Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Personally, I'd just make it elven, thieve's and orichalcum... maybe not even all those modifiers together. I realize LotR cannon would mean mithril mail would also have to be more resistant, but I think the added DR against crushing, the light weight and the freedom of movement is more than enough to make it attractive.

Or, you could just make mithril items thrice as thick (using the orichalcum modifier for it), they'd weigh the same and offer x3 DR. Would be pharaonically expensive... maybe settle for double thickness for 2/3 weight of the original piece of metalic armor.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

As orichalcum is indicated as only allowed for bronze items, and there is no bronze mail, it technically isn't RAW legal to make orichalcum mail. It should probably work, however - unless there's supposed to be some property of orichalcum that makes it poor for making mails (I'm not sure if this is the case for bronze, or if bronze was just out of wide use when mail technology was developed).

As for the legality of mithril, keep in mind that more than one group has used it. It was coined by Tolkien, but is used in Dungeons and Dragons. Judging by the fact that DnD was required (from what I've heard) to stop calling their halflings Hobbits, I'd say that they'd have recieved a nice Cease and Desist on mithril by now if it were trademarked. I'll also note that, according to Wikipedia, mithril wasn't trademarked by the Tolkien Estate, and therefore is essentially available for free use (and has been used by a plethora of sources, mostly RPGs of some sort or another).

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Bronze has been used for mail. It's fussy to pull wire out of, compared to iron, but the big issue is that it's EXPENSIVE, the parts to make bronze (especially tin) being rare, whereas iron is common, therefore relatively cheap.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Sounds good to me. In my default fantasy rpg setting (essentially an alternate North America), mithril/yttrium silver/Berian Silver is a naturally-occurring substance with the best known source of it being trans-locational with Homeline's Mountain Pass Mine in California and smaller veins being found throughout southern California and Nevada.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

How can you make flexible armour more resistant to crushing?

Which is covered using the heavy plate rules in Low Tech. You can have armour up to around DR 14 if you are willing to bear the additional weight. All you need is to assign a cost and weight modifier for a particular material and the regular armour customisation rules will handle the rest.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

To quote Smeagol, "Nasty elves twisted it." Who knows how they do what they do?

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

I don't know how you can do it with low-TL items, but the high-TL method is to make it flexible until it is struck by a sharp enough blow - like a bullet or a punch. The armor then temporarily becomes rigid, then moments later the armor is once more flexible. We're just starting to come up with armor like this in the real world, but it's still very much on the drawing board. In GURPS it's normally TL9.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Forgive me, I'm about to be a giant Tolkien nerd. :-)
That was the elven rope Smeagol was talking about. And Frodo's mail coat was made by dwarves, not elves. In Middle Earth, at least, mithril was at least as much a dwarven thing as elven.

Ok, I'm done now. You can go about your business.
Not getting the joke since 1986!

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

I know what Smeagol was talking about. I thought DanHoward was talking about Elven Chain which has DR unreduced by crushing damage. Elven Mail is certainly twisted by nasty elves. ;)

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

The Chinese worked out how to do it about 500 years ago. They had a type of scale armour with each scale shaped like the Chinese character for mountain (the armour was called "mountain armour"). When assembled and interlaced through each other the scales formed a star-shaped pattern. The construction flexes in one direction but not the other. When struck it "shock hardens" on impact. I've tried making a few reconstructions and the scales have to be precisely shaped and carefully fitted together but it works wonderfully. Low Tech will cover this variant. Now tell me how to make mail armour rigid and still function like mail - I'll even let you use shiney super-strong ultra-light wire.