Price of Aluminum of Yrth?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by scc

Are you talking about the second bit? No, that's in Magic, page 70:

You know, there's nothing about that saying that the decorations have to be precious, just that those are examples. The bigger problem is that an axe is not rod-shaped, and is therefore an invalid subject for the enchantment.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Anthony

You know, there's nothing about that saying that the decorations have to be precious, just that those are examples. The bigger problem is that an axe is not rod-shaped, and is therefore an invalid subject for the enchantment.

Actually this came up in a Kromm post, if you want the axe head to count as part of the Staff so you can use it to deliver a touch spell, it needs to be part of the enchantment and thus precious.

And no, it's not purely decorative, but find someone who doesn't want to be able to deliver touch spells and hurt their target at the same time.

Also using having that sort of shiny on your Staff makes for a good Powerstone

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<snort> Sure, that axe head is purely decorative.

Well, people were pointing out early in the thread that aluminum would make a poor axe head. So it's not functional... that leaves decorative!

(Being light is an advantage here. Who wants to tote around an unnecessarily heavy object that's purely symbolic?)

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Well, people were pointing out early in the thread that aluminum would make a poor axe head. So it's not functional... that leaves decorative!

(Being light is an advantage here. Who wants to tote around an unnecessarily heavy object that's purely symbolic?)

And of course there are no spells that harden materials, that would overcome aluminum's major deficiency in this area. <wink>

[Bruno]

For the record, let me say that I don't want someone putting a good edge on an aluminum axe and then whacking me in the anything with it.

I don't want them whacking me with an aluminum baseball bat, and this is going to be worse than that. It's going to weigh more, it has the leverage, and it has an edge on it. It is a viable weapon, just not a weapon that you would use given a choice for almost anything normally used for weapons. Except more wood - I would pick aluminum over wood for an axe blade, although if I have nothing but wood, a wood axe blade is still ouchy.

Make some aluminum bronze, if you have some banestormed metal lore. I think that's an improvement.

[Varyon]

Damascus Steel is more likely to be available, would be better for an axe head, and is probably sufficiently expensive to work for your purposes. The physical difference between a Fine Damascus Steel axe and a Fine Steel axe is probably below system resolution, but if you're willing to go a little cinematic, Azzalum (Fantasy Tech 1, p27) is a good approximation, and you'll also want to add in a CF for the attractive nature of the wavy pattern on the blade. Note the +5 CF in Fantasy Tech assumes the stuff isn't all that rare, but on Yrth Damascus Steel may well be as rare as gold (or more rare, if they can't find any iron deposits with the right impurities in them, restricting them to what gets Banestormed in).

Note this assumes you're correct that making an axe head out of something really expensive will allow it to work with Staff.

[Michael Cule]

I don't see any objection to a wizard who has seen aluminium and can use magic to analyse it being able to find sources of the ores it is extracted from.

It would require magical research to create a magical means of extracting the stuff. IIRC (quick Wikipedia check, yep) the means of extracting is used on Earth requires quite sophisticated chemistry and a shedload of electrical power which might be difficult to simulate with the magical means of producing lightning known on Yrth and would certainly attract the attention of the Ministry of Serendipity or its local equivalent.

But magical research to create an 'extract aluminium' spell isn't impossible. I'm not sure it would be worth the expense, effort and possible unpleasant attention from the Ministry though. Would the lighter aluminium based chainmail be worthwhile? I'm far from convinced that a lighter metal is what you want for melee weapons, baseball bats or not.

[sir_pudding]

If axe-staves were possible in the setting, they would already exist. Templars in particular would be using Halberds with Staff. Since they don't exist, I would think that in Yrth, the Staff spell only works on stick weapons.

What you make the head out of is irrelevant, because as soon as it becomes a polearm the enchantment stops working (or maybe it does work but only applies to the haft if you really want to make it complicated).

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If axe-staves were possible in the setting, they would already exist. Templars in particular would be using Halberds with Staff. Since they don't exist, I would think that in Yrth, the Staff spell only works on stick weapons.

What you make the head out of is irrelevant, because as soon as it becomes a polearm the enchantment stops working (or maybe it does work but only applies to the haft if you really want to make it complicated).

I'd allow it to work on the haft of a weapon with a maximum reach of 2 or shorter.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If axe-staves were possible in the setting, they would already exist. Templars in particular would be using Halberds with Staff. Since they don't exist, I would think that in Yrth, the Staff spell only works on stick weapons.

What you make the head out of is irrelevant, because as soon as it becomes a polearm the enchantment stops working (or maybe it does work but only applies to the haft if you really want to make it complicated).

Removable axe heads. Could there ever be a reason to hide the fact that your pole is really a staff with the magic temporarily suppressed by the functional blade?