I've heard that adamantine rots when it comes into direct contact with light (?). But I was looking at the DMG the other day and I happened to come across the adamantine entry and it didn't say anything about it rotting.
At that, I have several questions:
1) Does adamantine in fact, rot in the sun light (or and light at all
2) If so, what campaign setting does this take place in (Forgotten Realms, Ebberon, or normal 3.5)
3) Why wouldn't it mention anything about it in the DMG
Thank much
The DH
D1-3: Making adamantine drow weapons fail in sunlight was Gygax's way of allowing drow to all have +1 or better chainmail and shortswords without the party walking out of the Underdark with 473 magical items.
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Farewell is basically correct. Adamantine itself suffers no ill effects in sunlight, but the specific way that drow metalsmiths work the metal into the various magical weapons and armor that the dark elves use in the Underdark imbues the metal with this particular vulnerability. If you read the first series of the Drizzt Do'Urden books by R.A. Salvatore (The Dark Elf Trilogy: Homeland, Exile, and Sojourn) it explains this gradual decay that occurs after Drizzt escapes to the surface. It isn't instantaneous, but it does decay over time (a few weeks if I recall correctly).
I would imagine this only applies in the Forgotten Realms setting, but you could certainly apply it to dark elves in other settings as well.
Looked it up in DMG p283. Says it's found in meteorites and the rarest magical areas. From a DM perspective, considering how rare it would be and how sparingly it would be used, it would be hard to justify ruining the PCs' new treasure. From a Fantasy World perspective, if it *did* evaporate in sunlight then some crafty gnome would make a fortune preserving it with spells/alchemy for use in weapons.
In FR, the disintegrating drow weaponry is explained due to faezress, magical radiation that permeated the Underdark. The faezress imbues the items with additional magical potency, but sunlight destabilizes and destroys the item. That D1-D3's drow had adamantine items is just coincidence. Dwarves deal in adamantine all the time, for example, but because they don't live deep enough for faezress pockets to form, their adamantine wares are unaffected.
D1-3: Making adamantine drow weapons fail in sunlight was Gygax's way of allowing drow to all have +1 or better chainmail and shortswords without the party walking out of the Underdark with 473 magical items.
Trust me, it was MUCh more than that....I figured it out one time....there were something like 473 +1 daggers alone...
lol...473...
Anyway...another random question...
If I wanted to make an ability where some one would make an attack against an arm to disable it (it would be something like the lacerate ambush feat in Dragon #345 or sumptin)...now the quest.:
Would it be a disarm attempt or a sunder attempt??? (So you can wither cut the arm off or break it...lol...what choices...)
We took out the "drow items decay" from 3E FR for several reasons, which I covered here:
http://seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/drowitemsdontdecay.html
They put them back in as an option in one of the books, as someone mentioned, but I don't recommend it. It's problematic game design and doing something just to screw your PCs' treasure totals over time is lame.
I havent seen anything that supports that adamantine rots in sunlight; so far as I can tell; only drow items of certain radiation signatures rot when removed from the drow homeland and contact sunlight.
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Pg.7 of Second Darkness:
"...sun returned their advantage, for
the drow were blinded by its brilliance and many of their
most powerful weapons and armor swiftly decayed under
its light."It appears the drow weapons/armor suffer from decay in Golarion aswell
Or at least, they used to until the drow learned their lesson.