This is mainly directed to Erik, but I would welcome any other input. I think the group that I DM may have stumbled upon an unexptected easter egg. In room 23, the one where Alastor is encountered, the floor is filled with "softball sized" iron balls. Iron balls...in a mining town dependent on iron ore. My group, which includes an engineer, figured this out. The room is 20 feet wide, by 50 feet long, and is filled to a depth of 15 feet with the balls (as indicated by the room's side view). Now, assuming approximately four of these balls could fit in 1 cubic foot, that would make a total of around 960,000 of them. We estimated each would way in the neighborhood of 10 pounds. In the PHB, it states that one pound is iron is worth 1 sp. So, that would make one of these balls worth 1 gp, or, in total, the whole horde is worth 960,000 gp. My group is wondering if this means a new group of mine managers has just entered the scene, dealing in pre-smelted iron balls. I'm sure this was not intended in the module, but it has left a very interesting door open.
Say they are all rusted and useless.
Or...
They attempt to claim the horde and are tied up in litigation for an indeterminent period of time (say it is cleared up near the end of the adventure path and makes a nice little retirement package for them) as third cousins of the abondoned mine owner (the cairn is on the land) lay claim to the treasure. Additionally the mayor claims that the land was fallow and no one has claim and so it now belongs to the town. Of course, he is magnanamously willing to allow the party to keep their other treasure as a finders fee.
Then of course the nobles from the Free City get a sniff and they want their cut in both claim and at the least taxes... back taxes for as long as it has been there.
Sean Mahoney
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Rusted iron is still iron. It can be smelted and reused. It may not even be the greatest quality iron, but it is still iron. And you are assuming that the 'third cousins' and the town mayor ever hear a peep of it.
I may have rushed the numbers by Joseph when I was calculating the volume of the room (yes, I am the engineer spoken of above), but I was assuming the balls were 3 inches in diameter, and there would have been a minimum of 64 in a cubic foot stacked 4x4x4 (assuming, conservatively, that they were all stacked neatly on top of each other...any other assumption would increase the number by 10 percent or more).
Considering the dimensions of the balls given in the module, that would be 20' wide by 50' long by 15' feet = 15,000 cubic feet times 64 balls per cubic feet equals....a lot of balls.
So, it is fairly obvious that the PCs taking this treasure would severly unstabalize the balance of the game. They can't be allowed to keep it. Which sucks since I think it was extremely creative and innovating realization of the resources at hand.
I suppose you could allow them to take it and then force them to come up with some amazing reasons to keep adventuring. Afterall the characters are now rich and got all they wanted... a ticket out of the little mining town.
I guess if the players were willing to have the PCs invest the money in things that didn't affect adventuring it wouldn't really hurt anything. And it would make for interesting role-playing.
Sean Mahoney
Why not make them into plain old stone balls?
Otherwise, that amount of iron could destabilize the economics of the area, making iron close to worthless. The mining community would go bancrupt and the main livelyhood of the main income of many of the citizens would dry up. I guess that would be a good cue for the adventurers to get the hell out of Dodge...
Yep, they'll be stone / clay balls IMC.
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Why not make them into plain old stone balls?
Otherwise, that amount of iron could destabilize the economics of the area, making iron close to worthless. The mining community would go bancrupt and the main livelyhood of the main income of many of the citizens would dry up. I guess that would be a good cue for the adventurers to get the hell out of Dodge...
Well, there's nothing saying they have to pull them all up in one bulk load... The players could form some kind of alliance with a mine manager (such as Luzane Parrin) to bring up discreet ammounts of the balls for smelting in with Parrin's freshly mined loads. That ammount could bolster her fortunes, give the players a strong ally (or group of allies via her friend Lazare), and net the group a nice stipend for finding the resource. That way the players don't get a huge wad of change and devalue the regions 'top crop'.
Good job on the players...they at least deserve a good XP reward for seeing such a great opportunity. Of course, we have no idea what the winds of fortune (or other game designers) have planned for the various mine cartels in future installments. But, that's just the danger of running the adventure as soon as you get the first installment
No problem.
More simply, the balls are made of a less well-known metal with a value that is more ambiguous; such lead, tin, or zinc.
Or perhaps they are made of some strange metal that is likely unidentifiable (and probably useless) to all but the most obscure of alchemists; something like aluminum, cadmium, barium, strontium, chromium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, tellurium, tungsten, etc.
Or more conveniently for D&D; they are made of a fantasy metal.
Better yet even, it is an alien metal created by the mysterious Wind Dukes, which may have some value to a collector in the Free City but the value of the combined spheres is much smaller than the characters anticipate. Plus, shipping a gargantuan load of spheres to the Free City will be a nightmare to coordinate and difficult to keep hidden, otherwise all kinds of bandits and other greedy collectors will come out of the woodwork to "intercept" the shipment.
Now all we have to do is figure out which metal is the most useless of the lot. :)
That is a pretty good idea, LeapingShark. Except I wouldn't use tin because it is used to make bronze and is still valuable. Cobalt is a pretty good idea, though. Cobalt is a fairly brittle metal and would be of very limited use for the time, since it can't be made into armor, weapons, or anything that needs strength. It is also reasonably common (it is found in iron mines, I believe.) So combine limited use with it being common, and you have a relatively worthless metal.
There could also be possible reprocussions of upsetting the wind duke's cairn on such a large scale. Maybe some representatives arriving from the elemental plane to politely request they put it back lest they face the wrath of (a lot higher level) Wind Duke retribution
You can also assume that the balls are hollow, not solid. This will reduce the total amount of actual iron. The trap still works because "it's magic".
Creative Director
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The implied economics of the D&D world are somethimes annoying. For example... it might be cool to have an underground lake of shadow essence poison as an adventure location, but then you stop and realize that one vial of shadow essence is worth 250 gp.
Alternately, if you have your group of 4th level characters fight pirates and they take down a pirate crew... suddenly they've captured a warship worth 25,000 gp.
Same goes for the room of iron spheres. Sometimes, in order to make a more interesting story or encounter, you have to be willing to toss out the guidelines.
If the PCs are bent on selling the spheres, keep in mind a few things:
1: Diamond Lake can't afford to buy all the spheres.
2: The mine managers are more likely to try to kill the PCs and steal the iron.
3: All of the suggestions other posters have given above are great ideas to discourage players from turning the "Age of Worms" into the "Age of Iron Spheres."
That said... if the PCs really get obsessed with the room of iron spheres... you can either let the campaign turn into an iron-trade saga with the PCs defending their iron bonanza from bandits and thieves, or you can say that the iron spheres are all actually made of lead, or stone, or magic.
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I'm going to leave the spheres as iron as I'm not even sure my PCs will see this little economic idea. However, even if they do they will eventually realize that selling that much iron all of sudden will attract the attention of the mine managers. At level 1 the PCs are hardly able to take on a band of thugs taking the "unclaimed" mine from the PCs. The PCs also may need to buy the land if they want to pretend that the cairn is giving up iron the old-fashion way. I don't see this place becoming a huge money source for them until much later in the game when they can more easily defend it and bullshit to officials on how they are getting the iron.
Considering the value of all the iron spheres and the expense of creating traps in 3.5 (as different threads of various sites have explored), who would even go to the trouble of creating the room in the first place?
One of the big troubles with D&D, as James has pointed out, is how the monetary/treasure system can upset the whole EL to treasure ratio of the game. DM's create traps and situations involving pirate ships, recently abandoned taverns, and thousands of valuable iron spheres all the time because the idea is cool. One of the last things DMs think about some times is how PCs are going to turn their adventure prop into a money making scheme and become as rich as kings by the time their 5th level.
Making the balls cobalt or some other relatively worthless metal common to iron mines is the best suggestion I've heard so far. Since I don't have issue 124 yet, I don't know what sort of trap the iron spheres are part of, but if making the balls clay or some other brittle substance means that they shatter on impact when striking the PCs, a nasty DM could fill the clay balls with alchemist's fire, acid, or monstrous centipedes (magically held is stasis of course).
Mmm...perhaps that would be a tad vicious.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Considering the value of all the iron spheres and the expense of creating traps in 3.5 (as different threads of various sites have explored), who would even go to the trouble of creating the room in the first place?
Perhaps an ancient race of highly magical elemental beings? ;)
--Erik
PS: My solution? Make 'em lead.
Considering the value of all the iron spheres and the expense of creating traps in 3.5 (as different threads of various sites have explored), who would even go to the trouble of creating the room in the first place?
Perhaps an ancient race of highly magical elemental beings? ;)
--Erik
PS: My solution? Make 'em lead.
I know, but I have to ask the question so I can bask in your holy presence when you reply to my exceptionally valid statement.
PS: Leads a fair solution. What's the DC for lead poisoning?
Congratulations adventurers, you have just won a lifetime supply of sling bullets! A market price of approximately 9600 gold pieces, which equals a resale value of 4800gp. The 960,000 bullets weighs 480,000 lbs and occupies a total of 120 squares (bullets from top to bottom of each square). Sound fair?
Venelle examines the metal ball and shakes her head with disdain, stuffing the little ball back in your palm, "Priceless treasure-balls of a bygone era? Ha! I'm onto your con, mister! Those are friggin sling bullets! Ya big and fancy lookin, but sling bullets aren't exactly a hot item around Diamond Lake. No thanks, take your five billion bullets and go home."