cost to turn raw special material into items

[killerzombi]

in a campaign im in, we have run into the issue of having raw mithral, but now want to turn it into armor. we were looking at the rules to make armor from mithral and it doesnt state things very clearly. we saw that other items were 500/lb so we figured 250/lb selling price was reasonable.

however armors have set weights and cost modifiers to have it made. after being mithral, fullplate weighs 25lbs and so needs 25lbs of mithral, or 6,250 gold worth, if sold. if we dont do the work ourselves, how much does the work cost? most would say the total cost minus the raw material price(1/3) or 2/3 of the base cost. this means fullplate would cost the 6,250gp of mithral in weight, plus 2/3 of the total cost of mithral fullplate(10,500gp) so it totals out to being 13250!

are we over estimating the cost of mithral per pound? or is there something else wrong in our calculations? should it only be 2/3 the cost of normal(or masterwork) fullplate, since the work is still the same, just different material?

[DM_Blake]

You seem to think mithral is a material. It is not.

(read this post and the updated ending two posts later)

(or read the whole thread for the discussion leading up to this revelation)

[killerzombi]

ok, so if in my game my DM gives us a way of mining raw mithral and other materials, how would be the best way of adjucating costs so that this can be made into armor? should having the material just mean im buying normal armor of that type and giving up the wieght of mithral?

[DM_Blake]

OK, my previous post was joking, of course.

The real answer is that you should be able to have arms and armor made of mithral for just the cost of the normal item. If you want a mithral chain shirt, give some of your mithral to a smith and pay him 1000gp for the chain shirt which he will make out of your mithral for no extra charge. That assumes you have 12.5 pounds of mithral.

If you do that, the mithral portion of the armor is worth 1,000gp/12.5 pounds = 80gp per pound.

Or you could do the same thing with a mithral breastplate which also requires 12.5 pounds of mithral. But if you do, the value of THAT mithral is 4,000gp/12.5 pounds = 320gp per pound.

For some unexplained mystical reason, the same weight of 12.5 pounds of mithral is worth much more (4x more) when you make a breastplate out of it than when you make a chain shirt out of it. For the reason, see the link in my previous post in this thread.

That's why you cannot really put a fixed price/pound value on mithral.

To keep it simple, if you want to sell mithral on the market, just the raw unrefined mithral ore, I would use the book price of 500gp/pound. But, I would not treat it as a trade good so you would only get half of that price yourself, 250gp per pound of mithral you sell. That keeps it simple. And then, of course, any mithral items you make or you have someone else make should get the mithral component at no charge since you're supplying that component yourself.