The Cost of Mithral

[Hida_Kurain]

I'm trying to determine the actual cost of mithral armor. The DMG gives the price of mithral armor (heavy) as +9000 gp.

Does this figure just cover the manufacturing costs or the material costs as well?

Would obtaining the mithral lower the overall price? If so, how would this be determined?

Also, I need a textual reference from a WotC product to support the idea.

 

[kengar]

DMG pp.242 - 243 are really the only references.

To answer your question, the cost increase listed includes the material as well as labor. You add that to the price of a set of "normal" armor.

If the character got a hold of a chunk of (refined) mithral and brought it to the smith, then the DM would probably decide to reduce the price of the item (off the cuff, I might say something like cost = x2 MW [ item] to reflect the higher level of difficulty in crafting something from mithral).

 

[Krail Stromquism]

Check FR MoF

You'll find the answer to your question in Magic of Faerun in the back they have a bunch of unique materials including Mithral.

Also if you read the entries for the different specific armors in the DMG you'll find many of them are Mithral.

Dwarven Plate for one and I beleive Elven Chain as well.

You can sort of extrapolate the benefits and cost from examining those if you dont have MoF.

good luck, I dont have my books but Ill try and find it.

 

[Tiberius]

Hmmm... we had the exact same situation pop up in our game last night. To the letter. Hi, John! I'm somewhat surprised you didn't chose a Togashi name.

My take on it (for my campaign) is that it is impossible to simply buy mithral armor off the shelf. One may have it commissioned if you have the mithral ore, and the price listed in the DMG and MaoF is the cost for the time and special materials and tools needed to craft the armor. Since the dwarves are archetypal mithral-workers, I gave a price break for them, approximately 2/3 of what the humans were charging.

-Tiberius

 

[Hida_Kurain]

Behold Math and Market Price

Using the suggestion to extrapolate the Price:
Mithral

Light Armor +1000 gp
Medium Armor +4000 gp
Heavy Armor +9000 gp
Shield +1000 gp
Other Items +500 gp/lb

So Mithral Goes for 500 gp/lb

Examples of Mithral Armor from the Book
An item’s market price is what it costs to buy it:

From DMG page 182 (Specific Armors)
Dwarven Plate (Full Plate) Cost=10,500 gp
Cost Analysis=
Full Plate Cost: 1,500 gp
Heavy Armor Mithril Cost 9000 gp
Total: 10,500
To purchase the armor as a finished product were the material is already provided costs 10,500 (The cost of the dwarven plate). 10,500 is the MARKET COST to purchase the armor (premade).

Mithril Shirt (Chain Shirt) Cost = 1,100
Cost Analysis=
Chain Shirt Cost: 100 gp
Light Armor Mithril Cost 1000 gp
Total: 1,100
To purchase the armor as a finished product were the material is already provided costs 1,100 (The cost of the Mithril Shirt). 1,100 is the MARKET COST to purchase the armor (premade).

THE MARKET COST is inclusive of the materials for an item.

 

[Vanguard]

It's broken.

You've got an interesting question, and I've tried to answer it in several different ways. My first try was to use the cost for "raw" mithral in GP/Lb and subtract from the cost of armor.

The cost for Mithral according to the DMG is 500GP/Lb. Seeing as how a Chain Shirt weighs 25 pounds, and mithral items weigh half as much, we should need 12.5 pounds of mithral for a chain shirt. That works out to:

12.5Lbs x 500GP/Lb = 6250GP total

But the mithral shirt is only supposed to retail for 1100 (Whether you use the "mithral shirt" entry from the DMG treasure tables or take a regular chain shirt and add the mithral cost to it). We have a problem.

Looking at the PHB entry for a chain shirt, we see that a chain shirt includes a layer of padding under it. Assume this padding is equivalant to padded armor and weighs 10 Lbs. Now there's only 15 Lbs of metal which needs to be mithral. Mithral weighs half as much as steel, so our price for materials now works out to:

7.5Lbs x 500GP/Lb = 3750GP total

Still way too much. If we go in reverse and assume that the 100 for a regular chain shirt will cover our materials costs for padding, straps, etc, and we charge the 500GP/Lb rate, the actual mithral part of the armor weighs only 2 Lbs (Actually a little less, as we havn't paid labor costs for a masterwork item yet). Which would mean the actual metal on a steel chain shirt would weigh 4 Lbs. I've never handled an actual chain shirt, but this seems way too light to me. Also a quick crosscheck with existing numbers shows that the steel in a regular chain shirt should weigh approximately 15 lbs (25Lbs - 10 Lbs (the padding)). So we're still way off.

There are two solutions. Both are completely unofficial interpretations and/or extrapolations based on other rules, but they're the best we can do.

1 - "Mithral" chain is actually made of a mithral alloy, and therefore costs less than the listed cost for "pure" mithral by the pound.

2 - The DMG on p243 states that items crafted from mithral are treated as masterwork in regards to crafting times. If you already have the material, then the cost to get the armor made shouldn't be any different than a masterwork suit of armor, as it will take the smith the same amount of labor to create. (This is barring other special cirumstances, such as special equipment required for crafting mithral armor)

I like Option 2 better, it seems cleaner to me. However, with that you're still stuck with a bad price for Mithral per pound. I thought about working backwards from option 2 to extrapolate the "correct" cost/Lb for mithral, but since the armor price is by Light/Medium/Heavy and the commodity price is by weight, it probably wouldn't come out right (not to mention complications like the padding mentioned above). If someone wants to try to work out some sort of average figure, I'd love to see the numbers.

Hope this helps!