I'm running the Second Darkness adventure path and in module #2 the party recovers a significant quantity (50+ lbs.) of noqual skymetal. A sidebar in the module states that it's worth 50 gp per pound.
The question is how much skymetal is required to make weapons, armour, and shields?
The sidebar also lists the Item Cost Modifier for crafting items but it's in thousands of GP and doesn't appear to relate to the weight of the noqual (i.e., light armor has a cost of +4000 gp which if based on 50 gp per pound would be 80 lbs worth of noqual--there isn't even that much noqual to be found in the entire adventure!).
Is there a rule somewhere that spells out how much skymetal is required to craft items? Or does anyone have a rule of thumb?
Click here for all skymetals and costs for armour and weapons. The cost to make items from special materials is often more than the cost of the materials by weight alone - also very variable if by weight alone especially with the heavy armours. most flavour it as a degree of extra work/preparation is required
Thanks, I was aware of that info. But if someone wants to make a suit of chain mail, how many pounds of noqual do they need?
Another note here is when crafting mundane items you spend 1/3 of the final price on raw materials. For light armor this would be about 1,380gp or so. I'd say most of that is the noqual, maybe 1300 worth?
Also keep in mind that even metal armor has non-metal components to it. Without the padding most metal armor would be useless if not outright dangerous. Noqual is also lighter than steel so that 50 lbs of Noqual is the equivalent of 100 lbs of steel. So the Noqual chain shirt weighs 12.5 lbs. A couple of pounds of that will be padding for the armor so it probably uses about 10 lbs of actual Noqual.
There is also a difference between raw metals and the finished product. Once you have the raw material you need to turn it into actual items. Part of the cost of making the item is going to be the refining and smelting process. The metals probably have a higher melting temperature than ordinary steel so require special manufacturing processes. I believe the first chapter of the Iron Gods mentions this. The process of making useable items out of unusual materials is also expensive. Not every village blacksmith is going to be able to turn raw Noqual into armor.
Normally the raw material is about half the cost of the item. So what I would do would be to give a 50% discount for items made with the metal you found. I would also say that you would use the weight of the raw material to calculate out how much can be used this way. So with 50 lbs of Noqual you could make probably one suit of medium armor or two suits of light armor with a little left over for a weapon or other item. This is what I would do not strictly speaking RAW.
The PCs in my Iron Gods campaign do their own crafting and have their own source of the skymetal adamantine. While describing special-materials crafting as nothing more than an added cost is convenient if the PCs don't have the material, it is a pain when they do have the material.
In Pathfinder crafting, the cost of materials to make an item is one third of the item's full price. Making a chain shirt out of noqual increases its price by 4000 gp, so that adds 1,333 gp to the cost of materials. On the other hand, a noqual chain shirt weighs only 12.5 lbs., since noqual armor has half the weight of iron armor. 12.5 lbs. of noqual ore costs 625 gp. Less than half of the added materials cost is noqual itself.
The difference gets worse as the armor gets heavier. A noqual breastplate weighs 15 lbs. and noqual chainmail weights 20 lbs., which would be 750 gp and 1,000 gp of noqual respectively, but the materials cost goes up by 2,666 gp. Noqual full plate weighs 25 lbs., which would be 1,250 gp of noqual, but the materials cost goes up by 4,000 gp.
Therefore, let the players take the full weight of noqual used in the weapon or armor off from the cost of the item, because it is not going to make much difference.
Also, the crafting time skyrockets. I switched to the Making Craft Work system to reduce the time to a playable duration.