril is a metal created by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and his marvelous metal was included by the D&D sagas... But we forgot some of the main qualities of Mithril: a extremely light, temeprated and hard metal, easy to hide in a shirt (The Hobbit, LotR)... So for the mithril and to respect the creator of that metal, I sugest:

• It keeps a 10% of the standard weight and mithril chains or lighter can be used by arcanist without penalties to casting spells.
  Keep a 20% damage reduction against slashing/penetrating
  Keep a 10% damage reduction against blunt weapons.

- Adamantine:
Give to this rarest metal (absolutely more dificoult to get than mithril in Arelith) the following:
80% of its standard weight.
Give to it a 30% reduction damage agaist each phisical damage type


- Drow enchanted adamantine:
I could also give to the drows that arcane Lolhite alloy (that could provide them a gear of +4 or +5 enhancement) but that will turn into ashes once they exposed that gear under the daylight beams.

Add the chance to create masterly armors. (This one is a Tathkar Eisgrin idea)

And also... I thought there could be special weapons that could require specials schemes scrolls dropped as rare treasure, and that could allow the use of Mithril and adamantine for the creation of weapons! Those schemes or rare phormulas, will count as a requirement for the creation of those weapons and will be burned within the required resources.

Like [This is ONLY a sugestion like to make an idea... This not needed to be as strong, but something tasty, flavoured and more powerful than masterly damask against certain enemies]... Golden Morning Blade: In the hands of Paladin (as main class, with more levels as paladin than any other class the wearer had) will count as Holy Sword. For anyother will be just +4.
Aagainst any undead stroke by this holy blade, when wielded by a priest or paladin, will count as a disruption weapon (dc priest/paladin level+10)
Requireemnts:
Special Scheme Golden Morning Blade.
3 Mithril ingots
1 Steel Ingot
4 Coal
Crafting points: 1,000
DC: 50

Thanks for your patience reading this.

[The Rambling Midget]

Mithral was produced through a process similar to that of steel smelting. Items cast from mithral weighed only half as much as similar items forged from steel.[3] Since pieces of armor made from this valuable metal were very light, they allowed the wearer to make better use of their natural agility and were less restrictive on spellcasting.

I'd like to see Mithril become the second tier caster armor. Or, maybe allow Mithril and Greensteel to be combined for a second tier, with a far higher CP cost, of course. Would be cool if it could be tweaked to have 1/2 ACP.

It would also be nice to finally have an upper level Hide/Studded Leather Armor with Mithril as the base, so that half-casters would have a light armor option.

[KregorRanger]

I'd like to see Mithril become the second tier caster armor. Or, maybe allow Mithril and Greensteel to be combined for a second tier, with a far higher CP cost, of course. Would be cool if it could be tweaked to have 1/2 ACP.

It would also be nice to finally have an upper level Hide/Studded Leather Armor with Mithril as the base, so that half-casters would have a light armor option.

I agree wholeheartedly, echoing my suggestion in the Q&A thread here:

From the d20 SRD:

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).

How to approximate this, without item property fields for changing DEX bonus max, weight category, etc?

The easiest way I could see, would be for the crafting to actually spawn an armor that was in the next weight category, down, and make up the difference in armor modifier with additional enhancement bonus to AC. For example:

Current Mithral Breastplate: Breastplate with +2AC (total armor mod +7), 80% weight (not even close!), and 10% damage immunity (eh).
Reworked Mithral Breastplate: Scale mail with +3AC (total armor mod still +7), 70% weight (which would end up half of the breastplate).
You would gain, without other property mods, the 10% ASF reduction (because scale is 20% vs 30%), Max DEX +4 vs. +3, and -2 armor penalty vs. -5. This all pretty closely approximates all the benefits of mithral, except that it's still considered medium armor.

Current Mithral Scale: Scale with +2AC (total armor mod +6), 80% weight (not even close!), and 10% damage immunity (eh).
Reworked Mithral Scale: Leather armor with +4AC (total armor mod still +6), no weight reduction needed.
You would gain, without other property mods, the 10% ASF reduction (because leather is 10% vs 20%), Max DEX +6 vs. +4, and no armor penalty vs. -2. Weight category is light instead of medium. This approximates the benefits of mithral almost perfectly.

Heavier armors would base off of the breastplate, varying the AC enhancement bonus and weight reduction. +3/60% to equal mithril banded, +4/70% to equate mithril half plate, and (eek!) +5/80% to equate mithril full plate. All would be, as they should be, medium weight category instead of heavy.

Yes, this approach breaks the "Low/Mid-magic" barrier of present Regulith. Yes, it would make the mithril "heavy" armors hella expensive (and they should be). It would also affect some aesthetic in the fact that the torso models wouldn't match up for the type of armor it is.

If +5 for mithril "full plate" is too much armor bonus, then cap mithril at half plate, much like greensteel is capped at a breastplate.

Also, re: Adamantine armor, canonically:

Adamantine
....
Armor made from adamantine grants its wearer damage reduction of 1/- if it’s light armor, 2/- if it’s medium armor, and 3/- if it’s heavy armor.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

The butterfly of an idea for Masterwork Armours I have in my head is:

- Only Mithril and Adamantine armours and "Beast-Hide" Armours can be made as Masterwork (to begin with: a top to bottom introduction of the concept).
- Masterwork armours require a one-shot recipe, which can be discovered as a treasure.
- Masterwork armours can accept a Divine or an Arcane rune.
- Runes are one-shot (non-stackable) ingredients, which can be discovered as a treasure.
- Runes have abilities the Dev's see fit.
- (optional) Rune Research - Arcane and Divine Casters can fire spell levels into book shelves or runic circles. Once the research point has absorbed X spell levels, there is a miniscule chance of recovering a random rune. (Co-operation and guarding of research points becomes an interesting challenge - as they can be 'raided' by others who cast into them. Spell Levels absorbed are hidden).

[The Man of the Moon]

The butterfly of an idea for Masterwork Armours I have in my head is:

- Only Mithril and Adamantine armours and "Beast-Hide" Armours can be made as Masterwork (to begin with: a top to bottom introduction of the concept).
- Masterwork armours require a one-shot recipe, which can be discovered as a treasure.
- Masterwork armours can accept a Divine or an Arcane rune.
- Runes are one-shot (non-stackable) ingredients, which can be discovered as a treasure.
- Runes have abilities the Dev's see fit.
- (optional) Rune Research - Arcane and Divine Casters can fire spell levels into book shelves or runic circles. Once the research point has absorbed X spell levels, there is a miniscule chance of recovering a random rune. (Co-operation and guarding of research points becomes an interesting challenge - as they can be 'raided' by others who cast into them. Spell Levels absorbed are hidden).

I like it +10

[Drake Strongfist]

You mentioned Drow getting a bonus to being a blacksmith but not dwarves....for this reason I stopped reading the entire thread. Think on it....then tell my why dwarves (supposedly reknowned for smithing) should sit back while UD races/race can make a "ermagerd its awesome" item.

Futhermore....

Devs and/or Dm's....please dont comment on the fact that dwarves get a +1 to crafting skill at creation cuz they are dwarves....thats crap and you know it.