[DF] New Material - BloodSteel

[Dolarre]

I'm looking for a good CF for a new material I want to make available to certain traditions in my DF game, and I'd like some thoughts.

BloodSteel - Steel formed from iron alchemically extracted from vats of blood, and tempered with the ashes of burnt corpses. It is considered 'once-living' material for any magical requirements - specifically the Staff spell.

This allows metal or partially metal weapons to carry the staff spell for martially-focused mages.

How much more should this cost? How bad of an idea is it to introduce into a game? All opinions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[starslayer]

In 3e you could put staff on metal items for 3* the energy cost.

That normally put it out of quick and dirty enchanting, so, say +10cf?

[Varyon]

I think the once-living restriction is more thematic than a balancing factor. That said, extracting iron from blood is going to be far more finicky and time consuming than doing so from iron ores. I’d call it +4 CF.

[GodBeastX]

I had a post about the economics of it that went into details of calculating out what it should be... but then I lost it to a sensitive touch pad on this laptop...

... to summarize, I went with CF+3 or CF+4 which matches above.

[AlexanderHowl]

Actually, bloodsteel would be much more expensive than normal iron. The average human male possess 4 grams of iron in their body, 3 grams of which are found in blood. If we assume that the average sword requires 1/2 its mass in iron (the remaining mass being the sheath and the hilt), a shortsword would require the blood of 125 men, which would make it quite expensive. A staff would require the blood of 500 men, which would make it ludicrously expensive.

Even if you assume that the bloodsteel can be extracted from animals, it would still require a phenomenal amount of effort to gather and refine with alchemy. I would give a bloodsteel non-stick weapons a +99 CF and bloodsteel stick weapon at +999 CF. I would increase the CF to +999 CF for non-stick weapons and +9999 CF for stick weapons for bloodsteel made from sapient blood. Just to make it interesting, I would make animal derived bloodsteel deal +1d damage to any living animal (including sapient living animals like humans) and sapient derived bloodsteel deal +2d damage to any living animal (including sapient living animals like humans). Of course, such an expensive weapon would make a great power item in DF, so that would justify making such an insane weapon.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Actually, bloodsteel would be much more expensive than normal iron. The average human male possess 4 grams of iron in their body, 3 grams of which are found in blood. If we assume that the average sword requires 1/2 its mass in iron (the remaining mass being the sheath and the hilt), a shortsword would require the blood of 125 men, which would make it quite expensive. A staff would require the blood of 500 men, which would make it ludicrously expensive.

Even if you assume that the bloodsteel can be extracted from animals, it would still require a phenomenal amount of effort to gather and refine with alchemy. I would give a bloodsteel non-stick weapons a +99 CF and bloodsteel stick weapon at +999 CF. I would increase the CF to +999 CF for non-stick weapons and +9999 CF for stick weapons for bloodsteel made from sapient blood. Just to make it interesting, I would make animal derived bloodsteel deal +1d damage to any living animal (including sapient living animals like humans) and sapient derived bloodsteel deal +2d damage to any living animal (including sapient living animals like humans). Of course, such an expensive weapon would make a great power item in DF, so that would justify making such an insane weapon.

I'm not sure how you quantify the effort of alchemy to accomplish this?

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, it would probably be by the value of raw materials. In the case of a bloodsteel staff made from human blood, you would need have around 2,750 liters of human blood and, with a cost of around $330 per liter, we can approximate the value of the raw materials at around $900,000 of human blood. Since an Eternal Rest elixir costs only $2,000 in materials for 4 weeks of work, the bloodsteel staff would probably take 1800 weeks of work.

Now, if you used animal blood, the cost of materials would probably be 1% the cost of human blood, which would be $9,000 of animal blood. If we use an Eternal Rest elixir as a reference again, the bloodsteel staff would probably take 18 weeks of work.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Kind of random: I have idiopathic polycythemia vera - basically, I make too much blood. I have to have about 28,600mL of blood removed on a yearly basis (about 500-600mL a week). I did the math a while back and I could have a decent sized sword in only 12 years if I just stuck with regular phlebotomy - probably x2.5 to x3.5 faster if they take more in a go or go twice weekly.

[Rolando]

I think, that as this is fantasy, and a game, you may rule that you need the iron extracted from blood more as a reagent to make the required mystical/arcane connection. you may rule it as needing an ounce of iron from blood for each pound of total blood steel weight, or even the blood of a single human been per weapon (up to 10 pounds of metal), as this is more an arcane/mystical/alchemical transmutation of inorganic metal to "organic" (or magically conductive) metal than a chemical extraction of regular iron from blood (after all if it is still iron, then it can't be considered once living).

Better focus on the game balance and flavor for final cost multiplier than trying to find a real cost of blood and amount of iron needed.

[AlexanderHowl]

I think it would make for an interestingly grim and dark setting if bloodsteel required massive amounts of sapient blood. A weapon that required the lives of hundreds of human slaves to create would instantly be known and feared because of what it respresented, regardless of its capabilities. If the object also possessed great magical power, that would just be a cherry on top.