Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Mithril is likely copyright, so I doubt we'll see it in any official SJ Games product. But I'm throwing some suggestions out for home use:

Mithril is an armor modifier only available for mail and double mail. It can be (and usually is) combined with Elven, Fine, Ornate, and Thieves'. It comes in 4 grades:

Common Mithril provides +1 DR at 1/2 the usual weight: +29 CF.

Heavy Mithril provides +1 DR, and can be under other armor without a DX penalty for layering. Only one of Giant Spider Silk or Heavy Mithril or Superb Mithril can be worn without a layering penalty, though: +99 CF.

Superb Mithril provides +1 DR at 1/2 the usual weight, and can be under other armor without a DX penalty for layering. Only one of Giant Spider Silk or Heavy Mithril or Superb Mithril can be worn without a layering penalty, though: +139 CF.

Exquisite Mithril provides +1 DR at 1/2 the usual weight, and can worn under other armor without a DX penalty for layering. Exquisite mithril can be worn with Giant Spider Silk! A full suit of exquisite mithril can be traded for a Shire's worth of land: +399 CF.


Do these costs seem reasonable to other people? It's basically the Giant Spider Silk or Orichalcum CFs applied to mail armor.

At the top end, a mobile character could an Orichalcum Fine Corselet (DR4, $50700, 10 lbs), an Exquisite Mithril Fine Elven Double Mail Hauberk (DR6*, $212400, 16.5 lbs), and a Fine Giant Spider Silk Cloth Torso armor (DR 2*, $3270, 4.5 lbs) for DR4+8* at $266370 and 27 lbs.

A heavy armor warrior could replace the Orichalcum Corselet with a Fine Triple Proof Dwarven Steel Breastplate (DR10, $29900, 54 lbs) and save enough money to get Lighten (50%) cast on it. The extra 17 lbs of gear would increase armor to DR10+8* - very useful when dueling siege beasts and stone golems!

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Although you can substitute a pile of HP and a healer for the armor. Costs less in dollars, costs more in CP, and a pixie healer weighs less than 17 lbs!

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

As I wrote it up, orichalcum is to bronze what mithril is to steel.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

. . . and it's also important to note that I took stats for alkahest, orichalcum, and paut in DF from GURPS Cabal, not GURPS Fantasy, so it's possible that the orichalcum there a different thing again!

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Mithril may be a copyrighted word, but the concept isn't and yttrium silver fills the same niche that mithril does. Now I just have to find an appropriate "fair use" word to represent it.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Seems to me it was occasionally referred to as "true-silver" in LOTR. And I am revealing to much geekiness here, but in Sindarin it means "grey-glitter."

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Do the Cost Factors seem balanced for the weight, DR, and layering advantages?

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Why would you limit Mithril only to mail?

Once Low Tech is out all you will need is a weight and cost modifier for mithril. Everything else is handled by armour modifications such as fluting and heavy plate.

Suppose a DR3 iron cuirass costs $800 and weighs 8 lbs.
The same thing made from mithril might be 30x cost and half weight ($24,000, 4 lbs)
If you want heavier armour, say DR5, then use the heavy plate modifier which results in $48,000, 8 lbs. Once this is done you add padding which gives a final cost of $48,160 and weight of 11 lbs. for a DR5 mithril cuirass.

Same thing with mail. Just look up the entry for light mail, double mail, fine mail, etc and apply a cost and weight modifier for Mithril. You'll never get mail to behave like cloth no matter how magical the wire is. If you want Mithril to be layered under other armour without penalty then you make Mithril thread and weave into a textile. I'd treat it like super strong silk which would be exactly the same as spidersilk.

Is 30x enough? Suppose that mithril is worth 5x gold and all coins are equal weight:
1 copper coin = 2 iron coins
1 bronze coin = 2 copper coins = 4 iron coins
1 silver coin = 5 bronze coins = 20 iron coins
1 gold coin = 10 silver coins = 200 iron coins
1 mithril coin = 5 gold coins = 1000 iron coins

Based on this a piece of armour made from bronze should cost 4x its iron equivalent; gold would be 200x; mithril should cost 1000x.

Edit: On 2nd thoughts wouldn't Mithril be 500x since it is half the weight of iron?

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

I'm limiting mithril to mail because this is Dungeon Fantasy, and material modifiers tend to be iconic rather than reasonable. The iconic piece of mithril armor is a mail shirt, so mithril is mail only.

I'm less concerned about a reasonable math approximation (again, Dungeon Fantasy) of the value of mithril and more of a play balance thing. Is it worthwhile to spend $200K to get another 5* DR?

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Assuming the PCs can get their hands on that kind of cash? Probably yes. I know that if Lenia were sticking around after our houserule revision of Signature Gear, that mail shirt+sleeves would become mithril pretty much right away.

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.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Don't need to. You just have it made by elves, and you wear it in dungeons while you fight demons and take treasure. A realistic "how" is an optional extra.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Elven armour and Mithril mail are two different beasts. Elven armour can be some magical construction that can do anything you want. Mail is mail regardless of what kind of metal it is made from. Mithril mail would actually be less capable of resisting crushing attacks than iron since it has less mass to absorb impact.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

But it's mithril so it resists crushing attacks better anyway. Welcome to Dungeon Fantasy. :P

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Ooo...ooo...ooo...I am SO looking forward to Low Tech, then! I can see the Immortal Legion (the Berian Emperor's personal bodyguard) armored in this stuff, with the armor made of "Berian Silver"...

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Maybe Mithral as a material automatically shock-hardens on impact or some such? Doesn't need to make too much sense, really. Even the least possible explanation should work in Dungeon Fantasy:p

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

DARPA is funding research at INEEL that is investigating a Structural Amorphous Metal (SAM) that temporarily hardens and thickens/constricts when impacted. Theoretically at least, tightly linked rings of this SAM would harden and constrict when impacted by a crushing attack. Adjacent rings would harden and constrict from the initial rings constricting and so on. This would cascade outward with the net effect of flexible links in the area around the impact site temporarily becoming like a ridged plate. This "plate" would allow the kinetic energy from the crushing impact to be spread over a larger area. After the impact energy is dissipated, the rings return to their original condition and the armor is flexible again. End result is a “flexible armour” more resistant to crushing.

The information I have is the properties of the SAM have been demonstrated. INEEL was/is working on increasing batch size and other production issues. The planned applications I am aware of did not include rings.

-Dan

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

I have been reading about this research for years. Chinese mountain scale would have cost them a lot less. Maybe Pinnacle wants to try their Dragonscale using the Chinese pattern ;) The above wouldn't work with a mail mesh though. In order to make mail flexible you need a fair amount of free play between the links. Making the weave tight enough to shock harden would mean that the initial mesh would be too rigid. It might work on the chest but nowhere that needs more flexibility.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

A quick look on the interwebs suggests that the Tolkein estate didn't trademark the term mithril (unlike Hobbit and Balrog) and as a result it (or something spelled very like it and referring to a metal) has appeared in a wide range of games and publications, including D&D (particularly Forgotten Realms), Final Fantasy, Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Somehow I don't think Chinese mountain scale would quite work for the main application DARPA has in mind. ;-)

I only have a rudimentary knowledge of manufactoring mail. But if I remember the few factoids correctly, a very fine mesh allows a tighter fit for individual links, but the larger number of links lets the mail keep some of the flexibility.

If memory serves, INEEL was working with a number of different SAM materials (primary Ni, Ti, Zr, , and others), and the different materials had different properties. I would assume that the right one would maximize the ratio of contriction.

So a combination of a very fine mesh and the right SAM might still allow for the theroretical crush resistant flexiable mail. But I'll leave that to you experts to figure out.
-Dan

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

If I had to some up with technobabble, I'd say it was made of some sort of non-newtonian shear thickening liquid, and instruct my players to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and how you'd make wire out of it.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

They're equally made up stuff that's supposed to have effects beyond their weight, construction, whatever. It's an adjective attached to a piece of armor to let you stick numbers after it that reality wouldn't support otherwise.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

The question was for Dungeon Fantasy, Dan. And the "elven" mail quallifier on DF: 1 does just this. It's mind-boggingly unrealistic, ofcourse... but I didn't think this was an issue for the OP. Standard explanation is probably "elven smiths can imbue their works with quasi-magical qualities, such as the mail becoming hard as plate when struck" or some other low-techno-babble like that.
Yes, it's pretty logical and ever since you commented on that system for Low-Tech I figured it'd feature something as simple as this as well as the other tricky stuff. Good to know though, always good to know... keep throwing us tidbits like that :P

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

According to Wikipedia:
However, the term 'mithril' was apparently never officially trademarked, and copyrights don't apply to individual terms.

I'm partial, personally, to somewhat odd magic armors. My settings have things like silver-thread (basically, Elven kevlar). My dwarves, though, tend to favor craftsmanship (er... craftdwarfship). They are more likely to use a ritual intended to give the smith endurance and wisdom than to directly affect the materials.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

This gets me wondering if Magic items should have a TL modifier. How weird would it be to have elven armor as TL3+6 (effective TL9), Mithril Plate would be as effective as Titanium could be Plate TL3+4, or Gondorian Plate TL3+1 plate?

In this manner one would have an average gauge of Power level in a given setting. So players who run around with Golem armor would have the equivalent of a TL3+6 Power Armor, wield staffs of Uber Fireballs are using TL0+7 RPGs etc. etc.

If one carries on a Out of Atmosphere High Fantasy, they could just use GURPS Ultra Tech to make the items.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

In the context of a DF game, I wouldn't think so. In another type of campaign, it might be something to spin off of.

Re: Mithril Armor in Dungeon Fantasy
 

Please note that single words and names cannot be "copyrighted". You can trademark them if you want, but this is rarely done.

So if you write a book where you mention "mithril", the book itself will be automatically copyrighted, but the names of characters, places, things are not.
Words need to be specifically trademarked if you want to prevent others from using them.

In the case of Mithril, it's quite obvious it wasn't trademarked, as it is used in dozens of rpg and video games...

According to Wikipedia: