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Post by joatmoniac on Apr 5, 2016 21:27:11 GMT
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Post by frohtastic on Apr 6, 2016 4:20:20 GMT
Edit: No idea why the quote refuses to embed properly... it was "You could keep track of it as an XP type, 1 XP per kill, Level 1 = Dagger, 30 XP to Level 2 = Rapier, 50 XP to Level 3 = Short sword, Etc... " Cool idea, but I'd recommend against progressing from rapier to short sword, as that would actually represent a loss of power. Instead, you could let the player describe the weapon however they please, but have the damage dice increase as the weapon gains "XP." 1d4 to 1d6 to 1d8 and onwards, perhaps maxing out as a 1d8/1d10 versatile weapon. Anyone attuned to the weapon treats it as a weapon with which they have proficiency, regardless of how they choose to describe it. Then higher levels of "XP" might make it act as a +1, +2, and ultimately +3 weapon, but with significant XP gaps. You could even calculate out the math with reasonable certainty to guarantee that it reaches those levels at about the right time for the players to be using such weapons normally, so as to maintain game balance. You could also have some minor properties for the weapon that "unlock" as it reaches certain XP thresholds. (E.g. "Once the blade reaches 50 kills, the wielder begins to hear the whispers of those trapped within the blade whenever he or she holds it.") And at my table, I'd start making the wielder make sanity checks at a certain point... This reminds me of the weapon progression system that was in fable 3, where the weapons got different properties dependant on what you did. Killed a lot of skeletons? the handle is made out of bones!
Maybe the growth could also be depending on how the kills were done. Was it against evil creaturers (monsters etc) or innocents ? I imagine the blade would be able to sense intent from the wielder and morph accordingly.
Perhaps this is how sentient weapons are made?
Actually this reminds me of the manga / anime Soul Eater, where you had humans that were able to turn into weapons.
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Post by swordnut on Apr 8, 2016 14:54:38 GMT
I love the concept of this sword. Its way too cool to be just a weapon. This needs to be a quest goal. The BBEG is slaughtering powerful people to harvest their energies and material for this sword. The sheer volume of necromantic energy is huge. It would draw the energy of anyone killed within a large radius, acting as a battery to store energy.
Perhaps the sword has just been made, and now an army is raiding the country for victims to power a darker ritual.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2016 18:47:34 GMT
I wanted to return to the original post for just a second, where Tesla writes, "assuming a perfect method of extraction."
That's only going to be possible with magic. This is pure conjecture, but non-magical methods using medieval technology would probably yield single digit percents (or less) of total iron content in the body, thus requiring thousands of bodies, perhaps even tens of thousands.
I like the idea of the sword being completely non magical, myself, because it makes its creation so much more harrowing. I'm imagining a relatively sane alchemist in the employ of a king slowly slipping into madness. He presents his discovery of iron in the human body to his liege, thinking it may lead to some form of treatment for the king's maladies. That's when the king gets the idea for the man-made sword. The alchemist becomes overridden with guilt, feeling responsible for the events that follow.... all that death for a simple sword.
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Post by joatmoniac on Apr 9, 2016 6:35:04 GMT
Even with medieval technology it would be plausible to get a fairly high percentage of the iron out of blood. Once you de-oxygenate the blood you can pyrolyse (burn it) to leave behind the iron. The topic was too interesting not to do enough research to probably be put on a list or two, haha. It is the same method you posted, but I think it would work relatively well. I would agree though that there is little to no chance, short of magic, to obtain the full amount of iron from blood. I would think it would take quite a few more that the originally proposed 300-450. The other method that comes to creepy mind is of course the continued farming of X number of people over time. Could be high powered people, or those who are magically inclined. No matter how you look at it, it would make quite the BBEG backstory or campaign. So many ideas, and that reddit thread is worth an extensive read to get a ton of info from.
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Post by frohtastic on Apr 9, 2016 7:17:06 GMT
Even with medieval technology it would be plausible to get a fairly high percentage of the iron out of blood. Once you de-oxygenate the blood you can pyrolyse (burn it) to leave behind the iron. The topic was too interesting not to do enough research to probably be put on a list or two, haha. It is the same method you posted, but I think it would work relatively well. I would agree though that there is little to no chance, short of magic, to obtain the full amount of iron from blood. I would think it would take quite a few more that the originally proposed 300-450. The other method that comes to creepy mind is of course the continued farming of X number of people over time. Could be high powered people, or those who are magically inclined. No matter how you look at it, it would make quite the BBEG backstory or campaign. So many ideas, and that reddit thread is worth an extensive read to get a ton of info from. the reason the shire wasnt as badly hit was because sauron needed the hobbits to produce his iron! But yeah, the farming of highly fertile races could be a "good" way to do it.
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Post by Tesla Ranger on Apr 10, 2016 19:11:45 GMT
I wanted to return to the original post for just a second, where Tesla writes, "assuming a perfect method of extraction." That's only going to be possible with magic. This is pure conjecture, but non-magical methods using medieval technology would probably yield single digit percents (or less) of total iron content in the body, thus requiring thousands of bodies, perhaps even tens of thousands. I like the idea of the sword being completely non magical, myself, because it makes its creation so much more harrowing. I'm imagining a relatively sane alchemist in the employ of a king slowly slipping into madness. He presents his discovery of iron in the human body to his liege, thinking it may lead to some form of treatment for the king's maladies. That's when the king gets the idea for the man-made sword. The alchemist becomes overridden with guilt, feeling responsible for the events that follow.... all that death for a simple sword. As Joatmontiac mentioned, even with medeval technology the loss probably wouldn't be terribly severe. The simplest approach I can think of would be to cure the bodies (which you'd need to do anyway if you wanted to tan the hides), debone them, and incinerate the remaining flesh. You could then pass over the ashes with a lodestone (old time-y word for a magnet) and extract the iron that way. The only obvious loss I can imagine would be iron carried away in the exhaust during the incineration. I would assume that'd be relatively minor. If they could make a furnace that's hot enough to magnetize the copper (which is a bit of a question) then a similar process could be used to extract the really minute quantities of copper. This methodology would be effective but slow. Curing large game/cattle usually takes 6-12 months and you have to imagine it would take quite a bit of labor to debone 300-500 human corpses. Even after they've been reduced to ash, extracting the iron would be painstaking and lengthy. You'd probably be looking at 3-5 years to produce a sword using strictly medieval era techniques. Someone with access to early industrial-era technology (at least a generator and a rudimentary understanding of induction) could replace the lodestone with a hopper, magnetized/electrified roller, and giant electromagnet. As the iron (or really any metal) falls onto the roller it passes through the roller's EM field. Induction generates a small charge in the metal which temporarily magnetizes it so the electromagnet can collect it. The rest of the ash falls off the roller. Modern recycling centers use this technique to sort out non-ferrous metals. Both of those are mechanical solutions though. I would assume there'd have to be a chemical process that could be used, perhaps even one that's possible at a medieval level. Engineers and chemists were stupid before the invention of steam power, they were just limited by the technology they had on hand. I would be amazed if there weren't some chemical reaction that could extract or reduce any metallic molecules within a body. I find the idea more interesting sans magic. Anyway you cut it, it's an immense amount of labor so one imagines the result must be worth it. The corpses don't need to be killed just for this sword. A corpse is a corpse and the incidentally dead (plague victims, executed criminals, the recently buried) would work just as well as a typical Sacrifice.
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