Heroes of Undarin - Cold iron weapon question

[Gwaihir Scout]

One of my players has asked if his +3 weapon can be cold iron. Since this would make a big difference on the one chapter where it matters most, and the special materials rules aren't terribly clear, I figured I'd better ask for advice.

The fact that a +1 cold iron dagger is in the item pool makes me think the answer should be no. And since +3 weapons are master quality and cost 400+ gp for cold iron, I don't think they can afford to buy that upgrade themselves since they only have 100 gp.

[DM_Blake]

No, I don't think getting cold iron for free is the intent of the treasure tables.

He's already getting a +3 magic weapon, that's at least a 12th level item selection, right? That means that the playtest rulebook says he has at least 700gp to spend on equipment (more if they're higher than 12th level)?

If so, let him buy cold iron with that cash (assume the weapon was made from scratch as cold iron and the PC has only 300gp to spend on other gear).

If your adventure says they only get 100gp (a strange custom amount that isn't even on table 11-2 and seems overly limiting) then I guess the PC cannot have a +3 cold iron weapon.

Given the costs involved, I suppose you could let him have a +2 cold iron weapon. Treat it as a level 9 pick (one level higher than a basic +2 weapon). Assume it's master quality so he can even put one property rune on it if he picks the rune as one of his other selections.

Purely all up to GM discretion here.

I might ask why your player wants this so much? Is he metagaming to know that this weapon is important to the adventure? Did the player read spoilers? If I were the GM and I suspected this is the case, I'd be much less likely to rule in the player's favor. But that's just me (and if I'm not sure, then I would error on the side of trust rather than suspicion).

[Dreamtime2k9]

As someone who already ran the adventure for their group;

I'd argue no.

Mostly because the book asks players to spend x amount of money and make characters prior to getting the assortment of equipment. Even if they already knew the equipment list, they can't aford the master quality with their funds, they could afford expert but thats not an option as its +2 with a potency rune which would be odd considering cold irons property of removing a potency rune slot. Some classes get to treat their attacks as cold iron though which gives them a massive advantage in this ap ;)

@DM_Blake

why it isn't metagaming:

Under creating characters, it explicitly states that "These characters should all be crusaders who have signed on to fight demons in the Worldwound." and anyone who played prior editions will know about the cold iron so i would hardly call it metagaming personally.

[DM_Blake]

Oh, yeah, it's that chapter. We're getting to it in a few weeks. I forgot it has weird equipment requirements. Since they signed on for it, then yeah, probably not metagaming.

But if I recall correctly, the rules for starting items for this chapter are extremely strict and very different than all the other chapters. I think this is for a reason, mainly to limit access to items that could trivialize encounters and, consequently, trivialize the playtest.

So in this case I would definitely say no - stick to the exact rules for starting items so you have valid results for the playtest. Any deviation on how the characters get equipment would skew your playtest results toward being invalid.

[Gwaihir Scout]

We'll need to get used to cold iron actually being expensive.

If this wasn't a playtest, I'd let him go for a +2 cold iron weapon under these conditions, but since it is, it'll be a to-the-letter interpretation.

[DamianTheAlien]

Gwaihir Scout wrote:

One of my players has asked if his +3 weapon can be cold iron. Since this would make a big difference on the one chapter where it matters most, and the special materials rules aren't terribly clear, I figured I'd better ask for advice.

The fact that a +1 cold iron dagger is in the item pool makes me think the answer should be no. And since +3 weapons are master quality and cost 400+ gp for cold iron, I don't think they can afford to buy that upgrade themselves since they only have 100 gp.

By the rules, players may sell items for 50% of their price and buy (common) items for 100% of their price. Since the rules also says to allow downtime where possible, players could conceivably sell their allocation of magic items and buy a cold iron or silver weapon of master quality and have a rune transferred to that weapon (for 10% of the rune cost).

The weapon is not increased in level by having extra abilities like cold iron or wounding according to the rules.

***

As the module describes the characters as Crusaders (capital "C") one assumes they were veterans of the 5th Crusade and have the background and inclination to have anti-demon weapons. I therefore would not consider the desire for cold iron weapons to be in any way meta-gaming.

[Dreamtime2k9]

DamianTheAlien wrote:

By the rules, players may sell items for 50% of their price and buy (common) items for 100% of their price. Since the rules also says to allow downtime where possible, players could conceivably sell their allocation of magic items and buy a cold iron or silver weapon of master quality and have a rune transferred to that weapon (for 10% of the rune cost).

This would be true, however it has already been clarified by Mark on a previous post adressing this to not be as intended for sake of potential playtest data corruption.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs429ph?I-have-no-idea-how-to-handle-starting-we alth#36