Questions about Alternate Worldline Design.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Essential Stone is about as good as iron as bulk armor per unit of thickness and could probaly substitute for iron n many uses with magical shaping.

Essential Stone would be good for fortifications, but for personal weapons and armor, an Ironwood spell would probably be better. Then you could have wooden weapons, breastplates, greaves, and bracers with the strength of iron/steel. That dusack could be sharpened to a true broadsword.

Also, how great a use would glass have in this world? (what with being sharper than any wooden weapon could get)

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Also, how great a use would glass have in this world? (what with being sharper than any wooden weapon could get)

While glass may be "sharp", it's so brittle that it has the same (0.5) armor divisor as stone, wood and bone, and is prone to breaking easily (Improvised glass weapons break 50% of the time they strike or parry, LT63). If you're feeling generous, you could give it the same +1 damage as obsidian blades, though I suspect that's not strictly realistic.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Essential Stone would be good for fortifications, but for personal weapons and armor, an Ironwood spell would probably be better. Then you could have wooden weapons, breastplates, greaves, and bracers with the strength of iron/steel. That dusack could be sharpened to a true broadsword.

Also, how great a use would glass have in this world? (what with being sharper than any wooden weapon could get)

Magic doesn't have an "Ironwood" spell. That'a D&D-ism.

We do have Essential Wood which is 3x as strong as regular wood. That's DR, HP and ability to bear weight. The spell says nothing about increasing hardness which is a prime aspect of making blades. An Essential Wood would be 3x as hard to break but might not be any better at holding an edge.

Essential Stone is at least as hard as any glass and with Shape Stone is even easier to turn into useful items. I'm sure it would make knives, spears and axe-heads (it's also lighter than iron).

I'm just not sure that it would made long swinging sword blades. Sword blades need to be flexible but even Essential Stone isn't.

You probably have greater freedom to Shape armor bits with Shape Stone than with Shape Plant. With Shape Stone you can do anything you want with Stone that you could with modelling clay. Shape Plant appears more limited and is not that much cheaper when working with cut lumber.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, a _lot_ of stuff doesn't work out if you make Earth less dense by having few if any metals.

For example, hemoglobin.

Don't ignore the chemical and biochemical consequences for removing the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by martinl

For example, hemoglobin.

Don't ignore the chemical and biochemical consequences for removing the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust.

Haemoglobin doesn't require as much iron as making iron tools does. Plus how is having differently coloured blood a downside?

[Genesis]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Haemoglobin doesn't require as much iron as making iron tools does. Plus how is having differently coloured blood a downside?

It's not just differently colored blood - a significant fraction of biology is Fe-limited. There are a number of good examples of this iron-centric biology, which you can look up on wikipedia if you're really interested.

Anyway, even disagreeing with you on that point I'd still say you can have both metal-poor culture and metal-rich biology. Biology has gone to a lot of trouble to do iron economy very efficiently (because it's such an essential element). Culture, on the other hand, requires large deposits of conveniently-processable iron ore. If precursors/magic/aliens/maguffin-of-choice has removed convenient ore deposits your culture might be extremely poor in metalwork while the biology doesn't experience any change. The metal might even be just as common as it naturally is - all it takes is for concentration/purification of bulk metal to be a little more difficult...

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Genesis

Biology has gone to a lot of trouble to do iron economy very efficiently (because it's such an essential element). Culture, on the other hand, requires large deposits of conveniently-processable iron ore.

Even if the iron starts out evenly diffused, water can concentrate it a la bog iron.

In general, I agree that an element doesn't need to be high abundance for biology to use it, but if you are going to drastically alter the elemental mix, you will drastically alter the chemistry, and thus the biochemistry.

That said, very few players will care.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Genesis

It's not just differently colored blood - a significant fraction of biology is Fe-limited. There are a number of good examples of this iron-centric biology, which you can look up on wikipedia if you're really interested.

Anyway, even disagreeing with you on that point I'd still say you can have both metal-poor culture and metal-rich biology. Biology has gone to a lot of trouble to do iron economy very efficiently (because it's such an essential element). Culture, on the other hand, requires large deposits of conveniently-processable iron ore. If precursors/magic/aliens/maguffin-of-choice has removed convenient ore deposits your culture might be extremely poor in metalwork while the biology doesn't experience any change. The metal might even be just as common as it naturally is - all it takes is for concentration/purification of bulk metal to be a little more difficult...

I didn't mean to suggest that differently coloured blood would be the only difference but it seems that with substitutions like that you can reduce necessary iron to much lower levels when it is only needed for whatever iron is really needed for.

Originally Posted by martinl

Even if the iron starts out evenly diffused, water can concentrate it a la bog iron.

In general, I agree that an element doesn't need to be high abundance for biology to use it, but if you are going to drastically alter the elemental mix, you will drastically alter the chemistry, and thus the biochemistry.

That said, very few players will care.

Presumably there will be biological methods un-concentrate bog iron if it's rarer.Plus realistically you will get the occasional meteoric iron (though the cultures may not be familiar with it due to it's rarity.) so you can't totally remove extractable iron from the picture.

[Edges]

If all the weapons grade metal was somehow trapped in blood [waves hands for explanation], then sorcerer kings with the power to extract that metal would be feared indeed. And a single sword would bear the blood of thousands before it was ever used.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Edges

If all the weapons grade metal was somehow trapped in blood [waves hands for explanation], then sorcerer kings with the power to extract that metal would be feared indeed. And a single sword would bear the blood of thousands before it was ever used.

That idea has come up in Tekumel discussions. The amount of iron in blood would require a lot of people to make a sword and seems like a lot of work for a sorcerer king. Still it is a cool idea.